Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/393

 RENDERED AT CAISTOR, LINCOLNSHIRE. 2-1.7 piece or cro.ss of consecrated palm for the Lord of Hundon ; the thirty silver pennies (if contained in it) as an allusion to the price of the betrayal, and intended, perhaps, as the priest's fee or an offering ; and the four rods of wych elm to be hallowed for palms, to be borne by the lord and some of his family, — for great importance was attached to bearing the palms in the procession ? There would be notliing inconsistent with this supposition in the whip, as well as the purse and palms, Ijeiug afterwards delivered to the Lord of the Manor of Hundon, as evidence of the tenure ; nor in the money also being handed over to him, if it were not the priest's fee or an offering. Perhaps, if we knew more of the practices of the Church in Anglo-Saxon times, we should be able to find a more satisfactory explanation of these things in relation to the proceedings of the day. There is, however, a difficulty in reconciling what has been said of them with the ojnnion that this ceremony always took place at the reading of the twent3^-sixth chapter of St. Matthew ; because, since in the ancient ritual that was part of the Gospel at the Mass, the presentation of the whip, &c., would have taken place after the palms had been blest, and the procession was over. It is true the benediction of the palms is sometimes mentioned as following the Gospel, but it was the Gospel of that particular office, which, according to the present Roman Ritual, was the first nine verses of the twenty-first chapter of St. Matthew, the portion of the Gospel history which the procession was intended to commemorate. Is it not likely that the ceremony in question originally took place at this Gospel ; that at the Reformation, when the office for hallowing the palms and the jirocession were abohshed, it was trans- ferred to the Gospel of the day, which consisted of the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh chapters ; and that when the former of these became the Second Lesson, the ceremony which had become associated with it was performed, as it has recently been, at the time of reading that Lesson % If the ceremony be regarded as referring to the subject of the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew, the whip might represent the scourge, and the purse and thirty silver pennies be intended for the purse borne by Judas, and the price of the betrayal ; but then it is not easy to assign any meaning to the pieces of wych-elm, and the purse was a very small one to represent that borne b}" Judas. As to the three