Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/255

 unpopularity with the monks. One of his acts was to invite his predecessor to take up his residence at Oxney, close to Peterborough, and to assign to him during his life the portion of four monks from the cellar and kitchen of the monastery, deducting it from the allowance which he was entitled to claim for his own table. It was the custom of Henry III to appoint the heads of Benedictine houses—greatly, as Matthew Paris complains, to the detriment of the wealth of the order—to act as itinerant justices. The abbot of Peterborough was nominated to that office in 1254, and from that year to 1258 his name occurs several times at the head of the list of justices at Buckingham, Derby, Lincoln, and Bedford. In 1260, according to most of the authorities (although the chronicle of Thomas Wykes places this event in 1258), he was appointed the king's treasurer, retaining, however, his office as abbot of Peterborough. His secular employments rendered it necessary for him to be frequently absent from the monastery, but Walter of Whittlesea states that he exercised strict control over its management, so that the interests of the house did not suffer. He built the infirmary of the abbey, and presented a great bell to the church, bearing the inscription ‘Ion de Caux Abbas Oswaldo contulit hoc vas.’ Among many other benefactions to the abbey he gave five books, the titles of which are enumerated by Gunton ‘from an old manuscript.’ Bishop Patrick endeavours to prove that John de Caleto was the author of the earlier portion of the ‘Chronicon Angliæ’ (Cotton MS. Claud. A. v.) printed in Sparke's ‘Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores varii.’ The manuscript has on its first page a note ascribing its authorship to John, abbot of Peterborough; the handwriting of this entry is, however, only of the seventeenth century, and there is nothing to show from what source the statement was derived. The chronicle cannot in its present form have been written by John de Caleto, as it quotes Martinus Polonus, whose work was not published until after John's death. He died on 3 March 1262–3; according to Walter of Whittlesea at his own house in London, but the Dunstaple annals say that his death occurred at ‘Lande,’ which, if the reading be correct, probably means Laund in Leicestershire. His body was brought to Peterborough, and buried before the altar of St. Andrew. He was succeeded in the office of treasurer of England by Nicholas, archdeacon of Ely.

 CALEY, JOHN (d. 1834), antiquary, was the eldest son of John Caley, a grocer in Bishopsgate Street, London (Gray's Inn Admission Register; London Directory). At an early age he devoted himself to antiquarian pursuits, and busied himself about old books, catalogues, and manuscripts. In this way he made the acquaintance of the well-known Thomas Astle [q. v.], by whose influence he was placed in the Record Office in the Tower. Here he quickly became known as a skilful decipherer of ancient records, and his promotion was rapid. In 1787 he received from Lord William Bentinck, as clerk of the pipe, the keepership of the records in the Augmentation Office, in place of Mr. H. Brooker, deceased (Gent. Mag. vol. lvii. pt. ii. p. 1126); and in 1818, on the death of the Right Hon. George Rose, he was appointed keeper of the records in the ancient treasury at Westminster, formerly the chapter-house of the abbey (ib. vol. lxxxviii. pt. i. p. 367). Meanwhile he had entered himself at Gray's Inn, on 11 Jan. 1786, but never proceeded to the bar. When the first record commission was nominated in 1801, Caley was appointed secretary, an office which he continued to hold until the dissolution of the commission in March 1831. A special office, that of sub-commissioner, to superintend the arranging, repairing, and binding of records, was forthwith created for him, and for discharging this duty he was rewarded with a salary of 500l. a year, besides retaining his two lucrative keeperships. To Caley's influence were attributed many of the scandals which brought the commission into such ill repute. Everything appears to have been left to his discretion, and he did not fail to profit by such easy compliance. We have, too, the testimony of Sir Henry Cole, Mr. Illingworth, and others, that owing to Caley's systematic neglect of duty the arranging and binding of the records were executed in a most disgraceful manner, the lettering and dates being inaccurate in almost every instance. He also removed the seals from a great number of conventual leases, cartæ antiquæ, and Scotch records, many of which were of elaborate and beautiful workmanship, ostensibly for arranging the documents in volumes, but in reality for the convenience of copying them and taking casts to add to his collection at his house in Spa Fields, where were also stored, greatly to their injury, many of