156 The Story of a Prebendal Stall at Sarum. 



"capellani annui," who corresponded (as far as ancient and modern 

 can be compared) with what we now call " assistant curates/' were 

 paid, not in money, but for the most part in kind. Thus the 

 Chaplain of Erlegh, a dependency of Sunning, when called upon to 

 make a return of his income to the Dean of Sarum, in 1225, said 

 that it consisted of four measures [summoz) of corn, two measures 

 and a half of fine white wheat, and two and a half measures of 

 barley, besides one mark (=13*. 4sd.) in silver, 40 pence of which 

 came from the land of some " rusticus " — i.e., I suppose, some rural 

 tenant of a portion o£ land in the parish. 



Well, then, when Osmund, Bishop of Sarum, wished, towards the 

 close of the eleventh century, to found a Cathedral for his diocese, 

 and to place a body of secular canons in it, he thought it only 

 reasonable to make some provision for them. Hence he set apart a 

 number of small estates — in his time they were, I think, thirty-four, 

 they afterwards became some fifty or more (for two prebends con- 

 sisted of certain offerings given from time to time at the high altar 

 in the Cathedral) — and these estates, to which the technical name of 

 "prebends " was given, formed the endowment of his several canons. 

 He took a far more common- sense view of matters, as it seems to 

 me, than our modern legislators some forty years ago, who thought 

 that an income was quite needless for nine- tenths of the Canons of 

 Sarum at all, and that they ought to be quite content with the 

 " honor and glory of the thing. " I do not entirely sympathise with 

 such a view of matters, and should not be sorry, with my bit of 

 "blue ribbon/' to have a small "honorarium" appended thereunto. 

 However, as the matter stands, the value of our stalls, for all save 

 four or five of our body, may be set down at nil. One is almost 

 tempted, when you contemplate the whole of your "prebend" as 

 consisting of a seat in the Cathedral choir, and that is all — notwith- 

 standing for that diminutive " all " we used, when I was appointed, 

 to pay some £9 in fees — to recall the anecdote of the Irishman, who 

 when placed in a sedan-chair without a bottom remarked blandly — 

 "If it were not for the honor of the thing, I'd as lief have 

 walked." 



I have called the cathedral of Salisbury a cathedral of secular 



