The Abbot’s income was derived from a considerable number of sources, and in spite of the many existent documents which record them it is not easy to make any exact estimate of its total, but at the close of the fifteenth century it would seem to have amounted to not less than six hundred pounds a year, no mean sum when the relative value of money is considered. From this of course there were many necessary outgoings. Estates had to be kept up and wages paid to local bailiffs and workmen, and at the end of the financial year but a small balance remained to be carried forward—and this sometimes was on the wrong side of the account. In one casually selected year the actual household expenses of the Abbot averaged more than forty pounds a month.
The income and expenditure of the Prior were of course on a more modest scale. Oysters, plaice, sturgeon, salmon, whelks—all these and many other articles of food appeared on his table as on the Abbot’s, but his position did not require the same amount of entertaining of guests as fell to the latter. Moreover these were frequently of a lower degree in the social scale. For instance we note his breakfasts to the singing-men and dinners to those who had just made their profession in the monastery. Visits to his estate of Belsize formed his customary means of relaxation from the many cares of the monastery.
It may be well to say that neither in the case of Abbot or Prior does there appear to have been any ostentation in their manner of life or any extravagance in expenditure. Each played the part that the standard of the time expected of him. If the Abbot seems rather the feudal lord than the father of his flock at this period of monastic history, he was the victim of a development which he had done nothing to create and saw no adequate reason to alter. The Abbot of Westminster in the sixteenth century was no more deserving of censure for his mode of life than is a Dean of Westminster in the twentieth.
Of the administrative officials the Sacrist is in many ways the most interesting. He was responsible not only for the general survey of the fabric of the church and the necessary repairs thereto, but also for the provision of most of the accessories of worship. The main items of the income of his office were derived from properties within easy reach of the monastery, so that business was not apt to arise which would take him far afield from what must have been rather exacting duties. Taking a typical roll of the early sixteenth century, a long list of houses in the Sanctuary and King Street, Westminster, brought him rents amounting to about £137 out of a total income of just over £208. Some little property in London and elsewhere, with pensions from half a dozen churches such as Sawbridgeworth and Bloxham, the “farm� of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and the offerings in various of the Abbey chapels, accounted in the main for the balance. Among some curious items of receipt there is the yearly sum of thirty shillings and five pence paid to him by the Sheriffs of London for the maintenance of the lamp of Queen Matilda.
Apart from some few entries for the repair of houses his expenditure fell under four main heads. First, more than fifty-five pounds was spent under the title “purchase of stores.� This included every kind of light, whether wax or oil, for both church and monastery, incense, grease for the bells and charcoal for the sacristy.
The next heading is the familiar “church expenses.� No less than twenty-four thousand breads were bought for the Celebrations. A long list includes the costs of the setting up of the great Paschal candle; repairs to vestments, thuribles, candlesticks, bells and other accessories; clearing away snow from the church roof and scattering the crows and pigeons that strove to nest there; mending the Abbot’s pastoral staff and buying seven imitation pearls at two pence each to adorn his mitre. In similar lists in other of the Sacrist’s rolls we find record of the periodical lending of copes for service in the King’s palaces at Westminster and London, and in the year 1520 of the purchase of canvas and a chest in which to pack the copes for despatch across the sea, doubtless for Wolsey’s use on the occasion of the historic meeting between Henry VIII. and Francis I. on the Field of Cloth of Gold where a chapel had been erected, “the last and most gorgeous display of the departing spirit of chivalry.�
The two other main heads of expenses are repairs of the church and wages of the various workmen and servants, among whom are the clock-keeper, the rent-collector, the washerwoman and butler.
The few remaining rolls of the Subsacrist contain in detail matters which are only summarised in the account of his superior. He was responsible for the distribution to the various chapels of their proper allotment of candles prior to the celebration of their special feasts. It is from him that we learn the dedications of forgotten altars, with here and there hints of old customs and lost usages.
Take for example the roll for the year ending at Michaelmas 1524. It is thirty-three feet in length and accounts in the utmost detail for the consumption of nearly five thousand pounds of wax, of which only some five hundred were for what may be called lighting purposes as distinct from “lights.â€� From the notes which he supplies it is not hard to picture the refectory at Christmas time with the corona above St. Edward’s statue ablaze with candles, the windows all lit up and the flaming torches that accompany the carrying-in of the boar’s head. Or pass to the infirmary towards the end of that year where Brother Richard Charyng lay on his deathbed. He was thought to be dying on August 30th, but on September 3rd he was still alive. The Subsacrist knows it for he has had to supply pound tapers for his “Aneyleng.â€� He reminds us that Abbots Berkyng, Bircheston, and Colchester were still remembered in the monastery though the first died as early as 1246, for he has supplied candles for the celebration of their “obits.â€� When he writes of the “brassen chappell wt.in the new chappellâ€� we know what we had long suspected—that there was an altar within the grille which surrounds the tomb of Henry VII. A few hints more and we could identify the dedications of the chapels in the apse of that King’s building. When somewhere near St. George’s day he issues a two-pound taper for the dragon, does he refer to some pageantry within the Abbey church or was it a gift to its appanage St. Margaret’s, where we know a dragon to have been kept?
Perhaps the solution is to be found in a mandate addressed by Henry III. to Edward, son of Odo the goldsmith, requiring him to cause a dragon to be made in the fashion of a standard, of red silk sparkling all over with gold, the tongue of which should be made to resemble burning fire and appear to be continually moving, and the eyes of sapphires or other suitable stones. This standard was to be placed in the Church of St. Peter, Westminster.