Payments of the bailiffs of his manors, law expenses, and sundry items of no general interest added to the Treasurer’s expenditure; and at this period of history he found it, like his brethren in other monasteries, impossible to make both ends meet, and indeed his expenditure exceeded his assigned income by some hundreds of pounds.
That portion of his income, about one hundred and thirty pounds, of which no source has yet been indicated was drawn from the merging into the Treasurer’s office of other offices which in former times had been held separately. The love for the Abbey felt by Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., had been marked by large monetary gifts during her lifetime. Her burial by the shrine of St. Edward prompted her husband to make proper provision for the maintenance of her anniversary, and five manors were almost immediately assigned to the monastery for that purpose, those of Birdbrook, Edenbridge, Westerham, Turweston and Knowle. Two other foundations of a similar character in connection with Richard II. and Henry V. succeeded in due course, and Wardens were appointed to administer the three.
By the time with which we are concerned these offices had been practically merged with the Treasurership. Consequently the Treasurer must account for the receipts and expenditure connected with them. The income therefrom swelled his total but gave him no surplus for his own purposes, since he must purchase the wax, pay for the masses said and distribute what remained among the brethren in the usual proportion.
The office of Cellarer in the later history of the monastery of Westminster was one of dignity and importance, but its duties were probably of a considerably less exacting character than at the beginning. The tendency had been to divide the work formerly assigned and with the growth of buildings to create new offices, such as that of the Granator, rather than merely to provide assistants. Thus in the year ending Michaelmas 1527 the income of the office was only some eighty pounds a year, of which fourteen were spent in mending wagons, shoeing of horses, repairs of the water-mill and all the various expenses commonly associated with the life of the farmer.
The Cellarer had the oversight of the brewery, bakery and stables; paid the wages of the various labourers connected with them; bought shovels, coal-baskets and scoops; was responsible for repairs to the aqueduct which brought the Convent water—a frequent source of trouble,—and indeed performed a variety of small tasks the recital of which would only be tedious. In fact he was an altogether different person from what the popular imagination of to-day conceives him to have been.
The Granator’s account was rendered yearly like that of other officers, but it was an account in kind and not in money. He dealt solely with wheat, malt and oats, and the account was balanced in terms of these. So much had come from Wheathampstead; so much had he received at the hands of the Treasurer; so much had he delivered to the baker, and so on. His office demanded honesty on the part of its holder but made little demand on intelligence or business capacity.
The Almoner’s rolls bring into view an entirely different aspect of monastic life. For any proper understanding of his office it is necessary to remember that the distribution of alms was an inevitable accompaniment of requiem masses. Did the Abbot or other benefactor of the monastery desire to be remembered in prayer after his death, then he not only bequeathed property to endow masses but assigned that portion of its yield which was to be distributed amongst the poor. Among the poor he would rightly reckon the brethren of his own monastery as well as those who came to its gates for alms. With some such endowments, though not with all, the Almoner was associated as administrator.
For example, on the anniversary of the death of Richard Berkyng, who had been Abbot from 1222 to 1246, we find the Almoner of the sixteenth century distributing twenty pence to each of the monks as well as paying one shilling to the celebrants of the mass which was still said weekly for the Abbot’s soul.
Moreover the provision of some small amenities and comforts for the brethren was reasonably regarded as a legitimate charge upon the Almoner’s resources. Thus he was accustomed to pay for mats for the cloister, dormitory and refectory. When the novice first arrived at the monastery it was the Almoner who saw that his camera or chamber in the dormitory was first properly cleansed, paid the penny for his tonsure and bought two pennyworth of straw with which to stuff his mattress. He made some public distribution of alms on rogation days to an amount varying from three to five pounds.
But the foregoing duties are incidental and the Almoner’s first duty was to preside, with the Subalmoner’s aid, over the almonry itself—which lay to the south of Tothill Street outside the ancient boundary-wall of the precinct. Here was an almshouse and its chapel of St. Anne, but little can be discovered as to either. Prior to the foundation of the time of Henry VII., of which something will be said later, we read of payments to the “six poor men of St. Edwardâ€� who in the year 1492 begin to be called the “six soldiers of St. Edward.â€� Then there are the lay-brothers of the almonry, also six in number, who received one mark a year for their clothing and for whom sixteen pence a week was paid for food. These latter come first into view in the rolls about the year 1390, when each was receiving a loaf daily from the Cellarer. Provision was made for them to attend a weekly mass on Saturdays, but their other duties and manner of life generally in later days do not seem to be anywhere defined.