Besides the charitable care exercised by the Sub-almoner over the children of the almonry and song school, he was in part also responsible for the children of the Grammar School whose parents were not in need of charity. The latter had a master of their own who was paid three shillings and four pence a quarter in money for his trouble, but probably received his board and lodging in addition. The grammar children, as they are called uniformly both in monastic times and throughout the years immediately succeeding the dissolution, find a complete continuity with the Westminster School of to-day, and it is in consequence with no surprise that we read in a Sub-almoner’s notebook about the year 1526 of the payment of sixteen pence for “wryttyng of a play for the children.” Among the officials responsible to the Sub-almoner were the butler and keeper of the “Corde Hall” or _Corde_ as the monastic _Misericorde_ was commonly called, and here it would seem the grammar children took their meals. With such cares as these Islip’s life can have been no idle one, though he did not think it worth while to record in his diary anything of such commonplace tasks. These were duties within the cloister so to speak, and he began his diary on his appointment to offices which would take him farther afield and provide him with responsibilities to which his earlier duties might seem trivial. CHAPTER III. FROM 1492 TO 1498. Next in chronological sequence to the references in his diary to Islip’s earlier years is the brief entry that “on October 2, 1492 the King crossed the sea and came to the town called _Le Slewse_ and afterwards went as far as _Bulleyn_, and there was killed Lord John Savage, Knight, by the French, and various others, and in the month of December the King returned.” We may note first of all a point of some small historical interest. The date of the King’s return to England is given as December 17th by Hall, Stow, and other chroniclers, but the _Chronicle of Calais_ gives November 17th, a date with which Professor Pollard seems to concur, for he says that there is nothing to account for Henry’s delay at Calais for a whole month.[2] Islip of course does not account for it, but he must be allowed to settle the month, for he had particular reason to remember it, apart from the fact that he was a diarist contemporary with the event he was recording. Henry’s expedition was important enough in itself to call for chronicle, for it resulted in the long-delayed peace with France; but Islip recorded nothing that did not touch the monastery directly or indirectly, and this was a matter of direct importance to it as will presently appear.