Chapter I: The Management of the Monastery

The Rule of St. Benedict, made about the year 540, contemplated only some four officials as in the main responsible for the management of the monastery. These were the Abbot, Prior, Cellarer and Porter. St. Benedict indeed makes mention of a class of officers called Deans, each of whom would be responsible for a group of ten monks engaged in the work of the field which formed an essential part of his scheme of life, but in actual practice no record exists, in England at least, of the subsequent existence of such officers. In the monastic government also some further distinction was made as between the few monks who were priests and the majority who in the earlier years of monastic history were commonly laymen.

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:--

In primis payede for ij peyre Straylys. [Stragulæ = bed blankets]

Item pro uno materes cum j bolster.

Item for a payre Blankettis.

Item for ij Coverleddis.

Item for a pylow w^{t.} ij pylowe Berys [cases].

Item for a Nyghte Cappe w^{t.} ij kerchrys.

Item for a Coembe [? comb].

Item for a peyre Corkys.

Item for Cersey for ij peyre hoson w^{t.} the makyng.

Item for the makyng of ij peyre Shockys.

Item for ij peyre Botis.

Item for ij ffemorallis [drawers] w^{t.} the makyng.

Item for a Brygerdell.

Item for viij erdis of stamyn [linen] for ij stamyns [shirts] price
the erde iiij d.

Item for a petycote.

Item for ij erdes and a quarter of Blake for on Cote price the erde
ij s. viij d.

Item for ij erdis di of Blacke Cloth for an other Cote price the
erde iij s.

Item for ij erdis and quarter of Blacke Coton for a Nygth Cote
price the erde xij d.

Item for lynyng to the same iij Cotis to eche of them iiij erdis
and a quarter price the erde Vd. ob. q^{a.}

Item for the makyng of ij hames Whodis.

Item for a pec. of Say to make ij Cowlys and a frocke.

Item for a Gerdell ij d. A purse viij d. A peyre of knyves viij d.

Item for viij lambes skynys for to ffur a hode and ij Cotis Slevys
at the hande.

Item for ffurryng of the same.

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.