460 
ANTIQUITIES 
deadj 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, ^ suspects et alias inhonestse/ 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.^ 
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 7 th. 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 charge 
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 
^ A collation was a meal or repast on a fast day, in lieu of a supper 
-G. W. 
