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426
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
only one benefice with cure ofsouls was allowable, though the
fathers of 1215 realistically added that some form of dispensa/
tion must be made available for high/born, clerics and men of
letters. With or without such dispensations, the distinguished
clerks of the thirteenth century made their age the golden age
of pluralism, and John Mansel, the servant of Henry III, with
four important dignities, eight or nine rectories, and half a
dozen prebends, and the familiar Bogo de Clare, with twenty
four parish churches and a dozen benefices besides, were only
primi inter pares.
Meanwhile the papacy was making determined and on the
whole effective attempts to remedy with its right hand the evil
which it was doing something to foster with its left. The two
energetic legates Otto and Ottobuon, whose reforming decrees
in 1237 and 1268 remained classic for almost three centuries,
made stringent regulations against holding more than one
benefice which Archbishop Pecham in 1281 did his best to
implement, and Boniface VIII made a dispensation necessary
for holding even a sinecure along with a cure of souls. It was
still
possible, however, to obtain a 'blanket'
dispensation
covering all types of benefice up to a specified
total value. It
was left to John XXII in 1 3 1 7 to promulgate an epoch/making
decree with his bull Execralilis, which laid it down that not
even by dispensation could a clerk hold more than one bene^
fice with a cure of souls and one without, all others save
these two being resigned. Urban V did no more than env
this
phasize when he ordered returns to be made of each
diocese so that
pluralists might be deprived of all save the
canonical two benefices, but it is to this action that we owe
our knowledge of the English pluralists of the day, including
the egregious William of Wykeham. He certainly had a long
list, but one far less scandalous than Bogo's, for the super/
fluous benefices were all without cure of souls. With Clement's
decree the worst was over in England. Pluralists were not un/
known, but they were, so to say, an economic rather than a
spiritual scandal, and were not a major cause of weakness in
the early Tudor Church.