EX LIBRIS H.V.S. ECK.A.M. RECTORIS DE BETHNAL GREEN IN COM: LONDIN: ET AM1CORVM. WALTER DE WENLOK Photo by D. Welter A CONTEMPORARY EFFIGY, PROBABLY OF WALTER DE WENLOK Frontispiece ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHIES WALTER DE WENLOK ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER ERNEST HAROLD PEARCE, Litt.D, F.S.A, BISHOP OF WORCESTER HONORARY FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE SOMETIME CANON AND SUB-DEAN OF WESTMINSTER WITH A FRONTISPIECE LON DON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY IQ2O UNIFORM WITH VOLUME. SAINTE CHANTAL. 1572-1641. A Study in Vocation. By E. K. SANDERS. (Ecclesiastical Biographies.) Cloth boards, IDS. 6d. net. BOOKS ON WESTMINSTER. WESTMINSTER. By H. F. WESTLAKE, M.A., F.S.A. (English Towns Series.) With numerous Illustrations. Cloth boards, 45. net. WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER, ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER. By ERNEST HAROLD PEARCE, Litt.D., F.S.A., is. net Bishop of Worcester. Paper cover, ; cloth boards, is. 9d. net. LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. PRIORI ET CONUENTUI BEATE MARIE VIRGINIS WIGORN: MULTARUM HAUD IMMEMOR CURIALITATUM D. D. ADUENA WESTMON: PEEFACE THE name of Walter de Wenlok is attached to a very large number of the Abbey muniments, and the organisa tion of the Convent s multifarious interests was never more methodical than during his reign. A monograph about his doings and about the conditions of the Monastery during his time might therefore run to a considerable length, and when I first took it in hand, I laid my plans accordingly. But, first, the War brought administrative work that filled my days, so that the Abbot could be only the solace of my evenings. And then I was transplanted to what he " " would call the partes occidentals, which he knew so well Pershore and Longdon and Castle Morton and Wich the result that all I could to do and Malvern ; with hope was just to make an end, and realise sadly that never again should I be able to write books based on unedited Westminster documents. I have lived with Wenlok so long that it is a real grief to send him away. Since I left the Abbey, I have been kindly allowed by my dear friend, the Dean, to pay an occasional visit to the beloved Muniment Koom, and have received much help from the Eev. H. F. Westlake, F.S.A., upon whom the mantle of Dr. Edward Scott has suitably fallen. But borrowing a key is not quite the same joy as using your if leisure can be found amid the tasks that own ; and, any now fall upon me, I must devote it, say, to the doings of some Bishop of Worcester, a dignitary on whom Abbots of Westminster were apt to keep a shrewd, watchful eye. EENEST WOECESTEE. THE CASTLE, HABTLEBUBY, Maundy Thursday, 1920. vii CHAPTEK I. AN ELECTION AT WESTMINSTER. IN the Flores Historiarum l there stand side by side two records which may serve as a fitting introduction to our story, the more so as they refer to the year in which it opens. The first relates how on St. George s Day, in the year 1283, there passed away one John de Bradfield, Bishop of Rochester, to be succeeded by Thomas de Ynglestop or Inglethorpe, Dean of St. Paul s : and it proceeds to explain what an uncomfortable state of things then prevailed at Rochester between the Bishop and the monks. The Bishop appointed monks as officials in his household and conferred to the of the sergeancies disadvantage church ; he also asserted his right to receive the dole or gift of St. Andrew. 2 This was resented by the Prior on behalf of the monks and was resisted to the extent of an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, nothing loth, as a Franciscan, to find himself called upon for a ruling in this squabble of regulars. His Grace s reply was 3 immediate and ominous. "Descendam et videbo," so he told the Prior, not at all unmindful that this was the phrase in which the Vulgate represents the Almighty s announcement to Abraham of an intention to examine the sinfulness of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Archbishop having assured the Rochester monks on his arrival that he came not as Metropolitan, to the prejudice of the Bishop 1 Bolls Ser. Ill, 59 f. 2 Exhennium sancti Andrese. For exhennium cf. E. H. Pearce, William de 62 and Colchester, pp. 18, ; Monks of Westminster, pp. 21 ., 92 f. 3 Gen. xviii. 21. 2 WALTEK DE WENLOK or the church, but as patron of the church, proceeded to question the brethren about their grievance, and decided that the right of the case lay with them rather than with the Bishop s officials. He summoned the Bishop and ex pressed to him the view that he was evil intreating the church of Rochester in siding with his officials and going counter to the wishes of the Prior and the senior brethren. " "You the do wrong, my lord," said Archbishop. My predecessors," the Bishop pleaded, "have done the like." the would no such the But Archbishop accept plea ; thing not be if an had done it blacks would right, angel ; two do not make a white. 1 So the Bishop went away, a wiser and 2 a poorer man. The chronicler of the Flores Historiarum has no this on the he prejudice against Bishop ; contrary, 3 sums him up as praiseworthy, gentle and easy of address, and and and into the midst of merry joyful hospitable ; these various attributes, which he borrows from Edmund of Hadenham, 4 inserts a statement that he was also "cultor Trinitatis". But the chronicler, as a Westminster man, passes with 5 evident satisfaction to the next and concluding item in " his record of the year 1283, which relates that about St. Andrew s Day there died Eichard de Ware Abbot of West minster, treasurer of our lord the King; after whose decease, on the eve of the Circumcision, Brother Walter de Wenlac was unanimously elected in his stead by way of compromission". It is as if the chronicler would say: we manage things better at the Abbey, where there is no Bishop to trouble us, and we can go straight to the Pope for lack of justice without calling in his Grace of Canter bury. But it will be the effect of our present story to re veal that Westminster was by no means the home of ancient peace that the chronicler s contrast seems to imply 1 " Quia satis succedit in vitium, qui alterius injuriam continuat et errorem " 2 " Se retraxit, et saniori consilio adhaerere coepit." 4 * iii 73, Anglia Sacra, i. 353 (ed. 1691). iii. 60. AN ELECTION AT WESTMINSTEK 3 and that it was liable to have to deal with the Archbishop. No doubt Walter de Wenlok s election was unanimous, but unanimity was seldom the mark of Abbey life under his rule. times and critical The were unquiet ; we remember how Mr. J. R. Green takes this very year, 1283, with its completion of the conquest of Wales, as the text of a dis " " 1 course on the new England and on Edward s judicial, legislative and parliamentary developments. But our concern here is with a little company of religious, about fifty strong, situated hard by the administrative centre of these national changes, and still quarrelling and bickering about its own concerns, the Abbot and his particular friends in the House at serious cross-purposes with the Prior and his supporters. And the pity is that what we have to relate seems often to be so remote from the sacred and spiritual issues for which the Abbey stood, especially in troublous times. It appears almost as if the strong soul of the place were being smothered, first beneath the trivial details that are the staple of Abbot Ware s Consuetudinary, and then beneath the notarial warfare of Abbot Wenlok and his brethren. We return, then, to the statement of the Flores His- toriarum, that on 31 December, 1283, the unanimous election of Richard de Ware s successor took place. There is no mention of Walter de Wenl jk in our muniments be 2 fore that date. The splendid system by which the names 1 J. B. Short the Green, History of English People, ed. 1882, p. 1">3. 2 This is true as regards the rolls of the obedientiaries, but since the Monks of Westminster was issued I have carefully examined the account rolls of a number of Abbey properties, and have found several references to Wenlok s activity in the oversight of the estates. The earliest is in a roll Ashwell about Manor, 1280-1 (Mun. 26252, 26253), where his name is given as W. Walnock. He received payments from Fering Manor, along with Adam de 28 12811 1282 Wycumbe, September, August, (Mun. 25581) ; and from Ashford Manor, 24 June, 1282 6 1283 January, (Mun. 26660) ; while he and William de Watford are entered in the place usually occupied the Convent by Treasurers in an account of the Manor of Knightsbridge, June September, 1283 (Mun. 16376). It is also recorded in Mun. 26660 that four bushels of corn were provided " in prebendis fratris J. de Sutton 4 WALTEE DE WENLOK of all our monks were recorded from the time of their profession onwards to their departure or decease was still a long way off. 1 But for the moment the State Papers come to our aid and fill some gaps in our own documents.