ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



striking instance. Presentation to the deanery was in the hands of the 

 crown, and as a court appointment was always held by men holding other 

 offices and frequently pursuing secular avocations/^* 



Of the new religious orders in the thirteenth century, to whose example 

 so many bishops turned as a means of rousing the parochial clergy to a more 

 lively sense of their responsibilities, little is heard till the following century. 

 The Franciscans had a house at Dorchester founded according to Tanner by 

 the ancestors of Sir John Chideock, but no reference to it occurs earlier than 

 the reign of Edward 11.^^* Entries in the episcopal registers of Ghent and 

 Mortival show that the friars were already making their presence felt 

 throughout the diocese,"^ but their most effectual work in this county was 

 due to the Dominicans, whose establishment at Melcombe Regis deserves 

 special attention. The twin boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe, com- 

 posing the modern town of Weymouth, were at that time served respectively 

 by the mother churches of Wyke Regis and Radipole in the parishes of which 

 each lay. The register of Bishop Simon of Ghent records various unsuccessful 

 attempts on the part of certain parishioners of Melcombe to obtain parochial 

 rights for a chapel, to the detriment, it was complained, of the mother church 

 of Radipole,^^' and Bishop Mortival in 1 321, granting an indulgence of thirty 

 days for the parishioners of Wyke who should attend their parish church on 

 Sundays and feast days, mentions a complaint that certain of the inhabitants 

 were in the habit of attending a chapel at Weymouth"^ to the obvious injury 

 of the said parish church. 



As time went on, and the importance of those two outlying districts 

 increased there seems to have been — particularly on the part of the Melcombe 

 parishioners — a constant struggle to obtain a right to a place of worship of their 

 own, which was as often defeated by the authorities. The Dominicans in 

 the meantime settled at Melcombe and a return made on 1 8 November, 

 1425, by John Morton, commissary and sequestrator-general to the bishop, 

 respecting the erection of an altar at Melcombe Regis in a place ' profane 

 and inhonest ' without the consent or authority of the ordinary, stated that 

 the said altar had been erected for the celebration of mass by Edward Poliny 

 and John Lok of the order of friars preachers, and that many of the inhabi- 

 tants of Weymouth had assisted in its erection. For some reason not stated 

 the friars thought fit to disregard the bishop's citation to appear before him 

 or his commissary on the 21st of that month to explain their action, and 



'"Thus Martin de Patishull, appointed to the deanery in 1223, besides holding various ecclesiastical 

 appointments, was a justice of the King's Bench, a justice itinerant and constantly employed as a judge. His 

 successor, Randolf Brito, was in the year of his presentation to Wimborne appointed constable of Colchester 

 Castle and warden of the ports of Essex (Pat. 1 3 Hen. Ill, m. 9). The deanery of Wimborne is not even 

 mentioned in the list given by Matthew Paris {Chron. Maj.) of the many offices held by John Mansel 

 appointed in 1247. In the case of John de Kirkeby, who had recommended himself to the court by his success- 

 ful methods of collecting subsidies and taxes. Archbishop Peckham annulled his election to Rochester in 1285 

 on the ground of his notorious pluralism ; Reg. Efist. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), ii, 575. He appears to have 

 held the deanery from I 265, while only in deacon's orders, being ordained priest the day before his consecration 

 to Ely in 1286 [ibid, iii, App. 2, p. 1041]. Down to the suppression of the college under Edward VI 'the 

 little deanery ' was frequently one of the main links connecting this county with current political events and 

 personages outside its borders. 



'^* Tanner, Notitia, Dorset, x. 



'" The bishop in a letter to the archdeacon of Dorset in 1319 directed the names of all friars of the 

 Franciscan and Dominican orders and of the order of the hermits of St. Augustine to be submitted to him 

 before being licensed to hear confessions, and to absolve. Sarum Epis. Reg. Mortival, ii, fol. 94. 



'" Ibid. Simon of Ghent, fol. j d. 35 a'. 37. '" Ibid. Mortiv.il, ii, fol. 125. 



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