The monks of Westminster : being a register of the brethren of the convent from the time of the Confessor to the dissolution with lists of the obedientiaries and an introduction / by E.H. Pearce.
- Ernest Pearce
- Date:
- 1916
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The monks of Westminster : being a register of the brethren of the convent from the time of the Confessor to the dissolution with lists of the obedientiaries and an introduction / by E.H. Pearce. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![dates), which he prints1, and of which he truly says that “it is fuller and more exact than what has been hitherto printed.” The roll of Priors is liable to addition and correction at any time, as Dr Scott proceeds with his great work of describing and indexing the Muniments. For, up to the time when the rolls of the Chamberlain or of Queen Alianore’s manors begin to contain full lists, we are dependent upon the miscellaneous documents that survive,—acquittances, leases, the collection or payment of tenths, and the like; though in most cases the name of the Prior is not given, but simply the corporate title of “ the Prior and Convent.” As a rule, the most that we have in the way of personal touch is an initial; thus the person of William de Huntyndon [q.v.] is concealed under the description “ W Prior.” Let us take him as an instance of the difficulty. It happens that we possess rather more than 70 documents that refer either to him by name or to the Prior during his tenure of that office. In his case the number is largely due to the fact that he (or, as is sometimes stated, he and the Convent) was commissary in the archdeaconries of London and Middlesex to Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London, and Bartholomew de Ferentino, Canon of St Paul’s2, the official collectors of the tenth imposed for three years by Boniface VIII. Widmore dates him as Prior in 1298, but we cannot trace his actual election, though we do know that it was by compromission3. Neither can we certainly date his decease. There are documents connected with the collection of the tenths which imply that he was alive in Feb. 1305. There is also a draft4 of the protest addressed by Roger de Aldenham, after Prior Huntyndon’s death, against the interference of Abbot Wenlok with the accepted custom of filling the vacancy, but the protest does not include a date. All we can show from the Muniments is that by Jul. 1307 Huntyndon’s successor, Reginald de Hadham, had been both elected to the priorship by the Convent and deprived of it by Abbot Wenlok. It appears from Flores Historiarum (m, 129) that the election occurred on 2 Aug. 1305. If we pass back to the twelfth century, when the business papers are more scarce, the difficulty of naming and dating the Priors is proportionately greater; often all that we know, as in the case of William Postard, is that such an one was Prior at the time of his election to the Abbacy. If, again, we pass on to the middle of the fourteenth century, we begin to have the help, such as it is, of the manorial lists and of those of the Chamberlain. In every case these lists begin with a payment of money or an assignment of clothing to Dominus Prior, but it is not till late in the fifteenth century that they give us the Prior’s name. We have to detect his election by the disappearance of his name from its accustomed place in the list of monks, being careful to note that he is not include^ inter mortuos; that is, in a 1 Appendix xvin, pp. 228—9. 2 He held the prebend of Twyford. Hennessy, Repertorium Londinense, p. 52. 3 See below, pp. 78, 92. 4 Mini. 9508. 1—2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31347162_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
