of St. Paul's, the Abbot and monks of Westminster, and other religious houses-the Carthusians, St. John's Clerkenwell (the Hospitallers), Sion, and many smaller foundations. The Chapter of St. Paul's swept in a broad belt round the north of London till they met the Church of Westminster at Hampstead and Paddington. The Abbot of Westminster was almost a prince of Westminster. g On the other hand, the estates and manors of the Church and of the monasteries, though, as probably having been the longest under cultivation, the best cultivated, in productive value were far below their imagined wealth. The Church was by usage, perhaps from interest, an indulgent landlord. Of the estates, a large part had become copyhold, and paid only a moderate quitrent, and a small fixed fine on renewal. Of those on which the Church reserved the full fee, the fines on renewals, whether on lives or for terms of years, were no doubt extremely moderate. They had become hereditary in families, and acquired the certainty of actual possession. The rents were paid in money, usually of small amount, in services to the landlord (the Prebendary or the Church), in the cultivation of their lands, and to a considerable extent in kind. Probably the latter contribution was not taken into the account of their value. But not only had each monastery its common refectory, each Chapter had its common establishment, its common table, its horses, and other conveniences, largely supplied f Archdeacon Hale has printed (for | and condition of the Church property. the Camden Society) what he calls the Domesday of St. Paul; the Visitation of the manors of the Dean and Chapter (not the separate estates of the prebendaries). It throws great light on this point, as well as on the tenure g At the Dissolution Westminster was the most wealthy monastery-it was estimated at 39777.; St. John's, Clerkenwell, the richest of the military orders, 23857.; Sion, the richest nunnery, 19447.-Speed. h by the growers; hay and straw, beasts, poultry furnished at specified times by the tenants. Each had its mill, its brewhouse, its bakery; and no doubt the annual expenses of the House, or Domus, were to a large extent supplied from these unreckoned sources. Yet on the whole the tenants, no doubt, of the Church shared a full portion of the wealth of the Church, so secure and easy was their tenure; and it was not uncommon for ecclesiastics to take beneficiary leases of the lands of their own Church, which they bequeathed as property to their kindred or heirs, not unfrequently to their children. Besides this, over all their property the Church had a host of officers and retainers, stewards of their courts, receivers, proctors, lawyers, and other dependents, numberless in name and function. But of the wealth of the Clergy, the landed property, even with the tithe, was by no means the whole; and, invaded as it was by aggression, by dilapidation, by alienation through fraud or violence, limited in its productiveness by usage, by burthens, by generosity, by maladministration, it may be questioned whether it was the largest part. The vast treasures accumulated by the Avignonese Pontiffs when the Papal territories were h All this throws light on a very curious state of things at St. Paul's; no doubt not peculiar to St. Paul's. The Chapter consisted of 30 Prebendaries, each with his separate estate, and originally his right to share in the common fund, on condition of performing certain services in the Church. The Prebendaries withdrew each to the care and enjoyment of his Prebend, or, if a Pluralist, of many Prebends, leaving the duties to be performed by certain Residentiaries; so when the daily mass, the perpetual office, was imposed as a burthen, it was difficult to keep up the number of Residentiaries. In process of time the Common Fund grew larger, the emoluments and advantages from oblations, obits, and other sources increased in value; there was then a strife and a press to become a Residentiary. It was necessary (the exhausted fund was the plea) to obtain Papal or Archiepiscopal decrees to limit the number of Residentiaries. occupied by enemies or adventurers, and could have yielded but scanty revenues, testify to the voluntary or compulsory tribute paid by Western Christendom to her Supreme Court of Appeal. If the Bishops mainly depended on their endowments, to the Clergy, to the monastic churches, oblations (in many cases now from free gifts hardened into rightful demands) were pouring in, and had long been pouring in, with incalculable profusion. Not only might not the altars, hardly any part of the church might be approached, without a votive gift. The whole life, the death of every Christian was bound up with the ceremonial of the Church; for almost every office, was received from the rich and generous the ampler donation, from the poorer or more parsimonious was exacted the hard-wrung fee. Above all, there were the masses, which might lighten the sufferings of the soul in purgatory; there was the prodigal gift of the dying man out of selfish love for himself; the more generous and no less prodigal gift of the bereaved, out of holy charity for others. The dying man, from the King to the peasant, when he had no further use for his worldly riches, would devote them to this end;k the living, out of profound respect or deep affection for the beloved husband, parent, brother, kinsman, friend, would be, and actually was, not less bountiful and munificent.m i I am able to illustrate this from the records of St. Paul's, which have been investigated with singular industry and accuracy by my friend Archdeacon Hale, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information. There is another curious illustration of the wealth of the Clergy. The inventory of the effects of Richard Gravesend, Bishop of London, from 1290 to 1303. It measures 28 feet in length: it gives in detail all his possessions, his chapel (plate of the chapel), jewels, robes, books, horses, the grain and stock on each of his manors, with the value of each. The total amounts to 28711. 7s. 10d. Corn was then 4s. per quarter. m We have in St. Paul's an account of the obits or anniversaries of the deaths of certain persons, for the celebration of which bequests had been Add to all this the oblations at the crosses of the Redeemer, or the shrines of popular and famous saints, for their intercessory prayers to avert the imminent calamity, to assuage the sorrow, or to grant success to the schemes, it might be, of ambition, avarice, or any other passion, to obtain pardon for sin, to bring down blessing: crosses and shrines, many of them supposed to be endowed with miraculous powers, constantly working miracles." To most of these were made perpetual processions, led by the Clergy in their rich attire. From the basins of gold or the bright florins of the King to the mite of the beggar, all fell into the deep, insatiable box, which unlocked its treasures to the Clergy." vided among the Dean and Canons Residentiary. But this was by no means the only box of offerings-per made in the fourteenth century. The number was 111. The payments made amounted in the whole to 2678s. 5d., of which the Dean and Canons Resi-haps not the richest. There was one dentiary (present) received 1461s., at the magnificent shrine of St. Erkenabout 737.; multiply by 15, to bring wald; another at that of the Virgin, to present value, 10757. before which the offerings of wax tapers alone were so valuable, that the Dean and Chapter would no longer leave them to the vergers and servants of the Church. They were extinguished, carried to a room behind the chapter-house, and melted, for the use of the said Dean and Canons. Archbishop Arundel assigned to the same n E. g., Richard Preston, citizen and grocer, gave to the shrine of St. Erkenwald his best sapphire stone, for curing of infirmities of the eyes, appointing that proclamation should be made of its virtues.-Dugdale, p. 21. • We have an account of the money found in the box nnder the great Cross on the entrance of the Cathedral (Re-Dean and Canons, and to their succescepta de pixide Crucis Borealis). In one month (May, A.D. 1344) it yielded no less than 507. (præter argentum fractum). This was more than an average profit, but taken as an average it gives 6007. per annum. Multiply this by 15 to bring it to the present value of money, 3000l. This, by an order of the Pope's Commissary, D. 1410 (Dugdale, p. 20), was di sors for ever, the whole profits of the oblation box. Dugdale recounts gifts by King John of France, especially to the shrine of St. Erkenwald. The shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury received in one year 8327. 11s. 3d.; in another, 954/ 6s. 3d.-Burnet, Hist. Reformat., vol. i. See Taylor, Index for our Lady of Walsingham. Our Chauntry accounts are full and well Besides all these estates, tithes, oblations, bequests to the Clergy and the monasteries, reckon the subsidies in kind to the Mendicants in their four Orders-Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites. In every country of Latin Christendom, of these swarms of Friars, the lowest obtained sustenance: the higher means to build and to maintain splendid churches, cloisters, houses. All of these, according to their proper theory, ought to have lived on the daily dole from the charitable, bestowed at the gate of the palace or castle, of the cottage or hovel. But that which was once an act of charity had become an obligation. Who would dare to repel a holy Mendicant? The wealth of the Mendicants was now an object of bitter jealousy to the Clergy and to the older monastic Orders. They were a vast standing army, far more vast than any maintained by any kingdom in Christendom, at once levying subsidies to an enormous amount, and living at free quarters throughout the land. How onerous, how odious they had become in England, may be seen in the prose of Wycliffe and in the poetry of Piers Ploughman.P Unity of the clergy. The Clergy, including the Monks and Friars, were one throughout Latin Christendom; and through them, to a great extent, the Latin Church was one. Whatever antagonism, feud, hatred, estrangement, might rise between rival Prelates, rival Priests, rival Orders-whatever irreconcileable jealousy there might be between the Seculars and Regulars-yet the preserved, and would furnish a very curious illustration of the office and income of the Mass Priest. P Later, Speed, from the Supplication of Beggars, asserts, as demon strated, that, reckoning that every householder paid the five Orders five- |