[267] MS. 5824, f. 5. British Museum.
[268] Pope Clement VI., in 1398, sent to Bishop Grandisson of Exeter at his request a dispensation for fifty priests and scholars, by name, to receive holy orders and hold benefices. Thirty are classed as illegitimate, both parents being single persons; ten as having one parent a married person; ten as born of presbyters or persons in holy orders (“Grandisson’s Register,” Hingeston-Randolph, part i. p. 147).
[269] “Papal Letters,” vol. i. p. 113.
[270] “Register of Archbishop Gray,” p. 73.
[271] “Stapledon’s Register,” p. 180.
[272] “Archbishop Gray’s Register,” J. Raine, p. 29.
[273] Ibid., p. 153.
[274] A. Gibbons, “Early Lincoln Wills.”
[275] Tonsured.
[276] There are frequent entries in the Episcopal Registers of dispensations super defectum natalium to the sons of nativi to take orders and hold benefices. There are several examples in which a bishop gives such a dispensation to so-and-so “nativus meus,” to take sacred orders and hold ecclesiastical benefices; a gracious act of kindness to one of his own serfs (see [p. 130]).