york00orns

THE ABBOT OF FOUNTAINS.
Layton writes to report that in Yorkshire they "fynde
gret corruption emongiste persons religiouse, even
lyke as we dyde in the sowthe." ^ They were proceeding
on the day on which he wrote to visit
St. Mary's Abbey, where they were led to expect
" much evil disposition, bothe in thabbot and the
convent." He reports also, by the way, as it were,
that the Dean of York and the Treasurer of the
minster were squabbling one with the other as to the
terms on which the former was to resign the deanery
in favour of the latter. A joint epistle from the two
visitors enters at some length into the delinquencies
of the Abbot of Fountains,^ who is charged with
having dilapidated his house, wasted the woods upon
the monastic estate, and only a week before their
arrival had embezzled jilate and jewels out of the
sacristy of the church, and sold them to a London
goldsmith. His private life was also immoral. They
made him acknowledge his delinquencies, and advised
and almost insisted upon his resignation. But there
was some difficulty as to finding a suitable successor.
Fountains was a great monastery, and was not one
which was then to be suppressed. "There is never
a monke in that howse," they told Cromwell, " mete
for that rowme." They suggest, however, the appointment
of a former monk called Marmaduke Bradley,
then a prebendary of Ripon, whom they describe as
the wisest monk in England, and, what was probably
of greater importance, one who was ready to give
' " Letters," &c., p. 81.
- William Thresk, or Thiisk. He was afterwards executed
for his share in tlie Pilgrimage of Grace.