166 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2«* S. IX. Mak. 3. 'CO. 



honours, we accidentally learn other pious deeds of 

 this Walter, for his son Robert, in his own will, 

 says: "To the repair of the high- way called the 

 Causeway in Stawyk Marsh, which Walter Lord 

 Hungerford, my father, first caused to be made, 

 for the health of the soul of the Lady Katherinehis 

 wife, xxv. marks," &c. (ib. 295.). It is most 

 likely that his grandsire had done some such work 

 of public utility. Surely, then, persons of the pre- 

 sent day, in spite of all their "modern notions," 

 need be at no loss to understand why grateful 

 churchmen should teach the people to pray for 

 their living benefactors : prayer for such is even 

 now encom-aged by Protestantism. The men who 

 multiply the occasions of public service in cathe- 

 dral and parish churches ; or the better to enable 

 their poorer neighbours to come thither on the 

 Sunday and festival to worship and hear the word 

 of God, and on the week-days to go with ease 

 about this world's business, build bridges and 

 mend foul ways, are the people's best friends. 

 Upon such individuals, though they happen to be 

 lords — though, in doing such good deeds, they 

 showed a feeling wish for the soul's health of a 

 fondly beloved wife or other of their kindred, the 

 sourest Puritan, even should his head be crowded 

 with the very newest notions, ought to look with 

 favour, and surely he will not forbid such living 

 benefactor to be prayed for. 



Without halt or hesitation, Mr. Gougii Ni- 

 chols assures us " there is no doubt that there 

 was a market always open for the sale of these 

 visionary benefits" (indulgences). Where this 

 "always open market." was to be found, he does 

 not say. Perhaps this pardon or indulgence may 

 have been brought from Rome ; no, that is con- 

 tradicted by the document itself, which tells us it 

 was granted by fourteen bishops — had it come 

 from the Pope it would itself have said so. Was 

 Salisbury, so famous for its " Use," the market- 

 place ? Nothing of the kind stood there. Was 

 this curious "market" kept in London, or at 

 Canterbury, or at York ? Assuredly not, at least 

 during those times. In the days of Sir Robert De 

 Hungerford, and for many very many long years 

 afterwards, any such a sort of market had a being 

 nowhere but in airy nothing; and the only record 

 of its assumed existence in this country must be 

 sought for among the "modern notions" of some 

 few modern illustrators of our national ecclesiasti- 

 cal antiquities. The origin of the above-men- 

 tioned and many like indulgences may be easily 

 accounted for, without resorting to the l open 

 market " system of Mr. Godgh Nichols. The 

 bountifulness of such a public benefactor as Sir 

 Robert De Hungerford, must have been well 

 known to the Bishop of Sarum, who, on his side, 

 would take an early occasion of paying the grate- 

 ful thanks of his diocese in a way the most likely 

 to please the pious feelings of that religious noble- 



man. For this end, the prelate would himself 

 issue an indulgence of perhaps forty days to be 

 gained, under the usual and well-known condi- 

 tions of confession, contrition, and satisfaction, by 

 all who prayed for the well-being whilst he lived, 

 and for the soul's rest after his death, of De Hun- 

 gerford. Still more to enlarge this privilege, the 

 bishop would seek to gather from as many as he 

 could of his brother-bishops a like indulgence to 

 be added to his own : the meetings of our pre- 

 lates for business or some grand ceremonial af- 

 forded the opportunity, and were often made 

 available for drawing up and promulgating these 

 joint indulgences, as may be seen in Matthew 

 Paris (p. 494.). This "pardon" or "indulgence" 

 of thirty or of forty days, as it may be, is the for- 

 giveness or abatement, on the part of the Church, 

 of just so much time out of the months — perhaps 

 years — which, according to her penitential canons, 

 ought to be undergone in prayer, fasting, and 

 sackcloth for sins committed : by the same right 

 that she puts on, the Church can remit and take off 

 her canonical penances. 



Without the slightest diffidence Mr. Gough 

 Nichols lays it down that " the bishops who made 

 such grants were generally those of inferior grade 

 or suffragans." Whether we be indebted to "mo- 

 dern notions" for such novel information I know 

 not. Of this, however, I am certain there are 

 more mistakes than one in the foregoing sentence ; 

 but this is not the place for showing them. Mr. 

 Gough Nichols seems to forget that all the 

 bishops in an ecclesiastical province are the suf- 

 fragans, in the first and strict sense of the word, to 

 its archbishop : may be he confuses suffragans with 

 coadjutor bishops : true is it that, in its second 

 and less canonical meaning, the word suffragan 

 was formerly used in England for those who are 

 now better and more correctly called coadjutors. 

 But even so he is mistaken, for if we look at the long 

 catalogue — more than fifty in number — of those 

 indulgences granted to the church of Durham, 

 and to which he calls attention, we shall see that 

 they were, almost every one, given by archbishops, 

 and by bishops who, though they were suffragans 

 in the right sense of the word, as Lyndwode 

 would have employed it, were not so in its second 

 meaning, that is, coadjutors. Among those gran- 

 tors of the Durham indulgences, besides the Arch- 

 bishops of Canterbury and York, we find the 

 Bishops of London, Durham, Carlisle, Bath, Co- 

 ventry and Lichfield, Norwich, Ely, and Roches- 

 ter ; most of the bishops of Scotland, with those of 

 Sodor, Man, and the Isles, as well as of the Ork- 

 neys. To my belief Mr. Godgh Nichols cannot, 

 from out all those indulgences, point to half a 

 dozen which have the faintest likelihood of having 

 been bestowed by a coadjutor bishop, or as he 

 terms them " bishops of an inferior grade or suffra- 

 gans." 



