Gloucester College, a monk of St. Edmondsbury, named John Salusbury, and a young priest of Sherborne, in Dorset, who was, at any rate, in secret sympathy with the reformers.

Under date 1517 Brian Twyne notes, but is unable to explain, a gift which connects the College with the building of Corpus, then in progress: "Item delivered to ye Prior of Students at Gloucester College by my lord's Command xli.”

In 1539 we obtain the first suggestion of approaching dissolution. Philip, Abbot of Evesham, wrote on January 23 in that year to the students to inform them that he had commandment from "my Lord Privy Seal to make a governor of the College, and take the inventory of plate, furniture of the chapel, and other movables, and to send the same to him. I have therefore appointed your manciple the bearer to carry it up, and require you to permit him quietly to receive the same." In the following year the College came to an end, and its lands were granted to an alien holder.

We may conclude this long chapter with some mention of the great men Gloucester College has produced. No doubt the list would be a longer one if it was possible to say with more certainty of any Benedictine that he was a member of the College. Nearly all the names we can mention belong to the period just before the Dissolution, and it is interesting to see how that movement affected various members of the College.

John Feckenham was a native of the little Worcestershire village which was one day to receive the benefaction of our founder, Sir Thomas Cookes. He joined the Abbey of Evesham as a novice, and came up to

Gloucester College at the age of eighteen. Soon after his return to his monastery his abbey was dissolved (1535), and he returned to Gloucester College the recipient of a pension for life of 100 florins from the exchequer. He became chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester, and later to Bonner, the Bishop of London, whom he attended in the Tower of London during the reign of Edward VI. By his influence the Abbey of Westminster was refounded in 1556, and for two years he held the office of abbot of that house. He preached the funeral sermon on Queen Mary, and was committed to the Tower by Queen Elizabeth, whom he had often befriended. The rest of his life was passed in a progress from prison to prison, and he ended his days at Wisbech Castle in 1585. He was a man beloved by all parties, and it is said that Queen Elizabeth offered him the primacy on condition of his taking the oath of supremacy.

John Stanywell, at one time Prior of Gloucester College, was also one of the "last abbots." He was Abbot of Pershore and Episcopus Poletensis till the dissolution of the monasteries, when he retired into private life, dying in 1553 at a great age.

Very different were the fates of men like John Wakeman and Anthony Kitchin. The former was the last Abbot of Tewkesbury, but on the dissolution of his house in 1541 he became the first Bishop of Gloucester. The latter was the Vicar of Bray of the sixteenth century. He was a monk of Westminster, and became in succession Prior of Gloucester College and last Abbot of Eynsham. He received a pension of £133 on the dissolution of his house, together with the promise of a

benefice. In 1545 he became the Bishop of Llandaff, and he was the only bishop who clung to his bishopric throughout all the changes that followed in the English Church. He burnt a martyr under Queen Mary, and took the oath of supremacy under Queen Elizabeth. He died Bishop of Llandaff at the age of eighty-six, and Wood refers with some acrimony to the way in which he wasted the property of the see: "A bad Kitchin did for ever spoil the good meat of the Bishops of Llandaff."

Among earlier members of the College we may mention two other Abbots of Westminster. Thomas Mylling, a monk of Westminster, who became abbot of that house in 1469. In that capacity he gave sanctuary to Elizabeth Woodville in 1470, and Edward V. was born in his house. He became Bishop of Hereford in 1473, an office which he held till his death in 1493. He was one of the earliest English scholars to study Greek. The other was Edmund Kirton, an energetic prior of the College and a very successful Abbot of Westminster.

Edmund de Bromfield, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, was almost certainly a member of the College. He was promoted "usque ad summum gradum" at Oxford at the expense of his monastery; but whenever he was recalled he proved a source of discord. In consequence, he was sent to Rome, and there appointed Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds in defiance of the King in 1379. He was imprisoned for nearly ten years, but was released in 1389, and appointed Bishop of Llandaff.

Miles Salley, or Sawley, was a Benedictine of Abingdon, who came to the College, and, like Kitchin, became

successively Abbot of Eynsham and Bishop of Llandaff (1504-1516). He was a benefactor to the University of Oxford.

A more humble member of the College proved fortunate at the dissolution of the house. This was Richard Gunter, the Manciple. Afterwards, "to use brewing," he was fain to become free of the town. He was Mayor of Oxford in 1545 and 1546.

We may also refer to Richard Kedermyster, Abbot of Winchcombe in 1487, and a great supporter of the rights of the minor orders of clergy, and John Lawerne, a theologian of Worcester, whose lectures, doubtless delivered by him as D.D. of Gloucester College, are now in the Bodleian.

There are two other men whom we should like to claim. It is generally stated that Thomas Walsingham and John Langdon, Bishop of Rochester, were members of the College. But the former was a Carmelite all his life, and the other was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, and, according to some accounts, Warden of Canterbury College. In any case, neither of them would be educated at Gloucester College.

Of John Lydgate, the poet, and disciple of Chaucer, who was a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, as Bale asserts that he studied at both the English Universities, it may be inferred-no more can be said that he was a member of Gloucester College.

The names we have given are almost all that chance has preserved to us. They are probably fairly good examples of the lives of the more successful members of the College.

CHAPTER V

1541-1626

THE DISSOLUTION-THE BISHOP OF OXFORD'S PALACE-THE FOUNDATION AND PROGRESS OF GLOUCESTER HALL

As the monasteries which fed it were dissolved, the means of existence of the members of Gloucester College must have disappeared, together with all hopes of success in the career to which they had been destined. Under these circumstances they must rapidly have scattered, though a few perhaps lingered on and haunted the old buildings. The land was first dealt with in December, 1541, when there was a grant to John Glin and John James, Yeomen of the Guard, in survivorship of the "keeping or oversight of the mansion called Glocestre Colledge, without the suburbs of Oxford, late appertaining to divers religious houses now dissolved.” Very soon afterwards John Glin was succeeded by John Ellis. At the same time another part of the College was dealt with by sale to Edmund Powell, of Sandford, who acquired a close containing three and a half acres, commonly called "Glocester College Close," and another containing two acres near it.