“In the name of God, Amen. I, John Islip, monk of the monastery of St. Peter Westminster directly attached to the Roman Church, of the order of St. Benedict, vowed to the order and rule of the same in the said monastery and canonically elected Abbot thereof, unwilling to resist the divine will, at the urgent request of the Chapter of the said monastery and its proctors do consent to my election, in honour of Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Peter patron of the said monastery and the glorious Confessor St. Edward the King.” The Abbot-elect would seem to have celebrated the occasion by giving a modest dinner to the Convent if we may judge from the long list of articles of food purchased by the steward of his new household on that day. The cost amounted to seventeen shillings and ten pence and the list included “a potell of swet wyne”--bought perhaps to fill a loving-cup. Some formalities, however, were necessary before the Abbot-elect could be installed. The papal confirmation had to be obtained as also various royal grants of the Abbot’s temporalities. Some of the latter are dated November 13th and consist of mandates to the Crown escheators in various counties to deliver the temporalities in their hands. Matters were sufficiently forward for the installation to be fixed for November 25th. The three days previous were spent by Islip at the Abbot’s Manor of Neyte, close to Westminster, where various presents of food were made to him by his new tenants. On the morning of the day _when my lord was stalled_ he came from the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at the far end of Tothill Street, then one of the chief highways of Westminster, with a great number of nobles, friends and servants and was met in the Conventual cemetery just outside the west door of the church by five of the senior brethren, Charyng, Waterden, Langley, Holand and Borough. Waterden handed him the oath customarily taken by the Abbots to observe “all the rights, statutes and laudable constitutions and customs of the monastery.” He first read it through in a low tone and then recited it in a loud and clear voice. Then there came to him the Sub-prior and the rest of the monks with book, cross and pastoral staff. He knelt and kissed the book and so was led in procession into the church where the installation was duly performed. He subsequently gave a banquet at which probably the whole Convent was entertained, its cost amounting to no less than £4 13s. 7d. So he entered on his new dignities. He was but thirty-six years old and there were no less than sixteen of the brethren who were his seniors in point of profession. Twenty years had seen him pass from the country-bred novice to the high position of a mitred Abbot at the opening of a century destined to bring to the Church changes greater than any that had happened to it since St. Augustine first landed on the shores of Kent. CHAPTER V. ISLIP AS ABBOT.