Page:VCH London 1.djvu/525

RELIGIOUS HOUSES and if the monks fled they must have returned, for the contemporary biographer of Edward the Confessor speaks of the king having determined, because of his love of the prince of the apostles, to restore a monastery built in honour of St. Peter, which stood outside the walls of London, ' parvo quidem opere et numero paucioribus ibi congre- gatis monachis sub abbate in servitio Christi,' though even for these few the livelihood given by the faithful was barely sufficient. The place, however, was suitable, lying as it did near the City, in the midst of fertile meadows, and on the banks of the great water way which carried the world's merchandise to London.'" This is sober history : legend again intervening tells how Edward, having subdued his kingdom, vowed a pilgrimage to Rome to return thanks for his success, but was absolved by the pope at the instigation of the English nobles, who feared for the hard-won safety of the realm if the king were to go abroad. The condition of the ab- solution was that Edward should build or restore a monastery in honour of St. Peter, but before the bishops bearing the message had returned to England, a hermit, Wlsinus by name, sought the king, and told him that the prince of the apostles had appeared to him in a dream foretelling the return of the ambassadors and pointing out the ancient monastery of Thorney as the spot where he wished his church to stand. '^ However this may be, Edward threw himself into the work with characteristic devotion. The new building grew apace, and the king is said to have brought monks to Westminster from Exeter, when he erected the latter into an episcopal see. Many a legend grew up around the king and his new foundation, and the story of his illness and death about the time of the consecration of the abbey put the crowning touch to its connexion with the life and death of the last king of the old English royal lineage.'* It is therefore not surprising that the Conqueror, with his usual diplomacy, made a great display of devotion to the church. He boasted that on his first visit to the place he had offered 5 marks of silver and a precious pall on the altar of St. Peter, two not less precious ones at the shrine of St. Edward and 2 marks of gold and two palls on the high altar. This was the beginning of that intimate connexion between the abbey and its royal patrons which has made its history more political and national than that of any other religious foundation in England. Two interesting entries in the Customary of the abbey illustrate tiiis connexion. One, that the brethren were allowed to eat with bishops or Benedictine abbots either in the abbey or in the royal palace, as also with kings, queens, or other magnates. The other that the sacrist, in pointing out any relic in the church to a stranger, must do so shortly unless the visitor were a king or queen or some earl of royal lineage.'^ The effect of this connexion upon the character of the house as a religious community is not easy to estimate in the absence of full visitation records. The lack of historians, and the extraordinary number of forged documents in a monastery which should have been in a position to produce as great a school of chroniclers as Saint Albans, do not speak very well either for the critical and literary sense of the house or for its scrupu- lousness. The works of Richard of Cirencester and of Robert of Reading and the other con- tinuators of the ' Flores ' of the so-called Matthew of Westminster are the best known historical writings produced in the abbey. John Bever or ' of London ' wrote a history from the time of Eneas to 1306, chiefly compiled from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other sources. Sulcard, Sporley, and Flete, all wrote short annals of the abbey, chiefly concerned, however, with the characters of the abbots. The at- mosphere, moreover, seems to have engendered a keenness of political partizanship hardly in accordance with the monastic ideal. This was pre-eminently the case in the reign of Henry III, and again under Edward II, when the writer of the ' Flores ' was bitterly hostile to the king, and a dispute arose concerning the election of an abbot who was said to be favoured by Piers Gaveston.^'^ At the same time the royal in- fluence was more than once exercised in favour of discipline, and in early days at least, secured the appointment of abbots of administrative ability and high character. Edwin, who was a great friend of the Con- fessor and had apparently been abbot of West- minster almost throughout his reign, must have died within a few years of the Conquest,^' and if the fifteenth-century chronicler of the house is to be believed, his successor was deposed after exhortation from King William and Lanfranc at the end of four years' rule.^- The next appoint- ment was the work of the king and the arch- bishop. Vitalis had been abbot of Bernav (Evreux diocese) and had done much to improve " Lives of Edtv. Confessor (Rolls Ser.), 417. '^ Ibid., lines 1739-1814 of the French Metrical Life, and Cott. MS. Titus, A. viii, fol. 4. " Leland, Coll. (ed. Hearne), i, 81. " Cf. in the inventory of the abbey furniture taken at the dissolution of the house ' An Awlter clothe . . . with the Birth of o' Lord and Seynt Edwards story'.' Trans, of Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. iv, 325. " Customnry of Sf. Jugusdne's, Canterbury, and St. Peter's, U'cstm. (Hen. Bradshaw Soc), ii, 52, 123. In ' this connexion also may be noticed the thirty-two ' Quysshyns for Estates ' noted in the inventory printed in Trans, of Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. iv, 346. '" Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. i, App. 94. " Cott. MS. Faust. A. iii, and see Widmore, His- tory, 17. " Cott. MS. Faust. A. iii. 435