[81] See Sir H. Ellis’s “Introduction to Domesday,” i. 324, 325.
[82] The Church of Gisburn, Yorkshire, was given to the Nunnery of Stainfield, Lincolnshire, by a Percy. For fifty years the nuns simply presented to the rectory like any other patron; then in 1226 Archbishop Walter Gray assigned them ad proprios usus, half a carucate of the glebe land, and the tithe of corn in various places named, but without endowing a vicarage, and the convent presented six more rectors under those conditions; it was not until 1341 that a vicarage was ordained. (Whitaker’s “Craven,” p. 45).
[83] This Council also forbade a vicar to hold more than one parish.
[84] Where the religious house was situated in or near the parish church, special arrangements were not infrequently made. At Tortington, near Arundel, Sussex, was a small house of Austin canons which existed before the time of King John. The vicar of the parish had a corrody in the house, consisting of a right to board and lodging for himself and a serving boy. At Sybeton, Suffolk, the vicar and curate had their lodging and food in the religious house (“Valor,” iii. 442). At Taunton, in 1308, the Priory supplied the vicar with allowances of bread and ale, and hay and corn, and two shillings a year for the shoeing of his horse (“Bath and Wells,” p. 121, S.P.C.K.). See also Lenton, p. 404.
[85] One of the constitutions of Archbishop Stratford (1333) requires religious appropriators of churches to give a benefaction to the poor yearly, according to the judgment of the bishop, on pain of sequestration.
[86] Newcourt’s “Repertorium,” ii. 310. Upon making an appropriation an annual pension was usually reserved to the bishop and his successors, payable by the body benefited, for a recompense of the profits which the bishops would otherwise have received (Sir R. Phillimore, “Ecclesiastical Law”).
[87] i.e., which had obtained from the Court of Rome exemption from the Bishop’s ordinary jurisdiction.
[88] According to Matthew Paris, “the bishops of England at that time designed to recover from the monasteries all the appropriated churches. Grostete of Lincoln took steps to carry out the design in his diocese, but the monks appealed to Rome and defeated the bishop” (Matthew Paris, Bohn’s ed., ii. pp. 325, 326, 401, 420).
[89] Gray’s “Register,” p. 113. Surtees Society.
[90] Ibid., p. 112.