=Richard of London= (1274-1295) is said to have been born in the parish of S. Pancras.  He was a monk of the house, and while sacrist had erected the Bell-tower and given two bells.  A great deal of litigation was carried on in his time, and he and the abbey were fortunate in having in one of the monks, William of Woodford, a man of great skill and judgement, to conduct the different cases before the courts.  So uniformly successful was he and so wisely did he act as coadjutor of Richard when he became very old and infirm, that he was elected to the abbacy on the death of Richard of London in 1295.

=William of Woodford= (1295-1299) only lived four years after he became abbot.  After him came =Godfrey of Crowland= (1299-1321), the celerarius of the monastery.  He is very highly praised in the chronicles for the various services he rendered to the abbey.  More than once he was at the heavy charge of entertaining the king and his court, and he contributed largely to the expenses of the war with Scotland.

[Illustration:  Iron Railings, 1721.]

=Adam of Boothby= (1321-1338), one of the monks, was a man of great “innocence and simplicity” His revenues were much employed in contributions to the king’s expenses and in royal entertainments; and his energies devoted to divers legal difficulties connected with manors, wardships, repairs of bridges, rights of hunting, and the like.  Of the last eleven abbots, whose rule extended over a period of 124 years, all but one had been monks of the place.

=Henry of Morcot= (1338-1353) in all probability was also one of the monks, but this is not so recorded.  And the same may be said of all the remaining abbots, but the historians do not say so until the time of William in 1471.  At the same time it is never said that any of them came from elsewhere.

=Robert of Ramsey= (1353-1361) ruled for eight years, and nothing else is known about him.

=Henry of Overton= (1361-1391) was abbot during the commotions in King Richard II.’s reign.  The tenants with others rose up against the abbey, intending to destroy it.  The Bishop of Norwich “coming to the assistance of the monastery with a strong power, forced the villains to desist from their enterprise:  nay, dispersed them, and took some of them, and killed others; the rest, taking the church for sanctuary, which they intended to have destroyed, were there run through with lances and swords; some of them hard by the altar, others by the walls of the church, both within and without.”

=Nicholas= (1391-1396), =William Genge= (1396-1408) the first mitred abbot, =John Deeping= (1408-1438) in turn succeeded.  Nothing remarkable is told of them.  The name of the last and the names of the next two are really the names of places; but the prefix “de” seems now to have been discontinued, and the place-name to have become a surname.  Abbot John resigned his office the year before he died.

=Richard Ashton= (1438-1471) took great pains about the regulation of the services in the church, and drew up a customary out of the ancient usages of the place.