168 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[_2<><» S. IX. Mae. 3. '60. 



uges — and if the fault be notorious, that the of- 

 fender make some satisfaction, either in his own 

 person, or else that the minister of the church 

 openly in the pulpit signify to his people his suit- 

 mission, and declaration of his repentance done 

 before the ordinary ; and also, in token of his re- 

 pentance, what portion of money he hath given to 

 be employed in the uses above named. (Cardwell's 

 Documentary Annals, i. 415.) The under clergy 

 seem to have occasionally done a little business 

 upon their own account in this matter; for among 

 the articles exhibited against a Dr. Clay, vicar of 

 Halifax, one was that " when commissions were di- 

 rected to him to compel persons to do penance, he 

 exacted money of them, and so they were dismissed 

 without penalty." (The Acts of the High Com- 

 mission Court of Durham, p. 256.) 



From the foregoing evidence it is clear that the 

 Heads of the Protestant Establishment in this 

 country admitted, to a certain extent, the princi- 

 ples, and put into action, after a manner cpiite 

 their own, the discipline of indulgences. In com- 

 parison, however, with that of the Catholic Church, 

 the practice of Protestantism on that head was 

 laxity itself. The grant to Catholics by their 

 Church of the smallest indulgence, always was, as 

 it still is, made only under the unvarying condi- 

 tions of a true sorrow for sins, a sacramental con- 

 fession of them, and a fitting atonement for all 

 misdeeds, by those who wished to gain it. If we 

 look, for instance, at the very first of the Durham 

 indulgences referred to by Mr. Gough Nichols, 

 we shall find that it runs thus : " Nos (H. Ely- 

 ensis) vero de Dei misericordia — omnibus qui 

 fabricse memoratse pias elemosinarum largitiones 

 impenderint, seu predictum locum per hoc sep- 

 tennium proxime futurum causa orationis adierint 

 — si de peccatis suis vere contriti fuerint et con- 

 fessi, triginta dies de injuncta sibi penitentia relax - 

 amus." (Rites of Durham, p. 131.) The like clauses 

 would have been seen in all the other indulgences 

 enumerated after this one, had they been given in 

 lull. But the Protestant canonical penances — the 

 wearing of the white sheet, the standing so arrayed 

 upon the stool in open church, the questionings 

 from the pulpit — might be bought olF, from the 

 heads of the Protestant Establishment, even for 

 crimes of such black turpitude as fornication, 

 adultery, nay even incest, by the powerful or 

 wealthy sinner, through the payment of a pecu- 

 niary fine. Let it not be deemed that even the 

 last-named of such sins was of rare occurrence in 

 those reformed times. The Acts of the High Com- 

 mission Court of Durham, lately printed bj the 

 Surtees Society, afford but too many instances of 

 its frequency in the upper orders of life (pp. 28. 

 31. 76. 107. 123. 146.) in that diocese. No doubt 

 the others could have revealed the same frightful 

 state of wickedness. Other such indulgences 

 seem to have been in use up to the present century : 



some thirty years ago among my Protestant ac- 

 quaintances was an old lady who had been mar- 

 ried to two brothers ; and the story went, in her 

 neighbourhood, that she had bought off a prosecu- 

 tion, on that score, in the ecclesiastical courts by 

 the yearly payment of a sum of money. 



That Protestantism had its indulgences, and 

 used to sell them, is evident. For the sale and 

 purchase of one sort of these indulgences, there 

 was a well-known " open market" set up in Lon- 

 don, at St. Paul's, with its duly kept body of au- 

 thorised officials who put forth advertisements 

 in the public papers, inviting people to come and 

 buy their ecclesiastical indulgences, or, as they 

 called them, "licenses" to eat meat in Lent, and 

 on fast-days, we learn from a Protestant writer, 

 Lysons. Notwithstanding Mr. Gough Nichols's 

 opinion, it is fair to presume that from Ascham 

 and Foxe, from Cranmer, Parker, Grindal, and 

 Abbot downward, all those who bought as well as 

 the officials, high and low, who sold such licenses, 

 did not think them "visionary benefits;" other- 

 wise the first had not sought for nor given their 

 hard money for them, nor the second offered and 

 advertised for sale, and kept an " open market," 

 with all its necessary appliances, for the conve- 

 nience of purchasers throughout the kingdom. 



This De Hungerford inscription, so valuable a 

 monument of medieval antiquity, we are told 

 "has suffered much from wanton defacement" 

 (2 nd S. viii. 464.) ; this is sad : sadder still if the 

 cause for perpetrating such disfigurement must be 

 sought from that same motive which Mr. Gough 

 Nichols assigns for the disappearance of so many 

 copies of Foxe's book — " sectarian spite" (2 0d S. 

 viii. 221.) : but saddest of all, when, through the 

 same uncharitable agency, the defacement of a far 

 more mischievous nature is wrought on such in- 

 scriptions by men who scoff at their words, with- 

 out a care to understand their meaning. 



D. ,Rock. 



Brook Green, Hammersmith. 



Mr. Nichols does not seem to be aware 

 that I copied the inscription from an actual rub- 

 bing taken by myself, which I shall be .happy to 

 lend him if he has any doubt as to any at- 

 tempted deciphering of the monumental slab. I 

 am quite willing to admit (and thank him for the 

 suggestion) that the sense is better met by the 

 substitution of the woi'd com; but on the other 

 hand the last letter which I read r, is so clear and 

 separate from the preceding letters (which are a 

 little blurred by chipping), that I could not see 

 how it could be very well converted into com. 

 Again, would not the sculptor have followed the 

 same wording as in line 2.; viz. tauten or cum. f 

 He appears, however, to have been sufficiently 

 careless in incising other words. 



Mr. Nichols's extended version will bear a 



