Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/151

 Reviews. 135

boarded up the two doors through which communication between the chancel and nave was obtained and cut down trees in the church- yard to make a test case of it, just as to-day a gate is knocked down to assert a right-of-way. At the dissolution the monastic portion of Wymondham Church was allowed to become derelict. This dual ownership is responsible for many architectural irregu- larities that at first sight are a puzzle to ecclesiologists.

When Mr. Addy abandons fact for theory he certainly shows courage, for he is surely alone in laying down the general proposi- tions " that lord and priest were once the same person ; that the hall cannot at an early time be distinguished from the church ; and that ecclesiastical benefices were themselves manors, with all the privileges which belonged to feudal lordship "(p. vii). His evidence in no way supports this proposition, as it is drawn mainly from a late feudal period, when advowsons, rectories, and manors were all different forms of property, and no doubt were in many cases the property of one individual. Nor can evidence as to the original unity of church and hall, which is derived from Irish tribal and monastic society, be allowed much weight in determining the evolution of the English parish church. Again, after reading at p. 450 that " the evidence supporting the inference that the bene- fice and the manor were originally the same thing depends in some degree on that which supports the opinion that the hall and the church fabric were once indistinguishable," we at once ask for a definition of "manor" and "benefice." In area they very often were co-terminous, and in that sense identical, but in any other sense certainly not. Space does not permit of examining Mr. Addy's ingenious argument in full. He does not appear to adopt the usual interpretation of Edgar's law as to tithe payment : and the contiguity of manorhouse and church is most reasonably explained by the supposition that the manorial lord built the church on a site to suit his own convenience. Apart from his too visible efforts to fit facts to theory, Mr. Addy has produced a valuable and a well-indexed volume which will be welcomed if only as a useful digest upon a subject which was badly in need of one.

S. A. H. BURNE.