Clearly the thing to be desired was to get resident chaplains appointed to all the villes with a considerable population, and to that end to get endowments for them, and much was done in this direction in the thirteenth century. We shall find ample illustrations of various features of the work in the forty years' episcopate of Archbishop Walter Gray. The archbishop wrote to the Pope, Gregory IX., on the subject, desiring, no doubt, to get the support of the Papal sanction for the measures which he desired to take. We gather from the pope's reply that the archbishop had represented to him that "many parishes in his diocese were so widely spread that the parishioners were at a great distance from their church, and were not able, without much inconvenience, to come to the Divine services; and that it often happened, when the priest was summoned by the sick, that before he could arrive they had died without confession and the viaticum;" and no doubt the archbishop had suggested what he desired to do; whereupon the pope grants to him leave that, after due consideration of the distance of places, the difficulties of the roads, and the number of the increasing population, in parishes of this sort, he should build oratories and institute priests in them.[109]
The way in which the archbishop set to work (1233) to strengthen the existing machinery is admirably illustrated in the ordinance which he drew up with the concurrence of the dean for the vicarages with their chapels belonging to the deanery. There were three vicarages, Pocklington, Pickering, and Kellum. Pocklington had six chapels, Pickering four, and it does not appear that Kellum had any. First he strengthened the mother churches by the requirement that each of the vicars should, "besides all other necessary ministers," have a chaplain--an assistant priest--always with him. Then he consolidated the six chapels of Pocklington and the four of Pickering, two and two, into five vicarages, _i.e._ two neighbouring chapels were formed into a vicarage, the incumbent of which was to have _in nomine vicaragiæ_ certain endowments, and the vicar was to find the necessary ministers for both chapels; but the dignity of the mother churches was reserved by the provision that the new vicars were to pay a small annual sum to their mother churches _nomine subjectionis_.[110] Another illustration of the way in which the improved condition of things was brought about is in the case of Roundelay. Sir John de Roundelay and his heirs and the men of that ville had licence (A.D. 1231) to establish a perpetual chantry in their chapel every day in the year save Christmas, Purification, Easter ("Parasceues"), and All Saints, and if they had service on Palm Sunday, it was to be without procession and the blessing of the Palms; neither were they to have the celebration of baptism, marriage, or churching; on all these occasions they were to repair to the mother church, and the chaplain and people were to swear obedience to the mother church and its rectors. Sir John provided an endowment for the new incumbent, and the vicar of the mother church was to give him half a mark a year (6_s._ 8_d._), in consideration, no doubt, that it had hitherto been a charge upon him to that extent or more to make provision for the partial services at the chapel.[111]