A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



disciples of Jesus Christ, having the ornament of a quiet spirit, keeping the 

 tonsure, wearing a sober dress, not of silk or green or red in colour. They 

 might not play at dice nor be present at public wrestlings nor take part in 

 scotales or drinking bouts, and they should restrain their people also from 

 scotales. Like the religious they were bidden to show hospitality so far as 

 their means allowed of it. The archdeacons were ordered to make diligent 

 inquiry about the celibacy of the clergy, and they were also to denounce 

 rectors and vicars who had not sufficient learning, but they were to be chary 

 in their use of excommunication, and were not to deprive the people of services 

 by laying the church under an interdict when they could punish the priest 

 by sequestrating his fruits. The archdeacons were to observe the statutes of 

 the Lateran Council, and the councils of Oxford and London, and were not 

 to travel with more than seven horses, or to demand money wrongfully for 

 chrism and oil. The rural deans were to have no right to demand fees for 

 inducting the clergy. In the larger churches with dependent chapels the 

 bishop ordered the rectors to provide additional clergy, and if they failed to 

 do so it should be done by the archdeacons. In churches near the schools 

 of a city or castle the office of bearer of holy water should be given to 

 scholars for their maintenance. 1 At the beginning of September every year, 

 priests who had been ordained in another diocese and received benefices or 

 served for a salary in the diocese of Worcester, were to be presented to the 

 archdeacons or the bishop's official, that they might be approved or rejected 

 'according to their merits. If rectors and vicars had not taken priest's 

 orders, the archdeacons should admonish them to be ordained as soon as 

 possible. Vicars were bound to reside, and rectors might only absent them- 

 selves with the bishop's leave. Like his predecessor, 8 Cantilupe insisted that 

 the decrees of successive Lateran Councils touching the relations between 

 Jews and Christians should be observed ; no Christian might be a servant in 

 a Jewish household, nor give his money to a Jew to lend for usury, nor 

 receive a Jew's money that it might be in safe custody in the parish church. 8 

 It is probable that, owing to the constitution of William of Blois, the scandal 

 of pledging the books, vestments or ornaments of churches to the Jews had 

 ceased. 4 In conclusion the bishop ordered that the constitutions should be 

 observed in all the churches of his diocese, and he exhorted rectors and priests 

 to strive with all their might to understand them and to fulfil them. 6 The 

 clergy who were ignorant of them and failed to possess a copy would be fined 

 6s. Sd. for negligence. 



The bishop also drew up statutes to be observed in the monasteries of 

 his diocese, but he announced at the synod in 1 240 that he would cause these 

 to be published in the chapter-houses of the religious. 6 He made regular 

 visitations of the monasteries, compelling the abbot and convent of Gloucester 

 to admit him against their will in I239, 7 and in 1242 removing the prior 

 and other obedientiars from office. 8 In 1251, when the monastery was in 

 debt to the amount of 3,000 marks, he forbade the reception and entertain- 



1 It was a usual provision for poor scholars, Cutts ; Parish Priests and their People, 302, 303. Samson, 

 abbot of Bury, was thus supported as a student at the university of Paris ; Mem. of St. Edmund's Abbe) 

 (Rolls Ser.), i, 247. 



* Wilkins, Concilia, i, 571. ' Ibid. 675. * Ibid. 591. ' Ibid. 676. 



'Ibid. ' Ann. Man. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 4.30. ' Ibid. 433. 



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