The last abbot of Glastonbury, and other essays

Front matter

Gasquet, Frances Aidan, 1846

-1929.

The last abbot of

Chap. I. Glastonbury i

II. Richard Whiting 8

III. Richard Whiting Elected Abbot . . 17

IV. Troubles in Church and State ... 24 V. Richard Whiting as Abbot of Glastonbury 33

VI. The Beginning of the End ... 47 VII. The Martyrdom ..... 63

VIII. Abbot Hugh Cook of Reading . . 72 IX. The Last Abbot of Colchester . . 95 Appendix I ..... . 107

Appendix II . . . . . .111

II. English Biblical Criticism in the Thirteenth Century . . . . . -113

III. English Scholarship in the Thirteenth

IV. Two Dinners at Wells in the Fifteenth

Century 166

V. Some Troubles of a Catholic Family in

Penal Times 186

VI. Abbot Feckenham and Bath .... 203 VII. Christian P'amily Life in Pre-Reformation

Days 224

VIII. Christian Democracy in Pre-Reformation

Times 245

IX. The Layman in the Pre-Reformation Parish. 261 X. St. Gregory the Great and England . -279

Index 313

vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

View of Glastonbury and the Tor (From Hollar's

Print) To face p. i

Interior View of St. Mary's Chapel • „ ,, 6

Norman Doorway of St. Mary's Chapel . „ 12

Exterior OF St. Mary's Chapel . . . „ „ 12

Ruins of the Choir of Glastonbury Abbey

Church 20

The Pegged Grace-Cup of Glastonbury

Abbey „ „ 54

Facsimile of Part of Crumwell's " Remembrances " . . . . . . On p. 59

General View of Glastonbury Tor . . To face p. 64

Summit of Tor Hill 68

A Glastonbury Chair, probably made by

Dom John Thorne ....„,, 70

Facsimile of Abbot Whiting's Signature . On p. 112 viii

I

THE LAST ABBOT OF

CHAPTER I HE prospect from the Roman camp of Masbury

X on the Mendip hills of Somerset, is one to be remembered. The country presents itself to the view as in a map. In front a vast plain stretches out into the dim blue horizon across Dorsetshire to the shores of the English Channel. To the east the hills fall and rise like the swell of the sea in a series of vales and heights till they are lost in the distance. Westward the landscape is more varied, the ground, which at the spectator's feet had attained well-nigh to the dignity of a mountain, sinks away in a succession of terraces to the level country lying between it and the waters of the Severn sea. From the midst of this plain there rises clear and sharp against the sky, like a pyramid, a hill crowned with a tower, which forms from all points the most marked feature of the scene. Neither the glancing of the sunlight from the surface of the sea some fifteen miles away, nor the glimpse that is caught between the trees of the

B grey towers and gables of the great cathedral church of Wells, nor yet the sight of the spire of Doulting, calling up as it does memories of Saint Aldhelm, can long restrain the eye from turning once again to gaze on the conical hill with its tower which stands out in the landscape. Remarkable alike in its contour and in its situation, these do not constitute its chief attraction, for it speaks not only to the eye but to the mind also; it is Nature's monument marking a spot of more than ordinary interest. The shadows of tradition seem still to hover over the hill and recall a past which is lost in the dimness of legend. More than all, however, the last record which marks the place in the pages of history brings to mind a deed of desecration and of blood perpetrated in the evil days which brought ruin to the most famous sanctuary on English soil, for here suffered for conscience sake Richard Whiting, last abbot of the farfamed abbey of Glastonbury which nestled at its foot, thus making a worthy close to a history without parallel in the annals of our country.

The history of Glastonbury is the history of its abbey; without its abbey Glastonbury were nothing.' Even among those great ecclesiastical institutions, the Benedictine abbeys of medieval England, the history of Glastonbury has a character all its own. I will not insult its venerable age, says a recent historian, by so much as contrasting it with the foundations of yesterday, which arose under the influence of the Cistercian movement, for they play but a small part indeed in the history of this church and realm. Glastonbury is something more than Netley and Tintern, Rievaulx and Fountains. It is something more again than the Benedictine houses which arose at the

^ The following is adapted from the late Professor Freeman.

bidding of the Norman Conqueror, of his race and of his companions ; more than Selby and Battle, and Shrewsbury and Reading. It is in its own special aspect something more even than the royal minster of St. Peter, the crowning place of Harold and of William, which came to supplant Glastonbury as the burial place of kings. Nay, it stands out distinct even among the great and venerable foundations of English birth which were already great and venerable when this country fell into the hands of the Norman. There is something in Glastonbury which one looks for in vain at Peterborough and Crowland and Evesham, or even at Winchester and Canterbury; all these are the works of our own, our English people; they go back to the days of our ancient kingship, they go back — some of them — even to the days when Augustine preached, and Theodore fixed the organisation of the growing English Church; but they go back no further. We know their beginnings, we know their founders; their history, nay, their very legends do not dare to trace up their foundations beyond the time of the coming of Saxon and Angle into this island. At Glastonbury, and at Glastonbury alone, we instinctively feel that the name of England is not all, for here, and here alone, we walk with easy steps, with no thought of any impassable barrier, from the realm of Saxon Ina back to that of Arthur, the hero king of the British race. Alongside of the memory and the tombs of the West- Saxon princes, who broke the power of the Northmen, there still abides the memory of the British prince who checked for a generation the advance of the Saxon.

But at Glastonbury even this is a small matter. The legends of the spot go back to the very days of the Apostles. Here, and here alone on English soil, we are linked, not only to the beginnings of English Christianity, but to the beginnings of Christianity itself We are met at the outset by the tradition that the spot was made sacred as the dwelling of a multitude of the just, and its soil hallowed by the bodies of numerous saints, " whose souls now rejoice," says an ancient writer, " in the possession of God in heaven." For here were believed to have found a resting place the twelve disciples of Philip the Apostle, sent by him to Britain, under the leadership of Joseph of Arimathea, who had buried our Lord. " We know not," continues our author in his simple style, "whether they really repose here, although we have read that they sojourned in the place for nine years ; but here dwelt assuredly many of their disciples, ever twelve in number, who in imitation of them led a hermit's life until unto them came St. Patrick, the great Apostle of the Irish and first abbot of the hallowed spot. Here, too, rests St. Benen, the disciple of St. Patrick; here St. Gildas, the historian of the British; here St. David, bishop of Menevia, and here the holy hermit Indractus with his seven companions, all sprung from the royal race. Here rest the relics of a band of holy Irish pilgrims, who, returning from a visit to the shrines of Rome, turned aside to Glastonbur}- out of love to St. Patrick's memory and were martyred in a village named Shapwick. Hither, not long after, their remains were brought by Ina, our glorious king."

Such stories of the mediaeval scribe, however little worthy of credit in point of detail, represent, there can be little doubt, a substantial truth. For as in later centuries there were brought hither even from far distant Xorthumbria the relics of Paulinus, and Aidan and Ceolfrid, of Boisil, of Benet Biscop and of others for security on the advance of the Danes, so too in earlier dangers there were carried to Glastonbury, to save them from the blind fury of the pagan Saxon, all that was most sacred and venerated in the churches of Christian Britain.

" No fiction, no dream could have dared," writes the historian, " to set down the names of so many worthies of the earlier races of the British Islands in the Liber Vitce of Durham or of Peterborough. Now I do not ask you to believe these legends ; I do ask you to believe that there was some special cause why legends of this kind should grow in such a shape, and in such abundance round Glastonbury alone of all the great monastic churches of Britain."

Though these Glastonbury legends need not be believed as the record of facts, still it has been well said that " the very existence of those legends is a very great fact." The simple truth is that the remoteness and isolation of Glastonbury preserved it from attack, until Christianity had won its way among the West Saxons. So that when at last the Teutonic conqueror came to Avalon, he had already bowed his head to the cross and been washed in the waters of Christian baptism. His coming was thus not to destroy, but to give renewed life to the already ancient monastic sanctuary. The sacred precincts, hitherto held by Britons only, now received monks of English race some time before King Ina, its new founder, following the example of his father, Csedwalla, after a reign of seven and thirty years, resigned his crown to journey to Rome, desiring to end his pilgrimage on earth in the near neighbourhood of the holy places, so that he might the more readily be received by the saints themselves into the celestial kingdom.

And when later the Danes ovent^helmed the land, it was this hallowed spot that was destined to be the centre from which not merely a vigorous monastic revival spread throughout England, but whence the kingdom itself was raised by a great reformer to a new pitch of secular greatness; for it was here that Dunstan as a boy, brought by his father on a pilgrimage to the churches of St. Mary and St. Peter the Apostle, " built of olden time," passed the night in prayer. Overcome by sleep the boy saw in a dream an aged man, clothed in snowy vesture, leading him, not through the simple chapels and half-ruined buildings which then occupied the site, but through the fair alleys of a spacious church and comely claustral buildings, whilst he told him that thus was Glastonbury to be rebuilt by him, and that he was to be its future head. This, though but a dream, was yet a dream which must have been related by Dunstan himself in after years. The young daydreams of a strong nature have a tendency to realise themselves in later life, and this boyish vision of a renovated Glastonbury, the outward sign of a new monastic spirit, manifests the workings of a mind influenced, but prepared to be influenced, by the past memories and the present decay of the holy place. Nor did these early images pass away in view of the brilliant prospects that opened out before the young cleric, who had all the advantages of personal capacity and powerful connections, and so he betook himself to remote and solitary Glastonbury, to work out the realisation of his monastic ideals. Dunstan built up its walls with the essentially practical end of securing the primary requirements of monastic enclosure, and the buildings were just like those he dreamed of in his boyhood. He threw on his brother

INTERIOR VIEW OF ST. MARY S CHAPEL, SHOWING THE RUINS OF THE CHOIR THROUGH THE WEST DOOR OF THE ABBEY CHURCH

[To face p. 6

Wulfric the entire temporal business and management of the estates, so that he, freed from the encumbrance of all external affairs, might build up the souls of those who had committed themselves to his direction. It was here at Glastonbury, under the care of St. Dunstan, that St. Ethelwold was formed and fashioned to be the chief instrument in carrying out his monastic policy. Here, too, St. Elphege the martyr, and a successor of Dunstan on the throne of Canterbury lived his monastic life. And from Avalon, too, about the same time, went forth the monk Sigfrid, as the evangelist of pagan Norway.

With such a history, such legends of the past, and such a renewal as the firm and lofty spirit of Dunstan effected in its refoundation, it is no wonder that the repute of Glastonbury drew to it a crowd of fervent monks and the ample benefactions of devout and faithful friends, so that from henceforward there was no monastic house in England which for splendour or wealth could compare with this ancient sanctuary. Through the later Middle Ages, to the people of England Glastonbury was a Roma secunda. Strangers came from afar to visit the holy ground, and pilgrim rests marked the roads which led to it. Foreigners coming in ships which brought their freight to the great port of Bristol, hardly ever failed to turn aside to visit this home of the saints, whilst memorials of the sanctuary were carried by the Bristol merchants into foreign lands.

Even now, as it lies in ruin, the imagination can conceive the wonder with which a stranger, on reaching the summit of the hill, still known as the Pilgrinis Way, saw spread out before him Glastonbury Abbey in all its vast extent, with its towers and chapels, its broad courts and cloisters, crowned with the mighty church, the fitting shrine of the sacred relics and holy memories which had brought him thither.

Chapter II

Never, perhaps, was Glastonbury in greater glory than at the moment when Richard Whiting was elected to rule the house as abbot.

Richard Whiting was born probably in the early years of the second half of the fifteenth century. The civil war between the Houses of York and Lancaster was then at its height, and his boyhood must have been passed amid the popular excitement of the Wars of the Roses and the varied fortunes of King Edward IV. It is not unimportant to bear this in mind, since the personal experience, in his youth, of the troubles and dangers of civil strife can hardly have failed to impress their obvious lesson strongly upon his mind, and to influence him when the wilfulness of Henry brought the country to the very verge of civil war, with its attendant miseries and horrors.

The abbot's family was west-country in its origin and was connected distantly with that of Bishop Stapeldon, of Exeter, the generous founder of Exeter College, Oxford. Its principal member was possessed of considerable estates in Devon and Somerset, but Richard Whiting came of a younger branch of the family, numbered among the tenant holders of Glastonbury possessions in the fertile valley of Wrington. The name is found in the annals of other religious houses. About the time of Richard Whiting's birth, for example, another Richard, probably an uncle, was camerarius, or chamberlain, in the monastery of Bath,' an office which in after years, at the time of his election as abbot, the second Richard held in the Abbey of Glastonbury. Many years later, at the beginning of the troubles which involved the religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII, a Jane Whiting, daughter of John, probably a near relative of the Abbot of Glastonbury " was shorn and had taken the habit as a nun in the convent of Wilton; " ' whilst later still, when new foundations of English religious life were being laid in foreign countries, two of Abbot Whiting's nieces became postulants for the veil in the English Franciscan house at Bruges.^

Nothing is known for certain about the childhood and youth of Richard Whiting; but it may be safely conjectured that he received his early education and training within the walls of his future monastic home. The antiquary Hearne says that " the monks of Glastonbury kept a free school, where poor men's sons were bred up, as well as gentlemen's, and were fitted for the universities." ' And some curious legal proceedings, which involved an inquiry as to the Carthusian martyr, blessed Richard Bere, reveal the fact that, as a boy, he had been

' Reg. Beckington, f. 311.

^ R. O. Chanc, Inq. post niorte)n.

^ Oliver, Collections illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion, p. 135. This house returned to England on the French Revolution, and the high esteem with which it was regarded by English Catholics, persecuted at home or exiles abroad, still attends this venerable community, now established at Taunton.

^ History of Glastonbury, preface.

THE LAST AEBOT OF GLASTONBURY

" brought up at the charges of his uncle," Abbot Bere, in the Glastonbury school. The pleadings show that Richard Bere was probably the son of one of the tenants of the abbey lands, and among those who testify to the fact of his having been a boy in the school were " Nicholas Roe, of Glastonbury, gent," and " John Fox, of Glastonbury, yeoman," both of whom had been his fellow scholars " in the said abbey together," ^ and Thomas Penny, formerly Abbot Bere's servant, who spoke to the nephew Richard as having been in the school at the monastery, whence, as he remembered, he afterwards proceeded to Oxford. What is thus known, almost by accident, about the early education of the martyred Carthusian, may with fair certainty be inferred in the case of Richard Whiting. The boy's training in the claustral school was succeeded by the discipline of the monastic novitiate: and it was doubtless in early youth, as was then the custom, that he joined the community of the great Benedictine monastery of the west country.

Glastonbury, with its long, unbroken history, had had its days of prosperity and its days of trouble, its periods of laxity and days of recovery, and when Whiting first took the monastic habit report did not speak too well of the state of the establishment. John Selwood, the abbot, had held the office since 1457, and under his rule, owing, probably in some measure at least, to the demoralising influence of the constant civil commotions, discipline grew slack and the good name of the abbey had suffered. But it would seem that, as is so often the case, rumour with its many tongues had exaggerated the disorders, since after a careful examination carried out ' Downside Review^ vol. ix (1890), p. 162.

II under Bishop Stillington's orders by four ecclesiastics unconnected with the diocese, no stringent injunctions were apparently imposed, and Abbot Selwood continued to rule the house for another twenty years.

From Glastonbury Whiting was sent to Cambridge,' to complete his education, and his name appears amongst those who took their M.A. degree in 1483.^ About the same time the register of the university records the well-known names of Richard Reynolds, the Bridgettine priest of Syon, of John Houghton and William Exmew, both Carthusians, and all three afterwards noble martyrs in the cause of Catholic unity, for which Whiting was also later called upon to sacrifice his life. The blessed John Fisher also, although no longer a student, still remained in close connection with the university, when Richard Whiting came up from Glastonbury to Cambridge.

After taking his degree the young Benedictine monk returned to his monastery, and there probably would have been occupied in teaching. For this work his previous training and his stay at the university in preparation for his degree in Arts, would have specially qualified him, and in all probability he was thus engaged till his

' Probably to " Monks' College." Speed, speaking of Magdalen College, Cambridge, says it "was first an hall inhabited by monks of divers monasteries, and therefore heretofore called Monks' College, sent hither from their abbies to the universitie to studye. Edward Stafford, last Duke of Buckingham, &:c., bestowed much cost in the repair of it, and in 15 19 . ... new built the hall, whereupon for a time it was called Buckingham College; but the Duke being shortly after attainted, the buildings were left imperfect, continuing a place for monks to study in, until the general suppression of monasteries by King Henry VIII." — Speed, History of Great Britain, 1632, p. 1053.

''■ Cooper, Athena: Cantabrigienses, p. 71.

ordination to the priesthood, some fifteen years later. During this period one or two events of importance to the monks of the abbey may be briefly noted.

In 1493, John Sehvood, who had been abbot for thirtysix years, died. The monks having obtained the king's leave to proceed with the election of a successor,^ met for the purpose, and made their choice, without apparently having previously obtained the usual approval of the bishop of the diocese. This neglect was caused possibly by their ignorance of the forms of procedure, as so long a time had intervened since the last election. It may be also that in the long continued absence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells from his See they overlooked this form. Be this as it may, Bishop Fox, then the occupant of the See, on hearing of the election of John VVasyn without his approval, applied to the king for permission to cancel the election. This having been granted, he successfully claimed the right to nominate to the office, and on 20th January, 1494, by his commissary, Dr. Richard Nicke, Canon of Wells, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, he installed Richard Bere in the abbatial chair of Glastonbury .-

In the fourth year of this abbot's rule, Somerset and the neighbourhood of Glastonbury were disturbed by the passage of armed men — insurgents against the authority of King Henry VII and the royal troops sent against them — which must have sadly broken in upon the quiet of the monastic life. In the early summer of 1497 the Cornish rebels who had risen in resistance to the heavy taxation of Henry, passed through Glastonbury and Wells on their way to London. Their number was

' Pat. Rot., 8 Henry VII, p. 2, m. 11.

' Reg. Fox Bath et Wellen, f. 48. Pat. Rot., 9 Henry VH, 26.

EXTERIOR OF ST. MARY's CHAPKL (cOMMONLY CALLED ST. JOSEPH's) COVERING THE SITE OF THE OLD BRITISH CHURCH AND FORM- ING THE A'lRlUM OF THE MONASTIC CHURCH

[To face p. 12 estimated at from six to fifteen thousand, and the country for miles around was at night lighted up by their camp fires. Their poverty was dire, their need most urgent, and although it is recorded that no act of violence or pillage was perpetrated by this undisciplined band, still their support was a burden on the religious houses and the people of the districts through which they passed.

Hardly had this rising been suppressed than Somerset was again involved in civil commotions. Early in the autumn of 1497 Perkin Warbeck assembled his rabble forces — " howbeit, they were poor and naked " ' — round Taunton, and on the 21st September the advanced guard of the king's army arrived at Glastonbury, and was sheltered in the monastery and its dependencies. The same night the adventurer fled to sanctuary, leaving his 8,000 followers to their own devices; and on the 29th of this same month Henry himself reached Bath and moved forward at once to join his other forces at Wells and Glastonbury. With him came Bishop Oliver King, who, although he had held the See of Bath and Wells for three years, had never yet visited his cathedral city, and who now hurried on before his royal master to be enthroned as bishop a few hours before he in that capacity took part in the reception of the king. Henry had with him some 30,000 men, when on St. Jerome's day he entered Wells, and took up his lodgings with Dr. Cunthorpe in the Deanery."' The following day, Sunday, October i, was spent at Wells, where the king attended in the Cathedral at a solemn Te Deum in thanksgiving for his bloodless victory. Early on the

. ' B. Mus. Cott. MS. Vit. A. xvi, f. i66b. Historical MSS. Report, i, p. 107.

Monday he passed on to Glastonbury, and was lodged by Abbot Bere within the precincts of the monastery.

The abbey was then at the height of its glory, for Bere was in every way fitted for the position to which the choice of Fox had elevated him. A witness in the trial spoken of above describes Abbot Bere as " a grave, wise and discreet man, just and upright in all his ways, and for so accounted of almost all sorts of people." Another deposes that he " was good, honest, virtuous, wise and discreet, as well as a grave man, and for those virtues esteemed in as great reputation as few of his coat and calling in England at that time were better accounted of." ^ On the interior discipline and the exterior administration of his house alike he bestowed a watchful care, and under his prudent administration the monastic buildings and church received many useful and costly additions. At great expense he built the suite of rooms afterwards known as " the King's lodgings," and added more than one chapel to the time-honoured sanctuary of Glastonbury. At the west end of the town he built the Church of St. Benen, now commonly known as St. Benedict's, which bears in every portion of the structure his rebus. His care for the poor was manifested by the almshouses he established, and the thought he bestowed on the prudent ordering of the lowly spital of St. Margaret's, Taunton. Beyond this, Bere was a learned man, as well as a careful administrator, and even Erasmus submitted to his judgment. In a letter written a few years after this abbot's death this great scholar records how he had long known the reputation of the Abbot of Glastonbury. His bosom friend, Richard Pace, the well-known ambassador of Wolsey in many difficult ' Downside Review, ut sup., p. i6o.

negotiations, had told him how to Bere's liberality he owed his education, and his success in life to the abbot's judicious guidance. For this reason, Erasmus, who had made a translation of the sacred Scriptures from the Greek, which he thought showed a " more polished style " than St, Jerome's version, submitted his work to the judgment of the abbot. Bere opposed the publication, and Erasmus bowed to the abbot's opinion, which in after years he acknowledged as correct.' Henry the Seventh, who ever delighted in the company of learned men, must have been pleased with the entertainment he received at Glastonbury, where the whole cost was borne by the abbot.^ It is possible, by reason of the knowledge the king then derived of the great abilities of Bere, that six years afterwards, in 1503, he made choice of him to carry the congratulations of England to Cardinal John Angelo de Medicis, when he ascended the pontifical throne as Pius IV.

The troubles of Somerset did not end with the retirement of the royal troops. Though the country did not rise in support of the Cornish movement, it appears to have somewhat sympathised with it, and at Wells Lord Audley joined the insurgents as their leader. For this sympathy Henry made them pay; and the rebels' line of march can be traced by the record of the heavy fines levied upon those who had been supposed to have " aided and comforted " them. Sir Amyas Paulet — the first Paulet of Hinton St. George — was one of the commissioners sent to exact this pecuniary punishment, and

' Ep. lib. xviii, 46; Warner, Glast07ibury, p. 213.

^ The Wardrobe accounts show that while the king had to pay somewhat heavily for his stay at Wells, his entertainment at Glastonbury cost nothing.

i6 from his record it would appear that nearly all in Somerset were fined. The abbots of Ford and Cleeve, of Muchelney and Athelney, with others, had extended their charity to the starving insurgents, and Sir Amyas made them pay somewhat smartly for their pity. Somehow Glastonbury appears to have escaped the general penalty; probably the abbot's entertainment of the king saved the abbey, although some of the townsfolk did not escape the fine.' This severe treatment must have had more than a passing effect. The generation living at the time of the suppression of the abbey could well remember the event. They knew well what was the meaning of the heavy hand of a king, and had felt at their own hearths what were the ravages of an army. This may go far to explain how it happened that in Somersetshire there was no Pilgrimage of Grace.

Meantime Richard Whiting had witnessed these troubles, which came so near home, from the seclusion of the monastic enclosure in which he had been preparing for the reception of sacred orders. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Oliver King, had not remained in his diocese after the public reception of Henry. He was much engaged in the secular affairs of the kingdom, and his episcopal functions were relegated to the care of a suffragan, Thomas Cornish, titular Bishop of Tinos, also at this time Vicar of St. Cuthbert's, Wells, and Chancellor of the Diocese. From the hands of this prelate Dom Richard Whiting received the minor order of acolyte in the month of September, 1498. In the two succeeding years he was made sub-deacon and deacon, and on the 6th March, 1501, he was elevated to the sacred order of