RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



themselves in the study of letters but are too 

 fond of ease, and that the abbot has not pre- 

 sented a balance sheet to the monks for many 

 years. 



On the morrow of the exposure, the bishop 

 ■compelled Abbot John to give up the adminis- 

 tration of affairs and committed them to the 

 charge of William Batell, one of the monies.^ 

 It was arranged that the abbot should leave and 

 reside at the manor of Downham Hall, according 

 to the form and conditions upon which JohnNele 

 lately held the manor, namely by paying £^ a year 

 to the monastery. The £^ was to be deducted 

 from the pension of the abbot. He was to 

 receive each week for himself and three servants 

 eighteen loaves of the best bread and eighteen loaves 

 of ' Trencherd breede,' and eighteen flagons of 

 ■customary ale, and every day a dish for dinner 

 and another for supper of the better sort such as 

 would serve for four monks in hall, and another 

 dish not so good for his attendants. He was also 

 to be supplied with candles and fuel, both for his 

 chamber and kitchen, and other necessaries at 

 the charge of the cellarer. If the abbot chose 

 to live elsewhere than at Downham Hall, in any 

 other honest quarters, he was to receive yj. t\.d. 

 a week in lieu of provisions. Each of the three 

 servants was to receive 20s. a year. The abbot was 

 also to have, at the charge of the monastery, 

 four shod horses, with saddles and bridles, and 

 to have his expenses when he rode on business 

 ■of the monastery or for its defence in the 

 spiritual or temporal courts. Possibly the bishop 

 •consented to this liberal treatment of the exiled 

 abbot as some kind of punishment to the convent 

 at large, for so large a pension must have proved 

 a heavy burden. It is noteworthy to observe 

 that this businesslike agreement was drawn up 

 on the Sunday. When it had been accepted by the 

 abbot and convent, the bishop adjourned the 

 visitation to the following day, and then again 

 to the Thursday. Returning on the Thursday 

 the bishop enjoined on the monks that none of 

 them should dare to defame another, under pain 

 of excommunication, and then further adjourned 

 the visitation until the last day of the following 

 May.^ By thus keeping the visitation open, the 

 diocesan was entitled to return and use more 

 extreme measures with the monks, if the case 

 demanded it, without any dilatory preliminaries. 



When Bishop Nicke visited this house in 

 June, 1 5 14, the condition of things was, if 

 possible, more disgraceful than in 1492. The 

 abbot, Thomas Chamberlain, stated that the 

 monks had broken the cloister bolts, and that 

 the prior and other monks had broken open the 

 evidence chest. William Bury, the prior, made 



' His accounts, as chamberlain, for 1491, are 

 extant {Mini. Accts. Hen. Vll, No. 420) and show 

 him to have been a good manager, as the receipts and 

 expenditure exactly balance. 



'• Jessopp, Norw. Visit. (Camd. See), 20-23. 



a great variety of charges, divided into twenty 

 heads, against those under his rule, serious and 

 trivial, such as against Richard Cambridge for 

 inveighing against the doctrine of the resurrec- 

 tion, or John Cambridge for furtively hiding a 

 cookery book in his cubicle. On the other 

 hand there was much recrimination against tha 

 prior, who seems to have acted occasionally like 

 a madman, and was indeed charged with fits 

 of lunacy. He was accused of drawing a sword 

 on one monk, striking two others with a stone 

 in the cloister, maliciously breaking John 

 Hengham's claricord, and not attending mattins 

 oftener than once a month. Other evidence 

 proved general disorder and discomfort, such as 

 bad language, two cases of drunkenness, the 

 occasional presence of women, general neglect 

 of mass and mattins, the revealing of confession, 

 ruinous state of some of the buildings, and dis- 

 graceful condition of the church vessels and 

 ornaments. The immediate action of the bishop 

 was the dismissal of the prior and an injunction 

 to the convent to elect a successor within a 

 month.' 



Before the record of the next visitation 

 Wymondham had the good fortune to be ruled by 

 an abbot of much learning and of high character. 

 To Thomas Chamberlain in 15 17 succeeded 

 John Bransforth, D.D., and in 1520 John Holt, 

 titular bishop of Lydda, and a suffragan-bishop 

 of the diocese of London, was elected. He was 

 the tutor and friend of Sir Thomas More and 

 the author of the first Latin grammar that was 

 printed in England, about 1497.* He was an 

 old man at the time of his election, but his 

 influence for good over a notoriously unruly 

 house must have soon made itself felt. 



When the sufFragan-bishop of Chalcedon and 

 his brother commissioners visited Wymondham 

 on 29 June, 1520, the abbot's only complaint 

 was a neglect on the part of the monks to sing 

 the Lady Mass for six or eight days. The prior, 

 James Blome, stated that some of the windows 

 of the church were broken, and that pigeons 

 entered and defiled the books. William Bury, 

 their prior, was then precentor, and charged one 

 monk (Richard Cambridge) with absence from 

 mattins, and another with drunkenness. Richard 

 Cambridge said that they had not a washer- 

 woman, a barber, or a clock. As compared, 

 however, with the last two visitations, the con- 

 dition of things was satisfactory. The injunctions 

 made by the visitors ordered the glazing of the 

 church windows, the rendering of an annual 

 account by the abbot to the senior monks, the 

 providing of two secular servants to see to the 

 lighting and bell ringing, &c.* 



When the abbey was visited in July, 1526, 

 the improvement begun under Abbot John was 



' Ibid. 95-101. 



* Wood, Athena (Bliss), i, 14. 



' Jessopp, Nonv. Fiiit. (Camd. See). 



341 



