should be at charges with the bearer of it in his place. 14 So here is our Sacrist paying the expenses of William Colchester, namely, 13s. 4d., and the more considerable price of two horses for the journey, £6 16s. 8d. But the Sacrist has something to enter on the other side, an offering of £2 from the Countess of March, the lady who craved the aid of the girdle. If any one is churlish enough to say that the bargain seems but a poor one for the Convent—150s. spent on the journey, and only 40s. received from the beneficiary—the answer is that the horses would be sold at the end of the return journey for almost as much as they cost. If, again, it is objected that in any case the lady's gift was money thrown away, it is not so easy to convince the gainsayer. For while it is on record that on February 12, 1371 (i.e. in the year previous to that of the Sacrist's account), the lady Philippa, granddaughter of Edward III., did present her husband, the 3rd Earl of March, with a daughter who in process of time became the wife of Harry Hotspur, yet it does not appear that she was equally blessed during the year 1372-3.

Such duties sensibly performed, William Colchester was not long in attaining to administrative office. To begin with, Abbot Litlington chose him as his Custos Hospicii; i.e. Seneschal or steward of his household. We have the roll on which the young monk gave an account of his stewardship for the year Michaelmas to Michaelmas, 1373-4, and as the doings it records represent his early experience of that conventual business in which he was to be immersed for nearly half a century, we may stay by it for a short space in order to get our impressions.

He found his master in possession of a considerable rent-roll in various parts of the country, the manors being situate in the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, Surrey, Buckingham, and Middlesex. The rentals amounted to £696 13s. 6d., and the sale of stock, including an ox sold for 18s. 4d., and a cow—timore pestilencie—for 13s., brought the total to £719 8s. 8d. Large as this sum sounds, especially when multiplied to correspond with present values, it was none too large for the needs of the position. Household expenses, which are not entered in detail, came to £151 1s. 4½d. The purchase of live-stock—grey palfreys, bullocks, cows, steers, sheep, pigs, swans, poultry, and no less than 966 pigeons at about ½d. each—required £63 2s. 10d., and the outlay on dead stock such as bacon, salt-fish, five barrels of white herring, fourteen casks of red herring, and three casks of Scottish red herring, amounted to £31 8s. 4d. Lest it should be claimed that the Scottish variety was a special delicacy, we must add that the latter cost only 4s. a barrel as against 5s. 6d. for the other. Nor, if the quantities seem large, must it be lightly concluded that there was carelessness in the dispensation; indeed, it was the Seneschal's duty to enter on the back of his roll a stock-keeping account, from which it may be gleaned that all the herrings were consumed and eighty pigs; but there was a residue of five salt-fish and of two out of sixteen bullocks. Altogether in corn and wine and clothing and gifts to visitors and in other ways there was an expenditure of £684 to set against a revenue of £719.

But what we want is an idea of the duties and experiences that came to the young Seneschal, and this can be obtained from various items. He gets a pair of my lord's boots mended for twopence, and small sums go in stringing the great sportman's bows or in buying bags in which to carry his arrow-heads. That which cost more, and was probably more interesting to Colchester himself, was the coming and going of personages or their servants—the squire of the Earl of Cambridge (Edmund Langley, fifth son of Edward III.), who receives 20s. for bringing a letter to the Abbot from his lord; the Earl of Warwick's steward, who comes to sell a black palfrey; a monk of his own year, Richard Excestr', who is just starting on his career at Oxford, and to whom the Abbot gives a fatherly present of 20s.; the Bishop of Durham's 15 man, whose master we know as the builder of Bishop Hatfield Hall, and who is sent with a gift of two greyhounds to the Abbot. Several messengers arrive from the Prince, i.e. the Black Prince, who is now at Wycombe and now at Kensington, and Abbot Litlington makes several journeys by boat to call on the Bishop of Winchester, no less a personage than William of Wykeham, who was in some disgrace at the time.

Having in this way served the Abbot efficiently, Colchester received his next responsibility from the whole Chapter, who chose him as Convent Treasurer, and "Coquinarius" or Kitchener, for the year 1375-6. Happily we still possess his compotus as such. I must not describe it at length, but one feature of it, an entry under the head of "pitancie et flacones," is of too great interest to be passed by. Pittances were additional meals on special occasions by way of varying the dreary round of dry bread and sour wine, which alone could be provided in the Refectory. But "flacones" seem to be pancakes, and pancakes are a recognized Westminster institution, though it is no longer the duty of the Convent Treasurer to provide them for his brethren. I first translate the item as Colchester entered it:

"Paid in milk, 'creym,' butter, cheese and eggs bought for the pancakes in Easter week, on Rogation days and at Pentecost, 64s. 8d."

And now for some further light upon it. In 1389, when Colchester had occupied the Abbot's chair for three years, the Kitchener was Brother William Clehungre or Clayhanger, who has left us his bill 16 for materials, and from this it will appear how the pancake-custom has developed in the interval. It sets forth his

"expenses laid out in respect of the pancakes prescribed for the brethren and delivered to the monastery according to custom during 56 days each year, namely from Easter Day to Trinity Sunday, in the 12th year of the reign of King Richard II., as appears by all the parcels:—

Our Kitchener makes some trifling assumptions in his multiplication as to the butter and the eggs, and he robs the Convent of fivepence when he adds up the