242 



Bishops of Old Sarum. 



than the rule, and the good Dean was compelled, I fear, at the last 

 to accept a very low standard of efficiency. 



There can be little doubt but that during those five years of which 

 I am now speaking the Cathedral Chapter itself was reorganised. 

 The number of Canons established by Bishop Osmund, including the 

 "four principal persons," was, it would seem, thirty-six. The suc- 

 cessive charters contained among the episcopal muniments, and entries 

 in the Old Register also, record manifold gifts during the intervening 

 century, so that we find that in Bishop Richard Poore's time there 

 were no less than fifty -two Canons, the Bishop, in virtue of his 

 prebend of Horton, having also a place in Chapter as a Canon, and 

 making the fifty -third} Moreover a new, or at least an enlarged, 

 constitution seems to be alluded to in what is called " Cajoituli 

 Sarisburiensis prima Convocatio" which was held in 1225, a list of 

 all the Canons cited to attend being given in the Old Register. 

 We have no certain information, as far as I know at present, as to 

 the precise period at which certain lands, or " praebendse/'' were 

 annexed to the several stalls held by the Canons, and without the 

 possession of which no member of the Cathedral body — not even an 

 Archdeacon — even though he might have a " stall in choir/'' could 

 claim to have a "voice in chapter/-' 2 Originally, as we know, there 

 w T as one common fund out of which all the members of the cathedral, 

 in regular gradation, from the highest personage — the Dean — down 

 to the humblest servitor, received his support and sustenance. The 

 Bishop indeed, though described as the head of the cathedral, the 

 Dean and Canons forming with him one body (unum corpus), would 

 seem, from earliest times, to have had his separate estates. And at a 



1 In the account given in the Old Register (p. 160) of the election of Robert 

 Bingham as Bishop, in 1229, it is said " Summa omnium Canonicorum est 52, 

 prseter Episcopum qui est Canonicus, et est 53 tius ." At first the prebend of 

 Horton was held by the Bishop but in the year 1254, in the time of William of 

 York, this was exchanged for the prebend of Potterne. Reg. Osmund, fol. xx. 



2 There is in the statute book of the Cathedral, as framed in 1319 by Bishop 

 Roger de Mortival, a statute entitled " De non admittendis ad tractatus Capituli 

 qui nondum sunt assecuti corpora prsebendarum," and to this there is a significant 

 marginal note to this effect : " Nota — contra Archidiaconos qui non habent corpora 

 prsebendarum." 



