JOURNEYS AND MARKETS. 135 



veloped and enforced, and when the various European states 

 began to be defined by acknowledged limits. The appellate 

 jurisdiction of the curia was narrowed by one set of causes, 

 its faculty of political mediation by another set. 



It is not, however, with the larger questions of public 

 action, or with the power wielded by the popes in the politics 

 of medieval Europe, that the accounts, from which I have 

 extracted my information, deal, but only with the confirma- 

 tion of appropriations made to corporations. 



It is well known that a considerable portion of the endow- 

 ments possessed by ecclesiastical corporations in the Middle 

 Ages was derived from the great tithes of parishes, and that 

 the appropriation of such tithes for the maintenance of various 

 monastic establishments was constant. 



The church at Embleton was given to Merton College by 

 Edmond of Lancaster, the" younger brother of Edward the 

 First, with the purpose of aiding the society to build their 

 buildings, and especially their chapel, in Oxford. They must, 

 therefore, have intended to procure the impropriation of the 

 rectory from the commencement of their corporate existence, 

 and probably did devote a portion of the proceeds to this end. 

 It may have been the case that some earlier instruments gave 

 them authority to turn the rectory into a vicarage, and that 

 these were invalidated on technical grounds. At any rate, 

 sixty years after the first grant they determine to secure the 

 impropriation by the fulfilment of all legal requisites. To 

 this end, the licence of the king, the pope (John XXI), and 

 the Bishop of Durham were necessary; and journeys, the 

 details of which are printed in vol. ii. pp. 631-642, are under, 

 taken. 



The same person (John Middleton) keeps both accounts; 

 the one being a record of his personal expenses in travelling 

 to Avignon and back, the other being a similar account of 

 the charges at which the college was put by the journey of 

 the warden and two fellows in the north of England. 



The journey from Calais to Avignon, in the year 1331, 



