Boxley Abbey

In 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries one Geoffrey Chamber, a "commissioner" employed by Thomas Cromwell to oversee the closure of the institution, examined the famed relic and discovered it to be a fake, observing the levers and wires that enacted the so-called miracles.

Finally, it was sent to London and to the accompaniment of a mocking sermon from John Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, it was hacked to pieces in front of St Paul's Cathedral and burnt.

[5] Diarmaid MacCulloch, a biographer of Thomas Cromwell, notes that moveable parts, "for devotional and not fraudulent purposes", were occasionally a feature of religious statuary made during the twelfth century, the date of this figure.

[3] A legend that an effigy of the infant Saint Rumbold could only be lifted from its plinth by the particularly righteous was exploited by the monks, who engaged or disengaged a hidden bolt under the statue, according to the size of the cash gift on offer.

[6] The supposed finger of the apostle Andrew, inlaid heavily with silver, was also on display but was pawned to a local merchant for eleven pounds when the flow of "credulous and devout" visitors ceased.

Parts survive within the present mainly 19th-century Boxley Abbey House,[8] and there are some fragmentary remains of the church still standing, principally a doorway in the south aisle.