THE BENEDICTINES UNDER QUEEN MARY.

The restoration by Mary Tudor of a Benedictine establishment to Westminster Abbey lies outside the limits of our present investigation. Nor, by comparison with the period before the Dissolution, have we any appreciable wealth of material for reconstructing the daily life of the place during this brief revival. There are grants of leases by John Feckenham, the Abbot, and Este, the Prior, in fair numbers. There is also a cancelled bond, “datum in capitulari nostra domo,” 20 Mar. 1557, whereby the Abbot acknowledged that the Convent was indebted to Alphonsus de Salinas in the sum of £300. This divine, who had been appointed to the seventh Prebend of the new foundation 12 May 1554, and who is called in the document Alonso de Salines, was to receive “thirtie poundes yerelie at fowr termes in the yere” during his “naturall lyfe”; in other words, he purchased from the Abbey an annuity of £30. Or again there are directions about the management of rural property, such as those contained in a letter, signed by the Abbot, “to or trustie and welbeloued ffarmer Thomas Pollye or farmer of or parsonage of Shoram,” giving his lordship's “will and charge” as to the disposal of the “profettes.”

But there is no series of obedientiary rolls to claim succession to the annual stock-takings of the former time. Feckenham's public record can be sought elsewhere, and when it leaps to light, he is in no way shamed.