A sixteenth-century prayer book from Malmesbury Abbey survives in the Bodleian Library, containing an inscription naming its owner as ‘Thomas Olston’. The book almost certainly belonged to Thomas Olveston, who was the abbot of Malmesbury for three decades (1480– 1510), and his prayer book suggests that he took monastic observance seriously. It included the text of the Malmesbury version of various monastic services: the Office of the Virgin, the Psalms of the Passion, the Penitential Psalms and the Office of the Dead. The book also contained the Litany of the Saints as chanted at Malmesbury and the calendar of feasts that were observed in Tudor Malmesbury, with instructions as to how particularly important feasts should be celebrated, specifying how the commemoration of certain key saints required processional ritual by the community carrying thuribles for the burning of incense and wearing elaborately embroidered copes. There is evidence here of an extraordinary degree of continuity of practice from late Anglo-Saxon to Tudor times. The fragment of the Holy Cross that was the gift of Æthelstan in the tenth century was in the Tudor period still being taken in a solemn procession around the Abbey each year on 14 October. The feasts of two relatively obscure saints – Audoenus and Paternus – were celebrated with the greatest possible solemnity. In both cases these were saints whose relics had been acquired by the Abbey before the Norman Conquest. The Litany of the Saints called upon the intercessory power of many saints but singled out for a double invocation only three saints: Peter, Aldhelm and Paternus. St Paternus of Avranches was an extremely obscure individual, who had been a bishop of Avranches in the sixth century. According to William of Malmesbury, Æthelstan presented the relics of Paternus to the church of Malmesbury, and Olveston's prayer book indicates that the relics had been continuously venerated there for almost six centuries.

Enhancing the conventual church

Thomas Olveston had architectural ambitions, and he installed elaborate stone screens in the church, three of which are still visible: one made of solid stone was placed between the western piers of the crossing and, nearby, screens with openwork stone tracery were placed in each of the aisles. The central screen was capped with a cornice that was decorated with the royal coat of arms and a series of heraldic emblems.