Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Malvern, William of
MALVERN, WILLIAM of, alias PARKER (fl. 1535), last abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester, was born between 1485 and 1490, and is said to have been of the family of Parker of Hasfield in Gloucestershire. He was probably educated at the Benedictine abbey of Gloucester, and was sent by the monks to Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where he supplicated for leave to use a 'typett,' 17 April 1507, being at that time B.C.L. He supplicated for the university degrees of D.C.L. 29 Jan. 1507-8, B.D. 1 July 1511, D.D. 17 May 1514; he was not admitted to the degree of D.D. until 5 May 1515. Meanwhile he had returned to Gloucester, and entered the Benedictine order at St. Peter's Abbey. Under the abbot John Newton, alias Brown, Malvern was supervisor of the works, and acquired a taste for building, which he was afterwards able to gratify. On 4 May 1514 he was elected abbot, and in that capacity frequently attended parliament. Wolsey visited the abbey in 1525 and found the revenues to be just over a thousand pounds. Malvern added a good deal to the buildings. He repaired and in part rebuilt the abbot's house (now the palace) in the city, and also the country house at Prinknash. At Barnwood he built the tower, and in the cathedral the vestry at the north end of the cross aisle and the chapel where he was buried. He is said to have been opposed to Henry VIII's ecclesiastical policy, but he paid 500l. as the premunire composition, and on 31 Aug. 1534 he subscribed to the supremacy. He seems also to have been friendly with Rowland Lee [q. v.], bishop of Coventry, and attended him when he was doing his best to support Henry's views (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Gairdner, viii. 915). Henry himself seems to have been at Gloucester in 1535. During the year Malvern was charged by an anonymous accuser with having tried to hush up the scandal connected with Llanthony Abbey, about which Dr. Parker, the chancellor of Worcester, perhaps a kinsman of Malvern, had been appealed to in vain. The accusation is preserved in the Record Office. St. Peter's Abbey surrendered 2 Dec. 1539, and the deed was signed by the prior, but not by Malvern. He does not seem to have had a pension, and this gives credibility to the account that at the dissolution he retired to Hasfield, and there died very shortly afterwards. He was buried in the chapel he had built on the north side of the choir of Gloucester Cathedral; his tomb is an altar-monument with a figure in white marble.
Malvern wrote in 1524 an account in English verse of the foundation of his monastery, which Hearne printed in his edition of 'Robert of Gloucester' from a manuscript at Caius College, Cambridge.
[Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Gairdner; Hart's Histor. et Cartul. Monast. S. Petri Glouces. (Rolls Ser., iii. 296, 305, 307; Gasquet's Henry VIII and the Engl. Monasteries; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Dugdale's Monasticon, i. 536; Leland's Itin. iv. 77; Rudder's Hist, of Gloucestershire, p. 138; Hearne's Robert of Gloucester, Pref. p. vi, and ii. 578 sqq.]