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A.--PRIMARY .

B.--SECONDARY.

HOLYWELL PRESS, OXFORD.

FOOTNOTES

The shrines of St. Osyth and St. Amphibalus, also at St. Albans, were scarcely less famous.

About twelve cells were founded; the most important being Tynemouth and Wymondham, in Northumberland and Norfolk respectively.

The economic history of the Abbey cannot fairly be so divided, and will therefore be treated in Section II from 1300-1539.

Living in England in captivity. He was a close friend of the Abbot, and spent much of his time at St. Albans.

The almost chronic dearth at St. Albans in the early fourteenth century was a further misfortune. In 1314 the price of provisions in the town was excessive, and Edward endeavoured to fix it by Ordinance .

The grant of the same privilege to the Abbey of Evesham in 1363 was used as a strong argument by de la Mare during negotiations.

He tells, for instance, how in 1384, in the midst of an argument with the Duke of Lancaster, he threw his shoes and cap through the window. In 1387 a judge made difficulties about signing a document presented to him. His son said, according to Walsingham, that his father was knocked down and kicked as he lay.

The peasant armies in 1381 are said to have taken as their cry: 'We will have no King named John.'

See Armitage Smith, John of Gaunt, pp. 169-171.

The same epoch left its impress upon the Abbey fabric. Much of it was rebuilt by Abbot Thomas, though unfortunately lapse of time and the restoration by Lord Grimthorpe's munificence have left little except the great Abbey gateway. Some stained glass, wall-paintings and a rood screen of this date still remain, and in Abbot Whethamstede's chapel there is a beautiful brass of De la Mare.

Chaucer: Prologue, &c. , lines 165-206.

An unusually severe regulation.

It was highly desirable for the Abbot to maintain this distinction. In the King's courts the villein had no case against his lord save for bodily injury. In practice it appears that the Abbot of St. Albans could inflict even bodily injury with impunity. See, for instance, the case of Nicholas Tybson, who, having been stripped, thrashed and wounded by the Abbot's servants, brought an action for redress. The case was at once dismissed as a false appeal on the ground that Tybson was the born villein of the Abbot .

T. W. Page: 'End of Villeinage in England' passim. See, too, Petit-Dutaillis' introduction to R?ville, where the views of Stubbs and Thorold Rogers on this subject are exploded. The period 1349-1381, it is proved, was not marked by the reduction to serfdom of men emancipated before the Black Death, or the re-assertion on the part of landlords of labour services already commuted for money payments. On the contrary, the process of commutation proceeded at an increasing rate after 1349.

No manumissions occur in the records until more than a generation after the revolt: evidently the old system remained unprosperous but intact at St. Albans in 1381.

A few years earlier Abbot Heyworth had suppressed a similar rising at Barnet .

It is unfortunate that the surveys of the Commissioners in 1535 for Hertford have perished. At the same time the condition of monastic estates was wonderfully similar, and St. Albans was probably no exception.

On the other hand classical learning became more esteemed. It is impossible not to see in the florid verses of Whethamstede and in his prose an early appearance of the Renaissance spirit in England. Verse and prose are alike worthless, but show a striving after something better than mediaeval monastic writing. The tendency becomes more marked in his work after his visit to Italy in 1423, where he was certainly influenced by the early Humanist movement.

The town of St. Albans was apparently something of a Lollard centre. Sir John Oldcastle lay in hiding there, and when in 1414 William Murlee was hanged and burnt, the convent firmly believed that he had planned to put them every one to death . See, too, the account of the proceedings at the Synod held by Whethamstede in 1429 : for commission to put down heresy . The Abbot's bitterness extended to any departure from orthodoxy, and Pecock was an object of his special dislike.

Riley, for instance, thought it probable that Whethamstede was the Duke of Gloucester's political adviser, and that his resignation of the abbacy in 1440 was due to the waning of 'Good Duke Humphrey's' popularity before the rising star of Beaufort. 'When ... the contending rivals had been alike removed by the impartial hand of death, we find him emerging from his comparatively obscure position as a pensioned monk of the Abbey, and on the first opportunity attaining the Abbacy once more' .

'His counsels,' says Riley, 'seem to have been sought with equal eagerness by the two great heads of the antagonistic parties of the politics of the times, the intriguing and ambitious Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and his ... nephew, the Duke of Gloucester' .

The King is found nevertheless in 1549 spending Easter at the Abbey and lavishing gifts upon the Abbot.

It is a curious circumstance that the folio containing the account of his election has been torn out of the register.

There are a few instances, however, during Albon's rule.

In 1484 Wallingford formally allowed Thomas Hethnes, keeper of the George Inn, to have a chapel for the celebration of the Mass by the Chaplains of 'such great men and nobles and others as should be lodging at this hostelry' , a clear indication of the decline of the one-time famous hospitality.

The history of these transactions is taken from an article by Mr. Gairdner based upon Abbot Gasquet's researches in the Papal archives.

Mr. Gairdner gives it as his opinion that the visitation was not carried out . He bases his view on a passage in the St. Albans obit book , recording a victory of Wallingford over the Archbishop. This passage, it appears from what follows, was written not later than 1484 , the convent solemnly affixing its seal to the narrative under the date 'anno domini millesimo quadringentesimo octogesimo quarto, die, videlicet, mensis Augusti octava.' Probably therefore the account refers to an earlier and unsuccessful attempt of the Archbishop to carry out a visitation .

The school was refounded 1549; probably it never ceased actually to exist.

Already in 1528 Wolsey had suppressed a number of the smaller monasteries, among them the nunnery of St. Mary de Prez and the cell of Pembroke.

Adding 'It were well to suppress the nunnery of Sopwell as you may see by the comperts' . The state of affairs would thus really seem to have been worse in the smaller houses than at St. Albans; but of Binham, on the other hand, there is direct evidence that, except that its numbers had grown smaller, it was in good condition .

From one of his letters to Cromwell it would appear that as early as January, 1536, Catton felt his position insecure owing to the complaints of his own monks. 'Trusts greatly to Cromwell his position here being so intrikyd with extreme penury ... and most of all encumbered with an uncourteous flock of brethren.' .

The average decline in numbers has been calculated by Savine as one-fifth; so the proportion at St. Albans was high.

The three greater were: Canterbury ; Westminster ; and Glastonbury .

Transcriber's Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

This book contains archaic spellings of many words.

Pages containing only chapter titles were deleted, as the same information appeared at the top of the next page.

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