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Thus when Abbot Michael, having been struck down by the Black Death, was succeeded by Thomas de la Mare, the foundations of reform had been laid. It fell to the lot of the new abbot to complete and adorn the work begun by his predecessors.

Thomas de la Mare, who ruled the Abbey for almost fifty years, has perhaps left a deeper mark on the history of St. Albans than any other abbot. He was no mere political prelate. For his age he was what would be called a good man; but before all things he was an able administrator and a stern though just ruler. Indefatigable in upholding the convent's rights against every outside power, he knew no compromise in his exaction of full obedience from all within the House. To his biographer, credulity, the employment of unworthy officers and his lavish outlay as President of General Chapters were the only flaws in an otherwise perfect character. No censure is passed upon his craftiness in evading the Statute of Mortmain, nor are certain acts of crude revenge adversely commented upon. Besides supreme ability, he certainly possessed an exceptional personality, and towards the close of his life was regarded almost as a saint by the brethren. The greatest of the later abbots, he has perhaps suffered unduly at the hands of his editor, who conceived of him only 'as that most litigious of abbots ... Thomas de la Mare.' His tenants do not appear to have looked upon him as a tyrant. The orderly character of the revolt of 1381 at St. Albans was in marked contrast with the scenes of pillage and murder at Bury St. Edmunds. The St. Albans tenants rose to assert their rights--the men of Bury to avenge their wrongs.

Abbot Thomas displayed an astonishing activity in every department of monastic life. The church services were entirely revised, and particular care was bestowed upon the singing, for the regulation of which the Abbot drew up a new ordinal. A series of practical reforms followed; in monastery and cells the discipline was more strictly enforced. The general raising of the monastic standard was exemplified by his refusal to admit illiterate nuns into the house of St. Mary de Prez, and by his careful provisions regulating the duties of the Benedictine students at Oxford. At first, indeed, the rigidness of his discipline caused many of the monks to grumble, and some even to secede. 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.

Its inability to resist kingly and papal extortion during the thirteenth century left the Abbey in a state of miserable poverty. Financial comfort could be restored only by regulating these exactions. This the abbots appear to have realised, and John of Berkhampstead's new arrangement with the King is the first step towards a remedy of the evil. The existing debt was cancelled, and the Abbey secured possession of the revenues during a vacancy in return for a payment of 1,000 marks. Any advantage which this exclusion of the King's escheator might have conferred upon the Abbey was nullified by the unhappy occurrence of no less than five vacancies between 1290 and 1349. Each of these involved not only the payment of 1000 marks to the King, but a far more serious expenditure to secure papal confirmation. The financial embarrassment of the House surely increased. As a result of a special appeal to the Pope, Abbot Hugh secured a licence to receive special subsidies from the cells in order to lighten the debt. But from papal exactions there was no escape. In vain the Abbot begged to be excused from personal attendance at the Curia. His presence was insisted on; the usual enormous fees were exacted, and a licence to contract a loan to meet the expense thus incurred was the only relief afforded him. Abbot Hugh early became a favourite of Edward II, and the King's lavish endowments might well have served to repair the Abbey's fortunes but for the extensive building operations which were necessary. The church fabric was in a ruinous condition; walls were falling and roofs tumbling in, and Abbot Hugh had little choice but to restore the south side of the church. Small wonder that the debt which was 2,300 marks in 1308 was more than double that sum twenty years later.

At the accession of Richard Wallingford the Abbey's condition attracted the notice of the Crown, and a commission was appointed in 1327 to 'inquire by whose negligence the existing defects and dissipation of the Abbey's revenues had been brought about.' Two years later Abbot Richard received permission to live abroad for three years 'to avoid the burden of too great expense.' In this unsatisfactory condition the Abbey finances remained till 1349, when the Black Death visited St. Albans with unusual severity. Abbot Michael and three-fourths of the convent perished, and there is little doubt that the mortality among the Abbey's tenants was high. This catastrophe must have further impoverished the Abbey, and the 1000 marks due to the King on de la Mare's accession could only be paid by instalments.

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. Soon after the outbreak of the Great Schism, a petition was addressed to the Pope, supported by commendatory letters from the King, John of Gaunt, Princess Joanna, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Abbot prayed that in return for an annual payment of twenty marks the election of succeeding abbots should receive confirmation without their personal attendance at Rome.

The arguments which the envoys to Rome were to employ in the hope of winning the Pope's consent to the proposed measure show clearly the difficulties of the Abbey at this time. The whole annual revenue had fallen to ?1,053. Of this, ?465 was assigned to the Abbot--'and to the said Abbot pertains the entertainment of noble guests and of all laymen, and the prosecution of pleas in the various royal courts; which, inasmuch as laymen are more hostile to monks than they were wont, are more expensive than formerly, and also occur more frequently.' The remaining ?600 was considered inadequate for the maintenance of the convent.

Hospitality, it appeared, was the greatest burden the Monastery had to bear. 'Also the Lord Pope is to be informed that the Monastery of St. Albans is near London, where the King's Parliaments, Convocation, and other assemblies of nobles and clergy are held. And the nobles and magnates of the realm, both on their journey there and on their return, are entertained at the Abbey, to its great expense and loss.' The dearness of provisions, owing to the proximity of rich neighbours, had also helped to impoverish the Abbey, and finally, the partial felling of its woods to pay its debts to the King and Roman Court had diminished a former source of income.

The weakness of the central power during Richard II's minority had offered a favourable opportunity for making a similar arrangement with the Crown. 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.

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.

This detached political attitude is one reason why monastic chronicles are often so intolerably dull. 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. 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.

Towards Richard II their feelings were hostile, if not contemptuous. Walsingham, in his history of the reign, describes with unction the King's childish behaviour during his fits of ungovernable anger, 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. Another chronicler tells with scorn of the King's visit to the Abbey in 1394, when large concessions were promised, but never fulfilled. De la Mare's successor, John Moote, was apparently on equally indifferent terms with the King. 'This Abbot,' says the chronicler, 'gave to King Richard for the purpose of preserving his good will and avoiding his malice, at different times, one hundred and twenty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence.'

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. His rule was necessarily marked by constant litigation with high and low, from which, in a great majority of cases, he emerged successful. This great labour, the details of which fill the chronicles of his abbacy, had the effect of restoring in some measure the Abbey's material prosperity. Finally, by his statesmanlike measures with regard to future vacancies he had done all in his power to ensure the permanence of his work of financial restoration.

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. Its MSS. were frequently lent to other houses for the writing up of their own chronicles, and when official information was required on a point of history it became usual to refer to the St. Albans chronicles. With so long a tradition of annalistic composition the Abbey developed a variety of script unique in England, and experts can identify with considerable certainty the products of the St. Albans scriptorium. The composition of history never actually ceased after the time of Matthew Paris. The tradition was maintained by the writings of Rishanger, Trokelowe and Blaneforde. At the close of the fourteenth century occurred the valuable revival under the guidance of Thomas of Walsingham. The years 1370 and 1420 mark roughly the limits within which it fell. The amount of work produced was considerable, and in quality was hardly inferior to that of the thirteenth century. From an historical point of view it is probably more important, since by Walsingham's time other sources of chronicle writings were beginning to fail.

In its revival under De la Mare, St. Albans was almost unique among the English abbeys; in no other case was there any movement comparable with it. Yet there is a grave danger of overrating the significance of De la Mare's abbacy. The monastic system cannot be said to have been reinvigorated nor primitive fervour restored. The revival was confined within narrow limits, and, on the whole, its fruits were small. It was, however, sufficient to blunt the edge of much of the contemporary criticism which in the fourteenth century was being applied to the monastic system. Chaucer, for example, in his Prologue, described for all time the typical monk of his day--

A Monk ther was, a fair for the maistrye, an out-rydere, that lovede venerye; A manly man, to been an abbot able. Ful many a deyntee hors hadde he in stable: and, when he rood, men mighte his brydel here Ginglen in a whistling wynd as clere And eek as loude as doth the Chapel-belle, Ther as this lord was keper of the celle The reule of Seint Maure or of Seint Beneit, By-cause that it was old and somdel streit, This ilke monk leet olde thinges pace And held after the newe world the space.

... therfor he was a fricasour aright Grehoundes he hadde, as swifte as fowel in flight. Of pricking and of hunting for the hare Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare

His head was balled, that shoon as any glas And eek his face, as he hadde been anoint. He was a lord ful fat and in good point

He was nat pale as a for-pyned goost A fat swan loved he best of any roost.

But Chaucer's satire, once so true, was a spent shot in De la Mare's time.

The Necessity for Dissolution.

The necessity for the dissolution rests on a twofold argument. There was first, the decay of religion, and even morality itself, within the cloister; and secondly, there was the decay of the manorial system, the economic basis of monasticism.

A great spiritual peer who as a mitred abbot took his place in Parliament among the magnates, the Abbot of St. Albans was a no less important personage in virtue of his huge landed possessions. Indeed, it has never been determined whether the right of such abbots to sit in the Upper House rested upon their spiritual dignity or their position as tenants-in-chief and great landlords. The Abbot of St. Albans exercised a wide seignorial jurisdiction over the Hundred of Cashio from early times, and later, over numerous manors in the eastern counties, monuments to the piety of wealthy donors through the centuries. At the commencement of the fourteenth century the relations existing between the Abbey and its tenants were solely those of the manorial system, now fast decaying on all but monastic estates. The symmetry of this arrangement had been broken at an early date by the growth of the town at the very gates of the Abbey. The townsmen were ruled with the same despotic power as the country tenants, from whom they differed only in being more concentrated. As in the closely parallel case of Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans was governed by a bailiff chosen by the Abbot and holding office during his pleasure; the townsmen were tried in the Abbot's court, and offenders incarcerated in the monastic prison. The Abbot secured the profits arising from his court--'the court of St. Albans under the ash-tree every three weeks'--and from fairs, as also the heavy tolls imposed upon all merchandise passing through the town. This antiquated tyranny contrasted ill with the wide municipal independence enjoyed by other towns.

There were thus substantial reasons why the townsmen should free themselves at the first opportunity from the hated tutelage of the Abbey, though it must be confessed that their civic disabilities weighed less with them than the strict preservation of the Lord Abbot's warrens and fish ponds, the close fencing in of his estates, and a host of galling and antiquated signs of subjection, the chief of which was the obligation to full their cloth and grind their corn at the Abbot's mill.

Such were the grievances of the peasants who in 1381 formed the backbone of the Revolt. The unwillingness to allow manumission which has been seen to exist towards the end of the thirteenth century at St. Albans, and the harsh provisions made to retain labour services, continued in full force. In the case of one manor, it is true, the two systems appear to have existed side by side about 1340, but the rest of the evidence points to the retention in full of the old system both on the St. Albans estates and on the estates of its cells. Thus in 1381 the rural tenants of St. Albans were ready to join in the general revolt. Simultaneously the townsmen made a final attempt to win from the Abbot privileges identical with those demanded in 1327.

There is little reason to linger over the details of the Revolt. The townsmen rose in a body and set themselves to destroy all visible tokens of their subjection. The fences of the Abbot's woods were pulled down, his game was killed freely, and a show was made of dividing his domain into small individual holdings. Many houses were burnt, and the Abbey itself was mildly raided; but from first to last there was no wish to take life. 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 rights of pasturage on his common, permission to use private handmills, entire freedom to hunt and fish over the monastic estates, and self-government by freely-elected officials. These were a repetition of the demands of 1327, except that in the interval the notion of self-government had become more clearly defined.

In spite of the townsmen's boast that they were in alliance with the country tenants, the two bodies seem to have acted independently. Each had its own grievances to redress. Indeed, the country tenants were still further divided, but the Abbey was powerless to resist even such small bodies as the villeins of individual manors. The villeins on most of the Hertford manors--Tittenhanger, Northaw, Watford, Berkhamstead--marched to the Abbey and in a curiously restrained spirit secured charters satisfying their various local grievances. The tenants of the manor of Redburn, for example, extracted charters containing the abolition of serfdom, of villein services , and also, in common with the townsmen, the rights of the chase and of fishing. Those of Rickmansworth obtained all these privileges and the right besides of disposing freely of lands and movables; and so it was done by most other manors in the county.

But the privileges were secured only to be lost almost immediately. The King's officers arrived at St. Albans, no attempt at resistance was made, and the trouble subsided as quickly as it had arisen. The fifteen executions that followed were, for the age, mild enough retaliation on the part of a panic-stricken government. As a matter of course, the Abbey was restored in its privileges, and the town subjected to it until the Dissolution.

In this way the Abbey was officially confirmed in its retention of an economic system which had become both unjust and unprofitable. Yet economic change was inevitable, and received a grudging recognition. In 1424 the Abbot secured a papal bull allowing the Abbey complete freedom to let out its lands in farms to rent-paying tenants--the system long since in vogue on lay estates. Later in the century manumissions of bondmen become more and more frequent. At first manumission is regarded as a privilege by the serfs, and the price paid for it is commonly entered in the margin of the document; but gradually examples grow more common; no more money entries occur, and it seems that the Abbot was only too happy 'to be rid of the presence of persons who had claims upon him as a landowner without any power on his part to exact a return to himself of commensurate advantage.' Thus the old agricultural system slowly broke up, despite the monks who to the last retarded the transition to the new order.

Towards the town the Abbey remained to the last unbending, though not on account of any diminution in the resentment with which it was regarded by the inhabitants. In 1424 a large crowd appeared at the gate of the Abbey, armed with swords, to demand concessions similar to those of the extorted charter of 1381; but they were still cowed by the recollection of their late rising, and the affair came to nothing. The last mention of open resistance occurs in 1455 when John Chertsey erected a private mill, and so withdrew corn from that of the Abbot. To such an act of daring he seems to have been inspired by his wife, a woman of spirit. Chertsey, however, was a timid creature; his heart failed him, and he was induced to make humble apology to the Abbot and to destroy the mill.

The task of interpreting the Abbey's history during the fifteenth century is difficult in the extreme. The confusion, the aimlessness which characterised political history are reflected in the records of St. Albans. Although the material is at least as plentiful as before, the impression conveyed by the facts is blurred and uncertain. With the death of De la Mare the lines of development become obscured. The fourteenth century had witnessed a steady upward movement culminating in the Abbacy of De la Mare. There is a temptation to see in the fifteenth century a consistent, growing degeneracy: the more as it is beyond question that by the year 1490 the Convent had sunk into deeper degredation than ever before. In one sense such a theory is true. 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. Yet the reputation of St. Albans was as great in 1460 as in the days of Abbot Thomas. Up to 1464 no flagrant abuses appear to have invaded the cloister, nor was there any considerable slackening of the discipline. The problem, of which we can offer no adequate solution, is to account for the extraordinary rapid decay between 1464 and 1489, by which time the Abbey had become publicly scandalous. The history of these twenty-five years is quite obscure.

The first half of the century was singularly barren of incident. The best known Abbot of the time was John Whethamstede , a famous scholar and churchman. Significantly enough he was one of those chosen to represent the English nation at the Councils of Pavia and Basle. He was popular with the convent, perhaps on account of his ardent orthodoxy. The singularly bitter attitude adopted towards Lollards in de la Mare's time was carefully maintained, and Whethamstede, by means of synods and commissions, extirpated heresy within the Liberty. The Abbot was regarded by the monks as having conferred notable benefits upon them; the chief of these were his acquisition of the Priory of Pembroke , his generosity to the Abbey's students at Oxford and certain financial innovations. To-day, as one digs him out of the very inferior chronicle of the time, he seems rather wanting in purpose, and somewhat vain and foolish; nevertheless, he certainly had the confidence of the convent, who, after his voluntary retirement for some years insisted upon re-electing him Abbot in 1452. The reason was probably that he was old, experienced, and cautious. At the time these qualities were invaluable; the Abbey was acquiring a political significance, and skilful guidance was necessary to avoid disaster amid the intrigues of Henry VI's reign, which were threatening to culminate in Civil War. The second abbacy of Whethamstede, within which fell the Wars of the Roses, was therefore an anxious and, as it proved, disastrous time for the monks.

Henry VI was a frequent visitor at St. Albans, and bestowed, among many other marks of his favour, a notable extension of the franchise. The seignorial jurisdiction of the Abbot over the Hundred of Cashio, which was based on a charter of Henry II, had gradually been diminished by the encroachments of neighbouring Lords. In 1440 the King granted a new interpretation of the words of Henry II's Charter, by which the Abbot's authority was restored to its full limit, if not rendered greater than ever before. In order to obtain such a grant it is obvious that the Abbot must have been in high favour with Henry VI, who indeed is always mentioned in these chronicles in terms of respect.

Nevertheless, when in 1455 the Yorkist party triumphed at the first battle of St. Albans, only the fact that the direction of the Abbey's sympathies was well known can have saved it from being plundered.

Even during the fourteenth century there had been a natural and almost inevitable growth of luxury in the monastic life: in the course of the fifteenth it progressed by leaps and bounds. A host of insignificant facts illustrate the tendency. The food of the novices was rendered more sumptuous on the plea that the youths had not such strong constitutions as their fathers. Papal Bulls were secured remitting fasts, and the allowance of spices was doubled. As with the convent, so was it with the Abbots themselves. William Heyworth , who was considered so excellent a cleric as to be raised to episcopal dignity as Bishop of Lichfield, spent large sums of money on the completion of a splendid Abbot's mansion at Tittenhanger, contrary, needless to say, to all Benedictine precedent. A parallel tendency was a perceptible decline of zeal and interest in the religious life. In 1428, for instance, owing to its uselessness, the ancient cell of Beaulieu was abandoned, and twenty years later the Priory of Wymondham, as the result of a trifling dispute broke away from the mother house, and was erected into an Abbey. The tendency is further illustrated by the Constitutions published by Whethamstede after a formal visitation of the convent. 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. It was slothfulness, not positive vice, that had to be fought against. A subtle illustration of this is unconsciously supplied by the chronicler. 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. When Whethamstede was re-elected in 1452 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; and it was only with difficulty that persons could be found prepared to undertake the burden of preaching.

These facts point to a rapid raising of the standard of comfort, to growing indifference, and a sad decay of the monastic spirit. But in view of the dreadful condition of the convent in 1490 it is important to observe that they give us no reason to suppose the existence of immorality in the cloister or even of any serious relaxation of the discipline.

In the register of Wallingford's abbacy there is only one indication of the bad turn conventual life was taking. This is the record of an enormous traffic in patronage, a new and bad feature at St. Albans, confined for the most part to Wallingford's abbacy. Economically bankrupt, the Monastery was reduced at last to bartering the livings in its gift, and even to trafficking in the monastic offices. In the register of William Wallingford there is a long list of entries noting the gift by the Abbot to all sorts of important persons of the right to present to the next vacancy in many of the Abbey's livings. These transactions, whether accompanied by a money consideration or simply to gain the support and protection of persons of high rank, indicate a willingness on the part of the Abbot to trifle with some of his most sacred responsibilities. More sinister still are the frequent changes of the vicars in the various livings. At Elstree, for example, there were as many as nine rectors in sixteen years; at Shephale five occur in six years.

In a letter which he addressed to the Abbot, Morton wrote: '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; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation and all regular observances, hospitality, alms ... and the ancient rule of your order is deserted ... you have dilapidated the common property; you have made away with the jewels and the woods to the value of 8,000 marks or more.' The letter goes on to specify 'the enormous crimes and excesses' in a most complete manner; names and details are given in every case, and the Abbot and Thomas Sudbury, a monk, are accused of the most disgusting offences. 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. The Abbot and the Prioresses of Prez and Sopwell are strictly enjoined to correct these enormities within thirty days, and the Priors of the more distant cells within sixty days. Unless they comply the Archbishop himself will be compelled to make a personal visitation and to carry out the necessary reforms.

Owing to the disappearance of the Hertfordshire surveys, St. Albans can furnish no certain evidence upon the numerous questions arising out of the Dissolution. Such facts as we have tend to confirm the conclusions of M. Savine. There is no doubt, for example, that the social sympathies of the Abbey were pre-eminently aristocratic. Most of the monks do not themselves 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. 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. At a wealthy House like St. Albans, which relied so completely on the patronage of the great, it could scarcely have been otherwise.

In fact, evidence compels us to reduce the generally accepted estimates of the Abbey's social and economic importance. Such social services as it did render were chiefly on the side of hospitality and education. Of these, hospitality--which had always been at least as aristocratic as otherwise--had seriously diminished by the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, after the Dissolution this common shelter for rich and poor must have been deeply regretted.

The Abbey perhaps did its best work in the sphere of education; from first to last during our period particular care was expended upon the education of the monks, within the monastery and at the University. The Abbey deserves still greater credit for creating and maintaining St. Albans Grammar School. The first mention of the School occurs in 1100, when it was ruled by a secular head master and received fees from scholars. In the thirteenth century arose the practice of boarding within the monastery and teaching the sons of neighbouring lords; for the future no fees were to be received from the sixteen poorest scholars; the master was given the rare privilege of excommunicating the disobedient, and allowed, after an examination, to confer degrees upon the scholars after the manner of the Universities. All illicit or adulterine schools were to be rooted out of the Liberty. Towards the end of the century the Abbey began to board and educate a number of poor scholars; this custom, as a charity, fell to the Almoner, who soon devolved his duties upon a serjeant, who, like the schoolmaster, was not a monk. The school was thus in no sense 'an avenue to the monastery'; on the contrary, there was an entire separation of the school from the Abbey. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the institution flourished when the Abbey itself was in decay till, by a wide interpretation of terms, it was dissolved in 1539 as a part of the Abbey. This continuous interest in secular education for four centuries was perhaps the best word that could be said for the Abbey at the Dissolution.

The Visitation of the monasteries was carried out by Cromwell, as Vicar-General, in 1535. John ap Rice, the commissioner at St. Albans, wrote to his master: 'At St. Albans we found little although there was much to be found.' The commissioner spoke the simple truth if it was disorder and faction to which he referred. In the same year the prior and about half of the monks petitioned Sir Francis Brian to save them from their own Abbot, who had contracted large debts, had sold the woods belonging to the convent, and had compelled the convent to affix their seal to transactions of which they disapproved, threatening to expel anyone who should inform against him. Within a year there was civil war within the Abbey, and the same section of the convent wrote a second desperate appeal to Sir Brian, saying that the Abbot would surely take vengeance upon them unless Sir Brian secured the appointment of a coadjutor. 'Our monastery is in much decay and misery,' they confess sadly, and their words obtain confirmation from another extraordinary incident of that year, the trial of the third Prior for making various treasonable remarks, as for example, that the King intended to leave only four churches in England. Other monks of the Abbey had informed against him to 'avoid guilty participation.' The result was indecisive, but the whole matter is an indication of the complete demoralisation of the convent.

The history of St. Albans is sufficient proof that 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. While they decayed, St. Albans revived. A century later it is probable that the monasteries as a whole were in a far less degraded condition than St. Albans. Perhaps similarly startling differences will be revealed when the history of other abbeys has been worked out in detail. Many loose generalisations on the subject of the monasteries are due to the assumption that decay or reform proceeded at an equal pace in different abbeys. Froude, for example, sought to trace a growing corruption of monasticism from Norman times. His view was founded simply on his study of St. Albans records, and even here his account was worthless. The decadence, the immorality of which he spoke was largely confined to the early years of the fourteenth century, and the Abbacy of William Wallingford . To see in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a consistent, uniform process of decay is largely to misunderstand St. Albans' history.

Appendix:

It may be well, therefore, to repeat that the folio of the Register containing the account of Wallingford's election is missing, having been apparently torn from the MS.; that he had been convicted of appropriating Abbot Stoke's treasure in 1451; that in the 'Register of John Whethamstede' he is continually mentioned in terms of extreme disgust; and finally, that the Register of his own abbacy breaks off abruptly the year before Morton's Commission.

LIST OF THE ABBOTS OF ST. ALBAN'S

FROM 1291 TO 1539.

John de Berkhamstede 1291-1302. John de Maryns 1302-1308. Hugh de Eversdon 1308-1326. Richard de Wallingford 1326-1335. Michael de Mentmore 1335-1349. Thomas de la Mare 1349-1396. John Moote 1396-1401. William Heyworth 1401-1420. John Whethamstede 1420-1440. John Stoke 1440-1452. John Whethamstede 1452-1464. William Albon 1464-1476. William Wallingford 1476-1491. John Ramrygge 1492-1521. Thomas Wolsey 1521-1530. Robert Catton 1530-1538. Richard Boreman 1538-1539.

Chief Authorities.

A.--PRIMARY .

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