ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY total number of parishes was forty-five, including Edith Weston and Pilton, not mentioned in the Taxatio. The value of spiritualia in the whole deanery, not reckoning the churches omitted, or those appropriated to the cathedral, was >Ci75 ^j-. %d. ; the temporal property assigned to different religious houses in Rutland was said to be worth j^iS/ 4^. ■x^d. a year.^* Besides the churches, there were at least thirteen " parochial chapels : but these are always difficult to reckon with exactness in any county, as they are only mentioned incidentally in the Episcopal Registers and other records. An instance of the lawlessness which pervaded the period just before the Great Pestilence may be found in the case of the rector of Teigh in 1343. He had been guilty of ' homicide, theft, and other crimes,' but when the under-sheriff came to arrest him, he defended himself with a band of followers in the church, killing and wounding those who tried to make their way in. Sir Robert de Colville, a knight of the neighbourhood, came to the assistance of the attacking party, and finally haled the rector out into the public street, and cut off his head. In spite of the guiltiness of the murdered man, such an offence against the privileges of the Church could not be lightly passed over. The knight and his accomplices had to make procession, with bare heads and shoulders, round all the churches of the district, and to be beaten with rods at each church door.^* In 1349 the deaths of eight rectors, two vicars, and one chantry priest, are recorded in the Episcopal Registers : that is to say, nearly one-fourth of the clergy in the deanery. The return of the pestilence in 1361, which was felt so severely in the neighbouring county of Leicester, does not seem to have affected Rutland so much. Of the popular disturbances, economic and ecclesiastical, which followed close upon the pestilence, we find few traces in this county. It was indeed at his house at Burley that Bishop Spencer of Norwich heard of the outbreak of the Peasants' Revolt in his diocese ; " but the story of his rapid march to the scene of action and his subsequent doings do not belong to the history of Rutland. No record is preserved of the rise and spread of Lollard teachings here : though when ' the wolf was abroad,' as Bishop Buckingham com- plained, in the county of Northampton, and every other man who passed along the streets of Leicester was a Lollard, it seems scarcely possible that Rutland could have altogether escaped the infection. And it was in the prebendal church of Liddington that the famous hermit of Leicester, William Swinderby, was tried and put to penance for his heresies." Several chantries and gilds were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries. Of the former six ^^ were well known and continued for some length " Pope Nick. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 66, 67, 77. " These were : — Langham, Egleton, Brooke, Gunthorpe, and Barleythorpe in Oakham ; Woodhead in Great Casterton ; Braunston in Hambleton ; Belmesthorpe in Ryhall ; Belton in Wardley ; Essendine in Ryhall ; Inthorpe in Tinwell ; Tixover in Ketton ; Awsthorpe in Burley. The manorial chapels of Exton and Tolethorpe, and the chapel in the castle of Oakham, were of use to others than the lords of those manors during the 14th and 15th centuries, and are frequently mentioned in the records. '" Cal. of Papal Letters, iii, 142. " Wright, H'tst. of Rut. 30. " H. Knighton, Ckron. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 191 ; Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Buckingham, fol. 393. " Ibid. fol. 240. " Besides the four to be mentioned later, which were suppressed in 1 547, there was a chantry founded at Awsthorpe in 1314 {Iiq. a.q.d. 7 Edw. II, n. 81); and the chantry founded in the private chapel of Bernard de Bruce at Exton a little earlier (Wright, Hist, of Rut. 53) is mentioned constantly in the Episcopal Registers through the 14th and 15th centuries. I 145 19
