Parish priests and their people in the Middle Ages in England . day.^ Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be releasedfrom the excommunication he had incurred for procuringthe celebration of a clandestine marriage in St. Pauls CrayChurch. As a penance, he was ordered to visit the shrineof St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day, and there offera wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was tobe made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars atOxford for two years. Ferby afterwards came to an under-standing with his d
Parish priests and their people in the Middle Ages in England . day.^ Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be releasedfrom the excommunication he had incurred for procuringthe celebration of a clandestine marriage in St. Pauls CrayChurch. As a penance, he was ordered to visit the shrineof St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day, and there offera wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was tobe made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars atOxford for two years. Ferby afterwards came to an under-standing with his diocesan, and was dismissed from the the next February, John, chaplain of Pauls Cray, doubt-less the priest who had officiated on the occasion, sworebefore the bishop, in the cathedral, not to offend again,and was absolved.§ He redeemed his penance by taking * Grostetes Letters, Rolls Series, p. , Lichfield, p. Durham Ecclesiastical Proceedings, p. 47.§ There is a picture of the confession of clerics in the MS. 6 E. VILf 506 DISCIPLINE, 535 an oath to pay a mark at Lady Day in that and the twoensuing years.* The bishops had to deal, not only with the moraloffences of the clergy, but also with the occasionalcrimes committed by members of this privileged from Orders, and imprisonment withpenitential discipline, seems to have been the usualmode of punishment. We have seen that a Consti-tution of Archbishop Boniface, 1260, directed everybishop to have in his diocese one or two prisons forconfining clerics flagitious in crime, or convicted bycanonical censure, and that any cleric committing acrime such that if he were a layman he would, accord-ing to the secular law, suffer the extreme penalty,should be adjudged to perpetual imprisonment. This spiritual power was strong enough to cope with themost powerful offenders. We all remember how Henry II.,able and powerful king as he was, submitted to discipline atthe hands of the monks o
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