242 Bishops of Old Sancm. 



than the rule, and the good Dean was compelled, I fear, at the last 

 to accept a very low standard of efficiency. 



There can be little doubt but that during those five years of which 

 I am now speaking the Cathedral Chapter itself was reorganised. 

 The number of Canons established by Bishop Osmund, including the 

 "four principal persons," was, it would seem, thirtj/-six. The suc- 

 cessive charters contained among the episcopal muniments, and entries 

 in the Old Register also, record manifold gifts during the intervening 

 century, so that we find that in Bishop Richard Poore''s time there 

 were no less than fijty-hco Canons, the Bishop, in virtue of his 

 prebend of Horton, having also a place in Chapter as a Canon, and 

 making the jijttj-third} Moreover a new, or at least an enlarged, 

 constitution seems to be alluded to in what is called " Capituli 

 Sarisburiensis prima Convocatio'' which was held in 1225, a list of 

 all the Canons cited to attend being given in the Old Register, 

 We have no certain information, as far as I know at present, as to 

 the precise period at which certain lands, or " praebendae,^' were 

 annexed to the several stalls held by the Canons, and without the 

 possession of which no member of the Cathedral body — not even an 

 Archdeacon — even though he might have a " stall in choir," could 

 claim to have a ''voice in chapter."" Originally, as we know, there 

 was one common fund out of which all the members of the cathedral, 

 in regular gradation, from the highest personage — the Dean — down 

 to the humblest servitor, received his support and sustenance. The 

 Bishop indeed, though described as the head of the cathedral, the 

 Dean and Canons forming with him one lody [unum corpus), would 

 seem, from earliest times, to have had his separate estates. And at a 



' In the account given in the Old Eegister (p. 160) of the election of Eohert 

 Bingham as Bishop, in 1229, it is said " Summa omnium Canonicorum est 52, 

 pi-Eeter Episcopum qui est Canonicus, et est 53'™'." At first the prehend of 

 Horton was held by the Bishop but in the year 1254, in the time of William of 

 York, this was exchanged for the prehend of Potteme. Eeg. Osmund, fol. xx. 



^ There is in the statute book of the Cathedral, as framed in 1319 by Bishop 

 Eoger de Mortival, a statute entitled " De non admittendis ad tractatus Capituli 

 qui nondum sunt assecuti coi-pora prajbendarum," and to this there is a significant 

 marginal note to this effect : " Nota — contra Archidiaconos qui non habent corpora 

 praebeudarum." 



