Walter de Wenlok, Abbot of Westminster. By E. IL Pearce.
(S.P.C.K. 12s. net.)—The Bishop of Worcester, when he was a Canon of Westminster, spent much of his leisure in the Muniment Room of the Abbey. This scholarly and interesting biography of a noted Abbot, based largely on unprinted records, is an outcome of his studios. Walter do Wonlok was elected Abbot in 1283 and died on Christmas Day, 1307. Dr. Pearce makes us realize how great a man the mediaeval Abbot was, and how his time was devoted largely to high politics and estate manage- ment, as well as to the general oversight of affairs at the Abbey. Abbot Walter was concerned in some way in the mysterious burglary at the King's Treasury, then in the Prior's chamber, in 1303. Dr. Pearce suggests, on the strength of new evidence, that the Abbot and some of his leading sneaks were accused of complicity in the crime through the malevolence of a monk, Reginald de liadham, who headed a faction that was hostile to the Abbot, and who, after his election as Prior, engaged in a violent controversy with his Superior. The Abbey in those days was a very worldly institution. On p. 126 Dr. Pearce makes a trifling slip in his version of the letters patent printed on the next page ; it was on the Monday before, not after, the feast of St. Lucy that Abbot Walter gave the heart of Henry III. into the keeping of the Abbess of Fontevrault.
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