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 40s. 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 £40 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 £5 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 20d. 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 [£4] 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. × 5½ 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 3½ 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.
As there was nothing exceptional in the disposal of the ex-prior's goods,[ 51] the incident may be fairly taken as an illustration of Convent life as Colchester lived it, and we may therefore go on to notice that, putting together the sum that Excestr' left in cash and that which was realized by the sale of some of these articles, the Convent was able to pay the cost of his illness and burial; the items ranged from 2d. for milk to 10s. for the fee of the brief-writer who wrote out the formal announcement of his death on one shilling's worth of parchment for the information of other Benedictine houses, and £4 13s. 4d. for a marble slab with a memorial inscription. As Excestr' died in 1397, we may think of Abbot Colchester as saying the last words over the open grave of his former neighbour in Little Cloisters.