1915] on The Archives of Westminster Abbey 471 



Niger " (f. 87 b.) ; and then for some years he may have secured a 

 rest, though he seems to have been in Ireland in 1399. But in 

 1407, when he was well-nigh seventy, the travels were resumed. I 

 know it because his farm bailiffs bring the rents to his Receiver 

 instead of to the great man himself, and because there is an undated 

 letter of his written from Cologne * to two monks, who were slow 

 about some business as to which the old man was keen and peremptory, 

 and of whom one was dead by 1410. By the same clue, as well as 

 by official documents, I can follow him abroad again in 1412 and 

 ag-ain in 1414, this time to attend the great Council of Constance 

 with a long retinue; and I like to think that before leaving he had 

 a useful interview with the Primate, for the Abbot's Treasurer 

 enters " ScL for boat-hire when my lord dined at Lambhyth with the 

 Archbishop." 



In between those two journeys — on Passion Sunday, 1413 — there 

 came the great and bitterly cold solemnity of Henry Y.'s Coronation, 

 and when the brave King's chantry was set up, the sculptor was 

 bidden to recall Abbot Colchester's features as he stood at the 

 monarch's left hand. Even the journey to Constance did not blind 

 our Abbot to his country's danger and his own power to help. I 

 was searching for something else the other day in the Treasurer's 

 roll for 1414-5, the year of the preparation for Agincourt, and 

 found an entry of £33 expended in a new chariot with six horses, 

 with a complete set of harness, which had been given by the Convent 

 to the King on his departure for France, together with the stipends 

 of a valet, a boy and a page and keep for the horses for three weeks; 

 it is noted in the entry that on his part the old traveller-Abbot had 

 done the like. The two outlays together come to nearly £1000 of 

 our money. 



He died some time in the autumn of 1420 after an Abbacy of 

 thirty-four years, and his tomb is still with us in St. John Baptist's 

 Chapel. To the last his natural shrewdness was not abated. AVe 

 have the account! for the last year of his life of his outlays in 

 connexion with the General Chapter of the Benedictines at North- 

 ampton. There are payments in it to two Westminster monks for 

 services rendered at that conference. They were Richard Harwden 

 and Edmund Kirton, the two men who were elected in turn as 

 Abbot in his place. It is not every man of eighty who can spot his 

 successors for forty years ahead and encourage them to prepare 

 themselves. 



Once more, as he moved among men, treading no doubt at times 

 in slippery places, he seems to have retained their regard. I have 

 spoken to you of a young monk, one Thomas Merke, whom Colchester 

 befriended, and who became Bishop of Carlisle, dying in 1409. AVe 

 have a letter J from him to our Abbot in which the latter is asked 



» Mun. 1653. f Mmi. 12397. t Mun. 9240. 



