Westminster Abbey Reformed: 1540-1640 (review)

The Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey and one of its distinguished editors have here collected together a number of articles where the subject can be tied to the history of the Abbey in the first century after the Reformation. Each has its own interest although together they do not represent a consecutive or integrated account of the period in the 'Abbey' or secular College, as we should more properly call it. There are, however, some problems with the detail of various articles.

Knighton's introduction provides an overview, regretting that the archives no longer provide a comparable account of the lives of the Abbey clergy to that which can be constructed for the medieval period. He attempts to set the diverse subjects of the articles in a wider context. Several of them are brief accounts of the deans and one or two of the canons – John Redman, Richard Neile, Peter Heylen and John Williams – which distinguish their role as dean from their better-known careers in the wider political and religious arena. It is illuminating to consider what the position of Dean of Westminster represented in the ecclesiastical hierarchy and surprising that since nearly all moved on to bishoprics it is suggested that only Neile bothered to assess its effects on his financial position. Since the pitfalls of episcopal responsibility for diocesan taxes had become disastrously clear under Elizabeth, may this not be an issue of missing documentation?

The remaining articles relate to the structure of the new college, its power and influence inside the church and community and its role as the sacred location for the coronation of the monarch. The position of a wealthy religious institution with extensive privileges which lay across the road from a principal royal Palace in which many of the central offices of government were housed was bound to be in many ways particular if not peculiar.

Knighton describes the process whereby, at the Dissolution, the Abbey became a cathedral, briefly reverted to its status as an Abbey under Mary and finally became a secular college under a dean when Elizabeth came to the throne. It is a familiar story and most aspects parallels the experience of other great abbeys that were transformed into cathedrals but it is valuable to have the details spelled out. His suggestion that the hiatus before the cathedral was endowed with most of the lands of its predecessor may be explained by the way that property was scattered across the kingdom, however, is unconvincing since most monastic houses of any size had a similar spread of holdings, a problem Augmentations solved when the second court was established by reallocating all the land in a county, whatever its origin, to the receiver of that county.

Merritt, in stressing Henry VIII's building at the New Palace as providing an alternative focus for government, seems to overlook the fact that the Old Palace of Westminster had been a favoured royal residence until the fire of 1512, that Wolsey, who built York house only a stone's throw away provided a continuing Westminster focus for royal control so that Henry VIII's activities in extending Wolsey's palace and relegating the Old Palace to a bureaucratic annexe were a continuation rather than an innovation. In discussing the Abbey's rule over its urban surrounds through what were essentially manorial courts, which is not so dissimilar from the position at St Albans, or, in a secular context, Sheffield, and a raft of smaller towns, she totally ignores the undoubted importance of the court of the Verge and the role of the clerk of the market that intermittently came into play when the monarch was in residence at Westminster. They took certain cases away from the ordinary local courts wherever they were. Undoubtedly, as population spilled out of London, the problems would have multiplied. She suggests that the Abbey's resistance to the bills that were put up before Parliament in...