Chapter VIII: The Last Days of the Convent

“The knell that tolled at Islip’s death was really a knell for the Convent itself.” The appointment of his successor was long delayed and it is probable that intrigue was rife in the matter. John Fulwell, then Monk-Bailiff, was evidently strong enough to assume considerable authority in the monastery and it may well be that he looked to be appointed himself. On October 16th, 1532, he wrote to Cromwell reporting that “all things in the sanctuary as well within the monastery as without are in due order, according to the advertisement you gave me when I was last with you in London. At your return I trust you shall not hear but that we shall deserve the King’s most gracious favour in our suit.” Whatever may have been Fulwell’s hopes they were destined to be disappointed as was an effort made three years later by his friends to bribe Cromwell into giving him the Priorship of Worcester.

The year drew to a close without any appointment to the vacancy, and not until May in the following year is there any certain news of its being filled. On the twelfth of that month William Boston, a monk of Peterborough, took the oath in the Chancery Court to observe the conditions of the foundation of Henry VII. For three hundred years some son of the house had been chosen to rule over it. Boston was a stranger and it is doubtful if he obtained his office in a manner honourable to himself or to those who procured it for him. Three of the abbatial manors were mortgaged by him until he should have paid five hundred pounds to Cromwell and Sir William Paulet who was Controller of the royal household. It is perhaps unfair to blame him for the exchanges of land with the King by which the Abbey lost the manors of Hyde, Neyt and Eye, together with Covent Garden, but it is the fact which is most remembered against him.

It was in his time and in his own Chapter House that the famous thrill of horror ran through the assembled Commons at the reading of the _Comperta_ or findings of the Commissioners employed to make a case against the monastic houses of England. How much credit may be given to the findings of men who were themselves of a not too high standard of morality and honesty we shall not attempt to determine. It must be sufficient to say that no breath of scandal touched Westminster. It was a city set upon an hill which could not be hid, and its fall came for none of those grosser sins alleged against some other houses.

The story of Abbot Boston’s rule cannot be told in any detail owing to the lack of material. A kind of paralysis seems to have fallen on the monastery with his election. Account rolls if written at all were left untotalled, unbalanced and unaudited. He gathered into his own hands the more important offices as they fell vacant, holding ultimately those of the Sacrist, Cellarer, Warden of the New Work, Warden of the Lady Chapel, and Domestic Treasurer. It would almost seem as if Boston had been brought in to undo all that Islip had wrought and deliberately to provide an excuse for a dissolution which in Islip’s day would have been hard to find.

Under Cromwell’s influence and in obedience to his orders as Vicar-General Boston allowed his monks to be absent from the monastery on any plea of mental or bodily recreation. It was a subtle move thus to recreate a desire for the world that had once been renounced. This and the absence of any responsibility of office within the monastery were swift to sever the bonds of what in Islip’s day had been a family with but little dissension, and the path to the final dissolution was an easy one.

On January 16th, 1540, the deed of surrender was signed by Boston and twenty-six of the brethren. The Abbot became Dean of the new collegiate foundation and many of the house remained therein as prebendaries or minor canons. Among these was Thomas Elfrede, who was installed as ninth prebendary. To him the change cannot have brought much comfort. Forty-two years previously he had taken part in Fascet’s election as Abbot, and he had been one of those who voted in 1500 for Islip. It would be small wonder if his heart yearned for the older days and misliked the new. There is a note of pathos in the request which the old man recorded in his Will that he should be buried by the south door of the church in what was _sometyme the procession waye_, desiring to be carried in death along the path he had trodden so many times in the more peaceful days of his profession.

THE END.

NOTES

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER I.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

Rolls and Accounts of the Obedientiaries, 1480-1532.

BOOKS:

Bentley: _Excerpta Historica_, p. 404.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER II.

BOOKS:

_The Rites of Durham_: Surtees Society, 1902 Vol. II.

_Customary of St. Augustine’s Canterbury and St. Peter’s
Westminster_, Henry Bradshaw Society, Vol. I., 1902; Vol. II.,
1904.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Islip’s Diary_, Mun. 33290.

_Sub-Almoner’s Notebook_, Mun. 33301.

_Domesday Chartulary._

_Mortuary Roll of John Islip._

_Infirmarer’s Rolls_, 1480-84.

Muns. 9462, 12790, 6631 _dors._

VOW ON PROFESSION.

“Ego, frater N., promitto stabilitatem meam et conversionem morum meorum et obedientiam secundum regulam Sancti Benedicti, coram Deo et Sanctis omnibus Ejus, in hoc monasterio quod est constructum in honore Beati Petri, Apostolorum principis, in presentia domini N. abbatis.”

COATS OF ARMS.

ISLIP Ermine, a fesse engrailed between three weasels, ensigned of
a jewelled mitre.

GILES Ermine, a fesse engrailed between three crosses formy fitchy,
three martlets on the fesse.

[Hope: _Vetusta Monumenta_.]

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER III.

BOOKS:

Pollard: _Henry VII._

Stanley: _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_.

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1479.

Venetian State Papers.

_Archæologia_, 1914,

Sir William Hope: _The Funeral, Monument, and Chantry Chapel of
King Henry the Fifth_.

Surtees Society, Vol. 35.

Douthwaite: _Gray’s Inn_.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Register Book_, I.

_Rolls of the Monk-Bailiff_, _passim._

_Islip’s Diary_, Mun. 33290.

_Depositions touching the site of the tomb of Henry VI._, Mun.
6389**.

_Judgment of the Privy Council_, Mun. 6389*.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER IV.

BOOKS:

Dr. J. A. Robinson: _The Abbot’s House at Westminster_.

” ” : _The Benedictine Abbey of Westminster_
(Church Quarterly Review,
April, 1907).

Rymer : _Fœdera_, Vol. XIII., pp. 103, 104.

Neale and Brayley : _Westminster_, Vol. I., pp. 6-8.

Bentley : _Excerpta Historica_, Privy Purse
Expenses of Henry VII.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Death of Abbot Estney_, Mun. 5459.

_Domesday Chartulary_, ff. 629, 633, 638, 639.

_Prior Mane’s Household Accounts_, Mun. 33325.

_Sacrist’s Roll_, 16-17 Henry VII.

Muns. 5448, A, B, C; 5444, 5449, 5450, 5454, 6389***.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER V.

BOOKS:

Dugdale : _Monasticon_.

J. A. Robinson: _The Benedictine Abbey of Westminster_
(Church Quarterly Review, April,
1907).

A. P. Stanley : _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_.

PUBLIC RECORDS:

_Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic_, 1500-1532.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Sacrist’s Rolls_, 1490-1532.

_Articles of Complaint_, Mun. 5447.

_Visitation Documents_, Muns. 12788, 12789, 12790.

Muns. 15212, 15703, 12757, 22950, 12521, 9611, 19814, 13188, 13304.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER VI.

BOOKS:

Pollard: _Henry VIII._

Rymer : _Fœdera_, XIII., 269.

Foxe : _Acts and Monuments_.

PUBLIC RECORDS:

_Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, 1500-32._

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Enrolment of Præmunire against Wolsey and Islip_, Mun. 12256.

_Islip’s Household Accounts_, Mun. 33320.

_Savoy Papers_, Muns. 32408-24.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER VII.

BOOKS:

C. H. Cooper : _The Lady Margaret_.

R. B. Rackham : _The Nave of Westminster_ (Proceedings
of the British
Academy, Vol. IV.).

J. Armitage Robinson: _The Abbot’s House at Westminster_.

” ” : _The Benedictine Abbey of Westminster_.
(Church Quarterly
Review, April, 1907).

H. F. Westlake : _St. Margaret’s, Westminster_.

Sandford : _Genealogical History of the
Kings and Queens of England_.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

_Subsacrist’s Rolls_, Muns. 19836, 19818.

_Account Book of John Fulwell_, Mun. 33303.

_Novum Opus Rolls._

Abstract of _Royal Indenture_, Mun. 6637.

PUBLIC RECORDS:

British Museum: (_Orde MSS.), Addl. MSS._ 7099.

: _Harleian MSS._ 1498.

Public Record Office: _Books of Payments, Exchequer T. of R., Misc. Books_ 214, 215.

MATERIALS FOR CHAPTER VIII.

BOOKS:

Widmore : _History of Westminster Abbey_.

Rackham : _Nave of Westminster_.

Robinson: _Benedictine Abbey of Westminster_.

Register of Consistory Court.

PUBLIC RECORDS:

_Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, 1532-5._

WESTMINSTER ABBEY MUNIMENTS:

Rolls of the _Novum Opus_, 1532-4, and 12787.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See also page 108.

[2] Pollard: Henry VII., Vol. I. page 93 and note.

[3] cf. Abbot Butler: _Benedictine Monachism_, p. 199, quoting from Cardinal Gasquet; _English Monastic Life_, pp. 42-50.

[4] Westminster Abbey and the King’s Craftsmen, page 255.

[5] See page 11.