168 Bishops of Old Sarum. 
a reality. And this he formed on the usual Norman model, with the 
“ Quatuor Persone” at its head, viz., the dean, precentor, chancellor, 
treasurer, together with four archdeacons, and thirty-two canons—not 
prebendaries, as some will have it—for the words of his charter are 
plain enough—ef# in ed /i.e. ecclesia) canonicos constituisse ; and, to 
say the truth, Osmund had for many years slumbered peacefully in 
his tomb before the introduction of a title which, even when it lad 
a meaning, only told of the conversion of certain estates, intended 
for the benefit of the community, for the special benefit of individual 
canons.’ Of the chapter thus constituted, the bishop was the un- 
doubted and recognised head—the whole body of canons forming his 
council which he summoned on all emergencies. In accordance with 
“English custom” his canons (who were what were usually termed 
“canons secular”) lived each in his own house, and some of them 
were probably married men. But none of them, whether dignitaries 
or not, had any corporate existence in the Cathedral Chureh apart 
from the bishop, for all lived on the common property of the 
Church, and the canons were the bishop’s immediate companions 
and assistants, as well .in the services of the mother Church as in 
the general management of the diocese. It was the appropriation 
of certain “ prebende ” or “ estates ” to special dignities or canonries, 
that perhaps, more than any other cause, gradually made chapters 
more and more independent of the bishop, though the full divorce 
between them did not take place till the Reformation. Then, by 
degrees, deans asserted an independent jurisdiction as against bishops, 
and each canon claimed to be independent, for many purposes, both of 
the bishop and his brethren, and vicars to be independent of canons, 
holding each his separate estate, his separate patronage, his separate 
jurisdiction.? 
Another pleasing illusion I must also disperse. People talk of the 
1The earliest mention of a ‘‘distinct” prebend as the endowment of a 
Canonry, according to Mr. Mackenzie Walcot, does not reach beyond the reign 
of Edward I. Traditions, &c., of Cathedrals, p. 13. The earliest entry at 
Salisbury is of the date 1297 (the time of Bishop Simon of Ghent), in the oldest 
of our episcopal registers. 
2See Freeman’s ‘‘ Norman Conquest,” y. 497, and his History of the Cathe- 
dral of Wells, pp. 88, 173. 
