The Abbey of St. Albans from 1300 to the dissolution of the monasteries

by V. H. Galbraith

The Abbot, making no attempt to answer the charges, instantly appealed to the Pope against the authority of the Archbishop to hold a visitation.[87] The Pope consented to prohibit any action on Morton’s part pending the hearing of the appeal by two papal chaplains. Abbot Wallingford must now have won his case but for the intervention of Henry VII. The combined pleadings of King and Archbishop prevailed with the Pope. On July 30th, 1490, Innocent VIII, without pronouncing on the question of exemption, granted special faculties to the Archbishop for this particular visitation notwithstanding all rights and privileges. And there can be little doubt but that the visitation was in due course carried out.[88] Whether all these charges were substantiated we do not know; but it is impossible to doubt that the bulk of them was true. St. Albans was too large, too famous a house, and too near London, for Morton to have been misled by idle rumour. The outcome of Morton’s letter is unrecorded; probably the reforms were effected, though the Abbot, it would appear, was not deposed. It is in the Abbey’s favour that no further trace of immorality is to be found in the history of the fifty years of life which lay before it.

Events 1489–1539.

It seems strange that the Abbey should have gone on after this shock without a suspicion of coming destruction. Such, however, was the case; and even Henry VII is found to endow the monastery in return for certain prayers for his soul to be rendered ‘for ever and ever.’ As late as 1530, indeed, there is mention of a grant to the Abbey of an annual fair. Of these last years a wealth of detail has survived, albeit in unlikely places. In 1511 the House had fallen into the King’s debt; in 1515 Abbot Ramrygge, Wallingford’s successor, refused to pay Peter Pence,[89] and in 1519 the Prior of Rochester was appointed coadjutor to the old Abbot.[90] Monastic affairs, it appears, were in complete disorder, and a large debt (4,000 marks) had been accumulated. In the same year the Prior of Tynemouth was freed from the jurisdiction of St. Albans,[91] a measure which illustrates the enfeebled condition of the Abbey.

The first hint of the final catastrophe occurred upon the death of Ramrygge in 1521. By a dispensation of Adrian VI, Wolsey was commended to the vacant abbacy,[92] the convent apparently allowing this infringement of its rights without protest. Perhaps, as Abbot Gasquet has said, the motive for this action was in part a desire to reward the cardinal for secular services. If so, it was a poor compliment to Wolsey to receive an abbey so loaded with debt as to be unable to pay its contribution to Convocation.[93] It is far more likely that he secured it, knowing that the House was bankrupt, and that strong measures were required to save it.[94]

The death of Wolsey necessitated a fresh election. No interference was attempted by Henry VIII, who confirmed the convent’s choice in the person of Robert Catton. It was during his abbacy the Visitation of the monasteries was carried out.

Social Influence of the Abbey.

Owing to the disappearance of the Hertfordshire surveys, St. Albans can furnish no certain evidence upon the numerous questions arising out of the Dissolution.[95] Such facts as we have tend to confirm the conclusions of M. Savine.[96] There is no doubt, for example, that the social sympathies of the Abbey were pre-eminently aristocratic. Most of the monks do not themselves appear to have come from the lower strata of society. The Abbey bestowed its corrodies for the most part upon persons of the well-to-do classes. Moreover, a close connection existed between the Abbey and the neighbouring gentry, whose sons it had long been wont to board and educate. On members of the same class many of the lay offices of the monastery were conferred.[97] Even the apparently democratic practice of alms-giving was a perfunctory duty, a mere compliance with the wishes of donors who had in times past liberally endowed the Abbey. At a wealthy House like St. Albans, which relied so completely on the patronage of the great, it could scarcely have been otherwise.

In fact, evidence compels us to reduce the generally accepted estimates of the Abbey’s social and economic importance. Such social services as it did render were chiefly on the side of hospitality and education. Of these, hospitality[98]—which had always been at least as aristocratic as otherwise—had seriously diminished by the sixteenth century.[99] Nevertheless, after the Dissolution this common shelter for rich and poor must have been deeply regretted.[100]

Education.

The Abbey perhaps did its best work in the sphere of education; from first to last during our period particular care was expended upon the education of the monks, within the monastery and at the University. The Abbey deserves still greater credit for creating and maintaining St. Albans Grammar School. The first mention of the School occurs in 1100, when it was ruled by a secular head master and received fees from scholars. In the thirteenth century arose the practice of boarding within the monastery and teaching the sons of neighbouring lords; for the future no fees were to be received from the sixteen poorest scholars; the master was given the rare privilege of excommunicating the disobedient, and allowed, after an examination, to confer degrees upon the scholars after the manner of the Universities. All illicit or adulterine schools were to be rooted out of the Liberty. Towards the end of the century the Abbey began to board and educate a number of poor scholars; this custom, as a charity, fell to the Almoner, who soon devolved his duties upon a serjeant, who, like the schoolmaster, was not a monk. The school was thus in no sense ‘an avenue to the monastery’; on the contrary, there was an entire separation of the school from the Abbey. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the institution flourished when the Abbey itself was in decay[101] till, by a wide interpretation of terms, it was dissolved in 1539 as a part of the Abbey. This continuous interest in secular education for four centuries was perhaps the best word that could be said for the Abbey at the Dissolution.[102]