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Updated: June 28, 2025
Paul's, two Prebends at Bristol, and a great deal of other preferment all over the kingdom: and this at a moment when such extraordinary power has been suddenly conferred upon the people, and when every atom of power and patronage ought to be husbanded for the Crown. A Prebend of Westminster for my second son would soften the Catos of Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the Metropolitan Boroughs.
The prebends eyed me from their stalls; questions were whispered about the aisles after service, "who is he?" and "what is he?" and the replies were as usual "A young gentleman of good family and fortune, and great expectations." I was pleased with the peculiarities of a cathedral town, where I found I was a personage of some consequence.
Some went to speak to the bishop, telling him that, on account of that book, it was necessary to banish me from the city. They gave him the book which he examined with one of his prebends. He liked it well.
Hadrian Saravia, then, or about that time, made one of the Prebends of Canterbury; a German by birth, and sometime a pastor both in Flanders and Holland, where he had studied, and well considered the controverted points concerning Episcopacy and sacrilege; and in England had a just occasion to declare his judgment concerning both, unto his brethren ministers of the Low Countries; which was excepted against by Theodore Beza and others; against whose exceptions he rejoined, and thereby became the happy author of many learned tracts writ in Latin, especially of three; one, of the "Degrees of Ministers," and of the "Bishops' superiority above the Presbytery;" a second, "against Sacrilege;" and a third of "Christian Obedience to Princes;" the last being occasioned by Gretzerus the Jesuit.
Even Berlaymont was at first disposed to side with the opposition, but upon the argument used by the Duchess, that the bishoprics and prebends would furnish excellent places for his sons and other members of the aristocracy, he began warmly to support the measure. Most of the labor, however, and all the odium, of the business fell upon the Bishop's shoulders.
On pretence of remedying these abuses, Pope Honorius, in 1226, complaining of the poverty of his see as the source of all grievances, demanded from every cathedral two of the best prebends, and from every convent two monks' portions, to be set apart as a perpetual and settled revenue of the papal crown: but all men being sensible that the revenue would continue for ever, the abuses immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected.
Now, however, divines, whose sagacity had been sharpened by the imminent danger in which they stood of being turned out of their livings and prebends to make room for Papists, discovered flaws in the reasoning which had formerly seemed so convincing. The ethical parts of Scripture were not to be construed like Acts of Parliament, or like the casuistical treatises of the schoolmen.
The archbishop prepared a feast in order to regale the prebends, quite contrary to his usual manner and harsh temper; the prebends attended it unwillingly, seeing that they had been treated like boys, and that this banquet was only a device to shut their mouths.
Wee'l down with Deans and Prebends, too; But I rejoyce to tell ye How then we will eat Pig our fill, And Capon by the belly: Wee'l burn the Fathers witty Tomes, And make the Schoolmen flee; Wee'l down with all that smels of wit; And, hey! then up goe we.
The places of the dignitaries and the names of the prebends have fortunately been allowed to survive, and are inscribed on small brass plates affixed to the stalls. The organ is in the triforium, and what is seen of the case is Gothic. The reredos and its surroundings are like every other. Careful engravings of a hundred years ago show a very different state of things.
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