The Catholic antiquary Charles Eyston, writing in The History and Antiquities of Glastonbury, has a story to tell about the market house in the town:

This is one example of a sacrilege narrative, a story which demonstrates God's providence by showing the dire consequences of violating or demeaning a person, object or place publicly dedicated to the worship of God. The notion that sacrilege provokes divine wrath has a long history; as John Weever put it, ‘the depredation of Churches, Church robbing, or Sacriledge, was in all ages held most damnable … he that steals any thing from the Church, may be compared to Judas the traitour’. But Englishmen after the Reformation had particular cause to be nervous, since Henry VIII's dissolution of religious houses was held by many to be the worst example of sacrilege that England had ever seen.