hard put to determine what should best be done. The participation of the royal masons in the building of a new church would have ensured that the best would be done. Whether or not it had anything to do with the sins of Thomas, parson of Frindsbury, and Abel, parson of Ash, the best certainly was done..
   In forming any impression of the medieval clergy from contemporary records, it has to be remembered that there was seldom occasion to mention those humble parish priests who long and faithfully ministered to their flocks, whereas the movements of the less durable and the misdeeds and failings of the less commendable are plentifully evidenced. Even so, it does seen that the parishioners of Ash received smaller comfort from a number of their parsons than they might reasonably have expected.
   William Launcelyn, of whom we first hear in 1332, was more than once in trouble for absenteeism until, some eleven years later, he finally shook from his feet 

what little Ash dust there may have been.⁸ His successor, William le Galeys, obtained leave of absence to study at Cambridge for a year and, after successfully completing his tasks there, promptly exchanged benefices with Thomas de Stanton, rector of Banham in Norfolk.⁹  At about that time, exchanges of benefices were taking place with quite extraordinary frequency and le Galeys’ was by no means the only short incumbency that Ash suffered.
   Of the dozen or more rectors from about 1330 until the end of the century, only two stayed for any length of time. One of the two, Robert de Westbury, who remained from 1345 until 1359, succeeded in falling out with one of his principal parishioners, William de Hodeshole, in the matter of tithes¹⁰  and, more notably, in surviving the Black Death. The other was a Northumbrian, Adam de Akum, now Acomb, who came to Ash in 1361. Adam combined some farming with his parochial