Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/560

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. DEC. 12,

The house appears to have been of capa- city sufficient to accommodate even a princely retinue, for three years after the death of Litlington, its probable builder, the great Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, returning to England after failing to acquire the kingdom of Castile, though wearing the empty title, jure uxoris, besought the Abbot, William of Colchester, for the loan of Neyte Manor House. The Duke's own palace of the Savoy had been burnt down eight years previously by Wat Tyler's rebel throng, and he had need of quarters convenient to the Parliament sitting at Westminster, to which he had been sum- moned. His letter, preserved with the Abbey muniments, is so interesting in its quaint old French and dubious spelling that it I may be acceptable here as quoted in The, Archceological Journal, xxix. 144 :

Depar le Roy de Castille et de Leon, Due de Lancastre.

Tres cher en Dieu et nostre tres bien ame. Nous vous salvons tres sovent, et porce qtie nous sumes comandez par nostre tres redoute seigneur le Roy pour venir a cest son prochein Parlement a West- monster, et que nous y duissons estre en propre person, toutes autres choses lessees, en eide et secour del roiaulme Dengleterre, et sumes unqore tout destitut de lieu convenable pour nous et nostre houstell pour le dit Parlement, vous prions tres cherement et de cuer que vous nous yeullez suffrer bonement pour avoir vostre manoir del Neyt pour la demoere de nous et de nostre dit houstel durant le Parlement susdit. En quele chose fesant tres cher en Dieu et nostre tres bien ame vous nous t'errez bien graunt ease et plesaunce parent nous vous vploms especialment bon gree savoir et par tant faire autre foiz pour vous et a vostre request chose agreable de resoii. Et nostre seigneur Dieux vous eit touz jours en sa tres seinte garde.

Donne souz nostre prive seal a Narbourne le xxvii jour de Septembre [1389].

[Endorsed :] A nostre tres cher en Dieu et tres bien ame 1'abbe de Westmonster.

It may be presumed that the Duke's request was granted, for to have refused him would scarcely have been advisable. Half a century after his death his great- nephew Richard, Duke of York, the White Rose leader, occupied Neyte ; at least it is recorded that his Duchess Cecilia (Nevill) here gave birth to their fifth son, John (d. young). This was in November, 1448 (William of Worcester, ' Liber Niger,' ed. Hearne, 1728, ii. 424, 526).

The only other event at Neyte that we know of is the death of Abbot John Islip in 1532. He, like his predecessor, Litling- ton, was one of the Abbey builders, and the ''Islip Chapel," prepared for his burial, preserves his memory ; but his chief addi-

tion to the church was the raising of the- western towers to the height of the roof- ridge, whence they were afterwards to culminate in Wren's unsympathetic Gothic. The old order was drawing to its close, and Islip is counted as the last of the Abbots ; for Boston or Benson, who made the sur- render and became Dean, is scarcely allowed to rank with his predecessors. So it was fitting that Islip, dying " at his manor of Neyt beside Westminster on the afternoon of Sunday, 12th May, 1532," should be carried sumptuously to his burial in the Abbey. Happily there is a funeral record : " The body, having been chested and cered, re- mained in a large parlour in the said place, which was hung with black cloth garnished with escut- cheons of the Abbot's arms and those of the monastery. The coffin was covered with a rich pall of cloth of gold of tissue, and surmounted by four great tapers burning night and day. On the- afternoon of the following Thursday the body was conveyed to Westminster with a solemn procession.

through the streets 'The trayne was from Neyt

untill Touttell Streete.' "*

The latter clause indicates the route by the- Chelsea Road to Tothill Street, which ap- proached the Abbey doubtless the way generally used.

Neyte, granted or surrendered (with much more of the Abbey estate) to the King in 1536, was in 1547 given by Edward VI. to Sir Anthony Browne, K.G.,f a magnate of the time, and apparently a greedy assi- milater of manors seized from the monas- teries. He may have used the place as convenient to the Palace for a short time, but he died the year after getting it. The after transfers of Neyte are not traced ; it seems soon to have become merely a farm, and later its gardens were well known for the entertainment they afforded. Thus we are shown by Mr. H. B. Wheatley in ' London Past and Present ' (ii. 577) that Philip Massinger in * The City Madam ' (licensed 1632, 'D.N.B.'), Act III. sc. i.,. commends " the Neat House for munk melons, and the gardens where we traffic for asparagus." The dramatist was a Londoner, and is understood to refer to the Neyte we discuss ("Neat" for cattle being, as I find, the older spelling), and the munk or monk melons had doubtless repute from former cultivation by the brethren of Westminster. Later, between 1661 and 1668, Pepys, ever seeking enjoy- ment, visited " the "Neat Houses " (in the-

'Vetusta Moimmenta' (Soc. Antiquaries), vol. yii. part iv., which has several excellent repro- ductions of drawings from the Islip Obituary Roll. t Letters Patent, 1 Ed. VI., pt. 9, mem. 15.