The Visitation of the monasteries was carried out by Cromwell, as Vicar-General, in 1535.[103] John ap Rice, the commissioner at St. Albans, wrote to his master: ‘At St. Albans we found little although there was much to be found.’[104] The commissioner spoke the simple truth if it was disorder and faction to which he referred. In the same year the prior and about half of the monks petitioned Sir Francis Brian[105] to save them from their own Abbot, who had contracted large debts, had sold the woods belonging to the convent, and had compelled the convent to affix their seal to transactions of which they disapproved, threatening to expel anyone who should inform against him. Within a year there was civil war within the Abbey, and the same section of the convent wrote a second desperate appeal to Sir Brian, saying that the Abbot would surely take vengeance upon them unless Sir Brian secured the appointment of a coadjutor.[106] ‘Our monastery is in much decay and misery,’ they confess sadly, and their words obtain confirmation from another extraordinary incident of that year, the trial of the third Prior for making various treasonable remarks, as for example, that the King intended to leave only four churches in England. Other monks of the Abbey had informed against him to ‘avoid guilty participation.’ The result was indecisive, but the whole matter is an indication of the complete demoralisation of the convent.[107]

By this time it was becoming known to the world that St. Albans must fall.[108] Robert Catton was deprived of the Abbacy in the early days of 1538. The convent was induced to renounce its right to elect a successor in favour of Thomas Cromwell, who appointed a certain Richard Boreman (or Stevynache) to the vacancy. According to Abbot Gasquet, Boreman was chosen simply to effect a voluntary surrender of the Abbey, and it certainly is true that in December, 1537, Cromwell’s commissioners had tried in vain to induce Catton to resign the Abbey into their hands. He had declared himself ready, they wrote to Cromwell, ‘to beg his bread all the days of his life rather than surrender, although by the confession of the Abbot himself there is just cause of deprivation, not only for breaking the King’s injunctions, but also for the manifest dilapidation, making of shifts, negligent administration, and sundry other causes.’[109] It seems plain, in fact, that Catton’s deprivation was in large part due to his own misdeeds,[110] a conclusion which is supported by the fact that Boreman himself was soon involved in difficulties with the Government which appointed him. He was sent for a time to gaol, which is difficult of explanation on the assumption that he was a Government tool appointed only to effect a quiet surrender. Eventually the Act of Surrender was signed on December 5th, 1539. Some forty signatures were appended, indicating a decrease of one-third in the normal numbers of the convent.[111] The net monastic income was estimated at £2,102, the fourth highest in the Kingdom.[112] It only remained to divide the spoils, which was done with astonishing quickness. By the year 1544 every acre of the St. Albans estates was disposed of. The Abbey buildings were acquired by the townsmen (and so saved from destruction) at a cost of £400.

The history of St. Albans is sufficient proof that the time is past when we can rest content with generalisations about monasticism in the later Middle Ages. During the fourteenth century the trend of events in the Abbey was entirely contrary to that in most English Houses. While they decayed, St. Albans revived. A century later it is probable that the monasteries as a whole were in a far less degraded condition than St. Albans. Perhaps similarly startling differences will be revealed when the history of other abbeys has been worked out in detail. Many loose generalisations on the subject of the monasteries are due to the assumption that decay or reform proceeded at an equal pace in different abbeys. Froude, for example, sought to trace a growing corruption of monasticism from Norman times. His view was founded simply on his study of St. Albans records, and even here his account was worthless. The decadence, the immorality of which he spoke was largely confined to the early years of the fourteenth century, and the Abbacy of William Wallingford (1476–1490). To see in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a consistent, uniform process of decay is largely to misunderstand St. Albans’ history.

It is true, nevertheless, that the best days of the Abbey were already past at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The evolution of modern from mediaeval society, which was effected during our period, was fatal to monasticism. The country grew more and more out of sympathy with the monasteries; amid uncongenial surroundings, St. Albans, in common with other abbeys, became increasingly unpopular. By its unintelligent conservatism St. Albans alienated the sympathies of section after section of the community, until at the Dissolution it stood well-nigh in isolation. Recent defence of the monastic system has failed as completely as Froude’s indictment. In the Dissolution of St. Albans we may not, like Froude, ‘see the workings of the ineffable Being,’ but we are no less unable to regret it, to look upon it as a great social calamity.

Appendix:
See [Note 88], p. 60.

The account of William Wallingford’s abbacy in the Lives and Benefactions[113] ... is inconsistent with all that is known of him from other sources. The Abbot is described in a tone of excessive admiration which cannot be reconciled with the account of him supplied by Morton’s letter. In the Lives and Benefactions ..., for instance, he is stated to have left the Monastery entirely free of debt. This is not only intrinsically improbable, but is directly contradicted by Morton’s statement. Again, it is difficult to imagine any adequate reason why the convent should solemnly fix its seal as a testimony to the proof of the narrative, especially when the Abbot was, as it seems, still living. Indeed, considered apart from other evidence, this last passage, without explicitly stating it, distinctly implies that Wallingford did die in 1484. Doubtless the error of Newcome (followed by the editors of Dugdale’s Monasticon), who states that Wallingford died in 1484, is to be explained in this way.

It may be well, therefore, to repeat that the folio of the Register containing the account of Wallingford’s election is missing, having been apparently torn from the MS.; that he had been convicted of appropriating Abbot Stoke’s treasure in 1451; that in the ‘Register of John Whethamstede’ he is continually mentioned in terms of extreme disgust; and finally, that the Register of his own abbacy breaks off abruptly the year before Morton’s Commission.

In view of these facts we must regard the story of his abbacy, as told in the Lives and Benefactions, with extreme mistrust. It is not improbable that this account was written by a convent fearful of offending a tyrannical Abbot; it is by no means impossible that the Abbot himself caused the narrative to be written as an answer to the charges contained in Morton’s letter.

LIST OF THE ABBOTS OF ST. ALBAN’S
FROM 1291 TO 1539.

John de Berkhamstede1291–1302.
John de Maryns1302–1308.
Hugh de Eversdon1308–1326.
Richard de Wallingford1326–1335.
Michael de Mentmore1335–1349.
Thomas de la Mare1349–1396.
John Moote1396–1401.
William Heyworth1401–1420.
John Whethamstede1420–1440.
John Stoke1440–1452.
John Whethamstede (2)1452–1464.
William Albon1464–1476.
William Wallingford1476–1491(?).
John Ramrygge1492–1521.
Thomas Wolsey1521–1530.
Robert Catton1530–1538.
Richard Boreman (Stevynache)1538–1539.