The Westminster plea was first of all Henry’s own choice. A mass of testimony was offered from the sworn statements of twelve different witnesses who had been present at one or other of Henry’s visits to the Abbey church. This was a strong case in itself as it does not appear that Windsor had any such evidence to offer. Secondly it was pleaded that Westminster had for a long time been and still was the burial-place of Kings, and thirdly that since the Palace of Westminster was bound by both practical and sentimental ties to the Abbey Henry was to be considered a parishioner.
The case was adjourned till March 2nd and Islip records the many incidental expenses to which he had been put for counsel’s opinion, travelling costs and the like.
Judgment was given on March 5th in favour of Westminster, on the ground of Henry’s own choice and because it was the burial-place of kings. Needless to say the fact that the Yorkist Kings Edward IV. and Richard III. were interred elsewhere was ignored.
It is from this judgment that we must date the first conception of the new Lady Chapel, commonly known as the Chapel of Henry VII. Its foundation-stone was not to be laid for four and a half years and in the meanwhile its primary purpose was to disappear. In the meanwhile also fresh changes came into the life of the monastery, and the rest of the story may well take its place in connection with them.
CHAPTER IV.
ISLIP AS PRIOR.
On May 24th, 1498, Abbot John Estney died. He had ruled the monastery for twenty-four years and was nearly eighty years of age. There are indications that he had been for some time failing in health, and the fact that he had played no part in the action before the Privy Council in the matter of the burial of Henry VI. suggests that most of his powers had been by this time delegated to others. He had deserved well of the community and his loss must have been felt keenly by his sometime Chaplain, John Islip.
The choice of the Convent fell upon Prior Fascet as Estney’s successor. He was only about forty-two years old, but it must have been fairly clear from the first that the choice was made rather in view of his past services than for any future benefit he could confer upon the community. The plea of unfitness for the task that he made when the election was first announced to him was more than merely formal. But a year later and he was to forsake the independence of the abbatial manors and occupy the chamber in the monastic infirmary specially set apart for those for whom there seemed some hope of restoration to health. For him, however, such restoration was not to be, and in the late summer of the year 1500 he died. This is, however, to anticipate, and we must go back to his appointment to the Abbacy two years earlier.
He chose Islip as his successor in the office of Prior. It is at this point in Islip’s career that one of the small difficulties in the reconstruction of mediæval monastic life presents itself. There were two occasions in a monk’s career at Westminster which were deemed worthy of especial congratulation. The one was the celebration of his first mass after ordination to the priesthood, following on the conclusion of his noviciate, and the other when for the first time he sat ad skillam—“by the bell.â€� The skilla was the bell which was sounded by the Prior, or in his absence by the President, in the Refectory for grace to be said, for the lection to begin or end, or for some other usual signal of the mealtime. To sit by the bell, therefore, primarily meant to preside at the monastic meal.
The phrase, however, seems to have been used more loosely of those who occupied seats at the President’s table and thus to become capable of a certain ambiguity. It was customary at Westminster for the heads of the various departments to make a present in money or in kind to a monk after his first mass and his first sitting ad skillam. If we are to assume the wider meaning of the latter phrase it is impossible to determine what were the qualifications which a monk must possess or the period of probation through which he must pass before his promotion ad skillam. Islip was not thus advanced until he became Prior, when he must inevitably so sit; so that the qualification was evidently not that of the holding of monastic office, however important. Moreover a survey of the careers of a large number of monks shews that anything from four to more than thirty years from their profession might elapse before such promotion came. For example Kirton did not sit ad skillam until he became Abbot in 1440, thirty-two years after his first mass; while Thomas Gedney passed to the high table in 1421, within five years of his profession. Kirton indeed had spent some years of his monastic life at Oxford and never occupied the position of Prior, yet it would be expected that on one or other of his visits to Westminster he would be found to have been sitting at the high table at a far earlier date.
If, however, the narrower meaning of the phrase, that of actually presiding in the Refectory, may be taken as indicating the occasion upon which exenia or complimentary gifts were made, the difficulty to some extent disappears. Actual seniority of profession would then determine the occasion of the gifts. A relatively young monk such as John Islip might have sat at the high table long before some accident found him as the senior monk present in the Refectory, and the same fate might befall one many years older than himself. Moreover it seems probable from the fact that two tables were reserved for the senior monks in the Refectory in addition to the table of the President that the narrower interpretation of the phrase as used at Westminster is the more correct. This is borne out also by the fact that the phrase itself is found not only in its ambiguous form as primo sedente ad skyllam but also as primo presidente ad skyllam which would seem to admit of no ambiguity at all. It is to be observed that the phrase is undoubtedly used in the narrower sense at Westminster at the close of the thirteenth century.