Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/473

 s. vii. JUNE 15, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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excommunicated. By this time, it may be, such promotion of the office of judge drew near to be a brutwm fulmen, so that she might defy both summons and excommunication. When we recall the open, unblushing vice of kings and great ones, we may even marvel that men tolerated such persecution of humbler folk. The later visitations seem to have been mainly occupied with squabbles over pew rights. The last recorded court was in 1836, before Geo. Scobell, D.D., official Masham, Yorkshire. I extract the follow- ing from Whitaker's ' Yorkshire ' :

"Roger de Molbrai in the year 1146 founded a Priory of Black Canons at Newburgh, on which he bestowed the churches of Masham and Kirkby Malessart With the monks of Newburgh, how- ever, these united churches did not long continue; but there exists not a vestige of the transaction by which they were alienated. All which we know is that an. 1258 the Rectory Manor of Masham-cum- Kirkby Malzard was become the corps of a Prebend in the Cathedral of York."

The right of a peculiar was attached. It is a sample both of the generation and of the alienation of peculiars.

Temple, Cornwall. This little phantom of a village has a unique history. The place, originally, of a preceptory of the Knights Templar, on the suppression of the order it became a royal peculiar, exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction or appeal to Canter- bury. If we may believe the accounts given of it, the place was a sort of southern Gretna Green. Lysons ( k Hist, of Cornwall ') reports thus :

" Hals says that by ancient right and prescription the vicar or curate or parish cleric of Temple for the time being legally married all persons applying to them, according to the canons of the Church 01

England, without banns or licence which was

good and valid in law."

When Bishop Alley denounced the " speluncse latronum," he may well have had this place in his mind. But the authority is somewhat suspect. William Hals (ob. 1738) gathered materials for a history of Cornwall, a part of which was published twelve years after his death. He seems also to have left many notes not published, from which the state- ment may have come. But I cannot find it in the published work. He says this :

" Temple, lying in a wild wastrel, where ' many a bad marriage bargain is slubbered up,' and grass widows with their fatlings put to lie in arid nurse here."

Herein he partly quotes from Carew (' Hist, of Cornwall,' 1602), who speaks of

"Temple, a place exempt from the Bishops iuris- diction, as one appertayning to the Templars, but not so from disorder ; for if common report com-

municate with truth, many a bad mariage bar- gaine is there yerely slubbred up."

How much of this evil report was true it is impossible to say, for the village dwindled to nothing, the church fell to ruin, and the registers were lost in the eighteenth cen- tury. We must suppose some ground of truth in it, though even Carew only speaks of "common report." Hals's mention of grass widows may indicate that women guilty of unchaste conduct fled hither for refuge, where they would be safe from prosecution in an archdeacon's court.

Thorney Abbey. After the suppression it became a peculiar belonging to the Russell family. Prior to 1852 the Duke of Bedford was ordinary, and absolute owner of church and churchyard. The minister was his chap- lain, having (as is the case to-day) no endow- ment, but a salary. Neither he nor the church- warden attended episcopal visitations. The duke appointed a commissary to hold court, failing whom the minister might act as surrogate. For nearly a century (1637-1727) a colony of Frenchmen and Walloons in the place, being by law required to attend divine worship, also had a minister appointed by the Earl of Bedford ; and the Bishop of Ely in 1839 exercised one act of authority, grant- ing a faculty and consent regulating divine service. By an Order in Council (1852) much of this exclusive right was done away, while one or two privileges were retained, accord- ing to which Thorney is still in some sort a peculiar.

Hornchurch, with Romford, Essex, a peculiar belonging to New College, Oxford. Henry II. made a grant of the church and a small estate to the Hospital of SS. Nicholas and Bernard in Savoy (the famous hospice). The brethren sold the property to William of Wykeham, by whom it was appropriated to his college. The right of exemption was set up it does not appear how and always maintained ; and until the abolition of peculiars a com- missary conducted visitations, even in the nineteenth century citing all schoolmasters, apothecaries, and mid wives to exhibit their licences. (From a forthcoming history of New College by Messrs. Rashdall and Rait.)

It will be seen finally, and perhaps noted as an omission, that 1 have said nothing about Westminster Abbey, the Chapels Royal, or the independence of cathedral chapters. This did not form part of my purpose. In what I have said I have always endeavoured to follow authorities. In conjecture I may sometimes have been mistaken. I may have said too little and too much. But I hope that I have recorded something of worth for