DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. 179 



during the period of his rule, educated three hundred youths, who 

 lived domesticated with him, besides bestowing large benefactions 

 upon many indigent scholars who could not support the expenses of 

 an university education. Among the abbots who were themselves 

 the possessors of great mental endowments may be mentioned the 

 names of Hugh Faringdon,* the last Abbot of Reading, William 

 Frysell,t Prior of the Cathedral Benedictine Convent, at Roches- 

 ter, John Batmanson4 Prior of the Carthusians in London, John 

 Webbe,§ Prior of the Benedictine Convent at Coventry, and Keder- 

 minster,|| Abbot of Winchecombe, in Gloucestershire. Several 

 more instances might be recorded of abbots who passed their lives 



respecting the trial and execution of the abbot and two monks of Glaston- 

 bury, in Ellis's Series of Hist. Letters, vol. ii., p. 99. The lloman Catholic 

 writers stoutly deny Burnett's assertion, that at the gallows the abbot con- 

 fessed the justice of his sentence. There can be little doubt but that the 

 whole machinery of persecution was gradually brought into work against 

 him. It was not likely that the richest of abbacies, after St. Peter's, should 

 be allowed to escape the grasp of the secular and avaricious magnates, when 

 so many of the priories were reduced by them to a state of poverty ap- 

 proaching the apostolic standard. There were sixteen mitred abbots which 

 had revenues above £1,000. per ami. St. Peter's, Westminster, was valued 

 at £3,977., and Glastonbury at £3,508.— See Speed's Catalogue of Religious 

 Houses apud Collier, append., p. 34. 



* See his Latin Epistles addressed to the University of Oxford, while the 

 praises bestowed upon them by Warton may be considered as no mean evi- 

 dence of their excellence. — Vol. iii., p. 278. 



-J- That learned Orientalist, Robert Wakefield, in his Oratio de laudibus et 

 utilitate trium Linguarum Arabia, Chaldaica, et Hebraicce, pronounces a warm 

 eulogium on him as a judge of critical literature — See Leland, Collect., vol. 

 i., p. 18. 



X Robert Shirwoode, who published a latin translation of Ecclesiastes, 

 with critical annotations on the Hebrew text, styles him, from his profound 

 erudition and generous love of letters, Monachorum Decus. — Leland, Collect., 

 vol. ii., p. 23. 



§ Warton assigns to this monk a high rank as a scholar, when he says that 

 " he controverted Erasmus's Commentary on the New Testament with a degree 

 of spirit and erudition which was unhappily misapplied, and would have 

 done honour to the cause of his antagonist." — Vol. iii., p. 272. 



|| This admirable person instituted lectures in his monastery for the ex- 

 planation of the Scriptures in their original language, to which so many re- 

 sorted that he became the establisher, as it were, of another university. — 

 "Non aliter quam si fuisset altera nova universitatis." — See Wood, Hist. 

 Univ. Oxon., vol. i., p. 241. Longland, the most eloquent bishop of his day, 

 and Henry's favourite preacher, has dedicated to Kederminster five quadra- 

 gesimal sermons, delivered at Court, in which he expatiates at some length 

 on his singularis eruditio, and other rare attainments. 



