The Almoner’s income was not large, amounting in an average year to about seventy pounds. Some further account of his cares will appear in the narrative of Abbot Islip’s earlier years.
Just as the Almonry had its chapel of St. Anne so the Infirmary placed itself under the protection of St. Katharine, but while the Almonry has long disappeared the ruins still remain to hint the beauties of the Infirmary chapel, and the Infirmarer’s own refectory is still intact.
About thirty-three pounds represents the average income attached to the office. The two rectories of Wandsworth and Battersea provided more than a third of this, and the Church of St. Andrew at Pershore a little over eight pounds. A few rents of houses and a portion of the Manor of Parham in Sussex made up the remainder.
The Infirmarer kept a careful record of the names of his patients and the number of days which each spent under his charge. This was necessary in order that he might render a faithful account of his stewardship, for it was considered that the cost of a sick monk was three pence on a meat day and two pence on a fish day. The allowance for his own expenses was reckoned at twenty-three pence a week. On St. Katharine’s day he was accustomed to send twenty shillings for the entertainment of the Abbot and Convent, and the balance of his income might be charged with necessary repairs either to the Infirmary buildings or to the houses of which the Infirmarer was the landlord.
In addition to the Treasurer of whom some account has been given there was an official known as the Domestic or Inner Treasurer, whose rolls are of interest as shewing in part the manner by which the monks obtained their slender individual incomes.
So far as this department was concerned these arose from the endowments of various chantries within the church. In some cases only the celebrants of the masses received any payment, but in others all the brethren participated. In the case of the anniversary of Abbot Kyrton the Prior received two shillings and each brother one, while the reigning Abbot did not benefit. In that of one John Blokley the Abbot took eight pence, the Prior, the President of the Refectory, and the Refectorer four pence each, and the brethren two pence each.
The Domestic Treasurer dealt also with the receipts from properties which belonged in common to the Prior and Convent as distinct from the Abbatial lands and manors. Each officer taxed his own income at the rate of one penny in the mark towards the general fund, but it does not appear that the Domestic Treasurer administered the proceeds.
The Refectorer’s office was not one of great importance. It might be supposed that he was concerned with the provision of meals for the brethren, but the only article of food which it was his duty to provide was cheese, which cost between three and four pounds a year out of an income of little more than ten. He was responsible for the general upkeep of the refectory, whether for the repair of its walls and windows or the renewal when necessary of the cloths and other appurtenances of the table. He provided the wax for such candles as the Subsacrist was not required to supply, and cushions for the seats of the President and seniors.
Some slight information can be gleaned from his rolls as to the general arrangements of the refectory. There was the table of the President with the skilla or bell beside it, the sounding of which marked the various incidents of the meal; the two tables of the senior monks, the two tables appropriated to the undistinguished among the brethren, the table of the novices, and finally that set for the poor—the mensa pauperum. Somewhere in the refectory stood a statue of St. Edward with a crown of lights above him, which must be in order for the Feasts of the Translation and Deposition of the Convent’s tutelary saint. We note the homely designation of the larger cups as the Long Robin and the Charity Bowl.
The Monk Bailiff is perhaps the most perplexing of any of the monastic officers. It is not possible as in the case of others to obtain any adequate conception of his duties from the rolls which he kept, for he records merely the payment of fees without specifying the various services rendered. It must be supposed that he was responsible for general matters of law in which the monastery might be involved, for he notes year by year a payment of twenty shillings to the monastery’s attorney in the royal exchequer, of another twenty shillings to an attorney in the King’s Bench and of double that sum to an attorney in the Common Bench, with other smaller payments to legal officials. Fees to the bailiffs of the liberties in various counties also occur with regularity. He had his own apartments and staff of servants, his own stables, grooms and horses.