460 ANTIQUITIES 



dead, as often as may be. If any impediment occur to 

 prevent the celebration, they are to report it within three 

 days to the prior ; who is also required to search diligently 

 every month into breaches of this rule, and to punish the 

 delinquents.] 



Item 4th. "Not to permit such frequent passing of 

 secular people of both sexes through their convent, as if a 

 thoroughfare, from whence many disorders may and have 

 arisen/' 



Item 5th. " To take care that the doors of their church 

 and Priory be so attended to that no suspected and dis- 

 orderly females, ' suspectse et alise inhonestae/ pass through 

 their choir and cloister in the dark ; " and to see that the 

 doors of their church between the nave and the choir, and 

 the gates of their cloister opening into the fields, be 

 constantly kept shut until their first choir-service is over in 

 the morning, at dinner time, and when they meet at their 

 evening collation. 1 



Item 6th mentions that several of the canons are found 

 to be very ignorant and illiterate, and enjoins the prior to 

 see that they be better instructed by a proper master. 



[Item 7th. The decretals concerning their order are not 

 read, on which account they, in consequence of their ignor- 

 ance of them, to the peril of their souls act in a manner 

 therein expressly forbidden. Wherefore they are required 

 to have these decretals written in a volume, and read twice 

 a year in the chapter for the information of the seniors ; and 

 to have them explained, in the vulgar, to the novices, so 

 that they may know them as it were by heart. This chauge 

 is laid upon the prior, under pain of suspension.] 



Item 8th. The canons are here accused of refusing to 

 accept of their statutable clothing year by year, and of 

 demanding a certain specified sum of money, as if it were 

 their annual rent and due. This the bishop forbids, and 

 orders that the canons shall be clothed out of the revenue 

 of the Priory, and the old garments be laid by in a chamber 



1 A collation was a meal or repast on a fast day, in lieu of a supper 

 -G. W. 



