This digression is of some importance to a proper understanding of Islip’s career. It might be supposed that his early advancement to important offices had awakened some jealousy in the hearts of his fellows and had thus delayed his admission to the high table until as Prior he could no longer be excluded from it. That this was not the case must be evident from the fact that two years later the brethren themselves unanimously elected him to the highest office of all.
One further argument may be adduced. It is commonly said that the Abbot was solely responsible for the appointment of monks to the different offices of the monastery.[3] In the case of Westminster this general rule requires some modification. From the time of Abbot Crispin to Abbot Wenlock, that is to say from A.D. 1085 to 1307, it was indubitably the custom for the prior and Convent to select two to four monks from whom the Abbot might make his appointment to certain at least of the vacant offices. Since in all other respects the agreements between the Westminster Abbots and their monks continued in force in the centuries succeeding Abbot Wenlock, there is no reason to suppose from the lack of evidence that this particular custom changed. It may be assumed therefore with something more than probability that Islip represented the selection of the monastery at most stages of his advancement.
On becoming Prior Islip resigned his offices as Treasurer, Monk-Bailiff and Warden of the Churches, all of which on occasion would take him abroad from the cloister. He retained, however, the duties of the Cellarership, which was a more domestic office.
As Prior indeed he had to do the work which St. Benedict had designed for the Abbot. He must be in practice what the Abbot was in theory—the father of the Conventual family. As will appear later the Abbot, especially of such a monastery as Westminster, was apt to be drawn into the vortex of public affairs to an extent which left him little leisure for the essential duties of his position. To some extent also it must be admitted that the Prior did not share the full life of the brethren. He had a separate house at the end of the Dark Cloister running parallel to and south of the Refectory.
Islip himself has left little record of his own tenure of the office, but if the documents which attest the story of his successor may be taken as illustrative of the Prior’s life in general, it must be assumed that his share in the common life was occasional rather than constant, while the existence of such officials as the Sub-prior and the third or fourth Priors points to a delegation of duties and a system which may have worked well in practice but was not consonant with the Benedictine ideal. Those who are familiar with the course of the development of the collegiate life which Henry VIII. designed for his new foundation at Westminster in after-days will have observed the same forces at work in the gradual isolation of the higher officials from the common table and a somewhat quicker immersion in outside duties. It can hardly be doubted that such forces are disruptive in tendency, not necessarily of the body itself, but of the purpose and ideal for which it was called into being.
The Prior in fact found little difficulty in an occasional absence of days together from the monastery. A pilgrimage to the Rood of Grace at Boxley did not require any particular planning or arrangement, while the record of visitors entertained by “your mastership,� as Prior Mane’s faithful steward was wont to call him, shews the independent character of the hospitality which he exercised. Whatever may have been the frequency of his visits to the cloister Mane would seem seldom to have dined in the Refectory. He appears indeed as no unfit ruler of the house but he stands aloof from it none the less, a figure to be regarded by the younger brethren with more awe than love. There is nothing to shew that such a life was regarded as other than normal or that his immediate predecessors had lived in other fashion.
Fascet had been Abbot little more than a fortnight when he signed an indenture binding himself and the Convent to pay Henry VII. the sum of five hundred pounds, one hundred of which was to be paid at the following Christmas and the remainder in two equal portions at the end of the ensuing years. The King had represented that he was about to be put to great expense both in obtaining the papal license for and the actual removal of the body of Henry VI. from Windsor to London. Moreover the “diuerse other many and grete charges that our said souverain Lord must bere by the chaunge and alteracion of suche thinges as his Highness ... hadde ordeyned and purposed to have made and done within the said College of Wyndesore� formed an additional claim upon a Convent already somewhat put to it to find money for other purposes.
The total sum was, however, paid in the year 1500-1, and John Islip as the new Sacrist duly recorded it in his roll of account. The entry which he made was apt to be misleading. Translated it would run thus: “Paid for the removal of the body of the illustrious King Henry VI. from Windsor to the monastery of the Blessed Peter, Westminster.� It was doubtless this entry that subsequently gave rise to the tradition that the actual removal took place and the body laid in some temporary resting-place until the new chapel should be built as its shrine. The fact that the papal brief for the removal was not granted until May 20th, 1504, would be by itself sufficient to disprove the tradition, but if further proof were needed it could be found in the Will of Henry VII., which was begun in 1509 and contained the note that the King proposes right shortely to translate ... the bodie and reliques of our Uncle of blessed memorie King Henry the VIth.
For some unknown reason the translation was never carried out. It has been suggested that the large sum of money demanded for canonisation coupled with Henry’s parsimonious character proved sufficient to stay the project; but there is no evidence for this conjecture and it seems more reasonable to suppose that the canonisation was delayed until the new chapel should be sufficiently ready to receive the body, otherwise pilgrims would be flocking to Windsor rather than Westminster. Before the chapel was thus ready Henry VII. died, and it may well be that his successor had not the same interest in the matter as his father or the same concern to defend his title to the throne.
One further item of interest may be noted here. The privy purse expenses of Henry VII. contain payments amounting in all to more than sixty-eight pounds to Master Esterfelde for making the tomb of Henry VI. at Windsor, and a further payment to him of ten pounds for the actual conveyance of this tomb to Westminster. Its ultimate fate, however, was never recorded.