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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 417
pended for all purposes upon their owner; thus Canterbury
had scattered peculiars in Sussex, Middlesex (Harrow), and
Essex; York had (among others) the enclave ofHexham in the
diocese of Durham. The detailed map of medieval England
shows innumerable islands ofthis kind, even more ubiquitous
than the isolated fragments of counties that appear on older
maps ofEngland which themselves (as in the case ofthe islands
ofWorcestershire in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire) were
often the scattered parishes ofa bishopric. Next, there were the
areas which in the course oftime had won partial or total ex^
of Richmond in Yorkshire
emption such as the archdeaconry
or the
royal free
chapels of Staffordshire*
Finally, there were the
capitular bodies, and in particular the chapters of the secular
cathedrals, who enjoyed exemption, which they communicated
to the churches owned by them in the diocese. Instances could
be multiplied ofresults verging on the ridiculous; one such was
at Chichester, where the city and close in which the bishop's
palace stood were the peculiar ofthe dean and chapter; he had
only to cross a street to find himself in a detached fragment of
the diocese of Canterbury; while the parishes west of his park
were in the jurisdiction of the canons ofBosham, a royal free
chapel immediately subject to the bishop
of Exeter. 1
5. The Papal Government: taxes, provisors, and pluralism
For 150 years after the Conquest the concentration of Church
government in the hands ofthe papacy had steadily increased,
despite such moments oftension and controversy as the investi'
ture contest, the struggle ofAlexander III with anti'popes and
Barbarossa, and the Becket upheaval. During that period the
popes with scarcely an exception had acted as leaders and sup'
porters ofa great religious revival and had upheld the interests
ofthe Church at
large. Freedom of election to bishoprics and
abbacies had been asserted and in large part won; protection
1 A. Hamilton Thompson, The English Clergy, p. 75.