[277] Should feed beggars.
[278] Usually the bishop, but there were many exceptions.
[280] “Labbe’s Councils,” vol. xxii. p. 234.
[281] There is a picture of a bishop’s visitation in the fourteenth century MS. Royal 6 E. VI., and a much better of the sixteenth century in the printed Pontifical, p. 196, and of an archdeacon’s in the MS. Royal 6 E. VI., fols. 132 and 137.
[282] Procter, “History of the Book of Common Prayer,” p. 262.
[283] I refrain from repeating the unsupported assumption that these synodsmen gave name to our modern sidesmen, for which there is no evidence. Moreover, Professor Skeat assures me, in kind reply to a question on the subject, that the principles which govern the gradual changes of our language will not admit of the idea of the derivation of the one word from the other.
[284] From the “Annales de Burton,” p. 307.
[285] When St. Hugh became Bishop of Lincoln he made several decrees, one of which was “that no layman have the celebration of masses inflicted on him as a penance” (“Dioc. Hist. Lincoln,” p. 103, S.P.C.K.). It looks as if the clergy had set up a bad practice of inflicting attendance at Holy Communion, and making an offering as an ordinary act of penance. It was prohibited again in 1378 by Archbishop Simon of Sudbury (Johnson, “Laws and Canons,” ii. 444).
[286] A vulgar game.