INTRODUCTION 17 their authority or on the authority of one alone.1 No doubt after the final breach with Hadham on 2 September the had some words for his receiver better spoken than written, but only incapacitat- ing illness, following swiftly upon the events in chapter at the begin- ning of the month and perhaps foreshadowed in Wenlok's conduct during that crisis, would seem adequately to explain why the execu- tion of writs virtually ceased after 21 September. We know that Wenlok was visited by a physician before Michaelmas 1307.2 As the abbot of an exempt , having his goods separate from those of the convent, Wenlok had great freedom in his financial arrangements. Behind the reform of 1295 lay a desire for economy: he hoped to cut down waste by directing all his income into the hands of central collectors able to advise him on his resources and commit- ments as a whole and free of the special interest which stewards of the household had in spending money. His model may have been the royal Exchequer, still nominally the source from which the royal wardrobe drew its supplies, or he may have been influenced by the establishment of centralized control over conventual funds in a num- ber of English at this time.3 Yet if the difficulties posed by itinerancy could be solved, a separate, central, treasury had such obvious merits that a model is hardly needed to explain its intro- duction, and at Westminster the developed writ of liberate was ready to hand as an instrument for controlling it.

4. WENLOK'S QUARREL WITH PRIOR REGINALD DE HADHAM4 Reginald de Hadham was installed as prior on 2 August 1305 after an outwardly unanimous election; it was rumoured, however, that the abbot intended to set aside the electoral 'right' of the convent and intrude his own candidate into the priorship.5 Two years later, on 13 July 1307, Hadham appealed to Rome and to the king against the abbot's violation of the compositions regulating the division of monastic revenues between the abbot and convent;6 he may have

1 Below, pp. 211-13. 2 Below, p. 208; see also p. 212. 3 R. A. L. Smith, 'The Regimen Scaccarii in English Monasteries', Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, 4th Ser., xxiv (1942), pp. 73 ff. 4 The quarrel is described by Pearce {Walter de Wenlok, pp. 167-202). The main sources for it are the record of the examination of witnesses hostile to Wenlok in Aug. 1307 (W.A.M. 9497) and the acta of the judges delegate in 1308 (W.A.M. 9496). 6 W.A.M. 9508; see Pearce, op. cit., pp. 202-3. This document is only a draft. 6 W.A.M. 9496. This is also the source for the events which follow, except the appeal to the General Chapter. On 25 Sept. 1307 the king appointed a commission of four to inquire into the disputes at the Abbey (C.P.R., 1307-1313, p. 36).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 18 WALTER DE WENLOK appealed also to the court of Canterbury, for subsequently Wenlok charged him with prejudicing the liberties of the church of West- minster by an appeal to that court. Wenlok ignored Hadham's appeals, and, a week later, suspended him from office. On 24 August, fearing that Wenlok would proceed further against him, Hadham caused a copy of his appeal to be made for the General Chapter of the Benedictine Order due to meet at Oxford on 21 September under the presidency of Wenlok himself.1 On 2 September, at only one day's notice, and no doubt on hearing of this move, the abbot published in chapter charges relating to Hadham's conduct not only as prior and after his suspension but also as an obedientiary before he became prior. Hadham refused to withdraw his appeal to Rome, asked in vain for a written copy of the charges, was required to purge himself with twenty-four compurgators, all monks, at none, and on his failure to produce more than seventeen monks was deprived and imprisoned.2 He appealed to Rome against these sentences and was then excommunicated. We do not know how long he remained in confinement. In January 1308, within a month of Wenlok's death, he presided in a chapter which confirmed and made additions to the compositions,3 though it was not until 17 May that papal judges delegate finally revoked the sentences against him. The appeal decided in Hadham's favour was an appeal against the legality of his suspension and deprivation; the issue of the compositions had fallen into the background and was never brought to a hearing. The subdivision of monastic revenues at Westminster may go back to the earliest days of the Confessor's foundation. An extent written in the early twelfth century shows that assignments were already made for food, alms and pittances, fires, clothes and stipends, and the

1 Snappe's Formulary and Other Records, ed. H. E. Salter and V. H. Galbraith (Oxford Hist. Soc, lxxx, 1924), pp. 367-68. See also ibid., pp. 349-50. There is no evidence that the General Chapter met {Chapters of the English Black Monks, i, p. 295); the document was read to an informal gathering at Gloucester College on 21 Sept. 2 Hadham is said variously to have produced sixteen compurgators in all and seventeen monks with chaplains and priests as well (W.A.M. 9496). It seems clear that he tried to find twenty-four monks but failed, and then fell back on the claim that only sixteen were needed for a canonical purgation. The canonical rule was that the number of compurgators should vary according to the quality of the offence and the quality of the person. See Glossa Ordinaria (Parmensis) (Venice, 1498), and Henricus de Bartholomaeis (Hostiensis), In I-V Decretalium Libros Commentaria (Venice, 1581), comments on Decret. Greg. IX, lib. V, tit. xxxiv, cap. x; in this decretal fourteen compurgators were required for a clerk's purgation in a case of heresy. (I am grateful to Canon E. W. Kemp for these references and for a further reference below, p. 24, n. 1.) 3 in. 7.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 INTRODUCTION 19 Maundy.1 Provided they were revocable, arrangements of this kind did not damage the abbot's authority. But when Abbot Gilbert Crispin (1085-1117) assigned to the chamber revenues sufficient for the clothing and shoes of eighty monks,2 he began the practice of perpetually endowing conventual offices, and this could not fail to affect very seriously the relations between the abbot and his monks. Early in the thirteenth century William Humez made an assignment of this kind to the kitchen,3 and in 1225 Richard de Berking com- pleted the separation of abbatial and conventual goods by assigning to the convent the manors and rents administered by the cellarers.4 Berking's composition, supplemented within a few weeks by a second agreement,5 attempted to define the rights and duties of the abbot and convent in matters where they might be uncertain now that the convent had its separate portion, and this became the dominant note of the thirteenth century at Westminster. Arbitration on Berking's compositions had been necessary as early as 1227 and again in 1252.8 Wenlok ended by questioning not only some of the details of the compositions but their power to bind him at all. This attitude he made plain in the final quarrel. In some of the disagreements which brought the crisis to a head his position was not indefensible. He was right to resist the demand of the prior and convent that the surplus issues of Queen Eleanor's manors be dis- tributed among them in money.7 (Surprisingly, the absorption of Denham into the abbot's portion of lands, which now appears very questionable, occasioned no protest from his monks.8) The convent's claim to the manor of Deerhurst is now wholly obscure, and it is impossible that their demand for the division of its surplus issues should have been well-founded.9 If Wenlok caused annoyance by employing a monk to supervise the walls protecting abbey property from inundation by the Thames,10 it was not until 1308 that this

1 W.A.M. 5670; see J. Armitage Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of West- minster (Cambridge, 1911), p. 41. The endorsement extenta conventus Westnf is in a later hand. Armitage Robinson suggested that this document was drawn up in the vacancy which followed the death of Abbot Gilbert in 1117 (ibid., p. 44); if so, the perpetual assignment to the kitchen had already taken effect. 2 Customary, ii, p. 149; Flete, p. 87. Henry III confirmed this grant in 1252 (W.A.M. 1497). 3 HI. 1. 4 in. 2. 6 HI. 3. 6 m. 4-5. ' See below, p. 238, note. 8 See 1.167, note. In 1225 the farm of Denham (£15) had been allotted to the prior and convent (below, p. 217); after 1292 they continued to receive an equivalent sum (W.A.M. 19838, 19840-42). 9 See below, p. 239 and note. 101.2,9. These suggest that Brother Thomas de Lenton was warden of the walls early in Wenlok's abbacy; and in the minister's account for 'Eye' in 1302-3 there is a definite reference to a monk-warden of the walls (W.A.M. 26868). This official was distinct from the monk-warden of 'La Neyte'.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 20 WALTER DE WENLOK practice was explicitly forbidden;1 the real purpose of the rule of 1283 forbidding the abbot to commit the care of the walls to an obedientiary was to ensure that the abbot and not the convent paid for their upkeep.2 Wenlok broke his promise of 1288 to allow the sacrist £4 from the rents of the fair at Westminster; on the other hand, he saw that the real purpose of this grant—the provision of spice money for professed monks—was carried out;3 and nothing in the earlier compositions supports a claim to half the total profits of the fair voiced by the prior and convent in 1308.4 In 1295 Wenlok allowed the prior and convent to pay a procuration of six marks assessed on their goods by the cardinal bishops of Albano and Palestrina;5 but in 1307 he bowed to the convent's claim that pro- curations assessed on their goods were covered by the clauses in the compositions binding the abbot to pay for the entertainment of papal legates, nuncios and others travelling with a retinue of twelve or more.6 It was at least arguable that the procurations of papal envoys had become a tax little resembling the original burden of hospitality of which the compositions took note. In so far as this was a quarrel about the division of lands and income, it was not confined to the narrow issue of loyalty to the compositions, despite Hadham's attempt to put it on this basis. Nor is this surprising. No written code could regulate in all points, for any length of time, the business arrangements in a house where the abbot and convent had separate portions, because circumstances changed quickly: the manor on lease in one decade might be in hand the next; a new benefaction might cause a new obedience to develop; even the waters of the Thames were not immutable. But Wenlok asked for more than flexibility in new situations and equitable re- medies for hard cases. When he was driven in August 1307 to confirm the compositions, he claimed angrily, even as he did so, that, being fortified by prescriptive right and other lawful defences, he should not be compelled by the rigour of the law to observe them.7 Agree- ments which, after his election and blessing as abbot, he had sworn to observe8 were not really binding upon him.

1 Below, p. 235. a Below, p. 230; see also p. 221. 3 See 1.156 and note, 230; below, pp. 169, 212. 4 Below, p. 239. In 1288 the convent had been promised 20 marks from the rents of the fair after Wenlok's death to pay for his anniversary (Flete, p. 120). 6 W. A.M. 9499A; see R. Graham, English Ecclesiastical Studies (London, 1929), p. 304. In 1306 the prior and convent paid a 'courtesy' of £3 to papal nuncios (W. E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 557-58). 61. 241 and note; below, pp. 219, 230. 7 W.A.M. 5671; see Pearce, Walter de Wenlok, p. 204. 8 In Aug. 1307 several monks testified that, after his blessing as abbot, Wenlok

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 INTRODUCTION 21 A claim to a lawful defence against the compositions directs atten- tion to their constitutional clauses, for against some of these Wenlok might have pleaded the high authority of the Rule itself. Crokesley had pleaded the Rule against an ambiguous reference in Berking's first composition to the mode of dismissal of obedientiaries in charge of conventual property,1 but his success was short-lived, and in 1283 it was affirmed that the abbot might not remove the cellarers, hosteller or without asking all the brethren or the senior monks.2 Crokesley himself had to agree to the rule that the abbot would appoint cellarers from a short-list of four monks to be drawn up by the prior and convent.3 The prior claimed also the right to appoint deputy-obedientiaries, though this claim did not find its way into the compositions until 1308.4 And that group of monks for whom Roger de Aldenham and Reginald de Hadham were spokes- men derived from the separation of goods which the compositions recognized a claim not only that the monks of Westminster should elect their prior freely but also that the prior of their choice held office for life and could not be suspended or deprived by the abbot.5 What Wenlok thought of this last claim he showed plainly by suspending and depriving Hadham and by doing so after appeal. He refused almost until the end to admit the extension of the elective principle to the appointment of a warden for Queen Eleanor's manors.6 If concessions wrung from his successor, Kedyngton, and the additions made to the compositions in 1308 reflect Wenlok's shortcomings, he had agreed to final concords without the assent of the convent, interfered in the appointment of deputy-obedientiaries, admitted monks to profession and appointed to vacant churches out of chapter.' More important, in the final crisis he broke in spirit, if not in letter, the rules regulating the sending away of monks from the house. To Crokesley's composition, which merely required the abbot to have reasonable cause for sending a monk away and to do so only after careful discussion, the composition of 1283 added a

swore to observe the compositions (W.A.M. 9497). Presumably he had been present in chapter before his election, when all the monks swore to observe them (below, p. 232). 1 Below, pp. 218-19, 227. 2 Below, p. 230. 3 Below, p. 228. 4 Below, p. 238 and note. 6 W.A.M. 9496, 9508; see Pearce, Walter de Wenlok, pp. 202-3. 6 Flete,p. 118. 7 W.A.M. 5415(see Pearce, op. c//.,p.225);below,pp.235,238. If it was intended that the sub-prior should count as a deputy-obedientiary and be appointed by the prior, the appointment of Brother Henry Payn as sub-prior in 1307 (below, p. 27 and note) becomes significant, for he was the abbot's receiver and, in the final crisis, his strong supporter.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 22 WALTER DE WENLOK definite requirement of common assent.1 Behind the expanded treat- ment of this theme in 1308 lies the case of Brother Roger de Aldenham. Aldenham was Hadham's leading supporter; he it was who drafted the appeals against the abbot's violation of the compositions.2 When Hadham was suspended from office, Aldenham was sent to Hurley Priory.3 Hadham forbade him to go but subsequently gave him his own licence to be absent from the house; by 2 September he had been absent for a month. Wenlok excommunicated him and denounced him as an apostate. After the prior's reinstatement in 1308 he and Aldenham appealed jointly against these sentences and the appeal was upheld by judges delegate in February 1309. Aldenham did not impugn the manner in which the abbot tried to send him to Hurley; indeed, the rescript setting out his grievances fails to mention his banishment but represents the sentences of excommunication and apostasy as unjust penalties for joining in the original appeal of 13 July.4 It would appear, therefore, that Wenlok had sent Aldenham away coram publico, in a manner formally correct.5 But what would this mean in the context of Westminster in July 1307? Here it becomes relevant to ask who were the adherents of Hadham and Aldenham. We know the names of fifteen monks who made depositions hostile to Wenlok on 22 August 1307 and of six- teen whom Hadham produced as compurgators on 2 September. (Fourteen names are common to both lists.)8 Among them was a very 1 Below, pp. 229, 230. 2 W.A.M. 9496. See also Pearce, Walter de Wenlok, pp. 202-3. 3 This account has been reconstructed from the acta of the judges delegate in Aldenham's case (W.A.M. 9494-95) and in Hadham's case (W.A.M. 9496) and from the record of the examination of witnesses hostile to Wenlok in Aug. 1307 (W.A.M. 9497). None of these sources gives the exact stage at which Aldenham was excommunicated; it seems likely that this followed his exit from the house under licence from the suspended prior. Excommunication was the canonical pen- alty for a recalcitrant fugitive {Corpus Juris Canonici, ed. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879-81), ii, Decret. Greg. IX, lib. Ill, tit. xxxi, cap. xxiv). Pearce {op. cit., pp. 198-201) gives a short account of Aldenham's appeal. 4 W.A.M. 9494-96. We learn of the banishment from W.A.M. 9496. 6 His sentence may have had the king's support, for on 2 Sept. Wenlok referred to a royal mandate about Aldenham of which Hadham had impeded the execution (W.A.M. 9496). 6 Brothers William de Almaly, Walter de Arkesden, Gwydo de Aswell, Henry de Bircheston, Robert de Blith, Robert de Bures, William de Glastingber', John de London, Ralph de Morton, John de Nottele, Robert de Reding, Robert de Sancto Martino, Richard de Waltham, Thomas de Woburn deposed against Wenlok and supported Hadham on 2 Sept. (W.A.M. 9496-97). Brother Jordan de Wratting deposed but is not named as a compurgator. Brothers Richard de Coleworth and Richard de Fanelore did not depose but are named as compurga- tors. Brother Jordan may have been the seventeenth compurgator whose existence Hadham later concealed (above, p. 18, note).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 13:36:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500000064 INTRODUCTION 23 fair sprinkling of age and experience: three had been professed more than forty years,1 two others more than thirty years;2 six had held important obediences;3 significantly, three had been closely associa- ted with the abbot as chaplain, stewards of his household, or receiver.4 Among them were some who on any reckoning were senior monks of the house; and the group as a whole represented nearly one third of the community of professed monks.5 It may be assumed that Wenlok's sentence of banishment did not have their real assent, though it may have been uttered in their presence. Certainly it lacked the prior's assent. This, no doubt, explains why the rule about send- ing monks away was reworded in 1308; in such matters the abbot was to act with the assent of the convent aut saltern consilio prioris ceterorumque seniorum et saniorum collegii.6 Wenlok's quarrel with Hadham brings out sharply the evil con- sequences which might flow from the division of monastic lands and revenues between the abbot and convent, despite the great practical advantages of such a division. At Westminster the limitation of the abbot's powers had been a process intimately connected with the separation of endowments, though fed from other springs as well; by the end of the thirteenth century a point had been reached at which the discipline and peace of the house were in jeopardy. Wenlok fought for the old Benedictine idea of the abbot as effective ruler of his house and ultimate master of all its goods. His attitude to the peculium suggests, too, that he had a fitful sense of better standards than those attained recently by the monks of Westminster. But the final judge- ment on his actions must surely be that, though he fought for a cause which had good in it, he fought unworthily. Discussion appears to have been distasteful to him. In the final crisis he revealed a hasty, authoritarian temper, far from St Benedict's ideal, relevant—unless we dismiss it as a symptom of approaching illness—to an under- standing of relations with his monks throughout his abbacy; the

1 Fanelore, Waltham, Wratting {Monks, pp. 55, 56). 2 Bures, de Sancto Martino (ibid., pp. 57, 58). * Arkesden (treasurer, chamberlain); Bircheston (chamberlain); Coleworth (treasurer); Fanelore (almoner, infirmarer, ? treasurer); Morton (cellarer); Wratting (chamberlain, treasurer, pittancer; also granger, sub-prior and warden of Queen Eleanor's manors). For Morton's cellarership see Antient Kalendars [and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty's Exchequer], ed. F. Palgrave, i (Record Comm., 1836), p. 269; references to the obediences held by the other monks in this list will be found in Monks, pp. 55 ff. 4 Bircheston (steward); Fanelore (receiver); Morton (chaplain and steward). See below, pp. 24-27. Hadham and Aldenham also were at one time receivers for the abbot. 8 Fifty professed monks received spice money in Dec. 1307 (below, p. 212). • Below, p. 236.

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5. WENLOK'S OFFICIALS, CLERKS AND ANNUITANTS The lists compiled by E. H. Pearce are the starting-point for all work on the monastic community at Westminster,' but Pearce was not concerned with secular or lay officials, and his lists of monastic officials during Wenlok's abbacy can now be supplemented. In the following lists, where any doubt exists, names have been placed in square brackets.

(i) The Abbot's chaplains 1284-85: Brother Alan;8 1286: Brother Alexander de Pershore;9 1288-89: Brother Ralph de Morton;10 1296: Brother Laurence [de Elinton].11

1 A. Esmein, History of Continental Criminal Procedure (trans. J. Simpson, London, 1914), p. 89. 2 Antient Kalendars, ed. Palgrave, i, p. 266. He was imprisoned, however, for a short time (below, p. 43 and note). 3 Antient Kalendars, ed. Palgrave, i, pp. 253 ff. 4 On 14 July 1308 the king appointed a commission of five to enquire into the dissensions at the Abbey (C.P.R., 1307-1313, p. 124); on 23 May 1310 he addressed to the prior of Westminster a letter strongly critical of the lax discipline of the monastery (W.A.M. 12786, quoted in V.C.H. London, i (London, 1909), p. 442). 6 Above, p. 16. 6 Pearce, Walter de Wenlok, pp. 168-69, 202-3. 7 Monks of Westminster (Cambridge, 1916). 8 W.A.M. 25908. Probably the Brother Alan listed in Monks, p. 61. 9 W.A.M. 4930. Steward of the abbot's household late in 1286. 10 Monks, p. 64. Steward of the abbot's household. 11 Ibid., p. 66. Steward of the abbot's household.

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