Richard Whiting (abbot)

Richard Whiting was born near Wrington. He was educated at Glastonbury Abbey, and then at the Monk's Hostel at Cambridge, graduating with an MA in 1483. ==Career==

in East direction to the choir. Whiting was ordained deacon in 1500 and priest in 1501. He was a sober and caring spiritual leader and a good manager of the abbey's day-to-day life. Contemporary accounts show that Whiting was held in very high esteem. The abbey over which Whiting presided was one of the richest and most influential in England. About one hundred monks lived in the enclosed monastery, where the sons of the nobility and gentry were educated before going on to university. As Abbot of Glastonbury, Whiting was a peer of the realm and administrator of vast estates. Whiting signed his assent to the Act of Supremacy when it was first presented to him and his monks in 1534. Henry sent Richard Layton to examine Whiting and the other inhabitants of the abbey. He found all in good order, but suspended the abbot's jurisdiction over the town of Glastonbury. Small "injunctions" were given to him about the management of the abbey property. A number of times over the years which followed, Whiting was told the abbey was safe from dissolution. However, the 1535 Suppression of Religious Houses Act brought about the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and provided a warning of what the future might hold. ==Death==

By January 1539, Glastonbury was the only monastery left in Somerset. Abbot Whiting refused to surrender the abbey, which did not fall under the Act for the suppression of the lesser houses. The precise charge on which he was arrested, and subsequently executed, remains uncertain, though his case is usually referred to as one of treason. Cromwell clearly acted as judge and jury: in his manuscript Remembrances are the entries: Marillac, the French Ambassador, on 25 October wrote: "The Abbot of Glastonbury. . . has lately, been put in the Tower, because, in taking the Abbey treasures, valued at 200,000 crowns, they found a written book of arguments in behalf of Queen Katherine." the site of the martyrdoms of Abbot Whiting and Doms John Thorn and Roger James As a member of the House of Lords, Whiting should have been attainted (condemned) by an Act of Parliament passed for that purpose, but his execution was an accomplished fact before Parliament met. Whiting was sent back to Glastonbury with Pollard, and reached Wells on 14 November. A trial apparently took place, and he was convicted of "robbing Glastonbury church". The next day, Saturday, 15 November, he was taken to Glastonbury with two of his monks, treasurer of the church John Thorne and sacristan Roger James, where all three were fastened upon hurdles and dragged by horses to the top of Glastonbury Tor which overlooks the town. Here they were hanged, drawn and quartered, with Whiting's head being fastened over the west gate of the now deserted abbey and his limbs exposed at Wells, Bath, Ilchester and Bridgwater. ==Legacy==

Whiting was beatified by the Pope Leo XIII on 13 May 1895. Whiting was the subject of a novel, The Last Abbot of Glastonbury (1883), by Augustine David Crake. In 2023, a pastoral area of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton was named in honour of Whiting. ==See also==