4C8 The Rev. E. H. Pearce [May 14, 



absence, Lad disbursed to AVilliam Colchester the funds necessary 

 for his long journeys and his law costs. But the Convent had made 

 up its mind, and within a fortnight Colchester was elected by com- 

 promission. The King, though he was afterwards reconciled, refused 

 for a time to receive the nomination. It is well to bear this incident 

 in mind when you find Shakespeare's authorities suggesting that 

 Colchester was an " arch conspirator " on Eichard's behalf. 



Certainly there is no doubt about Richard 11. 's continued favour 

 and generosity to the Abbey. Here is a deed of gift, May 28, 1389, 

 of a set of Mass vestments of cloth-of-gold embroidered with re- 

 presentations of the Holy Trinity, St Edward the Confessor and 

 St. Edmund the King. ' In 18'J4, after the death of his Queen, 

 Anne of Bohemia, came his grant of £200 a year to maintain her 

 anniversary, and his own when he should depart hence ; which 

 was followed in April, 1399, by a grant of manors and lands in 

 Middlesex, Bedfordshire and Berkshire, from whence the sum of 

 about £200 yearly could be permanently derived. These matters 

 and the Abbot's arrangements for his own anniversaries at Aldenham 

 in Herts, at Hurley in Berkshire, at Colchester and at Westminster, 

 are well known, through the care with which our predecessors 

 guarded their precious documents. 



But we can show what is less known — how he managed his 

 estates and ordered his life. Times were bad, and farmers fell in 

 arrear. In 1388-9* these arrears were £104, or one-sixth of his 

 rental. But stock is plentiful. He has 58 horses and 19 foals ; 

 351 heads of cattle ; 2287 sheep and lambs ; and 299 pigs. When 

 he listened to the lay-clerks in the choir chanting the 144th Psalm 

 he had every reason to desire that there might be " no complaining,"" 

 and that our sheep might " bring forth thousands and ten thousands 

 in our streets." But the rolls of his Seneschals — we have six between 

 1388 and 1403— are of interest for the light that they throw on the 

 man. He did not ail much. He was not very well, indeed, in 

 1389, and once a doctor had a shilling from him for curing his tibia,, 

 which was, I find, a peculiarly vulnerable part of monkish anatomy. 

 He does not seem to have been a mighty hunter before the Lord 

 like Nicholas Litlington ; otherwise his steward would hardly buy 

 359 rabbits, 41 woodcock, and a pheasant. Certainly he was careful 

 and even frugal in his management, as a single document is sufficient to- 

 imply. I have already mentioned the monastic custom of " exennia,"' 

 gifts in kind, on certain rare occasions of rejoicing in a monk's life. 

 The advantage of being Abbot was that you had "exennia" every year 

 from a number of folk who liked to be in your good graces, heads 

 of daughter-convents, vicars of parishes on the estates, monks who 

 liked the great man to know that they could ply the rod or bend a 

 bow ; the King's larderer with a dish of fish ; Master Southam, the 



* Mun. 6165. 



