[379]. Chaucer, John Saunders’ ed. p. 83. London, 1889.
“Significavit is a Writ which issues out of the Chancery pon a Certificate given by the Ordinary of a man that stands obstinately excommunicate by the space of forty days, for the laying him up in prison without Bail or Mainprice, until he submit himself to the Authority of the Church.” “And it is so called because Significavit is an emphatical word in the Writ.”—T. Blount, Law Dictionary. London, 1717.
[380]. See A. Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 111 (London, 1909); also Chancery Warrants for Issue, The Patent Rolls, etc.; J. Johnson, Laws and Canons, ii. p. 192, De Excommunicato Capiendo, and p. 399; Holdsworth, Hist. i. pp. 358, 433.
[381]. Henry II. of England was severely scourged by eighty ecclesiastics; the bishops present gave each five strokes, and every monk gave three. The king’s penance brought on illness.—Lea, Middle Ages, p. 464; Meiklejohn, Hist. i. p. 102.
[382]. Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, vi. p. 172.
[383]. Bingham, ii. p. 128.
I once saw a cell belonging to a Spanish prelate at Majorca; it was a little dark lock-up and was untenanted.
[384]. For instance, Tinmouth Priory was employed as a prison by the abbots of St. Albans. See W. Dugdale, Monasticum Anglicanum, iii. p. 309. London, 1846.
Bingham, vii. p. 43.
Ingulph’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland. Riley’s ed. p. 98.