So late as 1536, the Registers of Chichester supply an example of manumission by Bishop Sherburne. The deed of manumission begins, as is usual in deeds of manumission of that time, with a quotation from the Institutes of Justinian, “Whereas at the beginning nature brought forth all men free, and afterwards the law of nations placed certain of them under the yoke of servitude; we believe that it is pious and meritorious towards God to manumit them, and restore them to the benefit of pristine liberty;” therefore the bishop emancipates Nicholas Holden, a “native and serf,” who for many years had served him on his manor of Woodmancote and elsewhere, from every chain, servitude, and servile condition by which he was bound to the bishop and his cathedral, and, so far as he can, to make him a free man.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CATHEDRAL.
n order to give a complete view of the position and work of the parochial clergy in town and country, it is necessary to indicate, however briefly, both their connection with the cathedral and their relations with the monasteries. In this chapter we attempt the former subject; the latter in a following chapter.
We must glance back at our history and recall the time when the cathedral was the mother church of the diocese, and the bishop and his clergy lived together as one family. Some of them remained always at head-quarters to keep up the Divine service with as full a choir as their circumstances permitted, and to carry on the schools, which formed so important a branch of their work of Christian civilization; while others were itinerating hither and thither through the diocese preaching the gospel to the people. Then, we remember, came the gradual organization of the parochial system, by which the great majority of the clergy were scattered over the diocese, each residing permanently in his own rectory-house, and ministering constantly to his own people.