1 - PREFACE

Summary

An effort has been made in this volume to re-people the Convent of St Peter, Westminster, by such an examination of the records as would enable me to cite the authorities for each name included and for each statement about the bearer of the name. The Abbots are in many cases already well known in their character and their work, though much more may yet be done to make the personalities of some of them a living reality to our generation by means of the documents which survive from their time and bear their seal. But the more we know of the Abbots, the more conscious we become that the daily round of conventual doings was from their life “a thing apart,” while to the Prior and monks it was their “whole existence.” The material that survives in the cases of Abbot Walter de Wenlok and Abbot William Colchester shows how small a portion of each year was spent by them at Westminster. The call of the King might send them to foreign parts; the affairs of the Order or the needs of the Convent might take them to Rome or Avignon; when they were in England, they flitted about from property to property,—Laleham, Pyrford, Cleygate, Denham, Islip and Pershore,—with a monk or two in their train to act as seneschal or chaplain; and even if they were at Westminster, they mostly resided outside the precincts at their manorhouse of La Neyte.