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.