RELIGIOUS HOUSES occur mention of the separate houses of canons.*** Ralph de Diceto qualifies the canons who pro- cured the election of Anselm in 1 136 as 'the domestic clergy of the dean,' ' whom he had with him at meals every day ' ; -^^ and hence there arises the supposition that at least some of the canons had once such common meals as con- tinued among the lesser clergy of the cathedral. It is possible that Ralph has ascribed to the year 1 136 an earlier custom; his own constitutions cannot be understood to contemplate any such practice. A charter of Edward the Confessor forbade the monastery of St. Paul to receive more priests than it could maintain.*^' This may have caused the limitation of the number of canons. In the twelfth century the possessions of the cathedral consisted of the patrimony of St. Paul and the prebends. The manors which belonged to the first of these divisions were farmed by the chapter, and rendered yearly rents, in money and in kind, to the chamber, and the brewery and bakehouse, respectively. The produce provided for daily distributions of money, bread and ale to all the ministers of the church.^" There are traces of a like two-fold division of property before the Norman invasion. The explicit grant of Queen Egelfleda makes it probable that some possessions of the church existed for other than common uses. It is stated in Domesday that, in the time of King Edward, the canons held land in three places ' for their living,' ^ while five canons are named who held of St. Paul's individually in 1086.* The prebendal system appears to have been established in the reign of William 11.^*" Both he and Henry I '" His/. MSS. Com. Re;., ix, App. i, 26. "* R. de Diceto, Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 248-9. "' Kemble, CoJex Dipl. 887.
- " Dom. Bk. of St. PauPs (ed. W. H. Hale), Introd.
"' Two and a half hides in Stepney, and the manors of Willesden and Fulham, v. Dom. Bk. i, 127. "' In Stepney, in two holdings in Twyford, in Rugmere, and in St. Pancras, v. Dom. Bk. ii, 9. "" In addition to their ancient possessions the canons held in chief, in 1086, in Caddington in Bed- fordshire, in Caddington and Kensworth in Hertford- shire, in Barnes in Surrey, and in Leigh and Norton Mandcville and two manors of Navestock in Essex. They held Wanstead in Essex of the bishop (v. Dom. Bk.'i, zi ; ii, 1 2^ ; i, 1 36, 34 ; ii, 9). The manors of Islington, Harlesden, Hoxton, Newington, St. Pan- cras, Rugmere, Tottenham, Willesden, Aedulvesnesa, and Tillingham must have become wholly or partially prebendal. Other property assigned to prebends lay in Shoreditch, and in the parishes of St. Andrew Holborn,and St. Giles without Cripplegate (Newcourt, Reperl. 1,65, 169, 183). The prebend of Chiswick may not have been formed until after the acquisition of the manor of Sutton in the parish of Chiswick before 1 181 {Dom. Bk. of St. PauPs [ed. W. H. Hale], 100- 21). The names of twenty-eight of the prebends have not varied from I 291 until the present day, if it be accepted that Halliwcll is the older name of the granted free disposition of their prebends to the canons.**^ In the most ancient portion of the cathedral archives there is a canonical rule which is almost entirely taken from the ' Regula ' of St. Chrodogang.*** It enjoins virtue, dignity of bearing, and due discharge of services in the cathedral and obedience to prelates in the chapter. Whenever it was adopted, perhaps by a conti- nental bishop of the eleventh century, it shows the constitution of the clergy to have been fairly complete, and to have approximated to the mediaeval institute of secular canons. It accords, however, a real pre-eminence in the cathedral to the bishop ; while the lack of any allusion to the dean, in this as in other early authorities, in connexion with the chapter and otherwise, goes to prove that his office, if it existed before the Conquest, can only have been that of a subordinate. The traditional history of St. Paul's describes its governing body as con- sisting originally of the bishop and thirty canons, and dates the foundation of the deanery two hundred years later than that of the cathedral.*** Hence there have been attempts to argue that the co-operation of the dean was not essential to the chapter's capacity for action.*" Under the Norman kings there must have been much definition of the customs of the church and the classes of its clergy, of its offices and the functions of its chapter. Maurice, bishop of London, was a signatory of the ' Insti- tutio ' of Osmund,*^* and therefore it is probable that the model of Salisbury directly influenced the growth of St. Paul's. Two fresh develop- ments must be ascribed to this period : the dean acquired the first place in the church ; the practice of non-residence, to which there is no allusion in Osmund's ' Institutio,' came into existence. Detailed information as to the state of the cathedral is first obtained from the story of the disputed election in 1 136-8, together with the compilations of statutes which were made by the deans Ralph de Diceto, Henry of Cornhill, and Ralph Baldock. In this picture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there are traces prebend called Finsbury or Halliwell {PopeNich. Tax. [Rec. Com.], 362 and 19^, and App. 1 to Reg. S. Pauls [ed. W. S. Simpson]). The prebends of Caddington Major and Caddington Minor are not mentioned in the 'Taxatio' of Pope Nicholas, although Le Neve asserts that they existed in 1103 {Fusti Eccl. Angl). They were certainly formed before 1322 {Cal. of Pa'. 1321-4, p. 222). "' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 60. '" Reg. S. Pauli (ed. W. S. Simpson), 38. ™ MS. of D. & C. of St. Paul's, W. D. 6, fol. 16, 58. -'" Ibid. fol. 16, 58. "" Statutes of Line. Cathedral (ed. H. Bradshaw). ' Institutio ' is signed by ' Martin ' of London ; Bishop Stubbs conjectures the name to be a clerical error. 419
