From the time of its first building the Abbot and Convent of Westminster had appointed the chantry priest who ministered at its altar. The little town had already been the birthplace of at least one great churchman in the person of Simon, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1349, and had given one monk to Westminster in the same century. The more conscientious of the chantry priests were wont to spend in the education of children the considerable leisure that their duties allowed them, and it is no great flight of fancy which imagines the first training of and the awakening of the first sense of vocation in John Islip as due to the teaching of such an one. Of his parents nothing is known, but from the fact that in 1496 he was himself paying thirteen shillings and four pence quarterly from his small allowances for the board and education of his sister Agnes, with an additional shilling for her shoes and gaiters, it may be supposed that they were by then no longer living. It was customary on entering the monastery for the family name to be discarded and the place name used instead, so we know him only as “John Islip.” The search for his patronymic yields nothing of certainty. For a moment it seems successful when in a document of the year 1506 we read the words _Johannes de Pacientia Abbas_, but the hope is ludicrously dispelled when we find that but for scribal carelessness they would have read _Johannes Dei pacientia Abbas_. One possible clue may be given for what it is worth. In the second picture of the beautiful mortuary roll which was begun in Islip’s honour but which was destined never to be completed, St. Giles is depicted as standing alone on the right-hand side of the Abbot as he lay on his deathbed, while in the dexter corner of the base of the penwork which frames the Abbot’s portrait in the first picture are shewn the arms of the family of Giles, the sinister corner being filled with the arms of the monastery. The significance of the relative position of these two shields will be appreciated by the student of heraldry. It may be noted also that in the time of Islip’s rule as Abbot mention is found of a chapel of St. Giles[1] which seems to appear then for the first time and may well have been one of the radiating chapels of the apse of the new Lady Chapel built by Henry VII. The connection between the monastery at Westminster and the town of Islip must have been kept alive not only by the chantry chapel and the sentiment that must needs have linked the places of the Confessor’s birth and burial, but also by the visits which from time to time were paid to his manor by the Abbot or one of his officials. Doubtless many a recruit was thus brought to the Abbey from one or other of its outlying estates. So it came to pass that John Islip entered the monastery on March 21st, the Feast of St. Benedict, 1480, and for six years--he records it himself as seven--lived the common life of the novice.