A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE had tried to check it ; but in the fourteenth century, in spite of the bull Execrabilis and its threats, it was no longer an offence to hold benefices in plurality : the only fault was to do so without dispensation from Rome. At this time, and indeed afterwards, those who held the largest number of benefices were those who had the money or the in- terest to procure them — the royal clerks and chaplains, and the cathedral clergy. There is no doubt that the county of Bedford suffered at the time of the Great Pestilence as much as the neighbouring counties. It must have been especially violent in and about the town of Bedford, as the names of the masters of both hospitals, and the priors both of Caldwell and Newnham, are found amongst those who died in 1349. The prior of Bushmead, the prioress of Markyate, and the rectors of Biddenham, Sutton and Shillington died in the same year. 1 The period between the Great Pestilence and the Reformation is uneventful in the history of the Church in Bedfordshire. Movements which affected other parts of England were doubtless felt here also, but the records are very scanty. There is a brief account in the Annals of Dunstable 2 (no longer kept with the same care as in former years) of a rising in the town in the year of the great peasant revolt, similar to those at St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds, but marked by much less violence. The old ill feeling between the prior and the townsmen was stirred up again — it had probably never quite died out — and the indus- trial problems raised by war and pestilence had doubtless affected this neighbourhood as much as others. A crowd assembled at the priory gates and demanded a new charter of liberties, ' such as the burgesses had in the days of Henry I.' Knowing what had happened at London and St. Albans, the prior had the tact and prudence to receive them courteously, and to issue the desired charter. It was revoked when the revolt was suppressed ; but the prior interceded for his townsmen that they might not suffer the same penalties as the rioters in Hertfordshire and the eastern counties. A few years later an old dispute between the religious and the townsmen, as to their respective rights in the parish church, was brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the efforts of Sir Reynold de Grey and other gentlemen of the neighbourhood. The lower part of the building was set apart for the use of the parishioners, and a new altar erected, where a secular vicar might minister to them on all ordinary occasions ; but on the principal feasts of the year they were to hear mass at the altar of St. Peter. 3 The visitation of the prebendal churches by Bishop Henry Beaufort in 1 399 4 brought to light a very unsatisfactory state of discipline, which however cannot cause much surprise when it is remembered how the 1 The chronicler of Dunstable notes under this year, and in connection with the Great Pestilence, that the townsmen made a new bell (probably as a votive offering). 3 jinn. Mon. (Rolls Series), iii. 417. 3 Line. Epis. Reg., Memo. Buckingham, 41 1. This arrangement was not permanent, no vicar- age or vicar being mentioned in the Valor Eccl. 1535.
- Ibid. Memo. Beaufort, 67.
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