Author: D D O S B Gasquet

Publisher:

Published: 2020-05-13

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13:

Chapter I 4GlastonburyChapter II 12Richard WhitingChapter III 23Richard Whiting elected AbbotChapter IV 31Troubles in Church and StateChapter V 42Richard Whiting as Abbot of GlastonburyChapter VI 58The Beginning of the EndChapter VII 73The MartyrdomChapter VIII 83Abbot Hugh Cook of ReadingChapter IX 107The Last Abbot of ColchesterRichard WhitingNever, 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.