great value connected with this county, if we except the two prebends of Aylesbury, worth £133 6s. 8d., and Sutton-cum-Buckingham, worth £173 6s. 8d. : of the rest, only one-third amounted to more than £10 in the year and among these only twenty-eight to £20 or more, while Hanslope stands in solitary eminence at £40. The greater number averaged about £7, and eight were under £5 a year.[1]
The archdeaconry had had a separate existence since the time of Bishop Remy ; but little is known of the early archdeacons except their names. Henry of Huntingdon[2] could remember five : Alured, the first ; Gilbert, distinguished as a graceful writer both in prose and verse ; Roger, who afterwards became bishop of Chester ; Richard, and David, brother of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. David's name is fre- quently found in the monastic chartularies, witnessing deeds and con- firming grants of churches during the long vacancy of the see of Lincoln which followed the death of Robert de Chesney. Matthew de Stratton held the office of archdeacon for a long time, nearly fifty years, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, together with the prebend of Sutton-cum-Buckingham : he was engaged in more than one suit about the benefices which he held, and seems once to have wounded the feelings of Bishop Grossetete by refusing to accept his arbitration.[3] A chantry endowed by him in the chapel of St. John Baptist at Buck- ingham was still called by his name at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI. [4] The chronicler of Osney Priory says that he governed the archdeaconry in a strenuous and praiseworthy manner.[5] Happening to die at Rome, he was succeeded by a series of foreigners by papal pro- vision : Percy de Lavannia, [6] who was archdeacon for nearly thirty years but scarcely ever in England ; Boniface de Saluzzo, a young Italian nobleman, who while he was only subdeacon and under twenty years of age had been dispensed to hold a papal chaplaincy, a canonry of Lincoln and the rectories of four churches [7] ; George de Saluzzo, whose movements were so little known in England that even the king, his kinsman, in 1322 believed him to be dead and collated somebody else to his archdeaconry [8] ; and Anibaldus, papal nuncio and bishop of Tusculum, who was archdeacon not only of Buckingham but of Not- tingham until his death in 1351, holding also canonries and prebends of Lincoln, Chichester and York, the rectories of Maidstone and East
- ↑ Pope Nich. Tax. 32-4.
- ↑ Letter de Contemptu Mundi in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 696.
- ↑ He was nine years occupied with a suit against John de Vercelli, canon of Lincoln, about the church of Buckingham, which the latter claimed as belonging to his prebend ; it was finally adjudged to the archdeacon. Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 158, 181, 221. Then he had a suit with the archdeacon of Bedford about the church of Edlesborough, on which occasion Bishop Grossetéte wrote to him. Letters of Grossetéte (Rolls Series), 103.
- ↑ Chantry Cert. 4, No. 9 ; Browne Willis, History of Buckingham, 28.
- ↑ Ann. Mon. (Rolls Series), iv. 225.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 247 (a description of his farming of his prebends to the Dean and Chapter).
- ↑ Cal. of Papal Letters, i. 568-71. There are two indults to him to serve his archdeaconry by deputy. Ibid. i. 613, and ii. 55.
- ↑ Close 16 Edw. II. m. 24.
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