The gift or purchase of outlying estates and churches necessitated the appointment of officers to superintend their management and to be responsible for the due collection from them of rents and pensions. Moreover any particular extensions of the monastic buildings or church involved the appointment of a temporary Warden of the New Work to account for the necessary receipts and expenditure. It was customary to assign particular estates to the support of particular departments or else to arrange for the equitable division of profits among them all. Thus each official had definite sources of income for his office and definite objects upon which that income was to be expended. Year by year he was required to submit for audit a roll or balance-sheet accounting for the monies of his department, and to many of these rolls were attached bills or subsidiary rolls of which the chief roll might contain but a summary. It is from the survival of such rolls that a knowledge of the internal economy of the monastery can be obtained, the duties of the various officials outlined, and the progress and cost of new buildings or repairs duly marked. At Westminster the number of such surviving rolls is over three thousand, and in addition there are many account-books exhibiting in the utmost detail the expenditure in certain of the departments.
Exceptions to the general scheme must, however, be noted. At Westminster the precentor’s office had some small property in land attached to it and received some few pensions from churches, but the precentor himself kept no rolls, for his income and expenditure were small, and his duties were not such as to call for much outlay of money. The adult portion of his Secular Choir, the forerunners of the lay-vicars of the present day, were paid by contributions from the Sacrist and others, while the Subalmoner had the care of the Singing-children.
The archdeacon’s duties were those of a legal rather than monastic character, and in consequence the history of his office is not to be found in monastic rolls. Similarly in the case of officers such as the prior and others, whose work was mainly that of supervision and discipline, little record survives, with the result that these are for the most part far more shadowy figures than the administrative officials. The latter seem oftentimes to live again by the human touches which creep unawares into what at first glance might seem to be dull and stereotyped records of receipts and expenditure, and to leave small room for the record of personality. When we have read through some pages of Brother Thomas Browne’s ill-written account-book, which in due course he must submit for the Abbot’s inspection, how shall we translate the homely hexameter which quite suddenly appears: Si mea pena valet, melior mea litera fiet? Brother Thomas becomes no such remote figure after all!
St. Benedict had with keen foresight anticipated the possibility of a certain rivalry as between the Prior and Convent on the one side and the Abbot on the other, and he would seem to have regarded the prior’s office as a necessary evil with which he would rather have dispensed. Could he have foreseen such a development as took place at Westminster it can hardly be doubted that he would have devised some special statutes to meet a situation which could never have been consistent with his ideals or with that half-departure from them which he may in his broad-mindedness have contemplated. For Westminster’s Abbot was a feudal lord with the additional dignity of a mitre.
In that later history with which we are most concerned he dwelt apart from his flock. He was no longer the parent at the head of the table, with his children gathered round him at the common meal. Affairs of state or of his own manorial business were among the lesser calls which might take him away from the family of which he was nominally the father.
The mere fact that he so dwelt apart was for more than two centuries a fruitful source of dissension. Two households had to be maintained from a common income: what was the proper division of it? New estates were bequeathed: what was their proper allocation? Anniversaries had to be performed: how should the proceeds be distributed? Innumerable and inevitable expenses had to be met: what share ought the Abbot to undertake?
Such were some of the questions which from time to time disturbed the peace of the family. Here and there a question could be solved by special legislation. It was easy when a vacancy occurred in the Abbacy for the Prior and Convent before they proceeded to election to lay down that the next Abbot should be solely responsible for the maintenance of the walls which protected their buildings from the periodical threat of inundation from the Thames. It was easy at such a time to adopt the general principle that of future bequests the Abbot should take four parts, the Prior two, and each professed member of the Convent one; but there came times when the ordinary provision for the Convent table was a matter of anxious thought while the Abbot might seem to have no such cares. It is no wonder that, until some working arrangement was arrived at, each ensuing vacancy in the Abbacy should be the occasion for the formulation of conditions to which the new Abbot was bound to subscribe.
It is much to the spiritual credit of the Westminster community that in general such problems were met by the spontaneous generosity of the one side or the other. In all but one or two clearly defined cases it may be said that these problems ultimately made for goodwill rather than disruption, as giving occasion for the exercise of the primary virtue of the Christian life. They form indeed no part of the actual story, but some account of their nature is a necessary preliminary to an understanding of the economy of the monastery at any period of its history.
It is interesting to make a survey of the life and duties of the various conventual officials in these latter days.
In theory the Abbot still slept in the dormitory and a chamber was kept there for his use. In practice the only person who had access to it was the Receiver of his household, and Brother John Islip records that when he himself held that office he had two hundred pounds in money belonging to the Abbot which he kept in a chest in this chamber. In theory the Abbot dined in the refectory. In practice this may have occasionally happened, but these occasions were evidently few. The ordinary arrangement was for a fixed allowance of bread, generally six convent loaves, to be sent to the Abbot when he was actually in residence at Cheyneygates—the house now occupied by the Dean—or at his Manor of Eye hard by. This allowance was not sent if he were absent at any other of his manors. Otherwise he was expected to maintain his household and entertain his private guests out of his official income. As it would not always be easy to distinguish between personal and official visitors it was provided that the Abbot might bring four guests to the refectory without charge, but should he bring more than this number he was to be responsible for the additional costs.