CHAP

I

Bishops had been non-resident, partly from the fact that foreigners were often appointed to English sees as a reward for some service which they had rendered to the kings of England or to the popes of Rome and their appointment seems always to have been made on the express understanding that their work was to get itself done as well or as ill as it Reasons could, by deputies. Englishmen were sometimes residence appointed with a similar understanding: occasionally men whose royal blood seems to have been thought ample excuse for a complete sinecure life, but more frequently men whose position at court, as statesmen, or as ambassadors, precluded them from carrying on their own proper work in their dioceses. In fact, chancellors and secretaries of state received their salaries in the shape of ecclesiastical benefices.*

for non

3

This non-residence of bishops was the source of unlimited evils. They felt little or no interest in their dioceses, and appointed their subordinate clergy for private reasons of favouritism or relationship

passed altogether beyond the bounds
of probability in our own times.

Much is made by superficial
writers of the satirical verses which
were levelled at the medieval
bishops and clergy; but there are
few so severe on them in their
clerical office as those against the
judges, in their judicial office, of
which Mr Foss gives the following
translation:-

"Judges there are whom gifts seduce and
favourites control,

Content to serve the devil alone, or take
him for a toll:

If nature's law forbids the judge from sel-
ling his decree,

How dread to those who finger bribes the
punishment shall be !

"If comes some noble lady in beauty and
in pride,

With golden horns upon her head, her
suit he'll soon decide;

But she who has no charms or friends,
and is for gifts too poor,

Her business all neglected, she's, weeping, shown the door."

3 The Duke of York, son of George III., was thus made Bishop of Osnaburg, an absurd appointment, which shows that the evil spoken of was not confined to mediæval times.

4 Wolsey's many preferments were heaped upon him to enable him to bear the enormous expenses which were incurred by him in carrying out the duties of his office as prime minister. When he went to France as mediator between the King of France and the Emperor of Germany, he expended £10,000 (equal to £120,000 of modern money), and was soon afterwards made Abbot of St. Alban's by the king by way of royal repayment. [Ellis' Orig. Lett., IJI. i. 274.]

rather than for any other consideration. What Epis- CHAP copal work was done in their dioceses was the work of suffragan bishops, who, instead of being assistants, were made substitutes for their principals, so far as the spiritual work of the Episcopal office was concerned; and who, it may be added, were often Scotch and Irish bishops, themselves neglecting their own duties for the purpose of residing in England. The clergy were deprived of proper oversight and guidance, and an example of non-residence was set to them also, which was very extensively followed.

We have seen how Ullerston, Abendon, and Colet, Pluralities, speak of pluralities, and of the non-residence to which A.D. 1367. they led. So grossly had this practice extended, that when Archbishop Langham made inquiry respecting the pluralist clergy of the province of Canterbury, some were found who held as many as twenty benefices and dignities, by means of papal provisions, with license to hold as many more as they could get." These appear to have been mostly Italians, and Edward III. issued a commission of inquiry respecting them about seven years afterwards, though with what result we are not informed. It was so con

5 Collier's Eccl. Hist., iii. 128, ed. 1852.

* Ibid., 132. Collier prints the following from Foxe, as a copy of this commission: 66 Edward, by the grace of God, King, &c., to the honourable Father in Christ, N, by the same grace, Bishop of L, greeting, being willing, for certain reasons, to be informed what, and how many benefices, as well archdeaconries as other dignities, as vicarages, parsonages, prebends, and chapels within your diocese, are at this present in the possession of Italians, and other foreigners,

by what names every of the said
benefices are called, and how much
each of them is worth by the year,
not as they stand charged in sub-
sidies, but according to the rack-
rent, and true valuations of the
same; and likewise, being desirous
to be certified of the names of all
and singular such foreigners being
now incumbents or occupying the
same; and, moreover, the names
of all of them, whether English-
men or foreigners, of what state or
condition soever, which have the
occupation, or disposition of any
such benefices, with the issues and

I

CHAP venient for the popes to have this means of paying and rewarding their officials, and also to receive the percentage which was required from each benefice, that the papal court always withstood reforms in this direction, even when pious popes desired them!" On the other hand, the English clergy in general were so sensible of the evil, that when the convocaA. D. 1430 tions chose delegates to attend the Council of Basle (from which so much reformation was expected), they instructed them, in the name of the Church of England, to demand that dispensatories for pluralities should be withheld, and also those for nonresidence; and that in no case should several parishes be united under one clergyman. But the evil was not abated then, nor for many years afterwards. A century later there was a definite attempt at legislation on the subject, but it fell to the ground. The

profits of the same, in the behalf
or by the authority of any of the
aforesaid foreigners, by way of
form, or title, or by any other
ways or means whatsoever, and
how long they have occupied, or
disposed of the same, and withal,
if any of the said foreigners are
now resident upon any benefices ;
we command you to send us a true
certificate of all and singular the
premises into our high Court of
Chancery, under your Episcopal
seal, before the feast of the Ascen-
sion of our Lord next ensuing,
without further delay, returning
likewise this our writ unto us.
Witness myself at Westminster,
the sixteenth day of April, in
the forty-eighth year of our reign
of England; and of France the
thirty-fifth."

7 Bishop Gibson [Codex, p. 946]
quotes the following remarkable
catalogue of pluralists from Arch-
bishop Winchelsea's register at the

I

record of this is contained among the state papers, CHAP in the shape of some instructions given by the king to Cromwell, to be declared to the council, and put in immediate execution. Among these there is a sketch of a bill for regulating the absenteeism of the clergy, dated in St. Michael's term 1531. It was A.D. 1531 to have enacted that every spiritual person having preferment, and residing without the king's special license "in the court of Rome, or elsewhere out of the realm, shall have his revenue divided into three parts; one for himself, one for repairs of manors, buildings, &c., and one to be distributed in charity."8 No further notice of the project occurs, and it seems to have been superseded by the Pluralities Act [21 Hen. VIII., cap. 13], which did not really touch the evil. Men's minds, at a later date, were diverted from this and other important reforms, by the hairsplitting controversies raised by Puritans and other Protestants, and the extravagances of non-residence and pluralities continued down to our own times; but had they been properly reformed at the period of the Reformation, far more real and solid work would have been done among the souls of the people of England, and infinite scandals prevented among the clergy.

Another constitutional disease of the Church in Appropriations the pre-Reformation ages was that of Appropriations, a disease akin to, though not so deadening as, the Impropriations of post-Reformation ages.

9

8 State Papers, vol. i. [1830], p. 383.

9 Impropriations are the alienation of tithes to laymen. Appropriations are the assignment of them to clerical corporations (for

so colleges and nonasteries used to
be considered), which thus become
responsible for the performance of
the duties for which the tithes are
paid.

CHAP

I

In its earliest form, the appropriation of parishes with their tithes and spiritual charge was scarcely more than a transfer of patronage to monasteries, the whole ecclesiastical income of each parish being still used for the spiritual purposes of the parish. But after the conquest parishes were appropriated to monasteries in a more absolute manner, the income of the parish being transferred to the monastery, and the latter being responsible for the duties of it very much at their discretion. Within three hundred years, about one-third of the benefices in England were thus appropriated, and these generally the best endowed.1 However desirous the members of these monasteries might have been, individually, to act up to their responsibilities towards their dependent parishes, all experience illustrates the phenomenon Corpora- that corporations never work up to the standard of their individual members: but that, on the contrary, the weakest link in the chain is the true exponent of their moral strength. Hence there were no districts which were more sunk in wickedness arising from neglect, in times within memory than those of which the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had spiritual charge, especially in the immediate neighbourhood of those Universities.2 As we are no better, so we are probably no worse, than our ancestors; and the appropriated parishes of preReformation times were, no doubt, sadly neglected: so that wickedness and schism found an easy prey in them, as they have done in recent generations. As Colet states it, "all things were done by vicars and

tions and

the cure of souls

1 Kennett's Case of Impropriations, p. 23.

2 It was a common thing in the last generation for Fellows of Col

leges to perform a hasty and perfunctory service at three and four churches, if within easy riding listance, on the Sunday.