require us to compress what in the most favourable circumstances must have been the labour of years into the brief and troubled period of Bishop Robert's first six months. Moreover the chief seat of the bishopric was not then Wells, but Bath; and it is not reasonable to suppose that the new bishop's attention should at first be wholly concentrated on a church which for nearly half a century had fallen from its high estate.
The form of the appended clause is in itself unusual. If it comes from Bishop Robert himself, and not from a scribe of later date, it must be intended to mean that Henry bishop of Winchester had been consulted at an early stage, and that the archbishops and bishops had given a general approval to Bishop Robert's proposal to introduce the new cathedral system at Wells. But that the Ordinance itself in the form in which we have it was thus approved by them is demonstrably untrue.[1]
One clause suffices to show that it cannot have been written before the end of the year 1159. After enumerating the prebends into which he had distributed the earlier possessions of the canons, the bishop proceeds to speak of two new prebends which he has added of his own benefaction. The first is Yatton: the second is described in these words: 'Huish in Brentmarsh and the church of Compton, which we have given to the same St Andrew to be held in entire and peaceable possession as a perpetual patrimony, we have united to form one prebend '. Fortunately for our purpose we have in the Liber Albus (R. i. 26) an elaborate charter, in which the bishop relates that Huish in Brentmarsh, a member of his manor of Banwell, had been granted by his predecessors to various persons, lay and clerical, and by himself to Master Alured and then to Master Richard de Montacute; and that he feared lest some powerful layman who could hardly be refused should petition for it in the future and so it should pass altogether into lay hands. He proceeds to say that he has determined to secure it by making it a perpetual prebend of the church of Wells, in order that the number of the canons may thereby be increased and the praises of God be the more fully and joyfully rendered in the choir. This charter is dated at Wells, 4 Nov. 1159.
If any doubt could be raised as to the meaning or validity of this charter, it would be set at rest by a comparison of the bull directed
- ↑ The late Canon Church in his Early History of the Church of Wells, while accepting the date 1136 for the Ordinance, was too good a historian not to recognise that it could not have come into effect so soon on account of the alienation of some of the properties: accordingly he regarded it (p. 18) as giving the outline of the bishop's plan.
