Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/92

 84 WESTMINSTER ABBEY IN 1444 January remedies were a mere repetition of the measures of 1444. Such difficulties, in fact, were not uncommon in the fifteenth century : few at any rate of the larger Benedictine monasteries escaped them. Twenty years later (1490) St. Albans was similarly placed; while a few years prior to 1467 the abbot of St. Edmund's had been induced by poverty to leave Bury and live at Bermondsey. 1 ' Et plures alii patres ', says the monks' petition, ' fecerunt ante hec tempora viventes per certum spatium sub voluntaria par- cimonia ad magnam laudem ipsorum et profectum.' The visitation of 1444 was, of course, extraordinary, and is not to be confused with the regular triennial visitations of the order. The circumstances that led to it are not known. The general chapter was conceivably petitioned by the convent, or the abbey was in arrears with its triennial contributions, or perhaps the condition of the house was notorious. The finding of the visitors is very guardedly phrased, but naturally arouses suspicion against ' that excellent divine ' 2 Edmund Kirton. And the plot thickens when he is found to have been charged some two years later when perhaps the prior and John Flete were still administering the abbey with being ' a fornicator, dilapidator, adulterer, simoniac and guilty of other crimes '. 3 This charge was made by the abbot of Reading, appointed to visit the monasteries in the London diocese, by the prior of Winchester and the abbots of Colchester (St. John) and Chertsey, 4 visitors of the order in England. Eugenius IV confirmed the visitation and ordered Kirton to be summoned before the abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and John de Obizis, canon of York. If found guilty he was to be deposed. The result of this trial is unknown : it is only certain that Kirton was not deposed, but remained abbot until 1462, when he resigned from old age. The question of his guilt or innocence is thus substantially analogous to the much- disputed case of Abbot Wallingford of St. Albans, and it may be suggested that the charges against these men are not altogether disproved by the fact that neither was deposed. Kirton had already been proved to be thoroughly incompetent, a ' dilapi- dator ' and unfit to rule. A charitable view would explain the charges of immorality as a gratuitous addition to the findings of 1444, merely intended to get rid of an inefficient abbot, when inefficiency had already once proved insufficient cause for depriva- tion. 5 1 This fact is known to us only from the Westminster Instrument of 1467. 2 Widmore. 3 Col. Pap. Beg. viii. 309 ; Pearce, p. 130. Kirton had not been elected by the convent but provided to the abbey in 1440. 5 The financial distress of this period (1444-69) is reflected in the slow progress of the novum opus. Between 1423 and 1440 (Abbot Harwden) building proceeded
 * The two abbots had taken part in the visitation of 1444.