york00orns

ENFORCEMENT OF DISCIPLINE. 1
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only class of men whose education fitted them to fill
them, and the vast territorial possessions
of prelates,
like the Archbishops of York and the Bishops of
Durham, placed them in positions which involved,
almost of necessity, from their proximity to Scotland,
no little attention to the res militaris. The routine
work of the diocese, such as ordinations, consecration
of churches and cemeteries, and the like, was committed
by the Archbishops to the care of a suffragan,
commonly the poorly-endowed bishop of Whitherne,
who was badly paid and too often treated with scant
courtesy by the great prelate whom he served. When
the chair of York was filled by a primate of great
capacity, other things were more carefully dealt with
than might have been looked for. We gain a knowledge
of this from the episcopal registers.
Attempts
were made from time to time to enforce discipline, to
punish the refractory, and to promote order, not only
in the cloister, or in the case of the secular priest,
but likewise as regarded such of the laity as committed
grave offences against decency and morality.
Curious illustrations occur here and there of practices
which had crept in, and of the attitude taken by the
Archbishop respecting them. In Greenfield's time,
for example, we find a mandate addressed to the
Chapter of Ripon, forbidding them to hold market.s
in the minster. An image of the Blessed Virgin had
been set up in the church of Foston, and crowds
had flocked to it in the belief that some peculiar
virtues resided in that particular piece of sculpture.
The Archbishop prohibits the adoration of the image.
It is a remarkable anticipation of the feeling which
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