V. H. Galbraith

“ When he chronicles the death of ‘that limb of Satan, idol of heretics, mirror of hypocrites and fabricator of lies—John Wycliffe,’ it is only to repeat cruel gossip about his last hours. The life of Wycliffe, in fact, marks a fresh step in the growing unpopularity of the monastic system, and with a sure instinct St. Albans recognised the fact, and so far as it was able, dealt with him accordingly. ”

“ The effect of lessening the pressure of outside circumstances and rendering more safe and easy the existence of the Abbey was to promote a mild revival which bore its best fruits in a new outburst of historical writing. The golden age of St. Albans’ historical composition had been the early thirteenth century, and was associated with the names of Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris. Then it was that the St. Albans School grew famous. ”

“ Yet politics were as keen and as absorbing in the Middle Ages as they are now, and monks and Abbot must have followed their course, and criticised the actors, with as much freedom as the men of to-day.25 In favour of St. Albans it must be said that, in comparison with other monasteries, its chronicles are singularly living and human. In those written during the revival of historical writing under the guidance of Thomas Walsingham, the political sympathies of the convent during the critical period of Richard II’s reign are fully revealed. ”

“ At the same time the picture of a town deprived of its ‘natural right of self-government,’ and hindered accordingly in its prosperity, and of the mass of the Abbey’s country tenants living unprosperously under an antiquated agricultural system, constitutes a crushing argument for the necessity of its dissolution. ”

“ Discontent culminated in revolt. In 1274, taking as their pretext the matter of the Abbot’s mill, the townsmen inaugurated a mild rebellion by setting up handmills in their own houses. Abbot Roger easily suppressed the rising, and an outbreak in 1314, provoked by the tactless, overbearing Hugh of Eversdon, collapsed even more ignominiously. A more serious disturbance, which broke out in 1327, was not finally crushed for seven years.38 Taking advantage of the death of Abbot Hugh, and the temporary anarchy which followed the death of Edward II, the townsmen rose again and blockaded the Abbey. ”

“ The nunneries of Prez and Sopwell—cells of the Abbey—are stated to be little better than brothels. ‘The brethren of the Abbey, some of whom, as it is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously within the precincts of the monastery and without.’
The Archbishop adds that he had warned the Abbot to cure these abuses before securing the papal commission. ”

“ A growing movement towards reform and revival was thus the main trend of events at St. Albans during the fourteenth century. The persistent efforts of Maryns and the other short-lived abbots removed abuses and restored the discipline. The long abbacy of Thomas de la Mare was marked by able administration, and minute and unflagging attention to the monastery’s interests. The Abbot shirked no contest to retain or regain lands, services or jurisdiction upon which the Abbey had just claims. ”

“ The leader of the insurgents was William Grindcob, who appears to have been something of an enthusiast, and the most disinterested of all the leaders in this revolt. In compliance with his demands the Abbot was compelled to deliver up all the Abbey charters, and then to draw up a new charter granting to the townsmen (1) rights of pasturage on his common, (2) permission to use private handmills, (3) entire freedom to hunt and fish over the monastic estates, and (4) self-government by freely-elected officials. ”

“ In lieu of a payment of 1,000 marks in each vacancy, Abbot Thomas had induced the Government to accept an annual tribute of fifty marks.30
Half a century earlier such measures might have completely restored the Abbey’s finances, and even during the fifteenth century they sensibly lessened its embarrassment. More they could not do, for the decay of the economic system was to make prosperity impossible. ”

“ He himself supported many more students than the number of his monks required. Edward III’s commission to the Abbot to visit all the monasteries in the King’s presentation is a striking tribute to his thoroughness. A visitation of Abbot Thomas was far from being a mere formality, and shed a valuable sidelight on the condition of many a great abbey.15 ‘In them,’ says the chronicler, ‘religion had well-nigh disappeared.’ The proper conduct of the monastic rule had been forgotten, and serious abuses were rife. At the Abbeys of Eynsham, Abingdon and Battle, De la Mare worked wonders of reform ”

“ The Abbey had scarcely escaped the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln4 (1163) when it fell under stricter subjection to Pope Innocent III. For the future each abbot was to go in person to Rome to secure confirmation of his election, that is to say to be mulcted in a vast sum of money.5 In6 a lesser degree the monastery was menaced by the Crown. Every vacancy put the convent at the mercy of the King’s escheator, who in practice could, and often did, exact far more than the sums to which he was entitled. ”

“ De la Mare realised that the payment to King and Pope of large sums at irregular intervals was fatal to any organisation of the Abbey’s finances, and to him is due the credit of having conceived the more workable system of annual contributions. ”

“ A natural bias, it should perhaps be added, was displayed in favour of the King, upon whose goodwill the prosperity of the House in large measure depended. Abbot Hugh of Eversdon, for instance, was one of Edward II’s ‘court party,’ and was richly endowed by that King. Again, Abbot Thomas was a close friend and supporter of Edward III, as also of the Black Prince. ”

“ The Abbot, however, was a saintly man, and made persistent efforts to correct abuses. In a formal visitation of the cells he punished severely all cases of incontinence, and having compiled two books of statutes, did his best to enforce them. The monks, unused to so strict a master, grumbled at Wallingford’s severity, but before his death matters had begun definitely to mend. In his later years he even had leisure to turn his attention to the cells. ”

“ Most of the monks do not themselves63 appear to have come from the lower strata of society. The Abbey bestowed its corrodies for the most part upon persons of the well-to-do classes. Moreover, a close connection existed between the Abbey and the neighbouring gentry, whose sons it had long been wont to board and educate. On members of the same class many of the lay offices of the monastery were conferred.97 Even the apparently democratic practice of alms-giving was a perfunctory duty, a mere compliance with the wishes of donors who had in times past liberally endowed the Abbey. ”

“ While the Abbey was thus fighting to continue the old tyranny manumissions were becoming frequent on lay lands, and all over the country labour services were being given up in favour of money payments. Further, the practice of letting out lands in farms to rent-paying tenants was growing more general. By diminishing the population the Black Death (1349) hastened this process,54 for landlords were compelled to offer high wages to secure41 the cultivation of their demesnes, and they had perforce to bring in rent-paying tenants to till the lands of such of their villeins as had succumbed. ”

“ The Abbot had promulgated a set of rigorous constitutions which went to the root of the trouble more than was usual; but the convent murmured, refused to accept them, and finally carried their will against the Abbot; as for the Constitutions they became a dead letter.55 When Whethamstede was re-elected in 145276 he was informed that three great defects existed in the Monastery. Scarcely one in the Abbey, it appeared, could be found competent to teach grammar; there were hardly any students from St. Albans at Gloucester Hall ”

“ The tendency is further illustrated by the Constitutions published by Whethamstede after a formal visitation of the convent.75 No gross abuses were discovered, but a certain laziness and indifference towards religious services and observance was found to have pervaded the convent. It was much the same in the cells which the Abbot visited a little later. It appeared that the monks were lazy, and slept too long; just correction for offences had not always been inflicted; services were apt to be carried out indifferently, and sometimes to be omitted altogether. ”

“ The tide of economic decline and growing material decrepitude, stemmed by De la Mare’s careful administration, proceeded unchecked after his death. Within the convent the decay of the monastic spirit was everywhere apparent. Living became inevitably more luxurious, and the religious life grew cold and formal.63 Yet the reputation of48 St. Albans was as great in 1460 as in the days of Abbot Thomas. Up to 1464 (the year in which Whethamstede died) no flagrant abuses appear to have invaded the cloister, nor was there any considerable slackening of the discipline. ”

“ Of such tenants a certain number were free labourers, but the large majority were bound to the lord by varying degrees of servile tenure. The serfs or villeins divided their time between cultivating their own patches of land and rendering labour services on that part of the manor which was cultivated by the lord or his bailiff for the supply of his own granaries. On many of the St. Albans manors a small money rent was also paid by the serf for his land.50 By long tradition, though scarcely by law, the villein could not be evicted ”

“ The internal danger was averted by sending away the disaffected monks to distant cells, but Abbot William was compelled to give verbal consent to the demands of the townsmen for a charter embodying the right of choosing their own members of Parliament, liberty to use handmills, to fish in the Abbey waters, and to hunt its preserves, the privilege of executing writs without the interference of the bailiff of the liberty, and finally, the title of free burgesses.48 By royal help the Abbot at length crushed the rising ”

“ Walsingham, in his history of the reign, describes with unction the King’s childish behaviour during his fits of ungovernable anger,31 his violent words on more than one occasion to his Parliaments, and his absurd extravagance in dress. With righteous indignation he relates how Richard, on his way to London, borrowed from the monastery a palfrey, which he never returned. ”

“ Albans is sufficient proof that68 the time is past when we can rest content with generalisations about monasticism in the later Middle Ages. During the fourteenth century the trend of events in the Abbey was entirely contrary to that in most English Houses. ”

“ The process of manumission continued; the numbers of freemen steadily increased, and, in spite of the Statute, wages and prices rose higher than ever before. This increase in the numbers of free labourers inspired those who were still in villeinage with the ambition to become themselves free and to cease rendering labour services which, as the token of their servile tenure, were regarded as degrading. ”

“ In a letter which he addressed to the Abbot, Morton wrote85: ‘It has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us on the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you the Abbot aforementioned have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of goods, revenues and possessions of the said monastery and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written.... You and certain of your fellow monks and brethren ... have relaxed the measure and form of religious life ”

“ But his method was effective. Before long the Abbey grew famous, not only in England, but on the Continent, and monks were often sent to St. Albans to be trained in monastic discipline for the benefit of their own houses.
17
The position of St. Albans as the premier Benedictine house was recognised by the election of the Abbot as president of the successive General Chapters at Northampton. In these assemblies De la Mare issued a comprehensive series of constitutions on the discipline of the Order. ”

“ Its poverty weakened its independence, and was at once the cause of the decline of its hospitality and the reason for its growing obsequiousness toward the great. The bishops especially were quick to realise the weakness of the Abbey.72 Always jealous of exempt houses, they exhibited in the fifteenth century an unusually bitter hostility towards St. Albans. In 1399, Henry Bishop of Lincoln had formally notified the Abbot that he claimed no jurisdiction over the Abbey73 ”

“ Albans we may not, like Froude, ‘see the workings of the ineffable Being,’ but we are no less unable to regret it, to look upon it as a great social calamity.
73
Appendix:
See Note 88, p. 60. The account of William Wallingford’s abbacy in the Lives and Benefactions113 ... is inconsistent with all that is known of him from other sources. The Abbot is described in a tone of excessive admiration which cannot be reconciled with the account of him supplied by Morton’s letter. In the Lives and Benefactions ..., for instance, he is stated to have left the Monastery entirely free of debt. ”