Lawlor — A Charter of Cristin, Bishop of Louth. 35 



grant of property common to the Bishop and canons; it is attested by a 

 single seal ; and the property is of the character which Dr. Wilson describes 

 as spiritual, the advowsons of two churches. 



At this point reference may be made to the curious form of the deed. 

 The Bishop, Prior, and Convent release the presentations to Peter Pipard, with 

 the assent and counsel of the chapter. This seems strange when we consider 

 that the ' convent ' and the ' chapter ' were one and the same body. Possibly 

 the formula was in part borrowed from the ordinary episcopal grants in which 

 the relation between the bishop and the chapter was not so close as at Louth. 

 The grant of a bishop usually ran in his name, the chapter merely consenting. 

 In the instrument before us the customary form may have been adapted to 

 the circumstances of the Bishop of Louth by the insertion of the words 

 "et Thomas dictus prior," &c, without the corresponding deletion of the 

 assent clause below. 



Here we may notice also the reservation to the community of the third 

 part of the greater tithes of the churches — " excepta tertia parte decimarum 

 garbarum quae ad praefatas ecclesias pertinent." This " third part" was, T 

 suppose, the " quarter episcopal," to which it would very nearly correspond in 

 amount. 1 We learn from a Begister of Clogher, quoted by Ware, that 

 in the time of Bishop Gillacrist I, "his brother Malachy obtained from 

 Pope Innocent II that the fourth part of the tithes, or the episcopal part 

 through all Ergall (Uriel), should be allotted to the Bishops of Clogher." 3 

 This appears to be good evidence that in the period with which we are 

 concerned the system of quarters episcopal was in force in the diocese of 

 Uriel. But as long as the Bishop was the head of an Augustinian chapter, 

 and without separate property, they would naturally be paid, not to him, 

 but to the community of which he was a member. Moreover, they would, of 

 course, be exacted only from churches the patronage of which did not 

 belong to the community. The churches of the chapter would be served by 

 the canons placed in charge of them, the entire revenues being paid into the 

 common fund. But when a church belonging to the chapter was alienated 

 to a lay patron, they would be reserved in the grant. Thus we can under- 



1 In later times the rectorial tithes were commonly counted as double the vicarial. 

 One-third of the former would therefore be two-ninths, or about a quarter of the whole. 



2 Ware, Works, vol. i, p. 180. The antiquity of Ware's Clogher Register is not so 

 great as the common description of it as ' ancient,' or the statement of Harris that it was 

 " the best authority " (ibid., p. 179) for the early bishops, might lead us to suspect ; for 

 it was compiled by Archdeacon Rory O'Cassidy as late as the year 1525 (ibid., p. 187). 

 It seems to have reckoned all the Bishops of Louth as Bishops of Clogher. Accordingly 

 we may surmise that it was to the Bishops of Louth that Innocent II granted the quarters 

 episcopal of Uriel. 



8.I.A. PKOC, VOL. XXXII., SECT. C. [6j 



