Abbot Lichfield was allowed to retire to the manor house of Offenham, where he died in 1546, and was buried in the lovely chapel he had built in early life on to the church of All Saints beneath the shelter of his own Abbey.
* * * * * The story of the Monastery has now come to an end.

In 1536 the lesser priories and monasteries were suppressed, and we can well imagine the tremor which this daring act of Henry must have sent through the religious world.

We can be sure the blow was unexpected by the monks themselves.

Only a few years before this Clement Lichfield had devoted much labour and money to the decoration of the great church, and his last work was the building of the tower which stands to this day.

We can never know whether the architectural additions which he made to the parish churches were suggested by the suspicion that they might survive that glorious edifice under whose shadow they reposed; but in his later years of retirement surely we may believe that he experienced a sorrowful gratification at the thought that some of his work would remain for the admiration of future ages, and that his mortal remains would lie in peace within the chapel which, in his youth, he had planned and adorned.
While Thomas Cromwell and his agents were engaged in their grim work of destruction we can fancy how Rumour first made herself busy; how the people talked of royal commissions and inquiries; tales would reach them of priories and convents which were seized, and of monks and nuns thrown upon the world.