OF SELBORNE 309 



Item 31st. He here singly and severally forbids each 

 canon not admitted to a cure of souls to administer 

 extreme unction, or the sacrament, to clergy or laity; 

 or to perform the service of matrimony, till he has 

 taken out the license of the parish priest. 



Item 3 2d. The bishop says in this Item that he had 

 observed and found, in his several visitations, that the 

 sacramental plate and cloths of the altar, surplices, etc. 

 were sometimes left in such an unckanly and disgusting 

 condition as to make the beholders shudder with horror ; 

 — "quod allqulbus sunt horrori";^ he therefore enjoins 

 them for the future to see that the plate, cloths, and 

 vestments, be kept bright, clean, and in decent order: 

 and, what must surprise the reader, adds — that he expects 

 for the future that the sacrist should provide for the 

 sacrament good wine, pure and unadulterated; and not, 

 as had often been the practice, that which was sour, 

 and tending to decay: — he says farther, that it seems 

 quite preposterous to omit in sacred matters that attention 

 to decent cleanliness, the neglect of which would disgrace 

 a common convivial meeting.'^ 



Item 33d says that, though the relics of saints, the plate, 

 holy vestments, and books of religious houses, are for- 

 bidden by canonical institutes to be pledged or lent out 

 upon pawn; yet, as the visitor finds this to be the case 

 in his several visitations, he therefore strictly enjoins the 

 prior forthwith to recall those pledges, and to restore 

 them to the convent ; and orders that all the papers and 



l"Men abhorred the ofFering of the Lord." i Sam. chap. ii. v. 17. 

 Strange as this account may appear to modern delicacy, the author, when 

 first in orders, twice met with similar circumstances attending the sacra- 

 ment at two churches belonging to two obscure villages. In the first he 

 found the inside of the chalice covered with birds' dung; and in the 

 other the communion-cloth soiled with cabbage and the greasy drippings 

 of a gammon of bacon. The good dame at the great farm-house, who 

 was to furnish the cloth, being a notable woman, thought it best to save 

 her clean linen, and so sent a foul cloth that had covered her own table 

 for two or three Sundays before. 



" ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa 



Corruget nares ; ne non et cantharus, et lanx 

 Ostendat tibi te " 



