Islip, however, in the earlier years of his abbacy did not regard the need for rigid economy as any excuse for the restriction of services. On the other hand he would seem to have multiplied the number of masses said in the church, for while in his first year nineteen thousand “breads” were purchased for this purpose no less than twenty-nine thousand were required in the second. In 1504 considerable outlay was made on the repair of vestments, lamps and other ornaments of the church, and there is in these years every evidence that there was no slackening at least of the external observances. Small items of expenditure have their interest. Henry VII. would seem to have had a private apartment in the church, for in 1491 keys had been bought for his seat and closet therein, while in 1504 there is a payment of four pence for “teynterhokys and cordes for the travers of the lord king in the church,” and a further expenditure of two pence for rosemary bought for the King. The Abbey church has been the scene of many a service of striking splendour in the course of its long history but few of them can have rivalled in curious impressiveness that which took place in November of the year 1515. Wolsey had attained the goal of his immediate though not of his ultimate desires, and on the fifteenth of the month his cardinal’s hat was brought in solemn procession through London to the Abbey church, where Islip and eight other Abbots received it and solemnly laid it upon the High Altar. On Sunday the 18th Wolsey, attended by nobles and gentlemen, came from York Place to the church, where mass was solemnly sung by the Archbishop of Canterbury. There were present the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, the Bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, Winchester, Ely, Durham, Norwich and Llandaff, beside the Abbots of Westminster, St. Albans, Bury, Glastonbury, Reading, Gloucester, Winchcombe, Tewkesbury, and the Prior of Coventry. The sermon was preached by Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, who is recorded to have said that “a cardinal represents the order of seraphim which continually burneth in the love of the glorious Trinity, and for these considerations a cardinal is apparelled only in red, which colour only betokeneth nobleness”--surely adulation enough even for Wolsey’s ambitious spirit! The final prayers and benediction were pronounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury over Wolsey’s prostrate form as “he lay grovelling” before the High Altar, and at last the hat was placed on his head. It is interesting for those acquainted with Abbey traditions to note that in the recessional the cross was carried before the new cardinal though he was not yet a papal legate, while no such distinction was accorded to the Archbishop of Canterbury.