1915] on The Archives of Westminster Abbey 459 



Nicholas Litliogton made him his Cnstos Hospicii, i.e., Seneschal or 

 Steward of his household. We have the roll in which the young- 

 monk gives an account * of his stewardship for the year Michaelmas- 

 Michaelmas, 1373-4, and as the doings it records represented his 

 first experience of that monastic business m which he was to be 

 involved for nearly half a century, we may stay a moment to get our 

 own impressions. He found his mister possessed of a considerable 

 rent-roll in different parts of the country — Worcestershire, Gloucester- 

 shire, Oxford, Surrey, Middlesex and Bucks. The revenues from 

 these lands ran up to £69G 13s. QcL, and the sale of stock, including 

 an ox sold for 18s. 4:d. and a cow for 13s. " timore pestilencie," 

 brought the total up to £719 8s. 8^. 



Large as this sum sounds, it was none too large for the needs 

 of the Abbot. Household expenses, not given here in detail, came 

 to £151 Is. 4jr/. The purchase of live-stock — grey palfreys, bullocks, 

 cows, steers, sheep, pigs, swans, poultry, no less than 966 pigeons 

 (at about Jd each) — required £6-6 2s. lOcL, and the outlay on dead 

 stock, such as bacon, salt fish, five barrels of white herring, fourteen 

 casks of red herring, and three casks of Scottish red herring, 

 amounted to £31 8s. 4:(L Lest it should be claimed that the last 

 variety was a special delicacy, I am bound to add that it seems more 

 hkely to have been a means of Lenten penance, for the red herring 

 from Scotland was priced at 4s. a cask as against 5s. Qd. for that 

 which had reddened elsewhere. Also, in case any housewife concludes 

 from the figures of all this provision that there has been great waste, 

 I note that it is William Colchester's duty to turn over his roll 

 and to give a stock-keeping account, from which it will appear that 

 at the end of the year his lordship has indeed entirely run out of 

 herrings, but he still has five salt fish ; his score of oxen is fourteen 

 up and two still to play, while all the eighty pigs are gone w^here 

 ail good pigs must needs go. 



I must not pursue in too great detail the rest of the expenditure 

 — corn and wine and clothing and gifts to visitors. The total outlay 

 of the year seems to have been £684 lis. 7J^/., so that there was 

 but little left out of £719. But I do want you to realize the sort 

 of duties that fell on the young seneschal. He would get a pair of 

 my lord's boots mended for twopence, or would spend sixpence in 

 stringing the great sportsman's bows, and twopence on two bags in 

 which to carrry his arrow-heads. But he was probably much more 

 interested in the goings and comings of persons — the squire of the 

 Earl of Camb-idge, Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward IIL, who 

 receives 20s. for bringing a letter to the Abbot from his lord ; the 

 Earl of Warwick's steward, who comes to sell a black palfrey ; a 

 brother-monk, Richard Excestr', whom we shall meet again, and who 

 was just starting on his career at Oxford, to whom the Abbot gives 



* Man. 24517. 



