RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



Wallingford was guilty either of using Dixwell 

 to oust Boston by indefensible means, or of 

 entrusting authority to a man convicted on 

 his own confession of intrigues for his own 

 advantage. 



It is unlikely that the weakness or lack of 

 principle so manifest here was displayed in this 

 instance only, and the easiest explanation of the 

 list of the abbot's good works attested by the 

 prior and convent in August 1484^' is that it 

 was intended as a defence against actual or 

 anticipated attacks on Wallingford's adminis- 

 tration.** 



In April 1487 John Rothbury, the archdeacon, 

 went to Rome to ask for certain additional 

 privileges : among other things that the abbot 

 and his successors might confer holy orders on 

 monks of the abbey and cells, and on seculars of 

 their jurisdiction, and also confirm children born 

 within that area, and that the exemption of St. 

 Albans might be declared to extend to pleas in 

 the Court of Arches.** This attempt to secure 

 absolute ecclesiastical independence, unsuccess- 

 ful owing to the opposition of the cardinals and 

 bishops,^" argues unmistakable apprehension of 

 episcopal and archiepiscopal activities, and may 

 thus afford a clue to the date of the suit brought 

 against the abbot in the Court of Arches by the 

 Prioress of Sopwell,^ to be referred to later. 

 Her case subsequently came before the arch- 

 bishop as Chancellor, and undoubtedly helped 

 to give him an unfavourable opinion of Walling- 

 ford and his monks. Some move on Morton's 

 part, probably his warning to the abbot to 

 amend what was wrong,^ made Wallingford 

 think the abbey's exemption in danger, for on 

 6 February 1490 he procured a papal bull which 

 ordered the archbishop to protect the privileges 

 of St. Albans.^ Morton, however, on 6 March 

 was commissioned by papal bull to visit exempt 

 monasteries, and under its powers he wrote on 

 5 July to the abbot threatening him with a 

 visitation unless within thirty days the abuses 

 reported to exist at St. Albans ^ were reformed. 

 The abbot was accused of simony and usury, 

 and of being so remiss in his rule and in his 



" Cott. MS. Nero, D vii, printed in Reg. oj 

 St. Albans, i, App. D. 



1' See Dr. Gairdner, ' Archbishop Morton and 

 St. Albans,' Ungl. Hist. Review, xxiv, 95. Abbot 

 Gasquet thinks it was occasioned by the convent's 

 discovery of the accusations against Wallingford con- 

 tained in what purported to be Wheathampstead's 

 Register {Abbot Wallingford, 30-2). 



" Reg. of St. Albans, ii, 287-9. 



2» Ibid. 289. 



21 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 181, no. 4. 



^^ He says in his letter of 5 July that he had 

 admonished him shortly before (Wilkins, Concilia, 'in, 

 632). 



^' Gasquet, Abbot WalRngford, 5 o. 



^ Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 632. 



administration of goods that regular observances 

 had been given up, hospitality and alms had 

 decreased, and daily diminished, and not a few 

 of the monks led dissolute lives, defiling even 

 God's temples by intercourse with nuns ; the 

 abbot is said to have admitted as a nun into 

 the house of Pre and made prioress a married 

 woman named Helen Germyn who had previously 

 left her husband to hve in adultery, and he had 

 taken no measures against her guilty intimacy 

 with Thomas Sudbury ,"5 one of his monks ; he 

 had also not corrected other monks who resorted 

 to the nunnery for immoral purposes ; he had 

 changed the Prioresses of Sopwell at his caprice, 

 and both here and at Pr6 had deposed the good 

 and religious and promoted the idle and vicious ; 

 he had moreover appointed as wardens of those 

 houses monks who had dissipated their goods ; 

 he had dilapidated the property of the monastery 

 and cells, sold the jewels and cut down wood to 

 the value of 8,000 marks and more ; the monks 

 neglected divine service ; some consorted with 

 harlots even in the precincts of the abbey, others 

 to pay for promotion had stolen the jewels of 

 the church and robbed the very shrine and had 

 not been punished. 



On II July the abbey's proctor represented 

 to the pope that St. Albans had pecuHar privi- 

 leges as to exemption from visitation, and asked 

 and obtained his protection for the monastery 

 pending its appeal.^® The case was submitted 

 to two papal chaplains, and by their advice 

 Morton on 30 July received special faculties to 

 deal vsith St. Albans." Whether he acted on 

 them, however, is not known .^^ In the absence 

 of the information that the account of an in- 

 quiry ^' or injunctions would have afforded, the 

 truth or falsehood of the charges in the letter or 

 ' monition ' remains a question of inference and 

 probabiUty. 



Abbot Gasquet^" considers that the actual 

 facts about Wallingford and the abbey at this 



" He was almoner in 1485 {JLeg. of St. Albans, ii, 



273)- 



^' Gasquet, op. cit. 51-2. 



2^ Ibid. 52-3. The statement in the Obit Book 

 (printed in Reg. of St. Albans, i, 478, App. D) that 

 Wallingford won a just victory in his contest with 

 the archbishop, and preserved all the privileges of 

 the abbey inviolate, means, therefore, not that he 

 prevented a visitation, but that he secured an 

 acknowledgement of the abbey's peculiar and extra- 

 ordinary immunities. 



28 Dr. Gairdner thought it probable that the 

 visitation took place ('Archbishop Morton and St. 

 Albans,' Engl. Hist. Rev. xxiv, 321). Abbot 

 Gasquet (op. cit. 59) thinks it more likely that Morton 

 did not visit, but was satisfied with the testimony of 

 the community that Wallingford had been slandered. 



29 Froude {Short Studies, iii, 127) assumed that 

 Morton's letter was the result of an official inquiry, 

 but he was quite mistaken. 



'» Op. cit. 



407 



