[629] S.P.C.K., “Diocesan Histories: Bath and Wells,” p. 128. We are reminded of the story told by Sismondi (chap. xlix.), that when Pope Urban V., in 1369, sent two legates with a bull of excommunication to Bernabo Visconti, Duke of Milan, that strong-willed prince compelled the legates to eat the documents, parchment, leaden seals, silk cord, and all. So Walter de Clifford, in 1250, compelled a royal messenger to eat the letters he brought, with the seal (Matthew Paris, ii. 324). The writ of summons was sometimes a small slip of parchment, or perhaps paper, and the seal a thin layer of beeswax covered with paper, so that the story is not impossible. There are other instances on record in which the summoner was compelled by violence to destroy his writ—in what manner is not stated—instead of serving it (“Calendar of Entries in Papal Registers,” A.D. 1247-48, pp. 239, 243).
[630] The castigation by the schoolmaster of a scholar hoisted on a man’s back after the hardly obsolete fashion of our public schools is depicted in the same MS., 6 E. VI., at f. 214, under the heading “Castigatio;” and again in the second volume of the work (6 E. VII.), at f. 444, under the heading “Master;” as if the word “castigatio” naturally suggested “schoolboy,” and the primary function of a “master” were to use the rod.
[631] “Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham,” p. 20.
[632] Ibid., p. 21.
[633] S.P.C.K., “Diocese of Lichfield,” p. 171. See other examples in “Diocesan Histories of Bath and Wells,” p. 130.
[634] There are forms of it in “The York Manual,” Rev. J. Raine, Surtees Society, pp. 86, 119.
[635] See “The Repression of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy,” by Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester. Rolls Series.
[636] The host asks him—
“Sire preest, quod he, art thou a vicary,
Or art thou a parson? say soth by thy fay,”
but the poet does not, by answering the question, narrow the class represented.