A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



the chancellor's duties defined. 'Since difficult questions have often arisen on the office 

 and duties of the Chancellor and Treasurer we have sanctioned a statute (constttucione) to be 

 perpetually binding that they may know that the underwritten duties (onera) belonged to them. 



Of the Office of Chancellor ' 



The Chancellor by the ancient custom of the church must hear the lessons assigned for the night 

 services in person, or by a fit person of competent experience, well learned in the method of pronun- 

 ciation customary in the church. This he must do immediately after vespers. He can, however, 

 if he wishes to lighten his labours, call the juniors of the second form and the boys of the third form 

 and hear their lessons before that office. But whoever is going to read must present himself to be 

 heard at a convenient time, otherwise if through mispronunciation or absurdity or otherwise he offend 

 against the rule of the church, let him incur the penalty decreed below ' against those who commit 

 default in duties assigned to them by the daily table, which in the church are commonly called marances. 



It is part of his office that he should properly maintain a notary and letter writer and otherwise 

 fit person sworn not to reveal the secrets of the chapter, to write the letters of the Dean and chapter ; 

 and shall without grudging or waste of time supply him with all things necessary for writing. 



Also he shall himself, or through some other fit corrector, correct the books of the church which 

 need correction. 



In these statutes it is the legal and literary duties of the chancellor that are insisted on. But 

 his educational duties as regards seeing to the proper reading of what had to be read, as distinct from 

 sung, in the services are still prominent. The ' lessons ' here mentioned are undoubtedly the lessons 

 in the modern ecclesiastical sense ; the portions of the Bible and other books appointed to be read 

 at services, which were three on ordinary days, six on feast days, and nine on the greater feasts. 

 They were not as a rule anything like as long as those read in our reformed churches, being little 

 more than scraps of Scripture, or short summaries or extracts from the ' legends ' (another word for 

 lessons) of the saint who was being commemorated ; and they tended to become little more than 

 tags on which to hang ' responds ' or ' verses,' pious exclamations or comments, or echoes of the 

 lesson itself elaborately sung by the choir, which played very much the part of the chorus in a Greek 

 drama, as the ideal spectator giving vent to the reflections provoked by the incidents recited in the text. 

 On the highest festivals the chancellor himself was bound to read the lessons. As the lessons were 

 in Latin, it required of course a sound classical education to do justice to them. One would rather 

 gather from this passage that there were local usages as to the pronunciation of the Latin ; the 

 southerner perhaps giving his without the burr which the northerner introduced, or it is even possible 

 that the accent imported into the Sussex cathedral by the northern Wilfrid differed from that 

 practised in Canterbury and Salisbury, or London, introduced from France and Normandy. 



The statutes of 1232 further show us that the schoolmaster was now separate from the 

 chancellor. For in a statute about the election of the choir boys we have the following : 



Of the boys of the Third Form 5 



We decree also that ten fit boys be elected from the third form by the Schoolmaster and the 

 Precentor's vicar and their names written in the upper part of the Table near the margin, and when 

 any one of them fails new ones are to be put in their place, and no one not in that number is to be 

 entitled to any office in the inscriptions of the table, unless he is one of the household or family 

 of a canon. 



The schoolmaster is here clearly a person distinct from the chancellor and on a par with the 

 precentor's deputy, the succentor, who was a vicar choral or canon's deputy, not a canon. He is 

 in fact the grammar schoolmaster, the fit deputy learned in the proper pronunciation, who instead 

 of the master is to hear the boys read and teach them, and also to beat them. From the statutes of 

 Lincoln Cathedral we know that the grammar schoolmaster tested the candidates for choristership in 

 grammar and reading, as the precentor's deputy, the succentor, did in singing. The table mentioned 

 was the orders for the day which were inscribed on a tablet and hung up for every one to see what 

 his part in the next day, or next week's, services was. It was this to which the onerous 'serving of 

 tables ' characteristic of an elaborate ritual, reprehended in the preface to the Book of Common 

 Prayer, refers. 



* Arch, xlv, 165. Statutes and Constitutions of the Cathedral Church, ed. by F. G. Bennett, R. H. Codrington, 

 and C. Deedes (1904.). 



4 This penalty was, if a vicar, the loss of id. or id. ; if not a vicar, chastisement by the precentor or his 

 deputy ; ' but if of the third form,' i.e. a boy, ' let him be turned out of the choir, or receive from his master 

 or the precentor's deputy seven strokes, or if he has committed a grave offence, fourteen.' 



* ' De pueris de tercia forma. Statuimus eciam ut per magistrum scholarum et vicarium cantoris decem 

 pueri eligantur ydonei in tercia forma, et eorum nomina in superiore parte tabule juxta marginem scribantur." In 

 the Statutes 'magistrum scolarum,' the regular title of ' schoolmaster,' is printed ' magistrum scolarium,' or master 

 of the scholars. Canon Deedes kindly verified the original MS. for me and says it is undoubtedly ' scolarum.' 



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