WESTMINSTER ABBEY
THE LAST DAYS OF THE
MONASTERY



Works by the same Author

——

ST. MARGARET’S, WESTMINSTER
THE PARISH GILDS OF MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND
WESTMINSTER, AN HISTORICAL SKETCH
ETC.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

THE LAST DAYS OF THE

MONASTERY

AS SHOWN BY THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

ABBOT JOHN ISLIP
1464-1532

BY

H. F. WESTLAKE, M.A., F.S.A.

Custodian and Minor Canon of Westminster Abbey


LONDON
PHILIP ALLAN & CO.
QUALITY COURT, CHANCERY LANE




First Published in April, 1921


Printed by Whitehead Brothers, Wolverhampton

FOREWORD

The Cloisters,
Westminster Abbey.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

THE MANAGEMENT OF THE MONASTERY.

By the time of Lanfranc, in the course of a quite natural development, additional officers had come to be necessary, and besides those of the Rule there is mention in his Constitutions of the Cantor, Sacrist, Guestmaster, Almoner and Infirmarer. In the Customary of St. Peter’s, Westminster, compiled by Abbot Ware about the year 1266, the number of Obedientiaries or principal officers had risen to at least fourteen, while to these must be added the many junior officers who worked directly under them either as deputies or assistants.

The gift or purchase of outlying estates and churches necessitated the appointment of officers to superintend their management and to be responsible for the due collection from them of rents and pensions. Moreover any particular extensions of the monastic buildings or church involved the appointment of a temporary Warden of the New Work to account for the necessary receipts and expenditure. It was customary to assign particular estates to the support of particular departments or else to arrange for the equitable division of profits among them all. Thus each official had definite sources of income for his office and definite objects upon which that income was to be expended. Year by year he was required to submit for audit a roll or balance-sheet accounting for the monies of his department, and to many of these rolls were attached bills or subsidiary rolls of which the chief roll might contain but a summary. It is from the survival of such rolls that a knowledge of the internal economy of the monastery can be obtained, the duties of the various officials outlined, and the progress and cost of new buildings or repairs duly marked. At Westminster the number of such surviving rolls is over three thousand, and in addition there are many account-books exhibiting in the utmost detail the expenditure in certain of the departments.

Exceptions to the general scheme must, however, be noted. At Westminster the precentor’s office had some small property in land attached to it and received some few pensions from churches, but the precentor himself kept no rolls, for his income and expenditure were small, and his duties were not such as to call for much outlay of money. The adult portion of his Secular Choir, the forerunners of the lay-vicars of the present day, were paid by contributions from the Sacrist and others, while the Subalmoner had the care of the Singing-children.

The archdeacon’s duties were those of a legal rather than monastic character, and in consequence the history of his office is not to be found in monastic rolls. Similarly in the case of officers such as the prior and others, whose work was mainly that of supervision and discipline, little record survives, with the result that these are for the most part far more shadowy figures than the administrative officials. The latter seem oftentimes to live again by the human touches which creep unawares into what at first glance might seem to be dull and stereotyped records of receipts and expenditure, and to leave small room for the record of personality. When we have read through some pages of Brother Thomas Browne’s ill-written account-book, which in due course he must submit for the Abbot’s inspection, how shall we translate the homely hexameter which quite suddenly appears: Si mea pena valet, melior mea litera fiet? Brother Thomas becomes no such remote figure after all!

St. Benedict had with keen foresight anticipated the possibility of a certain rivalry as between the Prior and Convent on the one side and the Abbot on the other, and he would seem to have regarded the prior’s office as a necessary evil with which he would rather have dispensed. Could he have foreseen such a development as took place at Westminster it can hardly be doubted that he would have devised some special statutes to meet a situation which could never have been consistent with his ideals or with that half-departure from them which he may in his broad-mindedness have contemplated. For Westminster’s Abbot was a feudal lord with the additional dignity of a mitre.

In that later history with which we are most concerned he dwelt apart from his flock. He was no longer the parent at the head of the table, with his children gathered round him at the common meal. Affairs of state or of his own manorial business were among the lesser calls which might take him away from the family of which he was nominally the father.

The mere fact that he so dwelt apart was for more than two centuries a fruitful source of dissension. Two households had to be maintained from a common income: what was the proper division of it? New estates were bequeathed: what was their proper allocation? Anniversaries had to be performed: how should the proceeds be distributed? Innumerable and inevitable expenses had to be met: what share ought the Abbot to undertake?

Such were some of the questions which from time to time disturbed the peace of the family. Here and there a question could be solved by special legislation. It was easy when a vacancy occurred in the Abbacy for the Prior and Convent before they proceeded to election to lay down that the next Abbot should be solely responsible for the maintenance of the walls which protected their buildings from the periodical threat of inundation from the Thames. It was easy at such a time to adopt the general principle that of future bequests the Abbot should take four parts, the Prior two, and each professed member of the Convent one; but there came times when the ordinary provision for the Convent table was a matter of anxious thought while the Abbot might seem to have no such cares. It is no wonder that, until some working arrangement was arrived at, each ensuing vacancy in the Abbacy should be the occasion for the formulation of conditions to which the new Abbot was bound to subscribe.

It is much to the spiritual credit of the Westminster community that in general such problems were met by the spontaneous generosity of the one side or the other. In all but one or two clearly defined cases it may be said that these problems ultimately made for goodwill rather than disruption, as giving occasion for the exercise of the primary virtue of the Christian life. They form indeed no part of the actual story, but some account of their nature is a necessary preliminary to an understanding of the economy of the monastery at any period of its history.

It is interesting to make a survey of the life and duties of the various conventual officials in these latter days.

In theory the Abbot still slept in the dormitory and a chamber was kept there for his use. In practice the only person who had access to it was the Receiver of his household, and Brother John Islip records that when he himself held that office he had two hundred pounds in money belonging to the Abbot which he kept in a chest in this chamber. In theory the Abbot dined in the refectory. In practice this may have occasionally happened, but these occasions were evidently few. The ordinary arrangement was for a fixed allowance of bread, generally six convent loaves, to be sent to the Abbot when he was actually in residence at Cheyneygates—the house now occupied by the Dean—or at his Manor of Eye hard by. This allowance was not sent if he were absent at any other of his manors. Otherwise he was expected to maintain his household and entertain his private guests out of his official income. As it would not always be easy to distinguish between personal and official visitors it was provided that the Abbot might bring four guests to the refectory without charge, but should he bring more than this number he was to be responsible for the additional costs.

The Abbot’s income was derived from a considerable number of sources, and in spite of the many existent documents which record them it is not easy to make any exact estimate of its total, but at the close of the fifteenth century it would seem to have amounted to not less than six hundred pounds a year, no mean sum when the relative value of money is considered. From this of course there were many necessary outgoings. Estates had to be kept up and wages paid to local bailiffs and workmen, and at the end of the financial year but a small balance remained to be carried forward—and this sometimes was on the wrong side of the account. In one casually selected year the actual household expenses of the Abbot averaged more than forty pounds a month.

The income and expenditure of the Prior were of course on a more modest scale. Oysters, plaice, sturgeon, salmon, whelks—all these and many other articles of food appeared on his table as on the Abbot’s, but his position did not require the same amount of entertaining of guests as fell to the latter. Moreover these were frequently of a lower degree in the social scale. For instance we note his breakfasts to the singing-men and dinners to those who had just made their profession in the monastery. Visits to his estate of Belsize formed his customary means of relaxation from the many cares of the monastery.

It may be well to say that neither in the case of Abbot or Prior does there appear to have been any ostentation in their manner of life or any extravagance in expenditure. Each played the part that the standard of the time expected of him. If the Abbot seems rather the feudal lord than the father of his flock at this period of monastic history, he was the victim of a development which he had done nothing to create and saw no adequate reason to alter. The Abbot of Westminster in the sixteenth century was no more deserving of censure for his mode of life than is a Dean of Westminster in the twentieth.

Of the administrative officials the Sacrist is in many ways the most interesting. He was responsible not only for the general survey of the fabric of the church and the necessary repairs thereto, but also for the provision of most of the accessories of worship. The main items of the income of his office were derived from properties within easy reach of the monastery, so that business was not apt to arise which would take him far afield from what must have been rather exacting duties. Taking a typical roll of the early sixteenth century, a long list of houses in the Sanctuary and King Street, Westminster, brought him rents amounting to about £137 out of a total income of just over £208. Some little property in London and elsewhere, with pensions from half a dozen churches such as Sawbridgeworth and Bloxham, the “farm” of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and the offerings in various of the Abbey chapels, accounted in the main for the balance. Among some curious items of receipt there is the yearly sum of thirty shillings and five pence paid to him by the Sheriffs of London for the maintenance of the lamp of Queen Matilda.

Apart from some few entries for the repair of houses his expenditure fell under four main heads. First, more than fifty-five pounds was spent under the title “purchase of stores.” This included every kind of light, whether wax or oil, for both church and monastery, incense, grease for the bells and charcoal for the sacristy.

The next heading is the familiar “church expenses.” No less than twenty-four thousand breads were bought for the Celebrations. A long list includes the costs of the setting up of the great Paschal candle; repairs to vestments, thuribles, candlesticks, bells and other accessories; clearing away snow from the church roof and scattering the crows and pigeons that strove to nest there; mending the Abbot’s pastoral staff and buying seven imitation pearls at two pence each to adorn his mitre. In similar lists in other of the Sacrist’s rolls we find record of the periodical lending of copes for service in the King’s palaces at Westminster and London, and in the year 1520 of the purchase of canvas and a chest in which to pack the copes for despatch across the sea, doubtless for Wolsey’s use on the occasion of the historic meeting between Henry VIII. and Francis I. on the Field of Cloth of Gold where a chapel had been erected, “the last and most gorgeous display of the departing spirit of chivalry.”

The two other main heads of expenses are repairs of the church and wages of the various workmen and servants, among whom are the clock-keeper, the rent-collector, the washerwoman and butler.

The few remaining rolls of the Subsacrist contain in detail matters which are only summarised in the account of his superior. He was responsible for the distribution to the various chapels of their proper allotment of candles prior to the celebration of their special feasts. It is from him that we learn the dedications of forgotten altars, with here and there hints of old customs and lost usages.

Take for example the roll for the year ending at Michaelmas 1524. It is thirty-three feet in length and accounts in the utmost detail for the consumption of nearly five thousand pounds of wax, of which only some five hundred were for what may be called lighting purposes as distinct from “lights.” From the notes which he supplies it is not hard to picture the refectory at Christmas time with the corona above St. Edward’s statue ablaze with candles, the windows all lit up and the flaming torches that accompany the carrying-in of the boar’s head. Or pass to the infirmary towards the end of that year where Brother Richard Charyng lay on his deathbed. He was thought to be dying on August 30th, but on September 3rd he was still alive. The Subsacrist knows it for he has had to supply pound tapers for his “Aneyleng.” He reminds us that Abbots Berkyng, Bircheston, and Colchester were still remembered in the monastery though the first died as early as 1246, for he has supplied candles for the celebration of their “obits.” When he writes of the “brassen chappell w^t.in the new chappell” we know what we had long suspected—that there was an altar within the grille which surrounds the tomb of Henry VII. A few hints more and we could identify the dedications of the chapels in the apse of that King’s building. When somewhere near St. George’s day he issues a two-pound taper for the dragon, does he refer to some pageantry within the Abbey church or was it a gift to its appanage St. Margaret’s, where we know a dragon to have been kept?

Perhaps the solution is to be found in a mandate addressed by Henry III. to Edward, son of Odo the goldsmith, requiring him to cause a dragon to be made in the fashion of a standard, of red silk sparkling all over with gold, the tongue of which should be made to resemble burning fire and appear to be continually moving, and the eyes of sapphires or other suitable stones. This standard was to be placed in the Church of St. Peter, Westminster.

The Chamberlain, like the Sacrist, derived most of his income from the rents of properties within easy reach. Bequests in the past had been specifically made for the provision of clothing for the monks, which was the Chamberlain’s main duty. Nine London churches and two country ones, those of Ashwell and Uppingham, made contributions to an income of about ninety pounds a year. The Chamberlain was responsible neither for the clothing of the Abbot nor the outfit of the novices. The former was required to provide all things for himself while the Treasurer paid for the somewhat elaborate list of articles required for the latter. Islip as Treasurer wrote down the full catalogue of these:—

The total for this bill came to £2 6s. 5d. exclusive of the first six items which have no charge entered and so were presumably drawn from stock.

The Chamberlain was accustomed to renew only some seven articles, those for actual day and night-wear. Directly responsible to him were the tailor, skinner and barber, the last of whom beside shaving the brethren had probably to bleed them periodically.

The Treasurer’s income in the early sixteenth century was no less than three hundred and seventy-six pounds a year, of which two hundred and forty-one pounds were derived from twenty-four manors. Of these the Manor of Battersea was worth about sixty pounds. Hendon was even more profitable with eighty-eight, while Aldenham produced fifty-seven. It will be well, however, to mention some of the items of his expenditure before noting the sources of the remainder of his income.

First in the demands on his purse was the purchase of grain. Four hundred quarters of wheat and a rather larger quantity of barley were bought for the Convent’s consumption either in the form of bread or beer. Not all of this was purchased from outside. It will be obvious that since many of the offices were endowed with land each might have grain at its disposal, and it was clearly advantageous to have one’s market so close at hand. Hence there arose a system of what may be termed interdepartmental dealing, the Treasurer purchasing the produce of other offices in wheat and at the same time perhaps selling his own surplus goods to others of his brother-officials.

The Treasurer’s main purpose was the sustenance of the brethren. Accordingly in addition to his own purchases of food in the form of grain he made an allowance of ten shillings a day to the Coquinarius, whose office is not adequately described if his title be translated simply as “cook,” while the ordinary rendering of “kitchener” entails the same objection. The Coquinarius would seem to have been a steward of the kitchen, combining the duties of an overseer and caterer. We shall take some further notice of him later.

Payments of the bailiffs of his manors, law expenses, and sundry items of no general interest added to the Treasurer’s expenditure; and at this period of history he found it, like his brethren in other monasteries, impossible to make both ends meet, and indeed his expenditure exceeded his assigned income by some hundreds of pounds.

That portion of his income, about one hundred and thirty pounds, of which no source has yet been indicated was drawn from the merging into the Treasurer’s office of other offices which in former times had been held separately. The love for the Abbey felt by Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., had been marked by large monetary gifts during her lifetime. Her burial by the shrine of St. Edward prompted her husband to make proper provision for the maintenance of her anniversary, and five manors were almost immediately assigned to the monastery for that purpose, those of Birdbrook, Edenbridge, Westerham, Turweston and Knowle. Two other foundations of a similar character in connection with Richard II. and Henry V. succeeded in due course, and Wardens were appointed to administer the three.

By the time with which we are concerned these offices had been practically merged with the Treasurership. Consequently the Treasurer must account for the receipts and expenditure connected with them. The income therefrom swelled his total but gave him no surplus for his own purposes, since he must purchase the wax, pay for the masses said and distribute what remained among the brethren in the usual proportion.

The office of Cellarer in the later history of the monastery of Westminster was one of dignity and importance, but its duties were probably of a considerably less exacting character than at the beginning. The tendency had been to divide the work formerly assigned and with the growth of buildings to create new offices, such as that of the Granator, rather than merely to provide assistants. Thus in the year ending Michaelmas 1527 the income of the office was only some eighty pounds a year, of which fourteen were spent in mending wagons, shoeing of horses, repairs of the water-mill and all the various expenses commonly associated with the life of the farmer.

The Cellarer had the oversight of the brewery, bakery and stables; paid the wages of the various labourers connected with them; bought shovels, coal-baskets and scoops; was responsible for repairs to the aqueduct which brought the Convent water—a frequent source of trouble,—and indeed performed a variety of small tasks the recital of which would only be tedious. In fact he was an altogether different person from what the popular imagination of to-day conceives him to have been.

The Granator’s account was rendered yearly like that of other officers, but it was an account in kind and not in money. He dealt solely with wheat, malt and oats, and the account was balanced in terms of these. So much had come from Wheathampstead; so much had he received at the hands of the Treasurer; so much had he delivered to the baker, and so on. His office demanded honesty on the part of its holder but made little demand on intelligence or business capacity.

The Almoner’s rolls bring into view an entirely different aspect of monastic life. For any proper understanding of his office it is necessary to remember that the distribution of alms was an inevitable accompaniment of requiem masses. Did the Abbot or other benefactor of the monastery desire to be remembered in prayer after his death, then he not only bequeathed property to endow masses but assigned that portion of its yield which was to be distributed amongst the poor. Among the poor he would rightly reckon the brethren of his own monastery as well as those who came to its gates for alms. With some such endowments, though not with all, the Almoner was associated as administrator.

For example, on the anniversary of the death of Richard Berkyng, who had been Abbot from 1222 to 1246, we find the Almoner of the sixteenth century distributing twenty pence to each of the monks as well as paying one shilling to the celebrants of the mass which was still said weekly for the Abbot’s soul.

Moreover the provision of some small amenities and comforts for the brethren was reasonably regarded as a legitimate charge upon the Almoner’s resources. Thus he was accustomed to pay for mats for the cloister, dormitory and refectory. When the novice first arrived at the monastery it was the Almoner who saw that his camera or chamber in the dormitory was first properly cleansed, paid the penny for his tonsure and bought two pennyworth of straw with which to stuff his mattress. He made some public distribution of alms on rogation days to an amount varying from three to five pounds.

But the foregoing duties are incidental and the Almoner’s first duty was to preside, with the Subalmoner’s aid, over the almonry itself—which lay to the south of Tothill Street outside the ancient boundary-wall of the precinct. Here was an almshouse and its chapel of St. Anne, but little can be discovered as to either. Prior to the foundation of the time of Henry VII., of which something will be said later, we read of payments to the “six poor men of St. Edward” who in the year 1492 begin to be called the “six soldiers of St. Edward.” Then there are the lay-brothers of the almonry, also six in number, who received one mark a year for their clothing and for whom sixteen pence a week was paid for food. These latter come first into view in the rolls about the year 1390, when each was receiving a loaf daily from the Cellarer. Provision was made for them to attend a weekly mass on Saturdays, but their other duties and manner of life generally in later days do not seem to be anywhere defined.

The Almoner’s income was not large, amounting in an average year to about seventy pounds. Some further account of his cares will appear in the narrative of Abbot Islip’s earlier years.

Just as the Almonry had its chapel of St. Anne so the Infirmary placed itself under the protection of St. Katharine, but while the Almonry has long disappeared the ruins still remain to hint the beauties of the Infirmary chapel, and the Infirmarer’s own refectory is still intact.

About thirty-three pounds represents the average income attached to the office. The two rectories of Wandsworth and Battersea provided more than a third of this, and the Church of St. Andrew at Pershore a little over eight pounds. A few rents of houses and a portion of the Manor of Parham in Sussex made up the remainder.

The Infirmarer kept a careful record of the names of his patients and the number of days which each spent under his charge. This was necessary in order that he might render a faithful account of his stewardship, for it was considered that the cost of a sick monk was three pence on a meat day and two pence on a fish day. The allowance for his own expenses was reckoned at twenty-three pence a week. On St. Katharine’s day he was accustomed to send twenty shillings for the entertainment of the Abbot and Convent, and the balance of his income might be charged with necessary repairs either to the Infirmary buildings or to the houses of which the Infirmarer was the landlord.

In addition to the Treasurer of whom some account has been given there was an official known as the Domestic or Inner Treasurer, whose rolls are of interest as shewing in part the manner by which the monks obtained their slender individual incomes.

So far as this department was concerned these arose from the endowments of various chantries within the church. In some cases only the celebrants of the masses received any payment, but in others all the brethren participated. In the case of the anniversary of Abbot Kyrton the Prior received two shillings and each brother one, while the reigning Abbot did not benefit. In that of one John Blokley the Abbot took eight pence, the Prior, the President of the Refectory, and the Refectorer four pence each, and the brethren two pence each.

The Domestic Treasurer dealt also with the receipts from properties which belonged in common to the Prior and Convent as distinct from the Abbatial lands and manors. Each officer taxed his own income at the rate of one penny in the mark towards the general fund, but it does not appear that the Domestic Treasurer administered the proceeds.

The Refectorer’s office was not one of great importance. It might be supposed that he was concerned with the provision of meals for the brethren, but the only article of food which it was his duty to provide was cheese, which cost between three and four pounds a year out of an income of little more than ten. He was responsible for the general upkeep of the refectory, whether for the repair of its walls and windows or the renewal when necessary of the cloths and other appurtenances of the table. He provided the wax for such candles as the Subsacrist was not required to supply, and cushions for the seats of the President and seniors.

Some slight information can be gleaned from his rolls as to the general arrangements of the refectory. There was the table of the President with the skilla or bell beside it, the sounding of which marked the various incidents of the meal; the two tables of the senior monks, the two tables appropriated to the undistinguished among the brethren, the table of the novices, and finally that set for the poor—the mensa pauperum. Somewhere in the refectory stood a statue of St. Edward with a crown of lights above him, which must be in order for the Feasts of the Translation and Deposition of the Convent’s tutelary saint. We note the homely designation of the larger cups as the Long Robin and the Charity Bowl.

The Monk Bailiff is perhaps the most perplexing of any of the monastic officers. It is not possible as in the case of others to obtain any adequate conception of his duties from the rolls which he kept, for he records merely the payment of fees without specifying the various services rendered. It must be supposed that he was responsible for general matters of law in which the monastery might be involved, for he notes year by year a payment of twenty shillings to the monastery’s attorney in the royal exchequer, of another twenty shillings to an attorney in the King’s Bench and of double that sum to an attorney in the Common Bench, with other smaller payments to legal officials. Fees to the bailiffs of the liberties in various counties also occur with regularity. He had his own apartments and staff of servants, his own stables, grooms and horses.

Some few of the Kitchener’s notebooks have survived, shewing in the utmost detail all the items of his expenditure on the food of the brethren. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday were ordinarily kept as days of abstinence from meat. It seems probable from the form of certain entries that meat was served in the Refectory only on Sundays. In the Misericorde where the brethren who had been bled took their meals, as well as those monks who for any reason had been ordered a more generous diet, meat was served on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, both at dinner and supper—unless of course some fast-day fell on one of these, while eggs might be served for supper there on Wednesdays.

The ordinary dinner in the Refectory consisted of two fish courses with the Convent loaf in addition. On Sundays it was not uncommon to provide nine pieces of beef, two sheep and two fat pigs, with “smalle poddynges.” Forgotten terms are recalled in scroffe or Shrove Sunday and Shrove Monday as well as Shrove Tuesday. On the two latter days a breakfast was provided, in addition to the ordinary fare, of red herrings and red sprats. Throughout Lent neither meat nor eggs was provided either in the Refectory or Misericorde, but leeks, onions, and peas for pottage occur frequently, with now and then a pittance of salt eels. The Sunday dinner was varied by the provision of figs and almonds. One red herring each was served on Good Friday with some almonds and rice, but white herrings were bought for guests. On Schere or Maundy Thursday it was the custom for the Abbot to supplement the Convent meal. Easter Day of course saw a considerable relaxation. Eggs for breakfast and supper, veal and beef at dinner with currant puddings to follow, not to mention two gallons of wine, marked the joyous character of the festival. The Kitchener’s expenses varied between three and six pounds a week.

One other important officer remains to be noted, the Warden of the Lady Chapel. He had his own property and consequently was obliged to submit his accounts for yearly audit, but it is sufficient to say of him that he did for the Lady Chapel in all respects what the Sacrist did for the rest of the church.

A number of minor officials receive occasional mention. We read of the Wardens of other Chapels in the monastery, of the Keeper of St. Edward’s Shrine, the Keeper of the relics and so on, but curiously enough only here and there is there any actual record of a Guestmaster and that only in the reign of Henry III. It seems probable that every professed monk in the monastery was provided with some specific task or charge.

It would be easier to write a volume than a single chapter on monastic life at Westminster. What has been here set down is no more than what the surviving rolls and documents of the later times actually tell as to the surroundings and life of the last sixty years of the monastery’s history.

CHAPTER II.

THE EARLY YEARS OF BROTHER JOHN ISLIP.

In the closing years of the fifteenth century, almost certainly in the year 1492, John Islip began to keep a diary. Like many another such volume it is remarkable for the prolixity of its earlier pages, the scantier entries which succeed them, and the final omission of all but necessary business notes which had to be recorded somewhere. It is from this diary that the facts of his first years are derived. He was twenty-eight years old and it seemed a fitting occasion to put down something of the story of his life, for already he had become of some importance in the monastery by his appointment to offices of considerable responsibility and trust. So he records what seemed to him the leading events of his earlier days and some few happenings in the life of the outside world that had struck him as of interest or importance.

He was born at Islip in Oxfordshire on June 10th in the year 1464. Islip itself had been the birthplace of Edward the Confessor whose father is said to have built a palace there. Its manor was an early endowment given by Edward to his newly-founded monastery of Westminster and, if old Thomas Hearne is to be believed, “the said mannour was formerly the best wooded of any mannour that belonged to Westminster.”

As far back as the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272) there had been at Islip a small chantry chapel in memory of the Confessor which the same writer tells us stood “a little way Northward from the church but fifteen yards in length and a little above seven in breadth.” It may be assumed that its character changed with the dissolution of the chantries in 1547, for it was afterwards turned into a barn and is shewn as such in an engraving in the Gentleman’s Magazine for December, 1788, but is recorded there as having disappeared at least twenty years before.

From the time of its first building the Abbot and Convent of Westminster had appointed the chantry priest who ministered at its altar. The little town had already been the birthplace of at least one great churchman in the person of Simon, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1349, and had given one monk to Westminster in the same century. The more conscientious of the chantry priests were wont to spend in the education of children the considerable leisure that their duties allowed them, and it is no great flight of fancy which imagines the first training of and the awakening of the first sense of vocation in John Islip as due to the teaching of such an one.

Of his parents nothing is known, but from the fact that in 1496 he was himself paying thirteen shillings and four pence quarterly from his small allowances for the board and education of his sister Agnes, with an additional shilling for her shoes and gaiters, it may be supposed that they were by then no longer living. It was customary on entering the monastery for the family name to be discarded and the place name used instead, so we know him only as “John Islip.”

The search for his patronymic yields nothing of certainty. For a moment it seems successful when in a document of the year 1506 we read the words Johannes de Pacientia Abbas, but the hope is ludicrously dispelled when we find that but for scribal carelessness they would have read Johannes Dei pacientia Abbas. One possible clue may be given for what it is worth. In the second picture of the beautiful mortuary roll which was begun in Islip’s honour but which was destined never to be completed, St. Giles is depicted as standing alone on the right-hand side of the Abbot as he lay on his deathbed, while in the dexter corner of the base of the penwork which frames the Abbot’s portrait in the first picture are shewn the arms of the family of Giles, the sinister corner being filled with the arms of the monastery. The significance of the relative position of these two shields will be appreciated by the student of heraldry. It may be noted also that in the time of Islip’s rule as Abbot mention is found of a chapel of St. Giles[1] which seems to appear then for the first time and may well have been one of the radiating chapels of the apse of the new Lady Chapel built by Henry VII.

The connection between the monastery at Westminster and the town of Islip must have been kept alive not only by the chantry chapel and the sentiment that must needs have linked the places of the Confessor’s birth and burial, but also by the visits which from time to time were paid to his manor by the Abbot or one of his officials. Doubtless many a recruit was thus brought to the Abbey from one or other of its outlying estates. So it came to pass that John Islip entered the monastery on March 21st, the Feast of St. Benedict, 1480, and for six years—he records it himself as seven—lived the common life of the novice.

He was not yet sixteen years old and it may be supposed that the somewhat confined character of the life of the cloister told for a time on the health of the country-bred lad, for in the first three or four years at Westminster he spent three considerable periods in the infirmary, his first and most severe illness lasting more than two months.

The monastery at the time of his entrance was somewhat depleted in numbers doubtless owing to the troublous years through which England had been passing. In the preceding decade only some ten novices had sought entrance and at the beginning of the year 1480 there were less than forty monks. In this year, however, there were eight admissions, and the number was never again to fall so low in Islip’s lifetime.

The Abbot was John Estney, a man of about sixty years of age who had ruled the monastery already for six years and was to rule it for eighteen more. To him in all probability more than to any other were due the influences which were to shape Islip’s life, and indeed it may well have been he who brought the boy to the monastery in the first place. He had been a priest for thirty-eight years and had held most of the offices of importance in the community.

For a time the ways of Abbot and novice lay widely separated, but the interest of the one and the ability of the other were destined within a few years to bring them together in the closest contact. Estney was by no means the oldest of the monks either in years or seniority. Pride of place in both respects was shared between three others. John Amondesham, priest and scholar, was now seventy-two years old at least. He had been sent to the University of Oxford as a selected student as long ago as the year 1432 and was reputed sufficiently learned to have been brought from there on two occasions to preach the Good Friday sermon before the monastery. He had never risen higher than the position of Sacrist, and that post he had long relinquished to spend his days quietly in one of the cameræ of the Infirmary. When John Islip first saw him he had but a year more of life left to him.

Contemporary with Amondesham were Richard Sporley and Richard Tedyngton, men presumably of no more than mediocre ability though the former perhaps would have laid claim to some literary skill in the compilation of a history of the Abbey, derived mainly from the work of one who had been his fellow-monk, John Flete. It is a claim which the verdict of to-day will not allow. Old men were Brothers Sporley and Tedyngton but still with some years of life before them.

Of those who entered at about the same time as Islip three shewed promise enough to be sent to the University, but no one of them left any obvious mark afterwards upon the community at Westminster.

The life as a novice was one of strict discipline and considerable toil. Until the rules of the new life were learnt in practice as well as theory it may well have been irksome, as indeed all strict discipline must be until it is seen as a means and not an end, as the necessary grammar before the new language can unfold its beauties.

The customary period of the novitiate was seven years. During this time the novice was under the sole care of the novice-master, through whose hands he received all his necessary clothing and bedding, supplied ultimately by the Chamberlain. He received none of the monetary allowances made to professed monks, nor indeed was he allowed to handle money at all. His instruction came from the novice-master, who was to report the matter if he shewed signs of special ability in order that his claims to a university career might be considered, in accordance with the Benedictine custom of sending to Oxford one in twenty of the community.

The main subject in the educational system was of course the Latin tongue in order that a proper understanding might be acquired both of the Scriptures and of the various orders of service. The latter indeed had to be learnt by heart and the novice-master would hear the repetition.

John Islip would seem not to have shewn any great ability as a scholar, at least in Latin, for he was not one of those selected to proceed to the university. He was sufficiently advanced, however, to be professed and ordained priest in his twenty-second year in accordance with a special privilege of the Westminster community. Scarcely had he said his first mass when he was appointed domestic chaplain to the Abbot and probably at the same time to the office of Sub-almoner. The former appointment would bring him into intimate contact with a wider life than he had hitherto known, while the latter would provide the first test of those administrative abilities which might mark him in due course for promotion to higher offices.

The duties of the Abbot’s chaplain in these later years of the monastery of Westminster are nowhere defined. In the fourteenth-century Customary of Canterbury it is written that such chaplains should be polite, discreet and pleasant, especially to all strangers. They form as it were a link between the Abbot and his Convent and are bidden to foster the love of the Abbot to the Convent and that of the Convent to the Abbot. Their other duties relate mainly to the due performance of masses in the private chapel and the general regulation of the Abbot’s household. At Durham it was the custom for the chaplain to be summoned to the bedside of a dying monk “who staied w^th him till he yealded y^e ghoste,” but no such duty seems to have been required at Westminster, the Prior being deemed responsible for the last offices. It can, however, hardly be wrong to assume that the position was one of tact and confidence as well as of invaluable experience to a man who within a comparatively few years was himself to occupy the Abbot’s place.

As Sub-almoner Islip’s duties were of a very practical character. His primary responsibility was for the children of the almonry and of the song school. These had their meals in common and were clothed and educated at the expense of the monastery. In due course the Sub-almoner took them to London to be apprenticed to masters of different trades, and would use the opportunity to purchase russet-coloured fustian for the coats of the “syngyng children,” with white cotton to line them, black velvet to bind them, and “sylkyn poyntts” for further decoration. His interest in the children did not end with their passing from his immediate control, for visits were paid from time to time to their masters and presents made in time of sickness.

Apparently the purchase of music books came into his department—if we may judge from a payment of five shillings made on one occasion for a “pryksong booke of masses, antems and other songis.” Year by year on St. Nicholas’ Eve and Day the festival of the Boy-Bishop was kept by the singing children, and it was the Sub-almoner’s duty to provide the necessary costumes as well as provisions for the festivity, such as milk-bread, “cowmfetts,” and the like. New shoes and hosen were bought as well as gloves, and eight pence had to be provided for the Boy-Bishop’s offering at the shrine of St. Edward and the altar of Our Lady of the Pew.

The singing children assisted at the high mass and evensong on all the principal feasts, and doubtless some of them developed a vocation for the monastic life.

Besides the charitable care exercised by the Sub-almoner over the children of the almonry and song school, he was in part also responsible for the children of the Grammar School whose parents were not in need of charity. The latter had a master of their own who was paid three shillings and four pence a quarter in money for his trouble, but probably received his board and lodging in addition. The grammar children, as they are called uniformly both in monastic times and throughout the years immediately succeeding the dissolution, find a complete continuity with the Westminster School of to-day, and it is in consequence with no surprise that we read in a Sub-almoner’s notebook about the year 1526 of the payment of sixteen pence for “wryttyng of a play for the children.”

Among the officials responsible to the Sub-almoner were the butler and keeper of the “Corde Hall” or Corde as the monastic Misericorde was commonly called, and here it would seem the grammar children took their meals.

With such cares as these Islip’s life can have been no idle one, though he did not think it worth while to record in his diary anything of such commonplace tasks. These were duties within the cloister so to speak, and he began his diary on his appointment to offices which would take him farther afield and provide him with responsibilities to which his earlier duties might seem trivial.

CHAPTER III.

FROM 1492 TO 1498.

We may note first of all a point of some small historical interest. The date of the King’s return to England is given as December 17th by Hall, Stow, and other chroniclers, but the Chronicle of Calais gives November 17th, a date with which Professor Pollard seems to concur, for he says that there is nothing to account for Henry’s delay at Calais for a whole month.[2] Islip of course does not account for it, but he must be allowed to settle the month, for he had particular reason to remember it, apart from the fact that he was a diarist contemporary with the event he was recording. Henry’s expedition was important enough in itself to call for chronicle, for it resulted in the long-delayed peace with France; but Islip recorded nothing that did not touch the monastery directly or indirectly, and this was a matter of direct importance to it as will presently appear.

In 1487 Henry VII. in a letter to the Pope related how a rumour of his defeat and the dispersal of his army had been circulated in London and Westminster. “When this was heard by some of those who by reason of their crimes enjoy the privileges and immunities of Westminster, being of opinion that after the commission of any nefarious crime soever they could have the free privilege of returning to that sanctuary ... took up arms for the purpose of plundering the houses of those whom they knew to be in the field with us and mustered in a body for the commission of crime. Amongst their number was one John Swit who said: ‘And what matter the censures of Church or Pontiff? Do you not perceive that interdicts of this sort are of no weight whatever, since you see with your own eyes that those very men who obtained such in their own favour are routed and that the whole anathema has recoiled upon their own heads?’ On pronouncing these words he instantly fell dead upon the ground and his face and body immediately became blacker than soot itself.... Verily we give thanks to Almighty God Who of His ineffable mercy has exhibited in our Kingdom so great a miracle concerning the Xtian faith.”

Miracle or not—and some of its more repulsive details have been omitted—it will be seen that Henry had no love for the sanctuary men who typified the very reverse of that law and order which he was endeavouring to establish. The Abbot was ultimately responsible for the safe keeping of the sanctuary men, as well as for the convicts committed to his prison, and was doubtless duly censured by the King. Indeed he would have had to obtain a royal pardon. Unfortunately at the end of September, just as Henry was starting on his expedition, twelve convicts escaped from the Abbot’s prison.

Henry was actually on the road but Prior Essex and others set out in hot haste to catch him. They came up with him at Canterbury and asked for his pardon. Henry, however, would not grant it, and told them he should defer the matter until he returned from France and came to Westminster.

It can easily be imagined with what trepidation the Convent awaited the King’s return, for they had reason to expect the severest penalties. Their fears were not unjustified, for on February 9th, 1493, the matter came before the King’s Bench and the Abbot was adjudged to pay the King no less than twelve hundred pounds. Such a sum could not immediately be forthcoming, and the Abbot accordingly entered into a bond for the payment.

Eventually, however, by the intervention of Sir Reginald Bray the King reduced the penalty to a thousand marks, the last instalments of which, amounting in all to £166 13s. 4d., were paid off by Islip as Abbot’s Receiver in the year 1497. That Islip was correct in his note of the month of the King’s return may therefore well be credited.

Islip goes on to record that in this same year, 1492, there died at Bermondsey the lady Elizabeth, sometime queen and wife of Edward IV. Again the matter is not one solely of external interest. On two occasions Elizabeth had sought sanctuary at Westminster. The first was in 1470 when with her daughters and Lady Scrope she had fled to the precinct on the reverse of Edward IV. in that year. Here her son, Edward V., was born. Her food was sent from Abbot Milling’s household and the Abbot himself was godfather to the ill-fated child at his baptism by the Sub-prior. When Edward returned in triumph to London she left to join him, only to return some twelve years later with the young Duke of York.

On this second occasion she received the personal hospitality of Abbot Estney. Islip was but a novice at the time but he could not have helped knowing of the important events which were happening within the monastery itself. Moreover Elizabeth’s name was already honoured in the community as the donor of the new chapel of St. Erasmus erected in 1478, probably at the west door of the old Lady Chapel.

When in 1486 she was restored to her full rights as queen-dowager she could think of no more pleasant place to live than in the monastery which had formerly sheltered her, and the Abbot’s house called Cheyneygates (the present Deanery) was leased to her for forty years. She lived there, however, but a few months, for in 1487 her lands were again forfeited and she retired to end her days in the abbey of Bermondsey.

In the summer of the year 1491, probably in the month of June, Prior Robert Essex died, and in July the Westminster students were summoned from Oxford to assist in the election of his successor. Among them was Roger Blake, and upon him fell the choice of the Convent. He survived his appointment, however, only a few weeks, and by Michaelmas George Fascet was appointed in his place.

Blake as a student at Oxford had of course held no appointment within the community, so that his election as Prior made no change in the roll of its officers. Fascet on the other hand held the two important positions of Treasurer and Monk-Bailiff as well as being Warden of the Manors. These offices thus became vacant and in addition other changes were taking place. William Mane who had held office along with Fascet both as Treasurer and Warden of the Manors had been appointed Almoner. For a short time he carried on the duties of Monk-Bailiff in place of Fascet, but the total burden must have proved too heavy to bear, and accordingly on October 12th, 1492, John Islip was chosen to hold with him the joint office of Warden of the Manors and along with Richard Newbery to succeed him and Fascet as Treasurers. At the same time Islip took Mane’s place as Monk-Bailiff and Warden of the Churches.

Islip was only twenty-eight years of age and there were twenty-three monks senior to him in a community that numbered about fifty. It argues well alike for his personal popularity and for the esteem in which his administrative abilities must have been held by both Abbot and Convent that the choice for such high offices should have fallen upon him.

Two attractive prospects were opened to him on his accession. As Monk-Bailiff he had separate apartments where his business could be transacted and where on occasion he could entertain friends. Accordingly we find in his diary for Sunday, February 10th, 1493, an entry which may be translated: I was at the High Mass but I did not sit in the Refectory because John Butler of Warwickshire and Thomas Candysse dined with me in the Bailiff’s guest-room.

Still more alluring perhaps to one in whom the life of the cloister can never have stamped out the love of the open country was the necessary duty from time to time as Treasurer of making a tour of the various properties of the monastery. It is not surprising that this should have been found necessary in his first year of office. Acquaintance with these properties was certainly to be desired and there can have been no conflict between the call of duty which would take him again into the ways of men and the cloistered conscience which would shut him from them.

St. Benedict himself indeed sanctioned occasional absence from the cloister so long as the Abbot’s leave was first obtained. The novice vowed faithfulness to the monastery of his profession but not complete or permanent seclusion within its walls, and if it be urged that such protracted absence as this of the new Treasurer would never have been contemplated by St. Benedict it might with equal truth be argued that St. Benedict could hardly be expected to foresee the acquirement of the scattered properties which made such absence necessary. In any case the Benedictine ideal of the monastery was the ideal of the self-contained family and would not be infringed in spirit at least by the necessary absence on family business of one member of it.

Accordingly after dinner on Sunday, June 30th, 1493, Islip set out on a tour which was to last nearly a month. On the first day he rode as far as Aldenham and held a court there on the Monday morning. Rising betimes on Tuesday he rode as far as Berkhampstead to mass, dined with Master John Shorne and went on to Langton for the night, where he held a court the next day. Thursday was a day of relaxation and he records that the whole of it was spent in the forest hunting in company with Master Lanxston and Master Gifford. Langton to Turweston and Banbury, Banbury to Warwick and Knowle, Coventry, Leicester, Oakham, Oundle, Huntingdon, so does he proceed, rising early and covering many miles before hearing his daily mass and breaking his fast. Offord, Langford, Ashwell, Malden, Feering, Kelvedon, Benfleet, Romford, such are some further stages of his journey. Only once did he spend more than one night in the same place, so that the tour if pleasant was by no means dilatory. He reached home again on July 24th.

He does not record what servants attended him, but the whole cost of his journey was two hundred and fifty-one marks, an average of ten marks a day, so that it is probable that such retinue accompanied him as befitted the dignity of his office and the safety of his person. That some such protection was necessary in those unsettled times will presently appear.

For the most part his tour was devoid of trouble incidental to the business aspect of it. Only at South Benfleet had he reason to suspect that anything was wrong. His suspicions were evidently corroborated after his return to Westminster, for on August 11th he returned to South Benfleet and seized the goods of William Gose who was his “farmer” or agent for the manor and parsonage there. A careful inventory and valuation was made of them, and they were reckoned to be worth just over forty-two pounds. Gose was evidently dismissed from office, for a little later Islip records the handing over of the stores of the manor to Thomas Petigrewe.

The dangers of the road have just been hinted at and he was a wise man who kept to the King’s highway. That Islip had them in mind may be assumed from a long entry in his diary somewhat previous to his tour. It was a story which he had heard at the Abbot’s table one Sunday from Richard Dolonde the Abbot’s guest. A certain priest with three servants had wandered from the high road and come to Egerston at about eight o’clock in the evening. When the priest’s groom went into the stable of the inn to fetch straw for his horses he found beneath the straw two men lying dead. He came and told his master what he had found, and the latter called the hostess and told her that he could not stay there that night. She asked him the cause and said “The supper is prepared, the meat killed and all things are ready, and now you will not wait, I marvel strongly.” Then the priest pretended different reasons for his going and at last told her the true one, saying “I do not dare to stay the night here for that two men lie dead in your stable.” She answered “This is the truth, don’t doubt it. It so happened yesterday towards nightfall two knights were here and their servants fought among themselves so that these two men were killed, then the others in fear asked my husband and me to hide their bodies and bury them this night. This we intend to do, so don’t fear.” The priest believed indeed that what the woman said was true and so stayed. But about nine o’clock the priest was lying on his bed, being unwilling to get into it because of his fear, when the landlord came and knocked at the chamber door and said “Sir, I have brought you apples and pears and a draught of good wine.” Then the priest replied “I am in bed, I do not wish to drink to-night.” But the other said “Open the door that I may speak with you.” Then the priest said “No.” The other replied “Then I will break it.” So he broke the door and came to the priest with eleven other men well-armed and said “Seek pardon of your Creator for you shall die and all your servants,” who when he heard this asked that he might hear the confessions of his servants. So he heard them and when confession was done the priest came with his servants and but one dagger and rushed on the men and killed nine of them. The other three were taken and hanged, and the wife was burned and so the priest escaped with his servants, “thanking God to Whom was the honour and the glory, Amen.”

It may be with such dangers in mind that Islip spent three pence on arrows for his servant, Robert Seston. The latter received five shillings a quarter for his wages but was provided with clothing, shoes, and doubtless food also, at his master’s expense. In addition he might look forward to a tip of twenty pence on Christmas day as well as on the anniversaries of Queen Eleanor and King Richard II. As Monk-Bailiff Islip had his own cook and outfit of kitchen utensils, while two grooms were in his permanent employment to look after the needs of the seven or eight horses living in his stables.

It might well be thought that the offices to which Islip had been appointed in the year 1492 would have provided him with but little leisure from their exercise to assume new duties. In the year 1496, however, William Brewode retired from the onerous position of Cellarer and Islip was elected in his place. The reason for this retirement does not appear. Brewode was only fifty years of age and there was no suggestion that he was unfit any longer to hold an office which he had honourably filled for twelve years and which four years later he was to fill again for a brief space before becoming Warden of the Lady Chapel. It may be that Islip was already so clearly marked out for promotion to the highest places of all that it was thought well for him to have experience of the widest possible character. This, however, is the merest speculation, and the reason for the change must be left in obscurity. In the same year Islip appears in the rôle of Abbot’s Receiver, a position he may have occupied for the four previous years though no record of it has survived.

In the two years that followed no incident seems to have occurred of sufficient importance to call for special mention either in his own life or that of the monastery until the beginning of the year 1498, when a few entries recall a story of some historical interest in which Islip was directly involved.