Wulnoth the fourth abbot

This abbot was succeeded by Wulnoth. This Wulnoth within two or three years had carefully corrected the mistakes of his predecessor. But afterwards he altered for the worse, and changed both the original shape and colour of the cowl and frock.

He ordained that the half-secular nuns should live in one house under one rule, so that he might clear them of any suspicion of ill fame. He set limits to their going abroad from their house. He fixed the times and places for silence, sleep, eating and prayer. His predecessor had placed them in a house too close to the church, thus mitigating their backsliding with the cover of religion. But Wulnoth ordained that the nuns should lodge in the almonry, hear matins and the other daytime hours in the great church, and perform the Maundy daily according to the Rule. In their diet, he cut out the eating of meat.

But as time went on, what he began well he spoiled by ending it badly. For he was the first to initiate a shameless breach in monastic dress. Keeping as he did hawks and hounds and huntsmen, he began to adopt the habits of huntsmen and their clothes. Also, so the story goes, he let loose the reins of chastity and squandered the substance of the church on fawners and reprobates, and so blackened the fame of its religion.

Note how the Blessed Alban was stolen and restored

Also in the time of this abbot, while the Danes were on the rampage in England, overwhelming the land and doing incalculable damage, they even made an attack on the church of St Alban, as they had heard of the existence of that famous protomartyr of the English. There they broke open the casket, stole the bones of Alban and carried them off to their own land of Denmark. There they honoured them by placing them in a bier of great price, specially made for the purpose, actually in a house of some Black Monks, so that in Denmark as in England the bier might be properly venerated.