William de Colchester, Abbot of Westminster

by Ernest Harold Pearce

In the next act[ 3] it is stated that he is dead—

"The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,

With clog of conscience and sour melancholy

Hath yielded up his body to the grave."

As to which it must be sufficient to say that the poet who could not give the Abbot's name was equally unconscious of the fact that he outlived his alleged conspiracy by twenty years.

But his name was William Colchester, and we may begin by assuming that, as his name implies, he was a Colchester man. In and before his time, and for a considerable space afterwards, the customary designation of a Brother was his Christian name and a place name, with or without the copula de; in earlier years he called himself William de Colchester, but the documents which concern him as Abbot mostly speak of William Colchester, or William Abbot of Westminster. Nor are we left to guess-work as to the place of his origin. In later life, according to the habit of his time, he busied himself with the endowment of obits, or anniversaries, for the good of his soul. Here is a document,[ 4] dated May 20, 1406, in which he bargained with the Prior of St. Botolph, Colchester, having paid 40s. to Henry IV.'s Clerk of the Hanaper to seal the bargain, that one of the canon-chaplains of that Priory should say Mass every week, at sixpence a week, for his soul and for the souls of his parents; that the Prior and his Brethren should observe his anniversary, again with a memorial of his parents, in the parish church of St. Nicholas, Colchester; that a set sum should be distributed yearly to the vicar of St. Nicholas, to the poor of the parish, and to the prisoners in Colchester Castle; and that the tomb of his parents in the parish churchyard should be kept in proper repair.

We may conclude, then, that this was his native parish, and that in his great position as Abbot of Westminster he wished the connexion to be had in remembrance. But he knew to a mile the distance between his Abbey and Colchester, and how easy it might be for the Prior of St. Botolph to accept his bequest and to neglect to fulfil its conditions. So in 1407 (December 3), when he was completing the arrangements[ 5] for maintaining an anniversary at the Abbey out of the revenues of the church of Aldenham,[ 6] in Hertfordshire, he inserted an instruction that the Monk-Bailiff of Westminster, at the time of his annual visit to the Essex manors, should either proceed or send to Colchester and make careful inquiry as to the due observance of the covenants, as who should say, "It is as well not to trust these provincial Priors further than you can see them."

We get to know also from the grant[ 7] of another anniversary at the Abbey's daughter Priory of Hurley, in Berkshire, that his father's name was Reginald, and his mother's Alice. He had a sister who in 1389-90 was living in Cambridge, for in that year his Receiver entered a gift of 12d. to a man who came from my lord's sister at that town; and we shall find that he had other connexions, some poor enough to bring him a basket of poultry, some rich enough to receive from him a present of jewelry. Evidently he sprang from a burgher stock of no great eminence, for whom the Church seemed the sphere in which the career was opened to the talents.

How he came to enter our Monastery we shall never know, for with all the wealth of our materials there survives not a trace of his or of any other postulant's testimonials. He came, he was seen, he was admitted. We know what the requisites were—that he must have examined his conscience as to the motives which led him to apply, that he must be sound in body, free in civil status, unburdened by debt or other obligations, and as a rule not less than eighteen years of age.[ 8] What steps the Fathers of the Convent took to secure outside evidence of a candidate's fitness in these respects must be left to the imagination. He passed muster and joined their number.