21 - Religious Life under Abbot John

Summary

The choir murals

Abbot John was not so preoccupied with St Edmunds’ temporal affairs that he neglected its spiritual and charitable concerns. He continued the policy of previous abbots, notably of Samson and Simon of Luton, by further beautifying the great and splendid abbey church, and he was responsible for the construction of the last freestanding chapel in the cemetery and for the reform of St Saviour’s hospital.

The early fifteenth-century Benefactors’ List records that Abbot John restored the choir and had it painted by one of his monks, John of Woodcroft (‘Wodecroft’, Woodcroft, Northants.). Unfortunately, the text which follows is corrupt and does not make sense. After ‘Wodecroft’ it reads ‘of a certain painter of the Lord King’. (The whole passage reads: ‘Johannes primus chorum fecit fieri et depingi per manus cuiusdam monachi sui dompni Johannis Wodecroft cuiusdam pictoris domini regis’.) M. R. James suggested amending the second cuiusdam to quondam, to mean ‘by the hand of his monk, Dom John Wodecroft, a former painter of the Lord King’. However, no John of Woodcroft appears in official records among the painters employed by Edward I (or by Edward II). It seems more likely that the scribe of the Benefactors’ List inadvertently omitted an ampersand or ‘et’ after ‘Wodecroft’ – that is, Abbot John employed John of Woodcroft [and] a royal painter.

Abbot John might well have employed a royal painter in addition to one of his own monks to paint the choir. Royal painters were sometimes employed by a number of patrons besides the king. It would not be surprising if Abbot John had previously employed Master Thomas at St Edmunds. Perhaps already before Thomas left St Edmunds he had in his possession a copy of the verses for the cycle of types and antitypes which he was to paint on the outside of the choir enclosure at Peterborough. This would explain the presence on a flyleaf of College of Arms MS Arundel 30 (ff. 6v–7) of a Bury manuscript, containing a late thirteenth-century copy of the Peterborough verses. However, the question of whether or not Abbot John employed a royal painter remains open.