John Feckenham

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John Feckenham (c. 1515 – October, 1584), also known as John Howman of Feckingham and later John de Feckenham or John Fecknam, was an English churchman, the last abbot of Westminster.

He was born at Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, into a family of substantial yeomen. The family name was Howman, but as a monk he chose to be known by the name of his place of origin. Thomas Fuller notes in Worthies of England that Feckenham was the last clergyman to be "locally surnamed". His early education came from the parish priest, but he was sent at an early age to the cloister school at abbey, and from there, in his eighteenth year, to Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a Benedictine student. After taking his degree in arts, he returned to Evesham, and made monastic profession. He went back to Oxford in 1537 and took his degree of Bachelor of Divinity on June 11, 1539. He was at Evesham at the time the abbey was surrendered on 27 January 1540 in the Dissolution of the Monasteries; and then, with a pension of £10 a year, he went back to Oxford. Sonn afterwards, however, he became chaplain to John Bell Bishop of Worcestor and then served Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, in the same capacity from 1543 to 1549. In 1544 Bonner gave him the living of Solihull.

Feckenham established a reputation as a preacher and a disputant of keen intellect but unvarying charity. After Bonner was deprived of his see, in about 1549, Thomas Cranmer sent Feckenham to the Tower of London, and while there learning and eloquence made him such a successful advocate that he was temporarily freed ("borrowed out of prison") to take part in seven public disputations against John Hooper, John Jewel and others. Released by Queen Mary I on her accession in 1553, he returned to Bonner's service, became a prebendary of St Paul's, rector of Finchley, then of Greenford Magna, chaplain and confessor to the Queen, and then Dean of St Paul's (March 10, 1554). He took part in the Oxford disputes against Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley; but he was ill at ease with the brutality of some measures put in force against Protestants. Feckenham employed his influence with Mary "to procure pardon of the faults or mitigation of the punishment for poor Protestants" (Fuller). He was sent by the Queen to prepare Lady Jane Grey for death and when the future Elizabeth I of England was sent to the Tower on March 18, 1554, Feckenham interceded for her life and liberty, even at the cost of displeasing Mary.

In May 1556 the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by the University of Oxford, and when the royal abbey of Westminster was revived, Feckenham was appointed abbot. Thus under his guidance traditional monastic life began again within its hallowed walls on November 21, 1556, the abbey school was reopened and the shrine of St Edward the Confessor restored.

On her accession in late 1558 Queen Elizabeth sent for Feckenham and is said to have offered him the archbishopric of Canterbury. Another story suggests that the Queen offered to let the abbot and his monks stay at Westminster if they conformed to the new faith. However, both of these stories are now widely discredited. Feckenham sat in Elizabeth's first parliament, and was the last mitred abbot to do so. He consistently opposed all the legislation for changes in religion, and, when the hour of trial came, refused the oath of supremacy. The abbey was dissolved on July 12, 1560, and within a year Feckenham was sent by Archbishop Matthew Parker to the Tower (May 20, 1560), according to Jewel, "for having obstinately refused attendance on public worship and everywhere declaiming and railing against that religion which we now profess" (Parker Society, first series, p. 79).

Except for some brief periods when he was a prisoner at large, Feckenham spent the rest of his life in confinement either in some recognized prison, or in the more distasteful and equally rigorous keeping of the Bishops of Winchester and Ely. After fourteen years' confinement, he was released on bail and lived in Holborn, where his benevolence was shown by all manner of works of charity. "He relieved the poor wheresoever he came, so that flies flock not thicker to spilt honey than beggars constantly crowd about him" (Fuller). He set up a public aqueduct in Holborn, and a hospice for the poor at Bath; he distributed every day to the sick the milk of twelve cows, took care of orphans, and encouraged sports on Sundays among the youth of London by giving prizes.

In 1577 he was committed to the care of Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely with strict instructions as to his treatment. Cox, who was known as an intolerant man of virtually Puritan views, could find no fault with him except that "he was a gentle person but in the popish religion too, too obstinate." In 1580 he was moved to Wisbech Castle, and there exercised a good influence among his fellow-prisoners; this was remembered when, in later years, the notorious Wisbeach Stirs broke out. Even here Feckenham found a means of doing public good; at his own cost he repaired the road and set up a market cross in the town. After twenty-four years of suffering for his conscience, he died in prison and was buried in an unknown grave in the parish church at Wisbech on October 10, 1584.

Among the few pieces published by John Feckenham are the Conference-Dialogue held between Lady Jane Grey and himself, and several funeral orations or sermons.

[edit] References

The fullest account of John Feckenham is to be found in E. Taunton, English Black Monks of St Benedict (London, 1897), vol. 1, pp. 160-222.

An authoritative recent account is David Knowles, "John Feckenham, Last Abbot of Westminster", in David Knowles, Saints and Scholars, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1962, pp. 192-202.