street was named after the well, and so it came to be called Stockwell.

In 1403 and again in 1406 the complaint was made; and a third time, at an uncertain date, the citizens complained that a path they had used of old and by which it had been their wont to go to a fountain-the Stockwell -was blocked up, now by the Abbot of Malmesbury, now by the monks of Gloucester. The authorities appear to have been inactive; the Abbot was certainly energetic, and the ultimate event is only known from the fact that the wall of Worcester College at the present day where it bounds Worcester House is built immediately over this ancient fountain, the continued existence of which is marked at the present day by a subsidence of the wall at that spot.

CHAPTER III

THE RELATIONS OF ST. ALBANS AND GLOUCESTER

COLLEGE

TOWARDS the middle of the fourteenth century we find the first traces of that close connection between the monastery of St. Albans and Gloucester College which resulted in such great benefits to our foundation. It is probable that St. Albans did not erect a studium in Gloucester College for some considerable period after the meeting on Salisbury Plain in 1290. The records of the Abbey are so full that we should almost certainly find some trace of the early occupation of a mansio if there was one at this early date. Moreover, there were many and adequate reasons in the internal economy of St. Albans itself which render it extremely unlikely that the Abbey would embark upon any fresh expense at the time when the College was founded.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century St. Albans passed through a remarkable series of monetary disasters. An abbot had died leaving the monastery heavily encumbered with debts owing to the Jews. Shortly afterwards one of the monks contrived to

purloin the corporate seal, and by the dishonest use which he made of it enriched himself at the expense of the Abbey. And we can obtain some idea of the straits to which the Abbey was reduced from the fact that when a newly-elected abbot drew a bill for 3,000 marks upon the Abbey at Paris on his way home from Rome in 1283, the very year when Gloucester College was first founded, the Abbey was compelled to sell its stock of growing corn in order to meet the bill.

In any case, we may take it as almost certain that

the constitutions of Benedict XII. which we referred to in the last chapter would be obeyed by the President of the Benedictine Order in England, and that at any rate from 1337 the Abbey of St. Albans was one of the houses which had a studium at Gloucester College. This is corroborated by the description of the studium as satis vetustum in 1396. In fact, it was not as Abbot of St. Albans, but as one of the three Presidents of the Benedictine Order in England, that we first hear of the connection between the Abbot of St. Albans and Gloucester College. This office was held on many occasions by Abbots of St. Albans for more than a century and a half. To four Abbots of St. Albans was Gloucester College signally indebted. They gave it constitutions, built its library, chapel, and garden walls, defended its prerogatives from encroachment, and turned it from a house of wood into a house of stone. These four abbots were Thomas de la Mare, the thirtieth abbot, who ruled over St. Albans for forty-seven years, from 1349 to his death, at the age of eighty-seven, in 1396; John de la Moote, abbot from 1396 to 1401, whose benefactions to the College

excited the jealousy of his own abbey; William Heyworth, abbot from 1401 to 1421; and John Whethamstede, John Bostok, or John Frumentarius, who was twice Abbot of St. Albans, from 1421 to 1440 and from 1452 to 1464. Popular tradition has assigned all these benefactions to the last and perhaps the most famous of the four, and as the tradition became enshrined in the pages of Anthony Wood, the benefactions of the earlier abbots have often been forgotten.

We have already referred to the amendments in the constitutions of the Benedictine Order published by Benedict XII., which were effected by Thomas de la Mare about 1349, and we shall refer in the next chapter to the part he took in saving Gloucester College from a visitation by William de Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1379—a visitation which in all probability would have been most disastrous to the financial interests of the College. He took an equal interest in the internal management of the College. We are told that he sent more than the prescribed number of students to Gloucester College-that is to say, more than 5 per cent.

"His scholars and clerks added to his fame and the fame of the monastery at Oxford, where there was an immense gathering of all the nations. They were educated in all kinds of knowledge, and on this account were promoted to various offices of trust. They excelled in the mechanical arts, in prudence in service of others, in fidelity, and in wit. The sons of nobles and the sons of paupers alike were trained in his chamber and supported by his wealth and charity, and as they were in after years scattered in

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ST. ALBANS AND GLOUCESTER COLLEGE 43

all parts of the kingdom, they used to speak of his magnificence and his holiness, and to increase the number of his friends and to refute his enemies."

In addition to this he contributed more than £40 to the repair of the house and furniture of the scholars, he gave £20 to support his scholars, and he gave as much more in alms out of his private purse.

To John de la Moote belongs the credit of beginning the stone house for the scholars at Oxford. Owing to the fortunate accident of his short tenure of office, we are enabled to fix the date of the St. Albans buildings at Gloucester College to within five years. When he entered on his abbacy, he observed that the houses of his scholars at Oxford were of wood and very ancient, and in a ruinous condition. Moreover, they were unpleasant owing to their vicinity to the kitchen, and not large enough to hold all the scholars he had decided to send, so he began to build a house next door to that of the monks of Norwich, having first obtained the leave of the lord of the tenement, the Abbot of Malmesbury, under the common seal. In consideration for this license he promised the perpetual prayers of his abbey on behalf of the living and dead of the Abbey of Malmesbury. Half of this building he completed before his death. He also provided planks of "Eastland board" and other material for the completion of the same work.

The cost of the building during his abbacy was £138 3s. 2d. Within that period the common chapel of the houses, which has generally been known as John Whethamstede's chapel, was begun, and he contributed 100s. to this work. It is not surprising to hear