William de Colchester Part 1

William de Colchester.

by Ernest Harold Pearce.

NOTE

Having had the honour of an invitation to deliver in May last a "Friday Evening Discourse" at the Royal Inst.i.tution on the Archives of Westminster Abbey, I thought it best to confine what I could say within an hour to the career of a single man, preferably one whose record had not hitherto been written. I have here expanded the lecture to some extent, and have added references. I am indebted to Mr. David Weller, the Dean's Virger, for some excellent pictures.

E. H. P.

3, Little Cloisters, _September, 1915._

WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER

I

A WINDOW IN THE NAVE

When the body of the late Lord Kelvin was laid to rest, by a right which there was none to dispute, in the Abbey Church of Westminster, it was placed, by the same kind of right, close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. In the same corner there are the graves, or the memorials, of Darwin and Herschel, of Joule and Gabriel Stokes and John Couch Adams, to be joined shortly by tablets in memory of Alfred Russel Wallace, of Sir Joseph Hooker, and of another Joseph, who died Lord Lister. It was not likely that Kelvin would long lack some memorial more impressive than the slab which covers his remains, and it was a happy and appropriate impulse which caused the representatives of engineering science on both sides of the Atlantic to undertake the task of providing one. But what form could it best take? The walls of the church have been overcrowded, to the grievous destruction of some precious features. The floor-s.p.a.ce, as the centuries following the Reformation were apt to forget, is intended to serve the purposes of public wors.h.i.+p. But the large windows of the Nave offer to those who would honour and foster the memory of the great dead a means of fulfilling their desire, and of adorning the fabric at the same time. In this case the chance was welcomed, and Kelvin has his Abbey memorial in stained gla.s.s. The window is one of a series projected in 1907 by Dr. Armitage Robinson, now Dean of Wells, and loyally accepted by his successor in the Deanery of Westminster--a series in which there are placed side by side a King of England who contributed either to the greatness of the foundation or to the majesty of the building, and the Abbot through whom the King worked his pious will. The King in this case is Harry of Monmouth, and we are thinking with somewhat mingled feelings that October 25, 1915, brings us to the 500th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt. But it is Henry V.'s Abbot who concerns us now; for in such a scheme of windows the Abbots are more difficult to justify to the ordinary visitor than the monarchs, not because of unworthiness, but because there has been but little effort made to appraise their worth as heads of our ancient house, or as conspicuous figures in their generation.[1]

In this case the Abbot is William of Colchester. As we shall see, his character is depicted by Shakespeare, but he has no article to his credit in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. If he is to be brought back from obscurity, it can only be accomplished by repeated visits to the Abbey Muniment Room. I shall therefore ask the reader to climb with me the turret staircase which is approached from a door in the East Cloister, and to enter a n.o.ble apartment of which that cloister is the origin. For when Henry III.'s builders came to the planning of the South Transept, known as Poets' Corner, the lines of the Great Cloister had already been long established, and must not be minished or altered by the new work. Therefore, whereas the North Transept has aisles on its east side and on its west, the South Transept is aisled only on the east side.

The East Cloister occupies the s.p.a.ce of what would otherwise be the western aisle, and thus upholds the floor of the apartment which we enter. We look into the distant recesses of the Abbey eastward, through three of Henry III.'s bays, across a low wall split up by the bases of dwarf pillars. There are signs of royalty in the room, such as the crowned heads at the capitals of the pillars of the colonnade by which we enter, and on the wooden wall which shuts off the southern section is the outline of a white hart crowned, the emblem of Richard II. Professor Lethaby has suggested to me that such a point of vantage from which to see what stones and what buildings are here, and from which to observe some procession of State as it arrives from the Palace by Poets' Corner door and makes its solemn circuit of the church, would naturally be appropriated as a royal pew. Be that as it may, the room was set apart in very early times for the storing of muniments; it contains a cupboard which probably dates from Richard II.'s reign and now stands under Richard II.'s hart; and at least one of its archive chests, if not more, belongs to the fourteenth century. We may a.s.sume, then, that here, from that century onwards, the Convent kept its official archives--charters, leases, acquittances, and the annual account-rolls of its officers. Here, for the last twenty years, the Dean and Chapter have had the constant service of Dr. Edward Scott, formerly of the British Museum, as the Keeper of their muniments. He has written with his own hand over 110,000 descriptions of doc.u.ments, and has compiled, and is still steadily compiling, an index of persons and things. I am merely attempting to construct a life of Abbot Colchester out of doc.u.ments which I have spelt out with Dr. Scott's a.s.sistance. Any one who finds the story uninteresting must console himself with the thought that it has not been told before.

II

A NOVICE FROM ESs.e.x

In Shakespeare's _Tragedy of King Richard II._, there is an Abbot of Westminster who flits craftily across the scene, generally shadowing a Bishop of Carlisle, whom we shall meet again. When Bolingbroke announces that he is about to be crowned King in Richard's stead, this Abbot bids his friends--

"Come home with me to supper; and I'll lay A plot shall show us all a merry day."[2]

In the next act[3] it is stated that he is dead--

"The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster, With clog of conscience and sour melancholy Hath yielded up his body to the grave."

As to which it must be sufficient to say that the poet who could not give the Abbot's name was equally unconscious of the fact that he outlived his alleged conspiracy by twenty years.

But his name was William Colchester, and we may begin by a.s.suming that, as his name implies, he was a Colchester man. In and before his time, and for a considerable s.p.a.ce afterwards, the customary designation of a Brother was his Christian name and a place name, with or without the copula _de_; in earlier years he called himself William de Colchester, but the doc.u.ments which concern him as Abbot mostly speak of William Colchester, or William Abbot of Westminster. Nor are we left to guess-work as to the place of his origin. In later life, according to the habit of his time, he busied himself with the endowment of obits, or anniversaries, for the good of his soul. Here is a doc.u.ment,[4]

dated May 20, 1406, in which he bargained with the Prior of St. Botolph, Colchester, having paid 40_s._ to Henry IV.'s Clerk of the Hanaper to seal the bargain, that one of the canon-chaplains of that Priory should say Ma.s.s every week, at sixpence a week, for his soul and for the souls of his parents; that the Prior and his Brethren should observe his anniversary, again with a memorial of his parents, in the parish church of St. Nicholas, Colchester; that a set sum should be distributed yearly to the vicar of St. Nicholas, to the poor of the parish, and to the prisoners in Colchester Castle; and that the tomb of his parents in the parish churchyard should be kept in proper repair.

We may conclude, then, that this was his native parish, and that in his great position as Abbot of Westminster he wished the connexion to be had in remembrance. But he knew to a mile the distance between his Abbey and Colchester, and how easy it might be for the Prior of St.

Botolph to accept his bequest and to neglect to fulfil its conditions.

So in 1407 (December 3), when he was completing the arrangements[5] for maintaining an anniversary at the Abbey out of the revenues of the church of Aldenham,[6] in Hertfords.h.i.+re, he inserted an instruction that the Monk-Bailiff of Westminster, at the time of his annual visit to the Ess.e.x manors, should either proceed or send to Colchester and make careful inquiry as to the due observance of the covenants, as who should say, "It is as well not to trust these provincial Priors further than you can see them."

We get to know also from the grant[7] of another anniversary at the Abbey's daughter Priory of Hurley, in Berks.h.i.+re, that his father's name was Reginald, and his mother's Alice. He had a sister who in 1389-90 was living in Cambridge, for in that year his Receiver entered a gift of 12_d._ to a man who came from my lord's sister at that town; and we shall find that he had other connexions, some poor enough to bring him a basket of poultry, some rich enough to receive from him a present of jewelry. Evidently he sprang from a burgher stock of no great eminence, for whom the Church seemed the sphere in which the career was opened to the talents.

How he came to enter our Monastery we shall never know, for with all the wealth of our materials there survives not a trace of his or of any other postulant's testimonials. He came, he was seen, he was admitted. We know what the requisites were--that he must have examined his conscience as to the motives which led him to apply, that he must be sound in body, free in civil status, unburdened by debt or other obligations, and as a rule not less than eighteen years of age.[8] What steps the Fathers of the Convent took to secure outside evidence of a candidate's fitness in these respects must be left to the imagination. He pa.s.sed muster and joined their number.

Our first trace of William Colchester's name on the books of the House is in connexion with his ordination as priest. I cannot tell what Bishop admitted him to the ministry, nor where it took place, but it can be ascertained that he said Ma.s.s for the first time during 1361-2 (the conventual year was reckoned for administrative purposes, as it is still, from Michaelmas to Michaelmas), and we are able to discover this, not because it was felt to be an event worth chronicling for its own sake, but because in that year three of the officers note that they severally expended 1s. 7-1/2_d._ in bread and wine as "exennia"--_i.e._ a complimentary gift[9]--made to him in honour of the event. We may suppose that he was then twenty-three years of age; he may have entered the Convent in or about 1356; and we may take 1338 as the probable year of his birth. If, as we have a.s.sumed, he entered the Convent some years before his ordination, then he did so during the reign of Simon Langham, the most eminent of all our Abbots, but it is not possible to say whether he received priest's orders before or after the election of Nicholas Litlington to the Abbacy in April, 1362. The Monastery was still suffering in numbers from the ravages of the Great Pestilence in 1349, and consisted in 1356-7 of only thirty-five monks and two novices.

Colchester was the last of five new members of whom we hear first in 1361-2.

Five years later, in 1366-7, he was chosen by the Convent as one of two of their number whom they thought specially apt to learning, and whom it was therefore their duty to send up to Oxford to join the other Benedictine students at Gloucester Hall, an inst.i.tution established by the Order in its General Chapter held at Abingdon in 1290.[10] Our custom was that the Convent Treasurer paid 10 yearly to each Westminster student for his maintenance,[11] besides the cost of his journeys to and fro; so that it is possible to compile from the Treasurers' rolls a fairly complete list of our Oxford scholars from 1356, when I came upon the first signs of a definite system, until the Dissolution. The plan tended to the great advantage of the monasteries; it meant that the likely young men were taken at an impressionable time in their lives out of the narrow rut of cloistral life, and were a.s.sociated with the world of scholars.h.i.+p and of affairs; and it will be found that a large proportion of those who were sent to Oxford rose quickly to positions of trust in the Convent. William Colchester remained at Oxford, save for periodical visits to the Abbey, from 1366 to 1370. It cannot be said that the Latin prose of which he was capable does credit to his University, and even monkish Latinity was seldom worse than that in which his few surviving letters are couched. But it is fair to a.s.sume that he learnt how to deal with men, and we can now go on to see that the Convent which had supported him at Oxford was satisfied with the product of its expenditure.

III

A MAN OF AFFAIRS

Soon after his return from the University two things happened, as if to signify that his competence was recognized. In October, 1371, he was promoted, as the Westminster phrase went, to sit by the bell--sedere ad skillam; that is to say, he moved up to the seniors' table in the Refectory, where was the bell or skyllet which gave the signal for grace to be said, or for the reader of the week to begin the lection. Like the day of his first Ma.s.s, this promotion, coming as a rule not less than ten years later, was reckoned to be an occasion for a little addition to the usually frugal fare, and we can state the date of it because the Sacrist and the Infirmarer and the Treasurer each sent him bread and wine to the value of 2_s._ 3-1/2_d._, so that he might make merry with his friends.

Secondly, he begins to be recognized as an experienced person who can safely be sent upon missions involving prudence and the management of men. In the same year, 1371-2, a payment of twenty s.h.i.+llings was made by the Steward of the Abbot's Household for the expenses of William Colchester and two valets who were sent to Northampton for the meeting of the General Chapter of the English Benedictines, probably in attendance on the Abbot of Westminster, who was frequently one of the Presidents of the Chapter.

But the next year, 1372-3, as we learn from the Sacrist, saw Colchester entrusted with a still more delicate duty. It was on this wise. Among the precious relics given to the Abbey by Edward the Confessor[12]

was the girdle of the Virgin Mary--zona beate Marie--which she had made with her own hands and had herself worn.[13] It was regarded as having especial value in securing a safe delivery to expectant mothers, and when the Westminster Book of Customs was compiled by Abbot Richard de Ware about a century before Colchester's admission, it was the rule that the Sacrist or, as he was sometimes called, the Secretary, should carry the girdle of the blessed Mother of G.o.d to any destination which it was appointed to reach, or should be at charges with the bearer of it in his place.[14] So here is our Sacrist paying the expenses of William Colchester, namely, 13_s._ 4_d._, and the more considerable price of two horses for the journey, 6 16_s._ 8_d._ But the Sacrist has something to enter on the other side, an offering of 2 from the Countess of March, the lady who craved the aid of the girdle. If any one is churlish enough to say that the bargain seems but a poor one for the Convent--150_s._ spent on the journey, and only 40_s._ received from the beneficiary--the answer is that the horses would be sold at the end of the return journey for almost as much as they cost. If, again, it is objected that in any case the lady's gift was money thrown away, it is not so easy to convince the gainsayer. For while it is on record that on February 12, 1371 (_i.e._ in the year previous to that of the Sacrist's account), the lady Philippa, granddaughter of Edward III., did present her husband, the 3rd Earl of March, with a daughter who in process of time became the wife of Harry Hotspur, yet it does not appear that she was equally blessed during the year 1372-3.

Such duties sensibly performed, William Colchester was not long in attaining to administrative office. To begin with, Abbot Litlington chose him as his Custos Hospicii; _i.e._ Seneschal or steward of his household. We have the roll on which the young monk gave an account of his stewards.h.i.+p for the year Michaelmas to Michaelmas, 1373-4, and as the doings it records represent his early experience of that conventual business in which he was to be immersed for nearly half a century, we may stay by it for a short s.p.a.ce in order to get our impressions.

He found his master in possession of a considerable rent-roll in various parts of the country, the manors being situate in the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, Surrey, Buckingham, and Middles.e.x. The rentals amounted to 696 13_s._ 6_d._, and the sale of stock, including an ox sold for 18_s._ 4_d._, and a cow--timore pestilencie--for 13_s._, brought the total to 719 8_s._ 8_d._ Large as this sum sounds, especially when multiplied to correspond with present values, it was none too large for the needs of the position. Household expenses, which are not entered in detail, came to 151 1_s._ 4-1/2_d._ The purchase of live-stock--grey palfreys, bullocks, cows, steers, sheep, pigs, swans, poultry, and no less than 966 pigeons at about 1/2_d._ each--required 63 2_s._ 10_d._, and the outlay on dead stock such as bacon, salt-fish, five barrels of white herring, fourteen casks of red herring, and three casks of Scottish red herring, amounted to 31 8_s._ 4_d._ Lest it should be claimed that the Scottish variety was a special delicacy, we must add that the latter cost only 4_s._ a barrel as against 5_s._ 6_d._ for the other. Nor, if the quant.i.ties seem large, must it be lightly concluded that there was carelessness in the dispensation; indeed, it was the Seneschal's duty to enter on the back of his roll a stock-keeping account, from which it may be gleaned that all the herrings were consumed and eighty pigs; but there was a residue of five salt-fish and of two out of sixteen bullocks. Altogether in corn and wine and clothing and gifts to visitors and in other ways there was an expenditure of 684 to set against a revenue of 719.

But what we want is an idea of the duties and experiences that came to the young Seneschal, and this can be obtained from various items. He gets a pair of my lord's boots mended for twopence, and small sums go in stringing the great sportman's bows or in buying bags in which to carry his arrow-heads. That which cost more, and was probably more interesting to Colchester himself, was the coming and going of personages or their servants--the squire of the Earl of Cambridge (Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III.), who receives 20_s._ for bringing a letter to the Abbot from his lord; the Earl of Warwick's steward, who comes to sell a black palfrey; a monk of his own year, Richard Excestr', who is just starting on his career at Oxford, and to whom the Abbot gives a fatherly present of 20_s._; the Bishop of Durham's[15] man, whose master we know as the builder of Bishop Hatfield Hall, and who is sent with a gift of two greyhounds to the Abbot. Several messengers arrive from the Prince, _i.e._ the Black Prince, who is now at Wycombe and now at Kensington, and Abbot Litlington makes several journeys by boat to call on the Bishop of Winchester, no less a personage than William of Wykeham, who was in some disgrace at the time.

Having in this way served the Abbot efficiently, Colchester received his next responsibility from the whole Chapter, who chose him as Convent Treasurer, and "Coquinarius" or Kitchener, for the year 1375-6. Happily we still possess his compotus as such. I must not describe it at length, but one feature of it, an entry under the head of "pitancie et flacones,"

is of too great interest to be pa.s.sed by. Pittances were additional meals on special occasions by way of varying the dreary round of dry bread and sour wine, which alone could be provided in the Refectory. But "flacones" seem to be pancakes, and pancakes are a recognized Westminster inst.i.tution, though it is no longer the duty of the Convent Treasurer to provide them for his brethren. I first translate the item as Colchester entered it:

"Paid in milk, 'creym,' b.u.t.ter, cheese and eggs bought for the pancakes in Easter week, on Rogation days and at Pentecost, 64_s._ 8_d._"

And now for some further light upon it. In 1389, when Colchester had occupied the Abbot's chair for three years, the Kitchener was Brother William Clehungre or Clayhanger, who has left us his bill[16] for materials, and from this it will appear how the pancake-custom has developed in the interval. It sets forth his

"expenses laid out in respect of the pancakes prescribed for the brethren and delivered to the monastery according to custom during 56 days each year, namely from Easter Day to Trinity Sunday, in the 12th year of the reign of King Richard II., as appears by all the parcels:--

_s._ _d._ Milk. First 126 gallons of milk @ 1_d._ the gallon 10 6

b.u.t.ter. Also 3 gallons 3 qrts of b.u.t.ter @ 2_s._ 4_d._ the gallon 9 4-1/2