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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 427
6. The Fourteenth Century: parishes, parliament,
and convocation
We have already glanced at the origins of the
vicarage
system, which in its beginnings and for some two centuries
was largely an adjustment of monastic demands. Though
responsible for a majority of appropriations, however, the re/
ligious houses were not the only interested parties. Bishops
appropriated their own proprietary churches to the episcopal
mensa or to a secular chapter, and from the fourteenth century
onwards lay owners of advowsons, desirous of founding col/
leges or chantries, made over their rights to their foundation
on the understanding that these would subsequently petition
for the impropriation that was unlawful for laymen. Though
bishops often delayed or obstructed, there was never any
movement towards a complete non possumus, partly because
the conception of a church as a pecuniary asset died hard,
partly because the petitioners could usually, at somewhat
greater expense, secure a papal privilege. After 1366, indeed,
when Urban V ostensibly laid a moratorium on impropria/
tion throughout the Church, a papal permission was neces/
sary in every case. This did not of itself act as a brake, but the
rate of appropriations fell in the fourteenth century and re/
mained low for the rest of the middle ages, partly, no doubt,
because the monasteries had reached an equilibrium where
further impropriations, by lessening the patronage in the hands
of the house, would have been on the balance an economic
disadvantage. Occasionally, however, we find an abbey in the
fifteenth century obtaining a privilege to farm out a number of
churches, even without the consent ofthe bishop. But by that
time a very high proportion ofthe parish churches of England
one in four in some dioceses, one in five or six in others
had been appropriated.
The system as a whole has been severely judged by modern
historians, as it had been long ago by medieval moralists and
reformers. In the abstract it has little to commend it, and in the
long run it probably had considerable influence in lowering