[98] The hermit who interposed between Sir Lionel and Sir Bors, and who was killed by Sir Lionel for his interference (Malory’s “Prince Arthur,” III, lxxix.), is called a “hermit-priest.” Also, in the Episcopal Registry of Lichfield, we find the bishop, date 10th February, 1409, giving to Brother Richard Goldeston, late Canon of Wombrugge, now recluse at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffenall, license to hear confessions.
“Great loobies and long, that loath were to swink [work],
Clothed them in copes to be known from others,
And shaped them hermits their ease to have.”
[100] Wanderers.
[101] Breakers out of their cells.
[102] Kindred.
[103] In “Piers Ploughman” we read that—
“Hermits with hoked staves
Wenden to Walsingham;”
These hooked staves may, however, have been pilgrim staves, not hermit staves. The pastoral staff on the official seal of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was of the same shape as the staff above represented. A staff of similar shape occurs on an early grave-stone at Welbeck Priory, engraved in the Rev. E. L. Cutts’s “Manual of Sepulchral Slabs and Crosses,” plate xxxv.
[104] Blomfield, in his “History of Norfolk,” 1532, says, “It is to be observed that hermitages were erected, for the most part, near great bridges (see Mag. Brit., On Warwickshire, p. 597, Dugdale, &c., and Badwell’s ‘Description of Tottenham’) and high roads, as appears from this, and those at Brandon, Downham, Stow Bardolph, in Norfolk, and Erith, in the Isle of Ely, &c.”