17. #Randulf of Gobion# (1146-1151). This Abbot had previously been chaplain and treasurer to the Bishop of Lincoln. He erected the Abbot's chamber and other useful buildings, and freed the Abbey from debt. He deposed the Prior because he suspected that a seal he found not yet engraved had been prepared for a new Abbot, and that this indicated a desire on the part of the Prior and monks to depose him. He is said to have burnt a rich chasuble in order to obtain the gold with which it was embroidered, and to have removed the gold plates from the shrine to procure money to make a purchase of land--the rent of which, however, went to the Abbey, not himself--while keeping the gold plate used at his own table. He was allowed to nominate a successor, and then resigned, dying shortly afterwards. 18. #Robert of Gorham# (1151-1166). He was a nephew of Geoffrey of Gorham, sixteenth Abbot. He had been a monk abroad, but coming on a visit to his uncle he obtained permission to "migrate" to St. Albans. In time he became Prior. As Abbot he managed the affairs of the Abbey with prudence. He repaired and releaded the church, whitened it within and without, that is to say, renewed the plaster with which from the first it had probably been covered. Matthew Paris tells us that one Nicholas Breakspear, a clerk from Langley, applied to him for admission to the Abbey, but was refused, as he failed to pass his entrance examination. "Wait, my son," said the Abbot, "and go on with your schooling so as to become more fit." Nicholas is spoken of as a youth, but he must have been about fifty years of age when Robert became Abbot, and was certainly Bishop of Albano within a year or two of that date, and became Pope, under the name of Adrian IV., in 1154, the only Englishman that has ever sat in St. Peter's chair. If there is any truth in the story of his rejection at St. Albans, it must have happened earlier than the abbacy of Robert. King Stephen visited the Abbey, and Robert obtained his authority to level the remains of the camp, that is, the tower that AElfric, the tenth Abbot, had allowed to remain standing at Kingsbury, which had become a den of robbers.