an end to feasting at funerals. The use of churches and churchyards for fairs was also forbidden; it had been the custom often to hold fairs in the churchyards and to erect booths in the churches themselves. Further, the archdeacons were ordered to forbid and prevent private marriages, and to warn women against the careless way in which mothers overlaid their children at night. They were also to reprove priests who demanded fees for the administration of the sacraments, sometimes even for the administration of the Holy Communion. That Grosseteste should have found it necessary to lay down rules about such very elementary matters as these is certainly remarkable, and shows on how many sides abuses had crept into the English Church, and what need there was for a rigorous authority to put them down.
