ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Ashby St. Ledgers, Little Billing, Blakesley, Bozeat, Brackley, Brafield, 

 Catesby, Chacombe (Chalcombe), Daventry, Dodford, Duston, Evenley, 

 Fawsley, Floore, Fotheringhay, Guilsborough, West Haddon, Hardingstone, 

 Hemington, Horton, Little Houghton, Lilbourne, Marston, Maxey, Moulton, 

 Newbottle, Northampton (All Saints, St. Bartholomew, St. Edmund, St. 

 Giles, St. Michael, St. Gregory, and St. Sepulchre), Norton by Daventry, 

 Pattishall, Peterborough (St. John Baptist), Preston Deanery, Preston Capes, 

 Roade, Slipton, Staverton, Sulgrave, Watford, Weedon Beck, Weedon Lois, 

 Welford, Wellingborough, Woollaston, and Wothorpe.' Forty of these 

 parishes are expressly stated to have had their vicarages ordained auctoritate 

 concilii. By this must be meant the fourth Lateran Council (12 15). 

 Almost all of the vicarages thus characterized in the Northampton and 

 other archdeaconries w^ould be those ordained by the bishop after the Luton 

 judgment, w^hen the general canon of the council was supported in a 

 particular case. 



Six of these Northamptonshire vicarages are described as ordained 

 exduddum, that is, ' very long ago,' namely, Guilsborough, Marston, Maxey, 

 Moulton, Newbottle, and Wellingborough. 



Bishop Wells's existing roll of institutions at Lincoln does not begin till 

 1220, but there are two transcripts or full excerpts which contain notices of 

 occurrences in 1217.^ Among the institutions of the latter year are those 

 made to the Northamptonshire livings of Addington, Maxey, and Norton, the 

 incumbent in each case being styled ' perpetual vicar.' 



The considerable variety of religious houses holding the great tithes of 

 Northamptonshire is illustrated by the list of the fifty-two examples of this 

 period : — Priory of St. Andrew, Northampton, thirteen ; priory of Daventry, 

 seven ; abbey of St. James, Northampton, five ; abbeys of Peterborough, 

 Sulby, Leicester, priories of Dunstable, Delapre, and Catesby, and the Knights 

 Hospitallers two each ; priories of Canons Ashby, St. Neots, Huntingdon, 

 Launde, Luffield, Merton, and Chalcombe, abbeys of Alnwick and Crowland, 

 and the hospital of St. John, Northampton, one each. In addition to these, 

 there were three foreign houses, each of which held a single vicarage, 

 namely, the abbey of St. Lucien, near Beauvais, the abbey of Bee, and the 

 abbey of Ebrulf (St. Evroul), all in Northern France. 



The ordinations of these vicarages do not give (with the exception of 

 Peterborough) such full details as are found in later examples, but no two of 

 them are precisely alike, and most of them have some special point of interest. 

 The vicars of the various Northampton churches, all of which belonged to 

 the priory of St. Andrew at its north gate, were treated after a different 

 fashion from the country vicars, as the emoluments of these town churches 

 were so small. The vicar of the great church of All Saints was entitled to 



' The full title of this volume is Liber Jntijuus de Ordinationibus Vicar'mrum tempore Hugpnis Wells, Lincohlensh 

 Episcopi, 1209-35. It was printed by Mr. A. Gibbons in 1 888, with an introduction by Canon G. G. 

 Perry. The Northamptonshire vicarages are on pp. 31-40 of Mr. Gibbons's edition. Canon Perry's edition 

 assumes that the Liber Jnti^uus was written in 1 2 1 8, but careful examination shows that the date was about 

 1220, the year after the Luton case. As a proof of some later entries, it may be mentioned that there is a 

 reference under one vicarage to the council of Oxford, which was held in 1222. By a slight error in 

 transcription Mr. Gibbons has placed the notice of St. Sepulchre under the heading of St. Gregory. Both 

 ordinations are mentioned in the original MS. There is a full criticism of the Liber Antiquus in H. Cobbe's 

 History of Luton Church (1899), 517 et seq. 



' Bishop Kennett's Collections, Lansd. MS. 946 ; and Hutton's Collections, Harl. MSS. 6950-5. 



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