 Mae'r ffawr, mae'n gweld, ychydig i ddim yn ei ddweud i gael eich 500 argynwg, y cyfnod i'r papain o'r llyfr amser, y Gweithio Lleidio, yn ymdweud ar gyfer y Gweithio Lleidio, yng Nghymru, ac yn ymdweud y Cyfnod, yn ymdweud y dyfodol, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. A bod yn ffrif, 1742, William Aldis, dwi'n ddweud o'r inspecfio ar y Ffleton Llywodraeth Llywodraethol, yw'r llyfr yn Llywodraeth Ffleton, o'r drwro'r ffelydd, sy'n amlwg, ychydig yn cael 5 ysgolion a 1 o ffordd, yw'r ffelydd i'r ysgolion John Islett, yw Aberdol Westminster, yw'r gweithio'r lleidio'r llyfr, ac yw'r gweithio'r llyfr i'r lleidio'r lleidio. He died January 1532, the beginning of King Henry the Eighth, which is something of a stretching definition of the word beginning, and soon after his death, this drawing was made. The antiquarian, William Aldis, was at this time in somewhat straightened circumstances, and was working primarily for various booksells. Until eight months previously, he had been the literary secretary of Edward Harley, but on Harley's death on the 16th June 1741, Aldis was forced to take what bibliographical work he could find, and was in fact eventually reduced to such a penury that ten years later his debts drove him into the fleet prison, from which he was only rescued by the generosity of friends. The curiosity that Aldis presented to the antiquaries in 1742 was what we now know as the Islet Roll, an exquisite mortuary roll drawn up to mark the death of John Islet, abbot of Westminster, which had actually happened on Sunday the 12th of May 1532. This roll, which now resides among the monuments of Westminster Avenue, features a wonderfully delicate and accomplished set of drawings in penning convalent, two of which provide us with the only pre-dissolution views of parts of the interior of the avenue, including the high altar. As such, they are historically extremely important, as well as being artistically significant. Islet, the subject of the mortuary roll, was the last great abbot of Westminster. He was born on the 10th of June 1464 in Islet in Oxfordshire, a village that had had a long and close association with Westminster Avenue, for it was here that Edward the Confessor had been born at the beginning of the 11th century, and it was a manna which that king had granted to the Abbey, and which the Abbey had held ever since. The future abbot was probably in fact the son of Nicholas Barton, and his wife Isabella, the local millers, but his potential must have been spotted at a young age, quite possibly by the then abbot of Westminster, John Islet. Young John Barton was called as a Benedictine monk in 1418, adopting the toponym Islet in recognition of his origins. He wrote swiftly through the church hierarchy, becoming chaplain to have a recently in 1487, and rapidly taken on various administrative roles within the Abbey, Cellaro in 1496, and soon afterwards receiver, treasurer and monk Bailiff. In 1498 he was involved in the Abbey's claim to be the proper burial place for Henry VI, a claim which, although legally successful, ended up in practicum of failure, Henry VI's body remained at Windsor. In the same year he was elected prior, the second highest position within the Abbey, and only two years later, at the age of only 36, he was chosen to succeed at the brief advocacy of George Fasket. Islet's rule as abbot was a high point for Westminster Abbey. Islet had significant influence at court with both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and was close to most of the major figures of the day, many of whom, including the king, came to dine at the abbot's lodges. He was appointed to various royal commissions and fulfilled other administrative roles. He was employed, for example, in the divorce proceedings of Henry VIII in the 1520s. But his major achievements, for which he will probably be best remembered, were architectural. The Charter Chapel in the Abbey, which bears his name, and especially overseeing the construction of the New Lake Chapel, one of the most splendid buildings in the country, whose foundation stone was laid on 24 January 1503, and whose consecration came 30 years later. As an artistic patron, then, like Adam Eastley before him, is was an edifice complex. Architecture and his buildings were clearly his chief interest. Nonetheless, a somewhat crude book of devotions of his does survive in the John Ryland's library. In it, alongside an interesting split pomegranate, which you can see at the bottom, you'd be good to know more of his relationship with Catherine Barron. He has had introduced his own primus, of which he is clearly very farmed. Whether this demonstrates a particularly cultivated sense of humour that is open to debate, and I, alongside a slip of a plant, I slip. This device is to be found again and again throughout the Abbey, notably on his Charter Chapel, I in the Slip. Or sometimes, in a variant of it, an eye and a man slipping out of truth, in quarries in windows both at the Abbey and elsewhere. He is rather a nice example from the Church of St Mary in the Chesterfield in Essex. Abbott by slips death on 12 May 1532, and his funeral four days later, were major events. The long procession, which accompanied his body, included senior ecclesiastical figures, herons and nobles. There is a detailed account for proceedings in a manuscript of the College of Arms. Incidentally, the presumably heralded author of this account had almost certainly seen the eye slip role, judging by the arms he chooses to illustrate the heading, of which, more in a moment. The Requiem Mass at I Slip's funeral was conducted by the abbot of Barreson-Eddon's, and the vicar of Croydon, the notorious Roman Phillips, preached the sermon. It is not necessarily surprising, therefore, that a mortuary role, that is a role designed to inform others of the death that our senior ecclesiastical figure was also drawn up to mark the occasion. The role is made up of five pounds over three membranes. These depict in sequence, and I've included here both a straight photograph of the original on the left, and a black and white photo taken some time ago under UV light, as the delicacy of the draftmanship in the original simply doesn't show up clearly from a distance. I tested this the other day, and it doesn't. And I thought this might make it easier to make up a little detail. Sorry. Abbott I Slip standing amongst the virtues is the first one. The abbott, on his deathbed, at his abatial residence in Lannate, a short distance from the abbey in what is now Pinnacle, the funeral of the great man, showing his magnificent catapult before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, his chartre chapel, which he himself would have constructed in readiness for his death, and which is architecturally very much as we still see it today, although the artist has removed the front wall to enable us to see inside. And it also includes I Slip's own tomb monument since last. And finally, a decorated initial U, presumably intended to open the word universities or something similar, and thereafter to be followed by the text of the mortuary room, which has not been written out, leading many people to suggest that for one reason or another the role was simply unfinished. This initial contains an image of the abbott assisting at the coronation of Henry VIII, with the exterior of the abbey set over it with building work in progress on the West End. On either side, the abbott issuing or possibly receiving a document, and on the right, a monk passing the document, has to be a different one, perhaps meant to be this mortuary role, to a messenger. In 1742, when Aldous displayed it, the role was actually in the possession of a certain William Green, a sculptor from Wakefield, whom the Society's Minutes record is desirous of committing it to the inspection of the loaned and ingenious society of antiquaries for their judgement and advice. Through the hands and care of William Aldous, who was desired to accept the Society's thanks. By the following spring, Green was tempted to sell the manuscript, still unclosely advised, one cannot help but imagine by Aldous. The manuscript had been in William Green's possession for a number of years, since at least 1728, and it had clearly interested him enough to make a copy of at least one of its powers, that of Isaac among the Virtues, and has the original on the side. This drawing is now amongst the goth papers at the bottom. When it was put on display before the antiquaries in 1742, the Isaac role clearly struck a call with at least one of the loaned fellows who saw it. The Society's official grave from George Virtues evidently remembered having seen something similar. I'm assuming correspondence on the subject with his friend John Anstis, Garter King of Arms. The letters that passed between them are among Virtues papers at the BL and a digital manuscript 23088. Two of those which Anstis sent to Virtues from his house in Warwick were also copied into the Society's Minutes the following May. The first of these, 30th November 1742, is worth quoting. Sir, I likewise send you the drafts relating to Abba Islip's death and funeral, which probably you might formally have seen in my custody, which I brought from Warwick a long ago. The first part contains his expiring in a large room, not in probably Jerusalem's chamber. Anstis is wrong there. With the elements of the four evangelists at the corner. The second is his body under the hearth, I saw a chapel ardent in the Abbey of Westminster, with the attendance, etc. The third is monument, which still remains, etc. These two letters show the decorations of the figures there in the Abbey. I have the heraldic narrative of his funeral from a manuscript at that time, presumably the College of Arms manuscript that we just saw. I shall send them at any time if the Society have not already seen it and if thought deserving and groving that may be done. Four months later, on the 25th of April 1943, Anstis followed this up with another letter. Apologising for not yet having sent the drafts from Warwick to virtue and misfortune occasioned by the sickness of his waterman. Now lately dead. Anstis explained that he had undertaken a somewhat drastic intervention on the drawings he had acquired. It was in a long role miserably ill-used before I put it into frames and got it to be repaired in several places. But I'm afraid these amendments decreased the value of it. What exactly these drawings or drafts were, though in Anstis' possession and which he had had cut up and put into frames, would not have been terribly clear except that George Virtue took up the offer of making copies. The drawings that Virtue made have recently been discovered, once more among the goth papers at the bottom. And here I must express my profuseness to Bernard Ners, who will be known to most of you, but first bringing them to my attention and for discussing their significance with me. The drawings that Virtue copied were coloured and are an entirely separate set from that which now constitutes the isolate roll. The Anstis pounds, as I better refer to them, were clearly very close to the drawings on the existing roll as we know it. But there are sufficient differences to make clear that the originals in Anstis' possession were not simply straight or indeed later copies. In fact, it seems clear that they must have been the portions of the finished coloured mortuary roll for which the isolate roll that we have represents an initial, if highly polished, preparatory drawing. If that is so, then the virtue drawings that we have here that are at the bottom represent the only genuine coloured representation of the new dissolution abbing in existence. And as such, of a fascinating new evidence of how the abbey looked and was furnished in the late medieval period. I think we may take Virtue's drawings as constituting an accurate representation of Anstis' original powers. Virtue was of course a highly accomplished drawing and both well-abeled and indeed un-specific instructions to record things precisely for antiquarian comparison. There would have been no reason for him to embellish or invent a strong pressure not to. Before looking in more detail at what evidence the new pictures give us for the circumstances of the creation of the mortuary roll and its purpose and what it shows us of the abbey interior, it will be as well to finish covering the history of the two manuscripts that we have as we now have them as far as I've been able to establish them. John Anstis himself stated that he had acquired his drawings in Warwickshire long before. Although this didn't give us much to go on, it's notable that a large proportion of the collection he owned had come from that of the hair on Sir Edward Walk, who died in 1677, and had lived the latter part of his life at Cropton in Warwickshire. It seems to me quite possible that the coloured roll, that is Anstis' powers, had been in Walker's possession in the late 17th century. And so possibly, as many other papers have, might have come before that, from the right of the family, by a civilian death and civilian name. This is on conjectural, but a great many other manuscripts did follow this route. And Thomas Wright's leaf, of course, was Garter King of Arms in 1532 at the death of Albert Eisler, although it was not apparently present in the funeral. What happened to these coloured panels after John Anstis' death in 1744 is unfortunately not clear. His papers were kept by his sons until the last of these died in 1778, in the 1760s, whereupon they were auctioned off in 600 and 56 lots. Unfortunately, there is no specific mentions of drawings of Albert Eisler's funeral among the sales particulars. The only entry in which it seems such drawings might lurk appears to be lock number 555, which includes a portfolio with some of the prints engraved by the Society of Antiquaries, categories of several great men and other prints. The annotated copy of the sales catalogue in the College of Arms indicates that this lock was purchased by Joseph Edmondson. You can just see this on the left there, Edmond. It's slightly cropped up a bit. He was formerly the Queen's coach painter, and later, after much rang game with a number of members of the College of Arms, a herald extorted man. Mark Noble, in his history of the College of Arms of 1804, described Edmondson as, from humble origins and a mean trade, rose to celebrity. He was apprentice to a power, became afterwards a herald painter and very employed much in ways and arms upon her, if you see took a fancy to the science of heraldry. In 1767, Garter King of Arms, Stephen Martin Leake, was rather blunt in his description, saying that he was a low dirty mechanic. And he, by obssiciousness, had insinuated himself into the favour of self-inability. An alternative possibility is that the colour panels remain in possession of George Virtue. Giants just died very soon after lending them to Virtue, and it's conceivable that Virtue may not be able to return them. If so, they should have remained among his papers, which are scattered. But many of his drawings were acquired by Horace Wampoll, and now form part of the Louis Wampoll collection in Farmington. But there seems to be no sign of the icillip paintings among them, as far as I've been able to establish. Whether the original colour panels were acquired by Edinson, or remained or retained by Virtue, or ended up elsewhere entirely, unfortunately no trace of them has yet been found up to the mid-18th century. The icillip roll itself, that is the one that we have at Westminster, Hawke for Sale, by William Green in 1743, was eventually bought by Robert Hay Drummond, later to become artificial in York, but at this point, a newly-installed pre-ender at Westminster. In 1747, four years later, with typical generosity, Drummond donated the roll to the dean and chapter of Westminster. His sixth son, George, said of him that wherever he lived, hospitality presided. Wherever he was present, elegance, festivity, and good humour were sure to be found. His very failings were those of a heart war, even to impetuosity. Some 40 years later, he was furious on a drawing upon vellum to the antiquities to put it before the fellows, this time in their relatively new rooms in Somerset House. The dean believed it to be by whole-wine, and the minutes give a detailed description of the document taken almost verbatim in the description of it in 1742-3. However, a final flourish is given on the significance of this curious whole manuscript. Abbot icillip, say the minutes, laid the first stone of Henry VII's chapel in 1502, and dying in 1532, this drawing becomes the more valuable because it not only represents the form of the house and the ceremony in a long manner of performing the obsequies in that age, but also shows the structure and appearance of the high water in Westminster Abbey before the Reformation. Further shows the original appearance and ornaments of icillip's chapel and the figure placed under his tomb, which is now destroyed. Three years later in 1787, the society petitioned the dean that is the artist Samuel Grimm to copy for the use of the society the drawings by Hans Hallwine of icillip's funeral in his lordship's possession. No response seems to have been forthcoming. And so four years later, in February 1791, it was ministered that the secretary do wait upon the Bishop of Rochester, that is the dean, to obtain permission of his lordship to have a copy of the drawing of Hans Hallwine of icillip's funeral and to request that the society draw for that purpose. This second petition evidently was successful. For Samuel Grimm was paid 30 years by the society in May 1791 for six drawings taken by him from a role in the possession of the dean of Westminster of icillip's funeral. The drawings that Grimm made of the role are now in the society's collections upstairs in the rare Westminster Abbey portfolio. Number 19, icillip among the virtues, number 20, the deathbed, number 21, the funeral, number 22, the icillip trackway and 15e, the initial U. The sixth drawing, coloured in the name of six by Grimm, was on icillip's arms that then come out to everyone. 15D in the portfolio, which seems to have been taken from the Parliament role of arms now written by the additional manuscript 40078. The intention had clearly been to make engravings but for some reason this project took another 13 years to come to fruition. Why this delay occurred is not entirely clear but it may have to explain why resting in the society's strong rooms through this period, the role's precise origins came to be rather forgotten. James Bazzaro finally produced five engravings from the Grimm drawings of the role for the volume four of the society's previously some of 83 guineas exclusive of copper and white. But the role itself was then forgotten and was not returned to the Dean of Chapters as it should have been. In fact, it not only sat in Somerset House but indeed was moved with other collections hidden to Burlington House in 1874 until it was rediscovered by W. St. John Hoog who published an investigation of the role, the only detail studied thus far in the Tooster Monument of Volume 7. The role was finally returned to the Dean of Chapters on the 31st of January 1907 120 years after it had been borrowed. It has remained in the museum of the Abbey since that date. In 1953 it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in an exhibition of Flemish Art at which was a detailed examination of the role it was carried out. It was only then that the attribution to whole wire was dropped to the alternative authorship of Gerard Horanbryd put forward by Art of the Pact. This attribution was supported by A.U. Poppin, keeper of Prince of Dorex at the British Museum and by Edward Croft Murray and has not since been challenged. The role itself was a feature in the Plans Queen's Diamond Jubilee Gallery at the Abbey due to open in early 2018 although because of light sensitivity we will probably only be able to display one panel at a time with a facsimile of the others. First of all we can scotch a tentative suggestion made by St. John Hope. St. John Hope was intrigued by the instructions which had to be found on the panel of isolate among the virtues. As you can see and I've included here both the original role on left and virtues drawing the colour panel so you can see what I'm referring to more clearly. The abbey is shown standing among coils of foliage with scrolls bearing the Christian virtues managing incidentally to incorporate another loom allusion to his rebus. He holds a slip of a plant in both hands. But the virtues picture also contains six excuctions around the abbey held by supporting angels. Five of the coats of arms depicted are straightforward and were straightforwardly explained by St. John Hope as working around the clockwise from the top left the arms of St. Edward the Confessor the arms of St. Peter to whom the church is dedicated the royal arms the arms of the abbey and the personal arms adopted by Albert Isaac himself. These last arms also appear frequently in his Charter Channel before his arm. Now the sixth arms left here caused St. John Hope some trouble. He suggested that they were the arms of the Giles family but he said that the arms had yet to be made out although he did note that St. John is one of the prominent figures of saints in the deathbed scene. In fact, the arms depicted are those of Albert Isaac's predecessor but one is Albert John Eastley. They appeared on his monumental brass which still sits in the north end outside the chapel of St. John the Evangelist immediately to the west of Isaac's own chapel. Only indents of the arms now survive however, Henry Key, writing in 1683 when they were still there, recorded on a fest in the rail between three crosses pattern three markers. In a similar arrangement to the Isaac role Eastley's brass also included the arms of St. Peter and of the abbey and at least one other which Key does not identify but which one would imagine might well have been the confessor's arms as we have seen John Eastley and Albert Isaac's patron. It is interesting to note that Isaac seems to have adopted arms with a marked similarity to Eastley's presumably as a sign of debt to his master but it is also worth noting the inclusion of this specific relationship that of Isaac's patron the person who was Albert when Isaac arrived at the abbey and who was responsible for promoting him through the various offices of the monastery and to whom he served as personal chapter. Its inclusion on the role in 1532 may have more significance than the purely historical lego biographical events from 50 years before again one I shall come back to. I'm afraid it's not my intention here to explore all the additional details that the virtue colour versions of the original Anstis pounds reveal about the architectural and decorative interior of Westminster Abbey before the dissolution. That must remain as the subject of a much further study and probably one to be taken up by others possibly by some of you in this room. For now I shall only highlight one or two specific details some of which in fact George Virtue himself enumerated in a memorandum among his papers drawn up on the instructions of the society. On the first panel for example that of Isaac among the virtues George Virtue states that the inscriptions and the inscription in Quirio Parcomet Persa is wanting entirely in those I have compared with from Mr Anstis. It appears by some little remains that such an illuminated partition of this figure of Robert Bysliff was joined to that of Mr Anstis's but had been cut off in his wanting now but may be happily supplied by this role that is Virtue has here filmed in the blank. On the third panel he states that every circumstance of the delineation is so much alike that excepting the colour blazing of the coats of arms that adorn the funeral hearse and some inserted martyrs it is all the same. In fact we can see on this panel that there are extra figures introduced onto the colour version and we've got them right and indeed on the other side of the highlight. Only two steps rather than three are in front of the highlight that a great deal more detail needs to be behind. That a motto has been introduced onto the fronting of the altar screen and that of course we have the colours of many of the features the covering for the hanging picks other cloth hangings the canopies and testers of the tunes behind the catapult and so on. Likewise the power show by Sid's monument in Chantry Chapel gives us much more detail in the colour version around the chapel of the original colour of the head of Christ by Tirugiana sculpted in about 1520 and now of the Wallace Coection. Especially Mark are the gilt bronze rays that surrounded the head most of which are now lost the two which do survive are apparently covered in black varnish that you can see them in the colour version of the lamp. Virtues notes that you which he suggests did not include the image of the building work over the top of the head and of the deathbed scene but if Virtue did versions of these as surely he must they don't seem to have spied. Interestingly the only difference in the deathbed scene as well that Virtue mentions is that the person that holds the crucifix to the dying habit that is here and in the depicted illumination it is a man in his black habit that holds it so Thomas Beckett has been replaced by a regular mark. I'm sure these features and many others will be the subject of much scrutiny in years to come but for my purposes tonight I want to look more closely at what the new images tell us about the circumstances of the role's production and its purpose. In this context it is on the picture of Islith's track. In Virtue's colour version of this picture a scroll has been added to the bottom of the panel. This scroll bears the legend Mercy and Grace repeated on either side of an eagle which holds in its mouth another scroll on which is written the single word fullwell. It is the inclusion of this detail which convinces me that Anstas's colour panels were the original finished version of the role. In 1932 when John Islith died brother John Fullwell was a very senior figure at Westminster. He had entered the Abbey in 1508 under Islith's patronage and like his master before him rose steadily through the ranks in months. By the 1530s he had become treasurer, seller, warden the manners of Queen Eleanor and of Richard II and Anna Bohemia responsible for the payments for the decoration of Abbey Islith's own chapter recently constructed and he had served as the Alice chapter in which capacity he was responsible for organising the furnishings of the new age. For example in 1526 he paid 11hours five shillings to the sculptor of Benedetto the Roetzano for one third of the overall price of the new water he even owned the old man's street. In 1525 he came to the university library as a small copy of the manipulus floor and was owned and inscribed by him not only with his name at the bottom, John Fullwell but also with the motto which adorns the Islith role Mercy and Grace and with a play on words on his name rather reminiscent of Islith's Reavus plain as ffarns you will see top left and Valadau Bene for well As such it was only natural that in 1532 Fullwell was chosen one of the three months tasked to notify him of the death of the abbot In the aftermath of Islith's death and the uncertainty around who would succeed him John Fullwell would have certainly felt himself a or possibly the leading candidate for the role However the appointment was long delayed and the uncertainty at the abbot increased these were difficult times On the 15th of March 1532 Archbishop Warram had publicly upgraded the King in Parliament but two months later in fact the day before Islith's funeral he resided over the convocation which surrendered its legislative independence to the crown On the same day Thomas Moore resided at the chancellyship and withdrew from public politics starting down his own ffate for a path At Westminster, John Fullwell in his treasurer's accounts of allowances for 1531-2 records very sizable payments that year for hospitality What would now be described as verse as advocacy or even lobbying For the visits of various barons of the treasury and other royal officials Thomas Moore is noted that year at the end of the list but his name has been crossed out The abbasid at some point might be seen as a poisoned chalice but I think there is no doubt that Fullwell both desired and actively sought it On the 16th of October 1532 five months after Islith's funeral Fullwell wrote to the ascendant Thomas Cromwell as master of the King's Jewels Sir, please edit your good mastership to understand that all things in the sanctuary as well within the monastery is continued to be as well within the monastery as without is continued in due order according to the advertisement you gave unto me when I was last with you at London So at the time of your return home my trust to your mastership will not hear but that we shall deserve the King's most gracious favour in our suit and in the meantime my religious father prior with all the convent as he shall so think convenient for the furtherance of the same and he so do it shall bind them many assuredly to pray for your prosperous continence as no one shall say to Jesus Christ what exactly this suit was he doesn't specify but I think it's quite likely that it included as part of it the Islith Rock not only as the notification of the former abbot's death but within it also an allusion to the former's desire to take on the abbot's scene that is that it was the Islith Rock which served both as the notification and the former's pitch for supremacy within the abbot it is traditionally stated that the mortuary rolls of this sort of which only a couple of dozen survive in this country were intended for circulation to heads of other religious houses to inform them of the death of a brother abbot this instance at least that is not the case this role was intended for the king hence the employment of a very high quality and presumably expensive artist unfortunately I have found no documentary smoking darling authorship frustratingly former's accounts as treasure do not survive for the rest of the year between 32 to 33 even if payment for such work was recorded in them he was an artist who worked in a wide range of media portraiture windows, embroidery and manuscripts he was probably in England by the late 50s and he or his workshop seemed perfectly plausible candidates but I'm afraid there is no firm evidence one way or the other and the new George Fertree drawings being clearly of a lesser quality than the Islith Rock to not help to clarify this obscure and overt references to himself into the palace as we have seen in the opening palace the escuptions display Islith's own arms alongside that of his patron and the abbot for whom he had served as chaplain the parallels with full wealth and Islith would have been clear to anyone with the knowledge of the abbot on the coloured chaplain palace he has of course gone as far as adding his name on personal motto to him might we expect to find other evidence of full wealth advertising himself well on the deathbed scene for which there is no surviving coloured copy in the foreground before Islith's bed a small group of monks gathered a lot of prayers in reality such a group who would surely have included Islith's own chaplain in the drawing the figures in this group reading figure second from the left are rendered beautifully with an authenticity not evident in other figures on the roll not even in the figures of Islith himself I would suggest that in this most prominent figure we have a portrait of John Fullwell praying for his master but also perhaps with one eye outward to the intended viewer for John's promise and to the king whatever is Fullwell's ambitions they would be thwarted by a man on the 12th of May 1533 on the anniversary of John Islith's death William Boster an obscure and presumably malleable monk from Peterborough took the oath in chance to perform the duties of him in the 7th Foundation he was the first outsider from the monastery to be given the embassy since 1214 over 300 years before within months much-having property was mortgaged off looked to fund payments to crime devastating financial misfinishment followed and the monastery fell into a decline until the almost inevitable dissolution of 1540 Boston himself was rewarded by being appointed dean of the New Collegiate Church nonetheless Fullwell's ambitions haven't wavered in 1535 three years after Islith's death the wealthy Mercer and future Mayor of London Robert Greshan sought from Primwell the favour for John Fullwell a monk bailiff at Westminster to be prior of Worcester but nothing came of this either Fullwell died still a monk at Westminster later that year and so perhaps in spitting that what survives of John Fullwell's ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful project is only the sublime preparatory drawing rather than the finished work what remains is not only an unparallel view of the avenue before the dissolution greatly enriched now by the discovery of these new colour views but also a glorious monument to failed ambition Thank you very much