Elisabeth Austin PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Nor did Thomas spare the arrangements of the Anglo-Saxon
chapter. The college of seven canons, enjoined to live in common,
gave way to a chapter no less collegiate, but certainly less apostolic.
Prebends rewarded canons who demonstrated administrative
capability with their own income and a measure of autonomy.
Although they were answerable to the dean and ultimately the
archbishop, in their prebends they were landlord and priest.562
It has been argued that granting lands as prebends gave
individual canons incentive to develop land that was currently
unprofitable. We have seen, however, that Thomas allocated
valuable lands to his new prebendaries, carefully offsetting waste­
land with resources such as mills. While attention to individual
estates holds obvious benefits for St. Peter's as a whole, not least
because rich prebends attracted more clergy to the church, Thomas
did not cast his canons out of the Minster primarily as a business
venture, as some modern accounts suggest.
Perhaps most importantly, the introduction of prebends
encouraged closer contact with parishioners in districts out of easy
reach of the Minster. The system fostered personal responsibility to
a particular district, and almost certainly allowed members of St.
Peter's to function as parish priests. Although no positive evidence
of the early prebendaries' spiritual activities survives, it would be
562During the early stages, it is not clear whether prebendaries maintained
clerks in minor orders to perform their functions at the mother church.
Perhaps in Thomas' time the canons who remained at St. Peter's, supported by
the common fund, proved sufficient to the church's needs. York's statutes do
not specify the date of the introduction of vicars choral, who were paid by
prebendaries to carry out their liturgical duties.
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