they afforded matter for satire both in prose and verse. Chaucer is never so facetious, as when satirizing them"; in Pierce Plowman's Visions, a well-known poem of the 14th century, there is a prophecy in form of their downfal, as we have already seen; and in the beginning of the 15th Henry IV. commissioners were appointed to visit and reform all the monasteries of the Cistercian order in England; so that, with respect to the dissolution of these houses, and the confiscating of their revenues, the Reformation of the 16th century did but hatch the egg: for it was laid long before. But this house of St. Radegundis required neither Lollard nor minstrel, to expose it, nor any arm of secular authority to shake it down. It was professedly a society of veiled nuns, a college of virgins; yet a house of frail sisters, who committed an act of felo de se: and this must suffice for the priory of St. Radegundis. Anciently there was not only over every nunnery its peculiar guard and prior, but there were provincial priors, who presided over all the nunneries of each • See the Nuns and Friars Tale, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. b Rymer's Fœdera, vol. 8. • There were, very early in the Christian Church, Colleges of Virgins, as before observed. Ascetic@n, Lib. ii. Cap. xi. d The following neat lines are incidentally quoted by the grave author of Ascetican, being a History and Defence of Monastic Institutions. Harum sunt quædam steriles, quædam parientes, Virgineoq. tamen nomine cuncta tenent: Quæ pastoralis baculi dotatur honore, Illa quidem melius fertiliusq. parit; order in every province; but the jurisdiction of monasteries belonged at this time a to the bishops of their respective dioceses. It was, therefore, John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, who obtained licence of Henry VII. to convert this his monastery into a college. The charter of foundation is dated 1496: it was dedicated to the most Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Radegundis, though, by the founders joining to it from the beginning the name of Jesus, it now retains, and did from his time, only that name. To speak then of the founder: he was born at Beverley, in Yorkshire, and educated at Cambridge, where he took his doctor's degree in 1461. He was first patronized by Kemp, Bishop of London, and from inferior preferments, rose to some of the first offices in church and state. In 1461 he became Dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster, and Master of the Rolls: in 1472 he was consecrated Bishop of Rochester: in 1476, after being made President of Wales, he was translated to Worcester, where he continued ten years; for, according to Bishop Godwin, he succeeded Morton in the see of Archbishop Parker describes the matter thus: Alcock-papæ retulit abbatissam sanctimonialium Radegundæ ordinis sancti Benedicti haud pie sancteq. vivere; eâq, decedente, abbatiam ad ruinam paratam, et a virginibus ordinem deserentibus desolatam fuisse, A. D. 1496. Catalogus Procancellariorum Cantab. &c. sub. fin. Antiq. Britan. Eccles. &c. b So the Regist. Alcock (fol. 125), as referred to by Bentham, Hist. of Ely, p. 182. The name should seem to be immediately derived from the chapel of the monastery that was dedicated to Jesus. Vulgo autem appellari Coll. Jesu, ab ecclesia conventuali sive sacello Jesu dicatæ. Orig. Jes. Ely, A. 1486a, and, that his civil dignity might keep time with his ecclesiastical, he was raised, while Bishop of Ely, by Henry VII. to be chancellor of England'. Alcock lived then under the full sunshine of royal patronage many years, for he did not die till the year 1500. He, of course, acquired considerable wealth, for which his taste in architecture found a ready vent. Many of the Norman prelates, as the Saxons were before, and their successors to the Reformation, are celebrated for their skill in architecture; a skill much promoted by their passion for building churches and monasteries. Bishop Alcock was concerned in other institutions, and it is said, in other public edifices at Cambridge, besides Jesus College, particularly St. Mary's Church. While Bishop of Worcester, he erected anew, and in elegant style, the north side of Westbury Church, in his native county; he founded a school at Kingston-upon-Hull; he built a chapel in the cathedral at Ely, and most of his episcopal manor houses he is said to have improved and adorned with various buildings. We need not, however, suppose that all this was done, as writers would lead us to believe, out of the bishop's private funds. Though the unhappy nuns of Radegundis might, when they were able, have dilapidated much, yet they had still large estates. The charter of foundation expressly says, they had dilapidated much, but all their remaining estates came to the bishop, by licence a Godwin. de Præsulibus Angliæ, p. 329. b Mr. Wharton says, (Ang. Sac. vol. i. p. 675,) iterum creatus est, idq. munus sesquianno, administravit, • So stated in Dallaway's Observations on English Architecture, p. 193. |