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Pluralists in the Province of Canterbury in 1366

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

C. J. Godfrey
C. J. Godfrey
Affiliation:
Rector of Donhead St. Andrew, Shaftsbury, Dorset
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Extract

It has long been recognised that one of the most valuable documents about pluralism is the lengthy return of pluralists made in 1366 in accordance with a constitution of pope Urban V. In this return detailed information was sent in to archbishop Simon Langham by the various diocesans, containing the names of pluralists residing at the time in their dioceses, the value of their emoluments, their benefices and academic titles. It has an obvious value as a clergy-list, containing the names not only of several distinguished clerks who held office in the government service, but also of humbler men, as well as of that interesting class of university graduates to whom the acquisition of ecclesiastical benefices became a financial necessity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 1960 , pp. 23 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

page 23 note 1 Printed in Registrum Simonis de Langham, ed. Wood, A. C. (G. & Y. Soc, liii., 1947–8)Google Scholar, 1–109. For the London diocesan returns see Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria, ed. Fowler, R. C. and Jenkins, Canon C. (C. & Y. Soc., xxxviii., 1930), 148–82Google Scholar, together with the analysis by Canon Jenkins in xxxvi-xliv of the introduction. The canon law relating to pluralism is summarised in Pluralism in the Medieval Church, by the late A. Hamilton Thompson (Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports, xxxiii-xxxvi), including a biographical list of 136 pluralists holding one or more benefices in the diocese of Lincoln.

page 23 note 2 For text see Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard (R.S.), iii. 413–14.

page 23 note 3 Reg. Langham (C. & Y.), 1–5.

page 24 note 1 Reg. Langham, 44–5.

page 25 note 1 Otery had a rectory, five prebends, and one portion, bringing in a combined sum of £55 is. 4d. (He makes a mistake in addition, overstating his total by £1.) Two of the benefices were, however, being legally disputed. One prebend, at Ottery St. Mary, worth only 3 marks, he had been given not for his own benefit but for the sake of the collegiate church there, recently founded. He again reveals the high opinion which he had of himself when he states that he was given a prebend at Westbury (10 marks) as that church was destitute of counsel.

page 25 note 2 It is important to remember that the pluralists listed for each diocese are those actually resident within it, irrespectively of where they were beneficed. Thus there were 72 resident in Lincoln diocese, though there were 136 pluralists who actually held a benefice in that diocese.

page 26 note 1 Occasionally they were permitted to retain them, as when Clement V allowed Richard Havering, archbishop-elect of Dublin, to retain his benefices for five years after his consecration: Reg. Woodlock (C. & Y.), 332.

page 26 note 2 According to his return, Wykeham's benefices are as follows: archdeaconry of Lincoln (£350); prebend of Sutton, Lincoln (260 marks); of Laghton, York (110 marks); of Ronham, Southwell (55 marks); of St. Mary, Beverley (£16); of Totenhall, London (16 marks); of Fordington, Salisbury (25 marks); of the conventual church of Wherwell (60 marks); of the conventual church of Shaftesbury (30 marks); of Dublin (90 marks); of Wells (68 marks); of Bridgnorth (£23 6s. 8d.); and the rectory of Manyhynet, Exeter diocese (£8).

page 27 note 1 According to the Calendar of Papal Petitions, i. 536, Welbourne's benefices in 1366 were actually far more valuable (480 marks) than he reveals in his certificate. It is complained that he is not a graduate, and ‘only slightly instructed in grammar’.

page 27 note 2 Mag. William de Arderne (Lincoln) claims £154, though this includes the disputed £100 from Wearmouth, and a 55 marks prebend at Southwell similarly ‘litigiosa’.

page 27 note 3 C.P.R., 1370–4, 145.

page 27 note 4 C.P.R., 1377–81, 3.

page 27 note 5 Cal. Pap. Pet., i. 153.

page 27 note 6 A. H. Thompson, Pluralism in the Medieval Church, xxxv, 230.

page 28 note 1 Norton's predecessor in the Salisbury chancellorship was the ill-fated Simon Sudbury, who resigned it on becoming bishop of London in 1362. Norton was probably a young man in 1366 as he did not die till 1402. On his death he was succeeded in the chancellorship by Walter Mitford, who was in turn followed by Henry Chichele in 1404: W. H. Jones, Fasti Ecclesiae Sarisberiensis, 338.

page 29 note 1 Reg. Sudbury (C. & Y.), xlii.

page 29 note 2 Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, ed. A. B. Emden, i. 59.

page 30 note 1 The granting of expectative benefices had been condemned by the third Lateran Council. (Decretal III tit. vii. cap. ii. ‘Corpus’, ii. 488.) The practice of promising a particular benefice in advance obviously encouraged one man to hope for the death of another. ‘Nulla ecclesiastics ministeria, seu etiam beneficia vel ecclesiae tribuantur alicui seu promittantur antequam vacent, ne desiderare quis mortem proximi videatur, in cuius locum et beneficium se crediderit successurum.’

The practice was also forbidden by Boniface VIII (Sexti Decretal III tit. vii. cap. it. ‘Corpus’, ii. 1037), who claimed for the Holy See the right of making purely general expectative grants.

page 30 note 2 His 22 marks were probably drawn from a prebend at Ripon, obtained in 1363, and the rectory of Hokewold, Norwich diocese: Cal. Pap. Pet., i. 405.

page 30 note 3 He became vicar of Duxworth St. John, Cambs. in 1391: he also obtained a prebend at St. Paul's: Alumni Cantabrigienses, ed. J. A. Venn. Pt. i, ii. 55.

page 30 note 4 Alumni, ed. J. A. Venn. Pt. 1, iii. 405.

page 30 note 5 Ibid., Pt. 1, ii. 244. He became prebendary of Lichfield in 1376.

page 30 note 6 W. H. Jones (Fasti, 400) confuses this John de Ufford with another ecclesiastic of the same name, who lived earlier, and was nominated by Clement VI (1342–52) to the archbishopric of Canterbury, but died before he was consecrated.

page 31 note 1 Cf. however Mag. Thomas de Wormenhale, licentiate in civil law, who though master of Peterhouse, is entered only under London, where he was resident at the time. He held the Bishopshurst prebend at Chichester, 25 marks. For his mastership of Peterhouse he was entitled to board and lodgings while in residence, and 40 shillings per annum: Reg Sudbury (C. & Y.), vi. 164, cf. Jenkins, intro., xli.

page 31 note 2 Op. cit., i, 502.

page 31 note 3 Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, iii. 465. Cf. A. B. Emden, op. cit., i, 502.

page 32 note 1 Reg. Langham, 58.

page 32 note 2 A. H. Thompson, Pluralism in the Medieval Church, xxxiv. 6. According to A. B. Emden, i. 45, Arderne was fellow of Merton from 1350 to c. 1362, and a lecturer in civil law from c. 1363 for seven years.

page 32 note 3 Cal. Pap. Pet., i. 474. Wearmouth is said to be void because William Newport has held it unlawfully for two years.

page 33 note 1 For a discussion of prebends in the five great Wessex nunneries of Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wilton, Wherewell and St. Mary Winton, see Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, intro., xlvii-li, by M. C. B. Dawes.

page 33 note 2 He was a professional lawyer, and in 1367 took part in a case of false claim: A. B. Emden, Biographical Register, i. 64.

page 33 note 3 In this connexion, cf. Reg. Woodlock (C. & Y.), 343, where the bishop of Winchester appoints the archdeacon of Winchester and Lawrence of Gloucester to advise the nuns of Wintney (a small and poor Cistercian house in Hants.) in the choice of a new prioress, as he fears they may be ignorant of the processes of law.

page 34 note 1 Oxford and Cambridge both had faculties of theology, but on the continent, Paris had a virtual monopoly until in 1360 Innocent VI authorised the university of Toulouse to grant theological degrees: H. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ii. 167.

page 34 note 2 One of the medical graduates, Simon de Breedon, is entered both under Canterbury and Chichester. He is warden of a hospital for the sick and poor at Maidstone, for which he receives 20 marks—in addition to £60 from a rectory and prebend—though he finds the burdens of the hospital almost unbearable. So he informs the collector of information in the Canterbury diocese in May 1366, when he describes himself as magister and doctor of medicine. Whether or not he has wearied of medical work at Maidstone we do not know, but he has apparently changed his residence by the close of the year to reside on his prebend at Chichester cathedral, as we find him answering the call for returns in that diocese in November. A shift in his intellectual interests is indicated by the fact that he now describes himself not only as magister and doctor of medicine, but more particularly as regent in arts and scholar in theology: Reg. Langham, 10, 100.

Breedon was a noted physician and astronomer. At his death in 1372 he left many books to Merton and Oriel Colleges. A. B. Emden, Bibliographical Register, 257–8.

page 35 note 1 Reg. Langham, ii. 292. Such a priest inevitably calls to mind the lines of Chaucer (who was, of course, writing rather more than twenty years later):

‘He sette not his benefice to hyre

And leet his sheepe encombred in the myre

And ran to Londoun unto Seint Paules

To seken hym a chaunterie for soules.’

Prologue: Canterbury Tales.

page 35 note 2 Cf. John Wycliffe, who was non-resident rector of Fillingham (£20). Out of his stipend he would have to provide a curate for the parish—the bishops were very strict in insisting on this. He would not be left too well off, and on 24 November 1362 we find him petitioning the pope for a canonry and prebend in York minster. (K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the beginnings of English Nonconformity, 25.) As a result he was granted the prebend of Aust in the collegiate church of Westbury. He was thus certainly a pluralist in 1366, yet while his fellow-canons of Westbury, John de Briere and Roger Otery, sent in their particulars in answer to the call for returns, Wycliffe for some reason was silent, or his certificate was mislaid.

page 36 note 1 Reg. Grandisson, ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, 1174. The mandate, which is addressed to the Official Principal and archdeacons, concerns beneficed clergy, ‘animarum curam habentes, presertim quibes claves ecclesie committuntur, velut pastores solliciti, supra gregem sibi commissum vigilare et noctis custodire vigilias teneantur’. The bishop is sorry to say that in his diocese there are those who instead of remaining in their cures, prefer to be absent in the service of great lords.

There is nothing in Braybroke's certificate to indicate that he had academic qualifications, but he was actually an Oxford graduate and a benefactor of Exeter college: A. B. Emden, Biographical Register, i. 253.

page 36 note 2 There was an exchange between Henry Caunvyll, vicar of Pewsey, and Walter Staward, rector of Rudford, on 29 October 1366: Reg. Sudbury, ii. 179; Reg. Charlton (Hereford, 1361–70).

page 37 note 1 The expression ‘parish priest’ is best avoided in this connexion, as in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it tended to denote an assistant priest rather than the incumbent, who might in fact not be in priest's orders at all. Dogmatism on the point however is best avoided. Thus, in the Epilogue to the Man of Law's Tale, Chaucer makes the Host address the parson as ‘Sir parish priest’.

page 39 note 1 Reg. Gandavo (G. & Y.), 822. W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, 195.

page 40 note 1 The author of this article is grateful to Rev. Canon G. W. O. Addleshaw and to Mr. F. R. H. du Boulay for advice on various points.