—Dehinc reum convocant, et, turba rejecta,
Dicunt: Ista crimina tibi sunt objecta;
Pone libras quindecim in nostra collecta,
Et tua flagitia non erunt detecta.
Reus dat denarios, Fratres scriptum radunt;
Sic infames plurimi per nummos evadunt:
Qui totam pecuniam quam petunt non tradunt,
Simul in infamiam et in pœnam cadunt.[697]
The example which King John had set, however instructive, was not appreciated by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the “focariæ” were allowed to remain virtually undisturbed, at least to such an extent as to render them almost universal. Although by rigid churchmen they were regarded as mere concubines, there can be little doubt that the tie between them and the priests was of a binding nature, which appears to have wanted none of the rites essential to its entire respectability. Giraldus Cambrensis, who died at an advanced age about the year 1220, speaks of these companions being publicly maintained by nearly all the parish priests in England and Wales. They arranged to have their benefices transmitted to their sons, while their daughters were married to the sons of other priests, thus establishing an hereditary sacerdotal caste in which marriage appears to have been a matter of course.[698] In 1202 the Bishop of Exeter complained to Innocent III. of the numerous sons of parish priests and vicars who seized their churches and claimed to hold them of right, actually appealing to Rome when he sought to interfere with them. Innocent of course ordered their removal and subjection to discipline without appeal: but the evil continued, and in 1205 we find him writing on the subject to the Bishop of Winchester whom he required to eject the sons of priests who in many cases held their father’s benefices.[699] The propriety of the connection, and the hereditary ecclesiastical functions of the offspring are quaintly alluded to in a poem of the period, wherein a logician takes a priest to task for entertaining such a partner—
L.—Et præ tot innumeris quæ frequentas malis,