Aspects of Kentish Local History

parishioners.¹ This is an early instance of a compulsory church rate for the repair of the fabric.
   Archbishop Peckham determined to remedy the injury to the hospitals. He petitioned Pope Nicholas IV for a faculty to revoke the appropriation of Reculver and to reimpose the original charge of £160 a year on the revenues of the see. This faculty was granted in 1290.² The division of the benefice between the rector and the vicar remained. Archbishop Peckham recovered the right of presentation to the rectory, and rewarded the chancellor, Master Luke, by instituting him to Reculver.³
   The Archbishop died on December 8th, 1292, and Master Luke did not long survive him. Edward I quickly exercised the right of the Crown to fill vacant livings when the see of Canterbury was vacant. On March 18th, 1293, he presented his chancellor to the wealthy benefice of Reculver, although Langton already held the rectories of Brough under Stainmore in the diocese of Carlisle and Breadsall in the diocese of Lichfield,⁴ and had no papal dispensation to take another benefice.
   Archbishop Winchelsey at Aquila in central Italy on September12th, 1294. He returned to England and landed at Yarmouth on January 1st, 1295. He began a visitation of his diocese and found much amiss at Reculver; some of the parishioners were presented for the sins of fornication and adultery, others for

witchcraft and usury; if unable to establish their innocence by purgation, they were condemned to be whipped round the church and the market place. The Archbishop issued a mandate to the rector's commissary and to the vicar jointly to see that the penances were performed; the names of guilty parishioners were written on a schedule attached to the mandate, others had the opportunity of clearing themselves by purgation.⁵
   At this visitation the Archbishop was told of the contention between the parishioners and the vicar about the custody of offerings placed in a chest which stood in front of the great stone cross between the chancel and the nave. This is the sole recorded mention of that great stone cross which was described in 1540 by the antiquary, John Leland. When he visited Reculver, he saw something, which as Sir Charles Peers noted⁶ raised him to an enthusiasm which he seldom displayed: "Yn
   ¹ Register of Archbishop Winchelsey, I, p.113 (Canterbury and York Society).
   ²  C. P. L., I, p. 511.
   ³  Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem., p. 1952; Sede Vacante Institutions, p. 103 (Kent Records, 1923).
   ⁴  C. P. L., p. 526.
   ⁵  Winchelsey, I, p. 101.
   ⁶  "Reculver: its Saxon Church and Cross", Archaeologia, LXXVII, pp. 241-256.