Part 2

But there is a local reason for dwelling on this custom. Westminster School is admittedly a Tudor foundation, but at the Abbey we cherish the conviction that its roots penetrate deep down into the monastic soil. Every Shrove Tuesday the school--in modern times by means of selected gladiators--makes a furious onset upon a single pancake. Mr. Sergeaunt[17] speaks of the ceremony as "the sole survivor of the medieval sports," and adds that "although its origin cannot be traced, it can hardly have come into being after the date of Elizabeth's foundation." Is it, then, beyond all likelihood that it arose out of some ancient protest of our Benedictines against the prospect of being fed upon pancakes every day for eight weeks? Is it inconceivable that the successful protestant was conducted at the end of the "greese," as now, to the Lord Abbot's presence to receive one mark from his lordship's bounty? All we can say is that the Brethren continued to be similarly regaled from Easter to Trinity until the Dissolution of the House.

IV

A PROCTOR AT ROME

William Colchester ceased to be Treasurer in the autumn of 1376, and within eight months circumstances had arisen in which his capacities were to be put to a severer and more prolonged test. We are all familiar with the expression "St. Stephen's," as applied to Parliament House. But it is not as readily realized that the House of Commons, after sitting for long years in the Chapter House[18] at the Abbey, removed itself at the Dissolution to the ancient Chapel of St. Stephen in the Palace of Westminster. I am only concerned now with the story of that chapel[19] as it is related to William Colchester's career. Placed where it was, it stood within the ancient limits of our Abbot's jurisdiction, but its Dean and his twelve Prebendaries had good grounds for regarding themselves as a royal foundation, and they craved the kind of ecclesiastical independence which attaches to-day to St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. Our Convent resisted this claim, which, on the other hand, had the good will of the Court. In 1377 a suit to test the rights of the case was entered before the Roman Curia, and it was necessary to appoint some careful and astute person to take charge in Rome of the Abbey's interests, and to negotiate their success. I will not go further into the merits of the case. It lasted for seventeen years, and was ultimately settled, on the whole, in the Abbey's favour, the College of St. Stephen agreeing to pay to the Abbey a yearly sum of five marks, and the right of the Abbot to instal the Dean of St. Stephen's being upheld.[20] What concerns us is that the Abbot and Convent chose William Colchester as their proctor at Rome in this suit, and that by good fortune there survive long statements of his personal and legal costs in carrying out the task laid upon him. They will serve as a guide-book of his journey and will give us considerable insight into his adventures.[21]

He left Westminster on June[22] 10, 1377, and was absent, as he is careful to record, for two years, twenty-three weeks, and three days. His first business was to furnish himself with official commendations, and to this end he sought for royal letters--pro expedicione cause--from the Keeper of the Privy Seal; he paid 3_s._ 4_d._ to the Keeper's servant to urge his master to dictate them, and by a like payment he made things right with the scrivener who would execute them; but the letters were not ready when he started. Meantime we can watch him as he reckons up the difficulties of his ordeal. It was arranged that he should go by way of Avignon, for Master Thomas Southam,[23] Archdeacon of Oxford, was still there, settling the affairs of Cardinal Langham's will. But the Pope was no longer there. Gregory XI. had quitted that scene of luxurious exile and ravenous extortion on September 13, 1376, and had entered Rome on January 17, 1377.[24] Most Englishmen had resented the Avignonese sojourn because it threw the Papacy into the hands of the French, but William Colchester, as he packed his valise, saw the matter in a different light. Because the Pope had left, there was no great chance of finding company for the journey;[25] and company meant so much the more security. There was nothing for it but to hire a companion, and he found one Gerard of London, who was willing to face the journey for 20_s._ and his expenses. Colchester is conscious that this seems an extravagance, but he enters in his account a plea that it was justified by the variety of language and the dangers of the roads in foreign parts.[26] For the road to Dover he bought for himself a horse and saddle which cost 34_s._ 8_d._; but it appears that he rather expected the man Gerard to walk, for he extenuates a further payment of 26_s._ 8_d._ for a horse, a saddle, and bridle for Gerard, by stating that the man entirely declined to go afoot. Thus mounted, they reached Dover, where they wasted five days in waiting for a passage, and all the time the cost of food was mounting up at the rate of sixpence a day for each horse, and fivepence a meal for each man. The passage, when they obtained one, cost 3_s._ 4_d._ each for the men, and double for the horses. At that cost they reached Calais, and within three days were at Bruges, where again there was a long halt. For the royal letters had not come. Edward III. was on his death-bed, and passed away eleven days after our travellers left London. But Colchester is convinced that an enemy had done this, and when he insists that the issue of the letters has been frustrated "per aduersarios," we must remember that the Dean and College of St. Stephen's were closer to the royal ear than our Abbot and Convent. Whatever the cause, the result was the entry in his account of the cost of nine days' commissariat at Bruges, together with a reward of 10_d._ to the hotel servants, which he at once resents and excuses as being the custom of the country.[27] In brief, he had already spent nearly all the L10 which he received at his journey's start from the hands of Brother John Lakyngheth, his rival for monastic promotion.

So now he converts his balance of 16_s._ 8_d._ from sterling into florins, reckoning a florin at 3_s._ 2_d._ To this he adds seven florins by the sale of his own horse--a creditable bargain, for, having paid 34_s._ 8_d._ for the beast in London, he has ridden it to Bruges, and there parted with it for 22_s._ 2_d._ On the other hand, Gerard's horse has turned out badly; the journey has nearly killed it;[28] and it goes for three florins, or 9_s._ 6_d._ Colchester negotiated a loan of twenty-three florins, and on they went towards the south, sometimes hiring mounts, sometimes begging a ride in a cart, often in terror of the Frenchmen, who laid an ambush for them as they entered Dauphine, so that our travellers hired a guide and went through byways. On the 27th day after leaving Bruges they entered Avignon, and next day they found Master Southam at his lodgings by the church of Our Lady of Miracles.

For a moment I lay aside Colchester's ledger and turn to a separate document; for Southam had with him at Avignon another Westminster monk, John Farnago, who became Colchester's paymaster and in due course presented to the Abbey an account[29] of what he had laid out on his behalf. We are thus furnished with the date of the arrival of Colchester and Gerard--July 24--and learn that they required bed and board at Avignon till August 19. Farnago purchased for his Brother a fresh outfit--cape, tunic, and hood of black Benedictine cloth, a scapular and cowl, and a plain colobium (or sleeveless tunic), buying the last, as he says, from Hagyuus, a Jew, whose real name was probably Hayyim. He also provided a horse for the journey to Marseilles, where Colchester was to take ship, and put some money in his scrip. So our Proctor turned his back on Avignon, perhaps not fully realizing that when on August 14, five days before his departure, he and Farnago witnessed the probate of Cardinal Langham's will,[30] he had been concerned with a document which was to have a vast effect on the church and the conventual buildings of St. Peter, Westminster.

We turn back to Colchester's own ledger, and note that he does not enter the actual date of his arrival in Rome; but we can fix it fairly closely. He says that, having got thus far, he was obliged to move on to Anagni, some forty miles southward from Rome on the road to Naples; and we know that Gregory XI., who had spent the summer of 1377 there, returned to Rome on November 17.[31] Colchester must have found the Papal Court busy at the packing of its trunks and must have returned with it forthwith to Rome; for the first date that he mentions is November 20. It would be wearisome to pursue the details of his activity in engaging counsel, English and Italian, and in paying their fees; but it is worth while to notice that there has been no great change since his day in legal expressions--retinuit duos aduocatos--and perhaps not a complete reform of illegal practice; for instance, he explains that he gave six florins to the valet--cubicularius--of the Cardinal of Milan, who was concerned in the decision of the case, with a view to the man's stirring up his master to sign a certain document; the object of the gift, says Colchester, was greater security, because at the moment there was a fierce altercation between the parties to the suit.

His expenses, already large, received a sudden addition through the death, on March 27, 1378, of Gregory XI. Seldom can an observant traveller have had a more exciting experience than to be in Rome during the session of the Consistory[32] which set Bartolommeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, upon what Colchester calls "the apex of the chief Apostolate." On personal grounds our monk must have been pleased at the choice of the electors, for the new Pope was the special _protege_ of the French Cardinal of Pampeluna, Simon Langham's friend and executor. But financially the effect was provoking. We know that Urban VI. proved himself a man "full of Neapolitan fire and savagery," who thought "that the Cardinals could be reduced to absolute obedience by mere rudeness,"[33] and we are quite prepared for Colchester's statement that between the Pope and the Sacred College there arose a great dissension. Cardinals and curials fled secretly, he says, in some numbers, and among the latter the two advocates whom he had briefed and paid. That money at any rate was a dead loss, but there was this advantage in Urban's case, that, knowing the preference of the Cardinals for Anagni as a summer residence, he decided for Tivoli in their despite, and Colchester could get there in a few hours for a couple of florins. Six weeks had to be spent within sound of Horace's waterfall before his business was finished. His return journey led him through Nice, where he was robbed of his cloak and other property. Then to Avignon once more, and thence in due course--at least, so he hoped--to the Abbey.

But he was fated, nevertheless, to turn again and revisit the Roman Court; for while he tarried in Master Southam's lodgings at Avignon, in September, 1378, there came news of a notable murder committed in the church of Westminster while the Gospel was being read at High Mass,[34] on August, 11. The victim was one Robert Hawle, who had escaped from the Tower and had taken sanctuary at Westminster. The incident had its political aspects; it raised various perilous questions; and Southam advised that Colchester should return to Rome in order to counteract any plots that might be mooted in behalf of the authors of "that horrible deed." So again the expenses began to roll up--the journey overland to Marseilles; a passage by galley to Ostia; a sojourn in Rome for the greater part of December, 1378; gratuities on several occasions to the Papal janitors for free entrance to the Chamber and the Consistory, and to the valets for access to the Pope himself; an expensive struggle by each faction to extract from the Curia the kind of Bull that each side wanted, in which our Proctor was apparently successful; and a journey from Rome to Bruges lasting forty-one days. Colchester waited for three weeks at Sluis to secure a passage across the Channel, in the belief that the enemy was watching Calais with the intention of doing him violence;[35] and when he reached his native shore, he rode up to London by ways that were devious for the same reason, arriving there in November, 1379. It was neither easy nor without peril to be the chosen representative of Westminster at the Roman Court.

V

AN ARCHDEACON

It is not doubtful that the Abbot and Chapter were well pleased with Colchester's fulfilment of the duties entrusted to him and that the large bill of costs was paid, if not with delight, at any rate with resignation. Of this we have several conclusive indications. First, within a brief space the Convent again despatched him to Rome, in 1382-3, doubtless to continue his management of the same suit. This time there is no record of his payments, nor should we be aware of his journey if it were not for two documents. One is the Chamberlain's compotus-roll of 1382-3. These accounts presented a balance of money on the one side, and a balance of materials on the other side; it was necessary for the Chamberlain to show, not merely that he had purchased so many outfits, but that he had distributed these outfits to such and such Brethren. So when he makes his statement about the habits--panni nigri--he notes that he did not give these to Brother William Colchester nor to Brother William Halle, because they were at Rome. No doubt, Colchester had represented to the Chapter the wisdom of providing him with a companion from the monastery instead of his hiring a courier as before. The other is a legal document, whose purport is of some personal interest. When Colchester left Westminster in 1382-3, Richard Excestr' was about to resign the Priorship, which he had held only since 1377. Attempts seem to have been made, perhaps by some of Colchester's Roman friends during his stay at the Curia, to secure a "provision" of the vacant office for him from the Pope, and the efforts succeeded. The document in question[36] bears date January 2, 1384, and is of the nature of a pardon to Colchester for the prejudice or contempt caused by such efforts to the Crown and its prerogatives. He denied that he was party to the attempt, and paid the necessary fee to the Hanaper for his pardon. The Priorship another took;[37] not, perhaps, because the Brethren thought Colchester unworthy of promotion or too young for it, but because the interests of the House required that he should go to Rome, whither he was sent, as the Treasurers' rolls inform us, both in 1384-5 and 1385-6. The suit against St. Stephen's Chapel still dragged on, and he alone had the knowledge and the experience for hastening its delays.

As a second proof of the confidence reposed in him we may note that in 1382[38] he was Archdeacon of the Convent; it is possible that he held the post earlier; certainly he held it in 1386; and probably he owed it to the Abbot personally. The office of Archdeacon is proverbially puzzling to the lay mind, and it may be that the Archdeaconry of Westminster creates some wonder in the minds even of other Archdeacons. The fact is that the Abbot in the exercise of jurisdiction over his Westminster area required the services of an ecclesiastical jurist in matters of divorce and of excommunication and the like; he needed also some one who would serve as his pastoral representative to those denizens of the area who were not on the foundation of the Convent. For this reason, even in Abbot Ware's time,[39] the Archdeacon was permitted to walk abroad to the Palace or elsewhere in the discharge of his duties, which, indeed, might take him much further afield; for when Abbot Colchester drew up an indenture[40] appropriating to certain memorial purposes the revenues of Aldenham church, he inserted a provision that the Archdeacon of Westminster for the time being should be in charge of the parish, receiving 40_s._ yearly for his labour therein. We have seen that Colchester's experience marked him out for juridical duties, and we must assume that he was not without pastoral zeal and aptitude.

A letter in Norman French addressed by "William, Conte de Salisbury" to Abbot Litlington will help us to see that his duties were of a varied character. The writer of the letter[41] was William de Montacute, 2nd Earl, who fought at Poitiers and in most of the French wars of his time. Addressing the Abbot as his dear and faithful friend, he thus unfolds his story. His servant, Nicholas Symcok, of London, has been robbed in the middle of June by highwaymen, one of whom, Richard Surrey, is popularly known as Richard atte Belle. The knight of the road has made off with some silver plate and L40 in coin, and has taken sanctuary at Westminster, being hotly pursued by his victim, who finds on Surrey's person all his lost property, less L5 of the stolen money. Symcok has deposited his recovered goods in the hands of Dan William Colchester, one of the lord Abbot's monks, who has laid them aside and placed his seal upon the package. Therefore, my good Lord--asks the Earl--I pray you have these chattels delivered up to my servant. This letter bears no date, and there is no proof that the Archdeacon as such was concerned with the affairs of sanctuary; nor does any title of office accompany the introduction of his name. But the incident was one which bore a legal character and Colchester's part in it may possibly be brought within the vague limits of archidiaconal functions.[42]

We are fortunate in possessing one unquestionable intimation as to his personal circumstances while holding this office. It bears date November 9, 1386, shortly before his promotion to the highest room, and is an indenture of lease of sheep.[43] It sets forth that Thomas Charlton, the valet, and Henry Norton, the servant of William Colchester, Archdeacon of Westminster, leased to John Waryn, butcher, of Westminster, 132 muttons--multones--3 rams, and 168 ewes, of the average value of 20_d._ each, to be fed and kept sound till Ash Wednesday next ensuing; and there follows a statement of the terms upon which the tenant may acquire any or all of them. The bargain was apparently made by the Archdeacon's servants, and the actual document leaves it in doubt whether the sheep were his or theirs, but the endorsement[44] places the ownership beyond question and proves the sheep to have been the Archdeacon's.

The third means adopted by the Convent for marking its sense of Colchester's services to the House was more exceptional. I give the statement of it as it stands in the vellum volume called _Liber Niger Quaternus_, a fifteenth-century copy of an earlier black paper register compiled by a very active monk called Roger Kyrton, or Cretton,[45] who entered the Convent in 1384-5, served many offices under Abbot Colchester, and survived him by about fourteen years:--

"On September 25, 1382, there was granted to Brother W. Colchester Archdeacon of Westminster a chamber, together with that part of the Garden which belongs to the Lady Chapel; also a pension of six marks [L4] and an additional monk's allowance--corrodium--such as is enjoyed by the seniors; but on condition that if the said William be promoted to any prelacy elsewhere, the pension, the allowance and the chamber are to revert to the Convent."

Two questions of topography arise here, the position of the Garden and that of the chambers, or "camerae." It is not necessary to assume that they were contiguous. "The part of the Garden which belongs to the Lady Chapel" cannot be located with certainty, but the Convent Garden lay in the acres eastward of St. Martin's Church, Charing Cross, which still retain the name, and are now the scene of the sale of garden-produce that is grown elsewhere. Our great chartulary called Domesday[46] shows that the Lady Chapel was given considerable property in this district during the reign of Henry III., under whom the chapel was built. In view of our information that within four years the Archdeacon possessed a flock of 400 sheep, it seems reasonable to suppose that his share of the Garden included considerable pasturage, and that he sometimes took his walks abroad in the direction of Charing to see if it was well with the flocks.

There is less doubt about the position of the chambers, which are often mentioned in connexion with the Infirmary, and which were probably attached to Little Cloisters, then recently rebuilt by Abbot Litlington. To this day the south side of Little Cloisters shows an alternation of old doors and old windows that suggests a row of almshouses. It thus becomes easy to realize that a separate residence, instead of the usual bed in the Great Dormitory, was a privilege highly prized and rarely conferred.

It is natural to ask in what conditions the tenants of these chambers lived, and the answer can be given in some detail. We have a long strip of frail paper,[47] 3 ft. 7 in. x 5-1/2 in., which deals with the post-mortem distribution of the effects of a monk whom William Colchester must have known long and well. Richard Excestr' said his first Mass, as did Colchester himself, in 1361-2; he became Prior quite early in life, in 1377; but, as we have seen, he resigned the office in 1382, and we do not know why his tenure of it was so brief. That the reason was not discreditable to himself may be inferred from the fact that on his resignation he was given precedence next after the new Prior, receiving a pension of four marks, a double, or Prior's, assignment of clothing, and a double share of the pittances that marked certain anniversaries, till his death in 1397. In this paper, then, his modest effects are arranged according to the rooms in which they stood, like the items in an auctioneer's catalogue when the sale is to take place, by order of the executors, on the premises. We gather that he has a reception-room, or "aula," where he can entertain a few friends, with a special welcome for any Brother who can play chess (for among his possessions are a chess-board and a set of chess-men[48]); a pantry, or "buteleria," for his little store of plate and crockery and napery, including a silver cup and cover, thirteen silver spoons (was it a complete "Apostle" set?), and a table-cloth 3-1/2 yards in length; a bedroom, or "camera," containing his white bedstead with a tester over it, and a "parpoynt," as well as his wardrobe; a kitchen, or "coquina," equipped with "droppyngpannes," "dressyng-Knyues," "flesshhokys," "anndyrons," a "treuet," and three pans which like the trivet are honestly described in the catalogue as being the worse for wear;[49] and a library, or "studium," with ten books and three maps. Among these books there was of course some scholastic theology and canon law, but there was also the Latin version of the Book of Messer Marco Polo, as if to signify that the latest modern literature was by no means excluded. The Provost of King's, who was kind enough to look through the list for me, takes this to be, as I suspected,[50] a very early instance of English interest in the Venetian traveller's adventures; and added that he believes it to be still more rare that a man of this monk's period should possess a map of Scotland.