While he was Archbishop, and afterwards when made a cardinal and living abroad, he never forgot the Abbey where he had been educated and where he had laid the foundation of his great career, but left to it a sum equal to £200,000 to be spent on building, and desired that he should be buried there. So you will find his tomb of marble and alabaster in the little chapel of St. Benedict at the entrance to the south ambulatory, the first monument of any importance set up to the memory of a bishop or abbot.
He was followed by the Prior, Nicholas Litlington, "a stirring person, very useful to the monastery," whose mind was set on improving the buildings. This was an easy task enough, thanks to the legacy of Langham and the good favour in which he stood with king and queen. So at once he set to work, the monastery being the object of his care. He built the south and west cloisters, setting his initials on the roof; the Abbot's Palace, the College Hall, the Jerusalem Chamber, houses for the bailiff, the cellarer, the infirmaries, and the sacrist, a malt-house and a water-mill; and besides this he presented the Abbey with much valuable plate and many rich vestments.
"But," remarks an old writer severely, "as he was enabled to do all this with the money left by his predecessor Langham, he should have put some memorial of the Cardinal upon the buildings. Instead, he has his own arms and the initial letters of his name on the keystone of the cloister arches."
The Abbot's house built by Litlington is the present Deanery; but the College Hall, once the Abbot's refectory, now the dining-hall of the Westminster scholars, and the Jerusalem Chamber, the room into which the Abbot's guests used to pass when they had dined, are open to the public at certain hours, and you must not forget them when you are walking through the cloisters. The Jerusalem Chamber has been restored since the days of Litlington, though the fine roof and the actual building stand now as then. The glass in one of the windows, however, is very old, as is the wonderful stone reredos, which once must have been part of the high altar. In the dining-hall you must notice the gallery at the one end in which the minstrels used to perform, and the fine pointed windows; for as the Norman architecture had given way to the Early English, and the Early English had developed into the beautiful Decorated style, so now another change was taking place, of which Litlington's building is an early example, and the Perpendicular style, which was entirely English, was creeping in.