The text is taken from MS. 201 in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The gloss is taken, by Mr. Thorpe, from a Bodleian MS., Junius 121, fol. 25b, which he calls “X” in a page between his Preface and Table of Contents. He says the Bodleian MS. is of the tenth century. Mr. Thorpe’s commanding position as an Anglo-Saxon scholar is generally admitted; yet Lord Selborne questions his opinion as to the date of the Bodleian MS. He says it must have been written in the eleventh century, and was copied from the Church Grith; thus dating the MS. a century later than Mr. Thorpe.[167] That could not have been, for the Church Grith law deals only with the tithe, but Edgar’s canon deals with all alms, including tithe. And as to the date of the MS., I should prefer the opinion of a disinterested Anglo-Saxon scholar and expert like Mr. Thorpe.
It is probable that the Cambridge MS. is a late copy made in Cnute’s reign, and that the Bodleian MS. was a gloss made in the tenth century on the original copy of the canons. The force of the gloss is that the priest was entitled only to one-third part of the people’s alms, which included the tithe. The Church Grith law deals only with the tithe, of which a third part was the priest’s. The gloss gives the general custom of all the churches of giving the priest only one-third part of all alms, oblations, tithes, etc., and not ALL the alms and oblations in addition to one-third part of the tithes. In principle, the words of the gloss do not differ from the wording of Ethelred’s law.
Canon 56. “And we enjoin that priests sing psalms when they distribute the alms, and that they earnestly desire the poor to pray for the people.” Why pray for the people? Because they gave alms to them.
Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was of Danish birth. His father was one of the Danish chiefs who were engaged in the invasions of England in A.D. 870. Odo was first a soldier in the wars of Edward the Elder. In 926 he was appointed bishop of Ramsbury. He was three times engaged on the battle-field after he became a bishop. In 942 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
Odo’s canons were compiled from Egbert’s Excerptions and Legatine Injunctions; the former I have shown not to be Egbert’s production. Odo’s tenth canon on tithes is the seventeenth Injunction passed at the Council at Calchyth, i.e., Chelsea, in 787.
The Monks.
It gives great pleasure to a certain class of writers to blacken the characters of the monks, and to extol Henry VIII. and the favourites and courtiers who surrounded him. But the present age is too critical and well-informed to be misled by the prejudiced and bigoted statements which have no foundation in fact. The monks were no doubt superstitious, and so were the parochial clergy; but the former were not ignorant men, as Judge Blackstone states in his Commentaries. He was much indebted to them for the preservation of ancient charters, laws, and historical annals, which form so important a part of his Commentaries. The various charters of English liberty, wrung from English sovereigns from time to time, were deposited in the monasteries by the barons for safe keeping, where they were carefully and faithfully preserved by the so-called “ignorant and superstitious monks.”
In every great abbey there was a large room called the “Scriptorium,” where several writers made it their sole business to transcribe books for the use of the library. They were generally engaged upon the Fathers, Classics, Histories, etc., etc. There was then no printing press. So zealous were the monks in general for this work, that they often had lands given to them and churches appropriated to them for carrying on the work. In all the great abbeys persons were appointed to take notice of the principal occurrences of the kingdom, and at the end of every year to digest them into annals. The constitutions of the clergy in their national and provincial synods, and even Acts of Parliament, were sent to the abbeys, in order to be duly recorded. The choicest records and treasures of the kingdom were preserved in the monasteries. A copy of the charter of liberties granted by Henry I. was sent to some abbey in every county to be preserved. The abbeys were schools of learning and education, for every convent had one person or more appointed for this purpose, and all the neighbours that desired it, might have their children taught certain branches of education free of charge. In the nunneries, also, young women were taught to work, and to read English and Latin also. Most of the daughters of noblemen and gentlemen were educated in those places.
Again, the monasteries were great hospitals, and most of them were obliged to relieve poor people every day. They served the same purposes of relieving the poor and strangers as the workhouses which originated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth did. When the monasteries were dissolved, and all their properties handed over as a free gift by Parliament to Henry VIII., to do with them as he pleased, there were no longer any places where the poor and strangers could be relieved. If all the monastic properties had then been placed under a Board of Commissioners to be utilized towards the relief of the poor, an annual income would now be at the command of such Commissioners as would be sufficient to cover the eight and a half millions per annum, the present cost of the relief of the poor of England and Wales, and thus the ratepayers of the kingdom would be relieved of the payment of poor rates. The annual value of all the property was £250,000, including the tithes possessed by the monastic bodies. If we take into account the valuable landed estates which the bishops and chapters were forced to exchange for the monastic appropriated tithes, firstfruits, and tenths, we shall get a revenue of at least £300,000 per annum, which, at the present time, would realize eight and a half millions per annum. To place such vast properties at the free disposal of Henry VIII. and his successors on the throne, is the most convincing proof of the subservient and even slavish Parliaments of the Tudor sovereigns.[168]