§ 23.
The position of monasteries as landowners
naturally led to some slackening of the rule. Abbots
and priors of the larger houses took their place among
the spiritual barons of the realm. From the fourteenth
century to the suppression twenty-four Benedictine
and three Augustinian abbots, with the prior of
Coventry and the English prior of the knights hospitallers,
had a prescriptive right to seats in parliament.
These are sometimes confounded with 'mitred'
abbots: the right, however, of an abbot or prior to
wear episcopal insignia depended, not upon a parliamentary
summons, but upon a privilege granted by the
pope. In addition to the extra-monastic duties thus
incumbent upon certain heads of houses, the care of
large estates took many of the brethren away from
constant attendance in their house. When bishop
Alnwick of Lincoln visited Peterborough abbey in
1437, he found that out of 44 monks there were seldom
on ordinary days more than ten or twelve at any
service in church. The obedientiaries or officers who
looked after the chief departments of the convent
came to church only on great festivals: some monks
lived upon the abbey granges: every week at least
seven were on furlough for blood-letting: two were
at their studies at Oxford: several were old and infirm
and could not attend service regularly. The somewhat
trite remark of the cellarer at Leicester in 1440
that 'abundance of money is the cause of many evils' is
justified over and over again in the records of episcopal
visitations. In spite, however, of their wealth, even
the richest houses, as a rule, were beset by money
difficulties. Their expenses were great: hospitality
and the daily alms were a serious drain on income:
pensions and corrodies or shares in the common
revenue were too liberally granted to outsiders: there
was much necessary outlay on property: young monks
had sometimes to be maintained in hostels belonging
to monasteries at the universities: an ambitious
abbot might run his house into extravagant expense
on buildings: episcopal visitations meant a large fee
to the bishop and expense upon his entertainment.
The improvidence of officers, joined with the damage
caused to property by pestilence and storm, constantly
reduced monasteries to a state of bankruptcy. The
heavy debts of monasteries, their insufficient assets,
the irregularity with which accounts were rendered,
and the consequent decay of discipline are abundantly
illustrated in the registers of fourteenth and
fifteenth-century bishops and in the patent rolls of
the reigns of Henry
V and Henry
VI.
