Aspects of Kentish Local History

to free himself and his successors from a heavy burden. The complete record of the act is missing; in 1278 the Archbishop was created Cardinal Bishop of Porto and it is alleged that he carried away to Rome the registers of the Archbishops which were never recovered.¹ The chapter of the cathedral monastery of Canterbury consented to Archbishop Kilwardby's arrangement which provided that the Keeper of the leper hospital at Harbledown should pay a hundred marks (£66 13s. 4.) to the hospital of Northgate, Canterbury, and retain a hundred and forty marks (£93 6s. 8d.) for the lepers under his care.
  The assessment of Reculver in the Taxation of Pope Nicholas in 1291 is interesting; the rector's portion was assessed at 170 marks (£113 6s. 8d.), the vicar's share at twenty-five marks; these figures represented approximately two-thirds of the estimated average income in Archbishop Kilwardby's gift to the Hospitals; the obligation of two hundred and forty marks was covered in the assessment of a hundred and seventy marks which would give a margin of ten marks for the cost of collection and yearly variations.
   By this appropriation to the hospitals the spiritual provision for the parishioners of Reculver was reduced to approximately one-eighth of the former amount; the vicar who took the place of the wealthy rector was nevertheless bound to maintain chaplains for the services of the chapels and to contribute to the repair of those buildings. By an unusual provision the parishioners were responsible for the repair of the

chancel as well as the nave of the mother church of Reculver.
   The consequences of Archbishop Kilwardby's action were disastrous. The parishioners were so resentful of their subjection to lepers that they withheld payment of their tithes, and the hospitals suffered a serious loss of revenue. The vicar of Reculver neglected his obligation to send a chaplain to celebrate mass daily in the chapels of All Saints in Thanet and of St. Nicholas, and their parishioners complained to Archbishop Peckham, the Franciscan friar who succeeded Kilwardby. He held an inquiry, and on April 27th, 1284, he decreed that the vicar should provide a chaplain to serve the two chapels and insisted that the inhabitants and the vicar alike were bound to contribute to the repair of the buildings.² In 1296 liability to contribute to the restoration of the fabric of All Saints' chapel was disputed. On June 12th, parishioners came to Bourne near Canterbury bringing documents to exhibit to Archbishop Winchelsey's commissaries; it was settled that the street called North Street from the house of the late John de Aula as far as the house of Richard le Rydere on either side of the said street lay within the bounds of the chapel of All Saints, and therefore all the inhabitants of the street, and those who had lands adjoining it, were
   ¹  R. C. Jenkins, Diocesan History of Canterbury, pp. 156, 157.
    ² Register of Archbishop Peckham, ff. 206v, 207. I am indebted to Dr. Irene Churchill for this reference.