On May 24th, 1498, Abbot John Estney died. He had ruled the monastery for twenty-four years and was nearly eighty years of age. There are indications that he had been for some time failing in health, and the fact that he had played no part in the action before the Privy Council in the matter of the burial of Henry VI. suggests that most of his powers had been by this time delegated to others. He had deserved well of the community and his loss must have been felt keenly by his sometime Chaplain, John Islip. The choice of the Convent fell upon Prior Fascet as Estney’s successor. He was only about forty-two years old, but it must have been fairly clear from the first that the choice was made rather in view of his past services than for any future benefit he could confer upon the community. The plea of unfitness for the task that he made when the election was first announced to him was more than merely formal. But a year later and he was to forsake the independence of the abbatial manors and occupy the chamber in the monastic infirmary specially set apart for those for whom there seemed some hope of restoration to health. For him, however, such restoration was not to be, and in the late summer of the year 1500 he died. This is, however, to anticipate, and we must go back to his appointment to the Abbacy two years earlier. He chose Islip as his successor in the office of Prior. It is at this point in Islip’s career that one of the small difficulties in the reconstruction of mediæval monastic life presents itself. There were two occasions in a monk’s career at Westminster which were deemed worthy of especial congratulation. The one was the celebration of his first mass after ordination to the priesthood, following on the conclusion of his noviciate, and the other when for the first time he sat _ad skillam_--“by the bell.” The _skilla_ was the bell which was sounded by the Prior, or in his absence by the President, in the Refectory for grace to be said, for the lection to begin or end, or for some other usual signal of the mealtime. To sit by the bell, therefore, primarily meant to preside at the monastic meal.