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This article was
first published in Catholic Life
The Last Abbot of
Glastonbury
By Dwight Longenecker
There
are few places in England more rich in sacred history than
Glastonbury.
Home to the oldest Marian shrine north of the Alps, and the
ruins of the greatest monastery in medieval England; Glastonbury
is also the site of the ancient and mystical Tor, topped
by the ruins of St Michael’s Tower. Along with its links
with Arthurian legend, Glastonbury is the supposed stopping
place of St Joseph of Arimathea, the location of an ancient
holy well and the area where ancient legend says Christ himself
once visited ancient Britain.
In addition to these
more well-known attractions, Glastonbury has a rich association
with Saints and martyrs of the Catholic faith. St David,
patron saint of Wales, Saint Bridget and Saint Patrick all
have legendary associations with Glastonbury. The great monastic
leader St Dunstan was born near Glastonbury and re-established
monastic life there in the tenth century. Six hundred years
later four Reformation martyrs also had links with Glastonbury.
Bl. Richard Bere was one of the Carthusians martyred at Tyburn.
Bl. Roger James and Bl. John Thorne were monks of Glastonbury
who were martyred along with their abbot, Richard Whiting
under the religious persecutions of Henry VIII.
Richard Whiting
was born around 1460 at Wrington, where the family were tenant
farmers on land owned by the Glastonbury Abbey. The boy grew
up during the exciting and tumultuous years of the War of
the Roses, was educated at the Abbey School, and joined the
noviciate at an early age. Some think Whiting was sent to
Cambridge where a man of that name appears in records as
having received an MA in 1483. If we went to Cambridge he
may well have known the future saint and martyr, John Fisher,
who was also a student at the time.
He was ordained
at Wells in 1501 and for the next twenty-four years he lived
a quiet and productive life as a monk at Glastonbury, eventually
becoming the Chamberlain. This meant he had administrative
duties looking over the officials and servants of the monastery
and its lands. Then in 1525 Richard Whiting was elected abbot
of the monastery in succession to Richard Bere, (the uncle
of the Carthusian martyr with the same name). For about five
years life in the abbey went on the same as it had for centuries.
Then in 1530 Cardinal Wolsey fell from power and the ruthless
Thomas Cromwell stepped into pander to every whim of Henry
VIII.
In
1531 Cromwell and his master got control of parliament, and
in 1534 the
Act of Supremacy was passed which forced all clergy to swear
allegiance to Henry as head of the church. Most of the clergy
and religious signed the oath, but most of them didn’t see
its full implications. Henry had been declared defender of
the faith. They couldn’t imagine that he would also claim
spiritual authority in the church. They therefore took the
oath, believing that they were only swearing to uphold Henry’s
temporal rights of power. In June of 1534 the royal Commissioners
troopers arrived at Glastonbury and Abbot Whiting and his
community took the oath of loyalty to the king.
On
1 August the King’s Commissioners returned on their visitation
to Glastonbury and reported that the community was run in
good order, and
that the monks were known for their strict life and holy
living. Dr Richard Layton even praised Abbot Whiting personally
for his holiness of life.
Abbot
Whiting and the great Abbey of Glastonbury were safe for
a time, but
the King and Cromwell were untiring in their efforts to claim
the riches of the monastic houses, and Glastonbury was the
richest in the land. The French ambassador of the time wrote
about Henry, ‘All the wealth in the world would not be enough
to satisfy and content his ambition.’ By 1538 the smaller
monastic houses had already been dissolved and it was the
turn for the large and more influential monasteries to come
under the hammer. In April 1539 an Act of Parliament gave
to the King all abbeys which should happen to be ‘dissolved,
suppressed, renounce or relinquished forfeited given up or
come into the king’s highness by attainder or attainder of
treason.’
Cromwell
now had to show the Abbot of Glastonbury to be a traitor
so the wealthiest
monastery of England could fall into the hands of the King.
So in Cromwell’s book of reminders in September 1539 an ominous
note reads, ‘Item. For proceeding against the Abbots of Reading
and Glaston.’ Cromwell acted fast. On Friday 19 September
three Commissioners appeared at Glastonbury without warning
to badger the seventy nine year old abbot with ‘certain articles’ set
out by Cromwell. During the night they ransacked the Abbot’s
lodgings looking for evidence to be used against him. Not
having found the evidence they wanted the sent him to the
Tower of London. They reported that they treated him ‘with
as fair words’ as they could ‘he being a very weak man and
sickly.’ This didn’t stop them, however, from taking depositions
from local people that accused the abbot of treason.
The
Commissioners dispersed the monks and kept the sacrist, Roger
James and
the Treasurer, John Thorne, to help them find the Abbey’s
treasure. Eventually they found it hidden and claimed it
for the king. By October all the treasure from the Abbey
was in the hands of the royal treasurer. It is easy to look
down on the monks for having gold and silver communion vessels,
and vestments adorned with sapphires and emeralds, but in
those days the riches of a monastery were part of its heritage
and ‘capital.’ It was their equivalent of a trust fund or
investments. That Henry and Cromwell took them shamelessly
was an act of robbery which made the subsequent charges against
Abbot Whiting even more ludicrous and obscene.
As
Abbot of Glastonbury Richard Whiting was a peer of the realm, and according to
the law he was entitled to be tried by parliament. However,
parliament was not sitting at the time so Cromwell took the
law into his own hands. In a chilling note from his reminder
book we read, ‘Item. The Abbot of Glaston to be tried at
Glaston and also executed there, with his accomplices.’ In
a travesty of justice worthy of the worst in Stalinist Russia
we read that Cromwell himself was to organise the trial,
reminding himself that the ‘evidence be well sorted and the
indictments well drawn.’
The
mock trial was held in the Bishop’s Hall in Wells on 14 November. Lord John
Russell was the judge and made sure the jury was made up
of people ‘very diligent to serve the King.’ Although his
monks had been dispersed, his lands taken and the abbey’s
riches grabbed, Abbot Whiting was charged with robbery. He
was therefore to be hanged as a traitor for robbing his own
church. The sacrist and treasurer of the Abbey were to be
executed along with Abbot Whiting because they assisted in
hiding the treasures from the King’s Commissioners.
On
the following day the abbot and monks were brought back the
short distance
to Glastonbury. From the Abbey gates in the centre of town
Richard Whiting was dragged on a hurdle and up Tor Hill.
There, by the side of the ancient tower of St Michael the
seventy nine year old man was hung, then cut down and mutilated.
After being disembowelled and quartered he was beheaded and
his head was fixed on a stake over the great gateway of the
Abbey. His quarters were boiled in pitch and displayed at
Wells, Bath, Ilchester and Bridgwater. With intentional cruelty
the blameless man was even deprived of the company of his
two monks in his martyrdom. John Thorne and Roger James were
executed individually after Abbot Whiting had died. Eyewitnesses
recorded that the abbot and his monks ‘took their death very
patiently, begging forgiveness of all they might have offended.’
The
great monastic historian David Knowles writes about the last
moments of
Abbot Whiting’s life, ‘The old man’s eyes, as he stood beneath
the gallows would have travelled for the last time along
the slopes of the clouded hills and over the ridges to the
south and over those to the north once hallowed, so the story
ran, by the footsteps of the beauteous lamb of God. Below
him lay the now majestic pile of his Abbey, desolate, solitary
and about to crumble into ruins.’
In
1895 Richard Whiting, Roger James and John Thorne were beatified
by Pope
Leo XIII. In 1925 a small Catholic Church was built in Glastonbury
just across the road from the ruined Abbey. Archeologists
discovered a medieval wax seal (now in the museum at Wells)
which portrayed the image of Our Lady of Glastonbury. Based
on this seal, a new image was commissioned and the ancient
shrine of Our Lady of Glastonbury was been restored in Glastonbury’s
modern Catholic Church. Glastonbury is now known for its
annual rock festival, but it is also increasingly well known
for the Marian pilgrimages. Every July Glastonbury is thronged
with crowds on the annual pilgrimage to the one of the oldest
shrines to Our Lady. Part of the shrine in Glastonbury Catholic
Church commemorates Abbot Whiting. Behind the high altar
a tapestry shows the old abbot and his monks along with the
other saints associated with Glastonbury. The tapestry is
a reminder of the marvellous Catholic history of Glastonbury
and shows how God’s way is woven through the bloodshed, the
passion and the glories of history down to our present day.
Source: The Last
Abbots of Glastonbury, Reading and Colchester, Dame
Veronica Buss, in Benedict’s Disciples, David Hugh
Farmer (ed) Leominster,Gracewing, 1995, pp. 245-255.
Dwight Longenecker is an oblate of Downside Abbey. He is a freelance
writer and broadcaster. His latest book is St
Benedict and St Thérèse—The Little Rule and the Little
Way.
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