1915] on The Archives of Westminster Abbey 457 



■with all the wealth of our materials there survives not a trace of his 

 or any other applicant's testimonials. He came, he was seen, he 

 was admitted. The requisites for admission were that he must have 

 examined his conscience and his motives in applying, that he must 

 be sound in body, free in civil status, unburdened by debt or other 

 obligations, and as a rule not less than eighteen years of age.* A 

 socially anxious mother once asked a head-master whether all due 

 care was taken to inquire as to the position of the homes from which 

 his pupils came. " Let me assure you, madam," he replied, " that 

 so long as your boy behaves and works, we shall not trouble about 

 the social status of his parents." So it was at Westminster. 



Our first trace of Wilham Colchester's name on the books is in con- 

 nexion with his ordination. I cannot tell you what Bishop admitted 

 him to the ministry, nor where it happened ; but I know that in the 

 year 1361-2 he said Mass for the first time, and I know it, not 

 because it seemed to be an event worth chronicling of itself, but 

 because three of our officers in that year tell me that they expended 

 Is. 7hd. each in bread and wine as "exennia" — i.e., a complimentary 

 gift — sent to him in honour of the event. He was then, we may 

 assume, twenty-three years of age ; he probably entered the Convent 

 in 1356, and he was probably born in 1338. 



Five years after his ordination, in 1366, "William Colchester was 

 chosen by the Convent as one of two of their number whom they 

 thought specially apt to learning, and whom it was their duty to 

 send up to Oxford to join other Benedictine students at Gloucester 

 Hall, an institution set up by the Order at its General Chapter held 

 in Abingdon in 1290.t The custom with us was that the Convent 

 Treasurer paid £10 yearly to each Westminster student for his 

 maintenance, besides his expenses going and returning, so that it is 

 possible to compile from the Treasurers' rolls a fairly complete list 

 of our Oxford scholars from 1356, when I came upon the first signs 

 of a definite system, till the Dissolution. The plan tended to the 

 great advantage of the monastery ; it meant that its likely young 

 men at an impressionable time in their lives were taken out of the 

 narrow rut of cloistral life and associated with the world of learning 

 and affairs ; and it will be found that a large proportion of those 

 who were sent to Oxford rose quickly to positions of trust in the 

 Convent. William Colchester was at Oxford from 1366 to 1370. 

 I cannot say that the Latin prose of which he was capable does- 

 credit to his University, for Latinity was seldom more vile than 

 that in which his few letters are couched. I content myself with 

 assuming that he learnt there how to deal with men, and I can see 

 that the Convent which had sent him there was satisfied with the 

 results of its expenditm-e. For two things happened upon his return. 



First, in the month of October, 1371, he was promoted, as the 



* Customary of Westminster, H. B. S. i. 261, 404. 

 t Eeyner, de Antig_. Bcnecl. in Anglia. App. p. 55. 



