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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![The Arch deacons. little group added at the end after a slight gap. Even so, we are without the day and the month of his election, and, failing any dated documents in which he is styled Prior, all we can say is that he had become so by the point of time in the autumn when the scrivener engrossed the compotus roll or when the obedientiary with whom we are dealing balanced his accounts. In this and in other ways it has been possible to add four names—Eadwye, Richard Excestr’, William Walsh, and Roger Blake—to Widmore’s list of Priors. Widmore provides also a list of the Archdeacons of Westminster. He “had no intention at first,” he says, to publish this list and “may have omitted some of the oldest1.” It is a matter of interest, indeed it is quite unique, that the Dean and Chapter of Westminster should yearly appoint one of their number to be Archdeacon, with the right to a place in the Lower House of the Canterbury Convocation. But the obedientiaries’ rolls make no mention of this office and our Muni¬ ments include very few documents that record its doings. The Archdeacon, as such, had no apparent authority inside the Convent and to this day he has no intrinsic precedence in the Chapter. Long after the courtesy adjunct of “Venerable” had become usual in the case of other Archdeacons, it had no place in the records of our Chapter, which speak even in May 1887 of “the Rev. Archdeacon Farrar.” The fact is that the Archdeacon of the monastery concerned the public more than the monastery; his sphere was that of causes matrimonial, excommunications, and the like. At the same time a right performance of “archidiaconal functions,” whatever they were, was in practice recognised as a qualification for higher office. We learn about the earliest known Archdeacon, Richard de Crokesley, only through his having been such when he was elected Abbot, [16] Dec. 1246; we do not know when he became Archdeacon nor any thing that he did as such2. In the same way William Colchester [q.v.], one of the most notable of our Abbots, was certainly Archdeacon just a month before his promotion to the highest room (10 Dec. 1386), and we can trace him at the same work in 13823. Moreover, when we examine the careers of the monks who filled this office, we find that William de Zepeswych [q.v.] could hold the Precentorship with the Archdeaconry; that William Colchester could be at once Archdeacon and Sacrist; John Stowe [q.v.] Archdeacon and Almoner; John Borewell4 [q.v.] Archdeacon and Treasurer both of the Convent and of the Royal manors. In each of these 1 He could have added six Archdeacons to his list, if he had examined the account-book of Prior Walsh (Mun. 33289). 2 Of. Flete, p. 108. 3 Cf. E. H. Pearce, William de Co^hester, Abbot of Westminster (S.P.C.K. 1915), p. 41. 4 Dr Basil Wilberforce, the late Archdeacon, presented to the Chapter a die of Borewell’s official seal, copied from an impression preserved in the British Museum (cxxi. 12). This is handed to the Archdeacon of Westminster in Chapter at the time of his annual election, keys being similarly delivered to the Treasurer and the Steward.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31347162_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
