legious intrusion into churches at the end of the thirteenth century. The same bishop (Oliver Button) who in one year (1292) sent out through the archdeacon of Buckingham his blessing on all who should assist the friars preaching the Crusade in that county,[1] had to excommunicate a little later those men who had assaulted and robbed the rector of Oakley in his own manse, [2] and another party of marauders who entered the church of Wingrave by night, broke down the altars and images of the Saints, and beat the clerks and laymen who opposed them. [3] There are instances also in this county of another form of activity with which mediaeval bishops are not usually credited, namely, the repression of superstitious and unauthorized devotions. St. Hugh is said to have waged war against the old popular well-worship which lingered on in the less civilized parts of the country, at High Wycombe and other places.[4] The same superstition, under a Christian disguise, was censured in the thirteenth century by Oliver Sutton. In 1299 he wrote to the archdeacon of Buckingham that he had heard how pilgrimages were being made to a well in a field at Linslade, where it was pretended that miracles were wrought ; the vicar, who had encouraged these practices for the sake of the offerings they brought to his church, was to be cited to appear at once before his bishop. [5] A little while before this, a man- date had been sent to the Dean of Newport Pagnel to forbid the ' superstitious vanities ' which drew people to the church of North Crawley, on pain of excommunication. [6]
We do not know what attitude was taken by the bishop towards a certain rector in Buckinghamshire who afterwards became very widely known in England, and was even venerated as a saint the famous ' Master John Schorne,' rector of North Marston from about 1290 to 1314.[7] Very little indeed is known of his actual career ; he is said to have been rector of Monks' Risborough before he came to North Marston, and it seems probable that he acted for a short time as official to the Italian archdeacon of Buckingham, Percival de Lavannia. [8] It was certainly at North Marston that he gained his reputation for sanctity ; it was there that he struck his staff into the ground, and produced a well which until quite recently was called by his name ; and the register
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, 56d.
- ↑ The excommunication took solemn form : the official of Buckingham and the dean of Waddesdon were to go with the rectors and vicars of all the neighbouring parishes, vested in albs and preceded by the banner of the Holy Cross, to Oakley church, and pronounce the sentence. Ibid. 2l7d.
- ↑ Ibid. 221. Compare Hund R. (Rec. Com.), 4 Edw. I., i. 41. "William de Poleye hated Thomas Curteys, chaplain of Great Brickhill, and imprisoned him at Snelleston until he should pay 12 marks ransom."
- ↑ Vita magna S. Hugonis (Rolls Series), 348.
- ↑ Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Sutton, 223 (1299).
- ↑ Ibid. 203d (1298).
- ↑ On the authority of Browne Willis only. There are no institutions to Monks' Risborough in the Lincoln Registers, owing to its complete appropriation to the monks of Canterbury : and the institution to North Marston cannot be traced possibly it may have been in the missing Roll of Sutton for Bucks Archdeaconry, which would supply the gap between 1280-90.
- ↑ Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Series), i. 443. ' Master John Schorne, then official of Master Percival, archdeacon of Bucks,' is mentioned without comment under the year 1280, and may of course refer to another person of the same name.
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