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 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY two of these portions are stated to be worth nothing, while the rest varied from I to 7^ marks. Possibly the terms ' appropriated ' and ' vicar ' were not yet always used with the definite signification now attached to them. Out of seven vicarages mentioned, only three — St. Sepulchre's, St. Giles Cripplegate, and St. Botolph Aldersgate — afterwards retained this character. The proportion of properly ordained vicarages in London to that of appro- priated churches was at that time small ; those in the City dating from the 13th century are only these three, the date of whose ordination has not been discovered, and St. Laurence Jewry, in which a vicarage was ordained on its appropriation to Balliol College in 1295.^** A vicarage was ordained in St. Olave Southwark, which was appropriated to Lewes Priory before 1238,^*' and the vicarage of St. Martin in the Fields is mentioned in the 13th century.^** Benefices were often given to persons who were under no obligation of residence, and these in turn often farmed out the church to a priest who was obliged to provide out of its revenues not only the pension due to its patron, but a substantial sum to the beneficed parson. Such an agreement was made in 1 25 I between Hugh Ricard, vicar of St. Botolph Aldersgate, and Robert de Bideford, chaplain. Robert was to farm the church for a year, and agreed to pay 10 marks to Hugh as well as the 10 marks pension due to St. Martin le Grand, and to sustain the goods and ornaments of the church.^" The parishioners, however, sometimes protested against the system of non- resident parsons. Roger Niger confirmed the settlement of a long-standing dispute between the Abbot of Westminster and the parishioners of St. James Garlickhithe, by which the latter agreed to renounce all pleas in the eccle- siastical courts against the presentation of the abbot, and the abbot undertook to present a suitable person in priest's orders who should be wiUing and sufficient to serve them in his own person."^ The grievance was apparently brought before the pope, who in 1223 issued a mandate to the Bishop of London to execute his office against non-resident vicars."' The attempts of the parochial clergy to relieve themselves of the burden of payments to religious houses led to a number of suits and quarrels in the 13th and 14th centuries. About 1234 there was a suit between St. Martin le Grand and St. Botolph Aldersgate, with regard to such a pension,"" and in 1235 another between the same house and the capellanus of St. Nicholas Shambles,"^ in both of which St. Martin's was successful. About the end of the 13th century the Bishop of London appears to have tried to relieve the parochial churches from some of the pensions, and instituted proceedings in 1290 against Westminster, and in 1300 against St. Mary Overy."^ Only the protest of Westminster against the bishop's action and the commission of inquiry following the appeal of St. Mary's to '*' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv, App. i, 449. A vicar of St. Margaret Moses is mentioned as late as 1309 (Lond. Epis. Reg. Baldock and Gravesend, fol. 25). •" Cott. MS. Vesp. F. IS, fol. iSgd. >'^ D. and C. Westm. Bk. 11, fol. 465 d. '" D. and C. Westm. Lond. B. box 2, pt. i. The vicar's portion in this church is given in the early 1 3th-century list as 2 marks. '^ D. and C. Westm. Bk. 11, fol. 102 d. '" Cal. of Papal Letters, i, 90. "° D. and C. Westm. Lond. B. box 2, pt. I. "' Ibid, box C. ; Cal. of Papal Letters, i, 140. '" D. and C. Westtn. Lond. B. box 5, parcel 36, no. 4 ; D. and C. St. Paul's A. box 5, no. 796. 191