Even during the fourteenth century there had been a natural and almost inevitable growth of luxury in the monastic life: in the course of the fifteenth it progressed by leaps and bounds. A host of insignificant facts illustrate the tendency. The food of the novices was rendered more sumptuous on the plea that the youths had not such strong constitutions as their fathers. Papal Bulls were secured remitting fasts, and the allowance of spices was doubled. As with the convent, so was it with the Abbots themselves. William Heyworth (1401–1420), who was considered so excellent a cleric as to be raised to episcopal dignity as Bishop of Lichfield, spent large sums of money on the completion of a splendid Abbot’s mansion at Tittenhanger, contrary, needless to say, to all Benedictine precedent. A parallel tendency was a perceptible decline of zeal and interest in the religious life. In 1428, for instance, owing (as the Abbot confessed) to its uselessness, the ancient cell of Beaulieu[74] was abandoned, and twenty years later the Priory of Wymondham, as the result of a trifling dispute broke away from the mother house, and was erected into an Abbey. The tendency is further illustrated by the Constitutions published by Whethamstede after a formal visitation of the convent.[75] No gross abuses were discovered, but a certain laziness and indifference towards religious services and observance was found to have pervaded the convent. It was much the same in the cells which the Abbot visited a little later. It appeared that the monks were lazy, and slept too long; just correction for offences had not always been inflicted; services were apt to be carried out indifferently, and sometimes to be omitted altogether. It was slothfulness, not positive vice, that had to be fought against. A subtle illustration of this is unconsciously supplied by the chronicler. The Abbot had promulgated a set of rigorous constitutions which went to the root of the trouble more than was usual; but the convent murmured, refused to accept them, and finally carried their will against the Abbot; as for the Constitutions they became a dead letter. When Whethamstede was re-elected in 1452[76] he was informed that three great defects existed in the Monastery. Scarcely one in the Abbey, it appeared, could be found competent to teach grammar; there were hardly any students from St. Albans at Gloucester Hall; and it was only with difficulty that persons could be found prepared to undertake the burden of preaching.
These facts point to a rapid raising of the standard of comfort, to growing indifference, and a sad decay of the monastic spirit. But in view of the dreadful condition of the convent in 1490 it is important to observe that they give us no reason to suppose the existence of immorality in the cloister or even of any serious relaxation of the discipline.
Abbot Wallingford.
Abbot Whethamstede’s successor was a certain William Albon (1464–1476), ‘who,’ says the chronicler, ‘followed diligently in the footsteps of his predecessor. During all the time he was Abbot he strove after the good of his Church in things temporal and spiritual.’[77] His reign and that of William Wallingford (1476-?1490) carry us to the year 1490, when a letter of Cardinal Morton reveals the monastery in a state of utter degradation. The decay must be placed entirely between the years 1476 and 1490, and it is impossible to account for its rapidity. Perhaps it was due to the bad influence of William Wallingford, but the whole matter is not a little mysterious. In 1451 Wallingford is found holding the joint offices of Archdeacon, Cellarer, Bursar, Forester and Sub-Cellarer of the Abbey, and in some of these offices he was continued during Whethamstede’s second abbacy (1452–1464). During this same period he was to all intents and purposes convicted of having laid hands upon the moneys of the previous Abbot. The matter is dealt with at length in the chronicle, and in most violent terms Wallingford is accused again and again of habitual perjury.[78] Yet on the death of Whethamstede he was elected prior, and in 1476 Abbot.[79] Finally, in an account of The Lives and Benefactions of the Later Abbots[80] he is spoken of in terms of the most extravagant praise. On the whole the general impression of this difficult character derived from the Chronicle is that of a bad man but a vigorous Abbot, who, however evil his influence upon the convent, nevertheless rendered it important services. The monks, perhaps, forgot his vices in their admiration of what was to them the first of virtues—his strenuous efforts to preserve the independence of the house. For it was during his rule that the most determined, and, as it proved, successful attacks were made upon the Abbey’s highly-prized exemption from archiepiscopal visitation.
Traffic in Patronage.
In the register of Wallingford’s abbacy there is only one indication of the bad turn conventual life was taking. This is the record of an enormous traffic in patronage, a new and bad feature at St. Albans, confined for the most part to Wallingford’s abbacy.[81] Economically bankrupt, the Monastery was reduced at last to bartering the livings in its gift, and even to trafficking in the monastic offices.[82] In the register of William Wallingford there is a long list of entries noting the gift by the Abbot to all sorts of important persons of the right to present to the next vacancy in many of the Abbey’s livings. These transactions, whether accompanied by a money consideration or simply to gain the support and protection of persons of high rank, indicate a willingness on the part of the Abbot to trifle with some of his most sacred responsibilities. More sinister still are the frequent changes of the vicars in the various livings. At Elstree, for example, there were as many as nine rectors in sixteen years; at Shephale five occur in six years.[83]
Morton’s Commission.
The case of St. Albans may have been exceptional. In the general decay of English monasticism the Abbey incurred an unenviable notoriety, which indeed still clings to it. But that the English monasteries as a body were in a depraved condition was fully realised by the heads of Church and State. In 1490 Archbishop Morton applied for and received from Innocent VIII the special powers necessary for a visitation of Cluniac, Cistercian and Premonstratension Houses with foreign heads.[84] Armed with the Papal commission Morton wrote letters to the heads of the various monasteries, in which he imperatively called upon them to reform.
In a letter which he addressed to the Abbot, Morton wrote[85]: ‘It has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us on the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you the Abbot aforementioned have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of goods, revenues and possessions of the said monastery and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written.... You and certain of your fellow monks and brethren ... have relaxed the measure and form of religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation and all regular observances, hospitality, alms[86] ... and the ancient rule of your order is deserted ... you have dilapidated the common property; you have made away with the jewels and the woods to the value of 8,000 marks or more.’ The letter goes on to specify ‘the enormous crimes and excesses’ in a most complete manner; names and details are given in every case, and the Abbot and Thomas Sudbury, a monk, are accused of the most disgusting offences. The nunneries of Prez and Sopwell—cells of the Abbey—are stated to be little better than brothels. ‘The brethren of the Abbey, some of whom, as it is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously within the precincts of the monastery and without.’
The Archbishop adds that he had warned the Abbot to cure these abuses before securing the papal commission. The Abbot and the Prioresses of Prez and Sopwell are strictly enjoined to correct these enormities within thirty days, and the Priors of the more distant cells within sixty days. Unless they comply the Archbishop himself will be compelled to make a personal visitation and to carry out the necessary reforms.