A HISTORY OF LONDON The precentor presided over the choir. From at least the thirteenth century he had a deputy in the succentor.'" In Baldock's time another officer, the master of the school of song, was also subject to him."* The choir was further supervised by the junior and the senior cardinals whose offices are said to have originated at a remote date, and who received the profits of private funerals and anniversaries, and a portion of ale and bread double that which was allotted to other minor canons.^'^ The sphere of the chancellor, unlike those of the dean, the treasurer and the precentor, was not confined to the cathedral. In so far as his most ancient function was concerned, he was an officer of the City. At least in the reign of Henry I the master of the schools was a dignitary of St. Paul's ; '" between the years 1 1 84 and 1 2 14 he came to be called chancellor.^'* In the beginning of the fourteenth century the chan- cellor presided over all the teachers of grammar in London, and over all City scholars except those of St. Mary le Bow and St. Martin le Grand. He also presented the master of the cathedral school to the dean and chapter, and had charge of the school books and buildings.^ He examined in the schools clerks of inferior degree who were candidates for ordination ; and at his discretion presented them to the bishop. Within the cathedral he held a position in relation to the non-musical part of the service analogous to that of the precentor in the choir.^° The lesser cathedral clergy were in his jurisdiction, and he could inflict on them punishments short of expulsion. '^^ He was the chief secretary of the cathedral and the keeper of the chapter's seal.'" In the time of Ralph de Diceto there was a binder of books,'^' and in 1283 a writer of books ^** among the ministers of St. Paul's. By the beginning of the next century the two offices were combined in one person,'^* and thus they survived until the days of Colet.'" A reference which seems to belong to the deanery of Baldock is to twelve scribes who were bound by an oath to be faithful to the cathedral, the dean, and the chapter, and to write without fraud or malice.**' In a list of salaries which dates from the "' Reg. S. Pauft (ed. W. S. Simpson), 50. The church of Shoreditch was eventually alienated from the precentor and conferred on the archdeacon of London (Newcourt, Repert. i, 96). "^ Reg. S. Pauti (ed. W. S. Simpson), 22. »^ Ibid. 326. Harl. MS. 890, fol. I 79J. "' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 29. •™ Le Neve, Fasti (ed. 1 7 16), 204. ^^ Newcourt, Repert. 108-10 ; Reg. S. Paufi (ed. W. S. Simpson), 226, 78. "» Reg S. Pauii (ed. W. S. Simpson), 23, 49. '" Ibid. 18. '" Ibid. 326. '"Ibid. 133. '" Ibid. 173. »" Ibid. 13. '" Ibid. 227. "' Ibid. 78. fourteenth century, there is an entry of the payment of twelve pence for the making of a chronicle ; and the ' keeper of the clock ' is mentioned as a servant of the church.'** The rites of the cathedral ^^ and of churches dependent on it anciently followed a peculiar form known as the ' Usus Sancti Pauli.*" Services an- alogous to those held in chantries, and frequently instituted for the eternal welfare of the same per- sons, were the obits. There is a record of a be- quest by Canon Ralph for the endowment of such a service in 1162 ;'" in the reign of Richard II 116 obits were celebrated every year. The foun- ders dictated the proportions of their bequests which should be spent on payments to a greater or less number of the clergy and servants of the cathe- dral ; and, sometimes, on contribution to the lights of the church and its fabric.'*' Other ser- vices were maintained by gilds connected with St. Paul's. In 1 197 Ralph de Diceto founded a Brotherhood of the Benefices of the Church of St. Paul. It included clerks not in priests' orders, and it met yearly to pray with all solemnity for dead broth ;rs.'" In that it affiarded to the clergy connected with the cathedral a means of union and exclusiveness, it must have had importance. The gild of St. Anne, in the person of its twelve wardens, obtained from the dean and chapter, in 127 1, free use and dis- position of the chapel of St. Anne in the crypt.'" In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the church of St. Paul was frequently censured for the immorality, the avarice, and the negligence of ministers. In part this is due to the critical spirit of the age ; in part, also, to the frequent papal provision of benefices, to the very prevalent custom of plurality, and to the abuse of non- residence. Complaints of the lack of discipline, of the irreverence, and of the frequent absence from the choir of the greater and lesser clergy, provoked an exhortation from Bishop Gravesend. In a commission to Bishop Sudbury, Edward III '" MSS. of D. and C. of St. Paul's, D. 2, fol. 91. '" A curious service was held on Innocents' Day, when the office was conducted by a boy bishop and by boy ministrants, who corresponded to the digni- taries and clergy of the cathedral (Harl. MS. 7041, fol. 21). Another and stranger survived until the reign of Elizabeth. In 1302 Sir Walter le Band, in consideration of a grant of land in Leigh, made by the canons to his father, bound himself that he and his heirs should, at the hour of the procession, deliver to the canons in the cathedral a doe on the day of the Conversion of St. Paul, and a fat buck on the feast of St. Paul's Commemoration. The ceremony was duly performed with much solemnity (Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, 16). "° Dugdale, Hist, of St. PauPs, 22. "' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 12. ^' Doc. lllus. Hist, of St. Paul's (ed. W. S. Simpson), 61-106. "' Reg. S. Pauli (ed. W. S. Simpson), 63. "* Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 27. 424
