4C0 The Rev. E. H. Pearce [May U, 



a fatherly tip of 20s. ; the Bishop of Durham's man, whose master 

 we know as the builder of Bishop Hatfield Hall at Durham, and 

 who is sent with a gift of two greyhounds to the Abbot. Several 

 messages come from the Prince, i.e., the Black Prince, who is now 

 at Wycombe and now at Kensington, and the Abbot makes several 

 journeys by boat to call on the Bishop of Winchester, no less a man 

 than William of Wykeham, who was in some disgrace at the time. 



But as he had thus served the lord Abbot well, Colchester's next 

 responsibihty was placed upon him by the whole Convent, whose 

 Treasurer he ^vas for the year 1375-6, as well as Coquinarius or 

 Kitchener. Happily we still possess his Treasurer-account. I must 

 not go through it at length, but I cannot omit one feature of it, 

 which you will find among his expenses under the head of " pitancie 

 et flacones." Pitances were any additional meals on special occasions 

 to vary the dismal round of dry bread and sour wine provided in the 

 Refectory. But " flacones " were pancakes, and pancakes are still a 

 Westminster institution, though the cost of providing them for my 

 colleagues and myself is, unhappily, no longer regarded by the 

 Ecclesiastical Commissioners as a legitimate feature of the Treasurer's 

 balance-sheet. First, then, the item itself : Paid in milk, '* creym," 

 butter, cheese and eggs bought for pancakes in Easter week, on 

 Rogation days and at Whitsuntide, 6 is. Sd. And now for some 

 further light upon it. In 1389, when William Colchester had been 

 three years in the Abbot's chair, the Convent Kitchener was one 

 William Clehungre or Clayhanger, and you will see from his bill 

 how pancakes have developed in the interval. It sets forth his 

 expenses laid out for the pancakes prescribed for the brethren, and 

 delivered to the monastery according to its custom during fifty-six 

 days each year, namely, from Easter Day to Trinity Sunday, in the 

 twelfth year of King Richard II., as appears by all the parcels : — 



IMilk. — First 126 gallons of milk ® Id. the gallon . 

 Butter. — Also 3 gallons 3 qrts. of butter @ 2s. 4d. a 



gallon 



Eggs. — Also 5816 eggs @ lOd. a hundred 

 Salt. — Also one peck of salt @ dd. . 



Total . 



Our Kitchener makes some trifling assumptions in his multipli- 

 cation for the butter and the eggs, and he robs the Convent of 

 fivepence when he adds up the total. Let us return to his pancakes 

 or his omelettes, whichever they were, and, with an eye to that wise 

 saw which insists that you cannot make such things without breaking 

 eggs, let us note that the total of eggs means an average of 103 and 

 a fraction per day, which, when we consider that in 1389 the prior 

 and Convent numbered forty-nine persons, works out at the by no- 

 means excessive rate of 2h eggs a person per day. There is another 



