A HISTORY OF DORSET 



and guests, and his heirs, to be served by a perpetual chaplain. ^^' Perhaps 

 the most interesting case of voluntary endowrment was the one confirmed by 

 Bishop Richard le Poor in 1218, w^herein seven parishioners of Mosterton 

 bestowed various gifts of land for the establishment and maintenance of a 

 chaplain who, with the consent of the rector of South Perrott, should make 

 personal residence and serve a chapel there."* With the growth of parish 

 churches there were springing up through the thirteenth century these 

 dependent chapels whose claims impinging on parochial rights required 

 constant readjustment, and were the cause of so many of the ecclesiastical 

 disputes in the succeeding century."* 



During this period of parochial organization which marks the thirteenth 

 century, the ordination of vicarages was not neglected. The practice 

 which came into vogue after the Conquest of granting the presentation of 

 churches and alienating the tithes to cathedral and monastic bodies had as a 

 consequence lowered incumbents from the position of rectors, which they 

 enjoyed, in primitive times, to that of curates forced to content them- 

 selves with whatever remuneration they might be allowed. Various attempts 

 were made to counteract this evil, which in addition left the spiritual needs of 

 the parishioners at the mercy of rectors with whom their importance was not 

 always paramount. In i 200 the council of Westminster directed that every 

 vicar should be instituted by the bishop to whom he should be responsible 

 for the discharge of his duties, and that he should be provided with a suffi- 

 cient competence from the issues of the church."' The vicar's income in 

 addition to a competent manse was usually reckoned at about a third of the 

 total profits. The rector took the great tithe, viz., of corn, and the incidental 

 charges such as synodals, and the archdeacon's fees were usually arranged be- 

 tween the rector and the vicar in proportion to their respective portions. An 

 €arlv instance of care in defining precisely the portion that should be assigned 

 to the vicar occurs in a deed appropriating to the abbey of Sherborne the 

 churches of Stalbridge and Stoke Abbott in 1191, The vicar of Stalbridge, 

 according to this ordination, was to have all that estate [tenementuni) which 

 Sewale had of the estate of the said church and all things pertaining 

 to the church save the free land and those tithes, viz., of sheaves as 

 well as small tithes, which should be assigned to the use of the sacrist of 

 Sherborne ; in addition he should have free pasture and a horse and four 

 beasts in the pasture of the abbot's demesne and should sustain all episcopal 

 dues. The vicar of Stoke Abbott should have all things pertaining to the 

 church which Gerrud used to have and should sustain all episcopal dues like- 

 wise ; the remainder of the issues were to be assigned to the clothing of the 

 monks of Sherborne."^ The dean and cathedral chapter confirmed the 

 ordination of the vicarage of Fordington made by Lawrence of Saint 



™ Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Ser.), 278-80. '" Ibid. 82-3. 



'" In some instances these chapels became further endowed and were eventually erected into parish 

 churches, but after the Black Death they frequently became too impoverished to support a chaplain, and sank 

 into disuse. 



"° The council of Oxford laid down the principle of providing a sufficient income, irrespective of the 

 actual value of a benefice, by decreeing that the vicar's stipend should not amount to less than 5 marks, except 

 in Wales. Wilkins, Concilia, i, 587. 



"' Sarum Chart, and Doc. (Rolls Ser.), 49. In 1238 the abbot and convent of Sherborne resigned to 

 Bishop Robert Bingham of Salisbury and the chapter the appropriation of these two churches of Stalbridge 

 and Stoke Abbott, reserving to themselves the advowson and certain issues ; ibid. 248-9. 



12 



