A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



had obtained rectories as early as the reign of Henry I. All the early 

 bishops granted licences for appropriations, though the custom of the 

 ordination or taxation of vicarages was not completely established till 

 the reign of Henry III. and the episcopate of Walter, the fourth bishop. 

 If we glance at the process by which the revenues of a parish church 

 became the property of a religious house, it will be seen how step by 

 step the monks gained their end. The advowson of the church of 

 Crosthwaite, for example, was granted to the monastery of Fountains by 

 Alice de Romelli, daughter of William fitz Duncan, about the year 

 1212. Bishop Bernard confirmed the appropriation of the whole of the 

 revenues, except an annual stipend of one hundred shillings, which he 

 reserved for a vicar who should be elected by the monks and presented 

 to the bishop for institution, the said vicar being answerable for all 

 episcopal dues and having the cure of souls. The appropriation had 

 the sanction of the pope, the metropolitan, and the prior and convent of 

 Carlisle, but its completion was delayed by the resignation of the rector, 

 who retired on an annual pension of five marks. Though this arrange- 

 ment lasted through two episcopates and received the confirmation of 

 Bishops Hugh and Walter, it was not brought to a successful issue till 

 Henry de Curtenay had resigned his pension in 1227, an( ^ ^ Adam de 

 Crosthwaite, the first vicar, had died some years afterwards. All the 

 complications, however, were cleared away in 1250, when Bishop 

 Silvester made a definite ordination of the vicarage by declaring particu- 

 larly the various sources of the vicar's stipend, assigning him a vicarage 

 house, certain tithes and other revenues. 1 In the taxation of vicarages 

 after appropriation, unless the sources of the vicar's stipend were care- 

 fully set out, quarrels with the impropriators were likely to ensue. 

 When Adam, son of Adam de Levington, granted the church of Kirk- 

 andrews on Eden to the nuns of St. Andrew of Marrig, though Bishops 

 Bernard and Hugh in succession confirmed the appropriation of the 

 church to their use, Ralf the chaplain succeeded in forcing a composition 

 in 1263 whereby the nuns should receive a pension of sixty shillings a 

 year, and that he and his successors should have peaceable possession of 

 the residue nomine personatus* But ordinations were drawn up with the 

 greatest care, so that the vicar was independent of the individual or 

 corporation to whom the appropriation belonged. The division of the 

 parochial revenues was so arranged that the incumbent was answerable 

 to the bishop in spiritualities and to the impropriator in temporalities, 

 yielding to the latter no other service than that which was due from any 

 tenant of a lay fee. 



This policy of robbing parishes for the support of religious corpora- 

 tions, some of which had no connection with the diocese or the county, 

 though it had fallen to some extent into decay towards the close of the 

 thirteenth century, was resuscitated after the outbreak of the Scottish 

 wars and the impoverishment of the local monastic houses by the con- 



1 Reg. of Fountains MS. ff. 101, 323-330. 



* Collectanea Topografhica tt Genealogica, v. 235-6. 



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