Never, perhaps, was Glastonbury in greater glory than at the moment when Richard Whiting was elected to rule the house as abbot.Never, perhaps, was Glastonbury in greater glory than at the moment when Richard Whiting was elected to rule the house as abbot.
Richard Whiting was born probably in the early years of the second half of the fifteenth century. The civil war between the Houses of York and Lancaster was then at its height, and his boyhood must have been passed amid the popular excitement of the Wars of the Roses and the varied fortunes of King Edward IV. It is not unimportant to bear this in mind, since the personal experience in his youth of the troubles and dangers of civil strife can hardly have failed to impress their obvious lesson strongly upon his mind, and to influence him when the willfulness of Henry brought the country to the very verge of’ civil war, with its attendant miseries and horrors.
The abbot’s family was west-country in its origin and was connected distantly with that of Bishop Stapeldon, of Exeter, the generous founder of Exeter College, Oxford. Its principal member was possessed of considerable estates in Devon and Somerset, but Richard Whiting came of a younger branch of the family, numbered among the tenant holders of Glastonbury possessions in the fertile valley of Warington. The name is found in the annals of other religious houses. About the time of Richard Whiting’s birth, for example, another Richard, probably an uncle, was camerarius, or chamberlain, in the monastery of Bath, an office which in after years, at the time of his election as abbot, the second Richard held in the Abbey of Glastonbury. Many years later, at the beginning of the troubles which involved the religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII, a Jane Whiting, daughter of John, probably a near relative of the Abbot of Glastonbury “was shorn and had taken the habit as a nun in the convent of Wilton;” whilst later still, when new foundations of English religious life were being laid in foreign countries, two of Abbot Whiting’s nieces became postulants for the veil in the English Franciscan house at Bruges.
Nothing is known for certain about the childhood and youth of Richard Whiting; but it may be safely conjectured that he received his early education and training within the walls of his future monastic home. The antiquary Hearne says that “the monks of Glastonbury kept a free school, where poor men’s sons were bred up as well as gentlemen’s and were fitted for the universities.” And some curious legal proceedings, which involved an enquiry as to the Carthusian martyr, blessed Richard Bere, reveal the fact that as a boy he had been “brought up at the charges of his uncle,” Abbot Bere, in the Glastonbury school. The pleadings show that Richard Bere was probably the son of one of the tenants of the abbey lands, and among those who testify to the fact of his having been a boy in the school were “Nicholas Roe, of Glastonbury, gent,” and “John Fox, of Glastonbury, yeoman,” both of whom had been his fellow scholars “in the said abbey together,” and Thomas Penny, formerly Abbot Bere’s servant, who spoke to the nephew Richard as having been in the school at the monastery, whence as he remembered he afterwards proceeded to Oxford. What is thus known, almost by accident, about the early education of the martyred Carthusian, may with fair certainty be inferred in the case of Richard Whiting. The boy’s training in the claustral school was succeeded by the discipline of the monastic novitiate: and it was doubtless in early youth, as was then the custom, that he joined the community of the great Benedictine monastery of the west country.
Glastonbury, with its long, unbroken history, had had its days of prosperity and its days of trouble, its periods of laxity and days of recovery, and when Whiting first took the monastic habit report did not speak too well of the state of the establishment. John Selwood, the abbot, had held the office since 1457, and under his rule, owing, probably in some measure at least, to the demoralising influence of the constant civil commotions, discipline grew slack and the good name of the abbey had suffered. But it would seem that, as is so often the case, rumour with its many tongues had exaggerated the disorders, since after a careful examination carried out under Bishop Stillington’s orders by four ecclesiastics unconnected with the diocese, no stringent injunctions were apparently imposed, and Abbot Selwood continued to rule the house for another twenty years.
From Glastonbury, Whiting was sent to Cambridge to complete his education, and his name appears amongst those who took their M. A. degree in 1483. About the same time the register of the university records the well-known names of Richard Reynolds, the Bridgettine priest of Sion, of John Houghton and William Exmew, both Carthusians, and all three afterwards noble martyrs in the cause of Catholic unity, for which Whiting was also later called upon to sacrifice his life. The blessed John Fisher also, although no longer a student, still remained in close connection with the university, when Richard Whiting came up from Glastonbury to Cambridge.
After taking his degree the young Benedictine monk returned to his monastery, and there probably would have been occupied in teaching. stay at the university in preparation for his degree in Arts, would have specially qualified him, and in all probability he was thus engaged till his ordination to the priesthood, some fifteen years later. During this period one or two events of importance to the monks of the abbey may be briefly noted.
In 1493, John Selwood, who had been abbot for thirty-six years, died. The monks having obtained the King’s leave to proceed with the election of a successor,^ met for the purpose, and made their choice, without apparently having previously obtained the usual approval of the bishop of the diocese. This neglect was caused possibly by their ignorance of the forms of procedure, as so long a time had intervened since the last election. It may be also that in the long continued absence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells from his See they overlooked this form. Be this as it may, Bishop Fox, then the occupant of the See, on hearing of the election of John Wasyn without his approval, applied to the king for permission to cancel the election. This having been granted, he successfully claimed the right to nominate to the office, and on 20th January, 1494, by his commissary. Dr. Richard Nicke, Canon of Wells, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, he installed Richard Bere in the abbatial chair of Glastonbury.
In the fourth year of this abbot’s rule, Somerset and the neighbourhood of Glastonbury was disturbed by the passage of armed men – insurgents against the authority of King Henry VII and the royal troops sent against them – which must have sadly broken in upon the quiet of the monastic life. In the early summer of 1497 the Cornish rebels who had risen in resistance to the heavy taxation of Henry, passed through Glastonbury and Wells on their way to London. Their number was estimated at from six to fifteen thousand, and the country for miles around was at night lighted up by their camp fires. Their poverty was dire, their need most urgent, and although it is recorded that no act of violence or pillage was perpetrated by this undisciplined band, still their support was a burden on the religious houses and the people of the districts through which they passed.
Hardly had this rising been suppressed than Somerset was again involved in civil commotions. Early in the autumn of 1497 Perkin Warbeck assembled his rabble forces – “howbeit, they were poor and naked” – round Taunton, and on the 21st September the advanced guard of the king’s army arrived at Glastonbury, and was sheltered in the monastery and its dependencies. The same night the adventurer fled to sanctuary, leaving his 8,000 followers to their own devices; and on the 29th of this same month Henry himself reached Bath and moved forward at once to join his other forces at Wells and Glastonbury. With him came Bishop Oliver King, who, although he had held the See of Bath and Wells for three years, had never yet visited his cathedral city, and who now hurried on before his royal master to be enthroned as bishop a few hours before he in that capacity took part in the reception of the king. Henry had with him some 30,000 men, when on Saint Jerome’s day he entered Wells, and took up his lodgings with Dr. Cunthorpe in the deanery. The following day, Sunday, 1 October, was spent at Wells, where the king attended in the Cathedral at a solemn Te Deum in thanksgiving for his bloodless victory. Early on the Monday he passed on to Glastonbury, and was lodged by Abbot Bere within the precincts of the monastery.
The abbey was then at the height of its glory, for Bere was in every way fitted for the position to which the choice of Fox had elevated him. A witness in the trial spoken of above describes Abbot Bere as ” a grave, wise and discreet man, just and upright in all his ways, and for so accounted of almost all sorts of people.” Another deposes that he “was good, honest, virtuous, wise and discreet, as well as a grave man, and for those virtues esteemed in as great reputation as few of his coat and calling in England at that time were better accounted of.” On the interior discipline and the exterior administration of his house alike he bestowed a watchful care, and under his prudent administration the monastic buildings and church received many useful and costly additions. At great expense he built the suite of rooms afterwards known as “the King’s lodgings,” and added more than one chapel to the time-honoured sanctuary of Glastonbury. At the west end of the town he built the Church of Saint Benen, now commonly known as Saint Benedict s, which bears in every portion of the structure his rebus. His care for the poor was manifested by the almshouses he established, and the thought he bestowed on the prudent ordering of the lowly spital of Saint Margaret’s, Taunton. Beyond this, Bere was a learned man, as well as a careful administrator, and even Erasmus submitted to his judgment. In a letter written a few years after this abbot’s death this great scholar records how he had long known the reputation of the Abbot of Glastonbury. His bosom friend, Richard Pace, the well-known ambassador of Wolsey in many difficult negotiations, had told him how to Bere’s liberality he owed his education and his success in life to the abbot’s judicious guidance. For this reason, Erasmus, who had made a translation of the sacred Scriptures from the Greek, which he thought showed a “more polished style” than Saint Jerome’s version, submitted his work to the judgment of the abbot. Bere opposed the publication, and Erasmus bowed to the abbot’s opinion, which in after years he acknowledged as correct.^ Henry the Seventh, who ever delighted in the company of learned men, must have been pleased with the entertainment he received at Glastonbury, where the whole cost was borne by the abbot. It is possible, by reason of the knowledge the king then derived of the great abilities of Bere, that six years afterwards, in 1503, he made choice of him to carry the congratulations of England to Cardinal John Angelo de Medicis, when he ascended the pontifical throne as Pius IV.
The troubles of Somerset did not end with the retirement of the royal troops. Though the country did not rise in support of the Cornish movement, it appears to have somewhat sympathised with it, and at Wells Lord Audley joined the insurgents as their leader. For this sympathy Henry made them pay; and the rebels’ line of march can be traced by the. record of the heavy fines levied upon those who had been supposed to have “aided and comforted” them. Sir Amyas Paulet – the first Paulet of Hinton Saint George – was one of the commissioners sent to exact this pecuniary punishment, and from his record it would appear that nearly all in Somerset were fined. The abbots of Ford and Cleeve, of Muchelney and Athelney, with others, had extended their charity to the starving insurgents, and Sir Amyas made them pay somewhat smartly for their pity. Somehow Glastonbury appears to have escaped the general penalty; probably the abbot’s entertainment of the king saved the abbey, although some of the townsfolk did not escape the fine.^ This severe treatment must have had more than a passing effect. The generation living at the time of the suppression of the abbey could well remember the event. They knew well what was the meaning of the heavy hand of a king, and had felt at their own hearths what were the ravages of an army. This may go far to explain how it happened that in Somersetshire there was no Pilgrimage of Grace.
Meantime Richard Whiting had witnessed these troubles, which came so near home, from the seclusion of the monastic enclosure in which he had been preparing for the reception of sacred orders. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Oliver King, had not remained in his diocese after the public reception of Henry. He was much engaged in the secular affairs of the kingdom, and his episcopal functions were relegated to the care of a suffragan, Thomas Cornish, titular Bishop of Tinos, also at this time Vicar of Saint Cuthberts, Wells, and Chancellor of the Diocese. From the hands of this prelate Dom Richard Whiting received the minor order of acolyte in the month of September, 1498. In the two succeeding years he was made sub-deacon and deacon, and on the 6th March, 1501, he was elevated to the sacred order of the priesthood. The ordination was held in Wells by Bishop Cornish in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, by the cathedral cloisters – a chapel long since destroyed, and the foundations of which have recently been discovered.
For the next five and twenty years we know very little about Richard Whiting. It is more than probable that his life was passed entirely in the seclusion of the cloister and in the exercise of the duties imposed upon him by obedience. In 1505, the register of the University of Cambridge shows that he returned there, and took his final degree as Doctor in Theology. In his monastery he held the office of “Camerarius,” or Chamberlain, which! would give him the care of the dormitory, lavatory, and wardrobe of the community, and place him over the numerous officials and servants necessary to this office in so important and vast an establishment as Glastonbury then was.