He was not yet sixteen years old and it may be supposed that the somewhat confined character of the life of the cloister told for a time on the health of the country-bred lad, for in the first three or four years at Westminster he spent three considerable periods in the infirmary, his first and most severe illness lasting more than two months. The monastery at the time of his entrance was somewhat depleted in numbers doubtless owing to the troublous years through which England had been passing. In the preceding decade only some ten novices had sought entrance and at the beginning of the year 1480 there were less than forty monks. In this year, however, there were eight admissions, and the number was never again to fall so low in Islip’s lifetime. The Abbot was John Estney, a man of about sixty years of age who had ruled the monastery already for six years and was to rule it for eighteen more. To him in all probability more than to any other were due the influences which were to shape Islip’s life, and indeed it may well have been he who brought the boy to the monastery in the first place. He had been a priest for thirty-eight years and had held most of the offices of importance in the community. For a time the ways of Abbot and novice lay widely separated, but the interest of the one and the ability of the other were destined within a few years to bring them together in the closest contact. Estney was by no means the oldest of the monks either in years or seniority. Pride of place in both respects was shared between three others. John Amondesham, priest and scholar, was now seventy-two years old at least. He had been sent to the University of Oxford as a selected student as long ago as the year 1432 and was reputed sufficiently learned to have been brought from there on two occasions to preach the Good Friday sermon before the monastery. He had never risen higher than the position of Sacrist, and that post he had long relinquished to spend his days quietly in one of the _cameræ_ of the Infirmary. When John Islip first saw him he had but a year more of life left to him. Contemporary with Amondesham were Richard Sporley and Richard Tedyngton, men presumably of no more than mediocre ability though the former perhaps would have laid claim to some literary skill in the compilation of a history of the Abbey, derived mainly from the work of one who had been his fellow-monk, John Flete. It is a claim which the verdict of to-day will not allow. Old men were Brothers Sporley and Tedyngton but still with some years of life before them. Of those who entered at about the same time as Islip three shewed promise enough to be sent to the University, but no one of them left any obvious mark afterwards upon the community at Westminster.