Aspects of Kentish Local History

repeated his instruction to them to admit Master Nicholas whose prohibity and honesty he had commended, adding that he marvelled at their refusal and was angered by it.¹
   The admission of Nicholas is not recorded. He got possession, and Clement V declared that he temarariously withheld it and hindered Bernard de Bovisvilla or his proctor from entry.
   Edward I died on July 7th, 1307. Edward II asked Clement V to remove the suspension and the Archbishop returned to England in March or April 1308. The Pope at once desired him to oust Nicholas of Tingwick, but before the rector received a citation to appear at the Curia Edward II issued writs of prohibition against the Archbishop and his commissary.
   Before Winchelsey left for England the Pope had admonished him to refrain from offences against the Crown, so far as possible. In excusing himself from further action against Nicholas, he recalled this warning to the Pope's memory and urged the disastrous consequences of failure to obey writs of prohibition. Moreover he pleaded his own bodily weakness and the varied and arduous occupations in which he was engaged to promote the common weal.²
   If, as seems probable, this undated letter to Clement V was written as late as 1310 the Archbishop referred to his service as one of the twenty-five Lords Ordainers appointed to act in the constitutional crisis.
   Winchelsey was not so much absorbed in state affairs

as to overlook the long neglect of the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants of Reculver. He issued a remarkable ordination of three perpetual vicarages for the service of the parish church and the chapels; it was drawn up by a public notary, Geoffrey de Brampton, and on July 24th, 1310, the seals of the Archbishop, the chapter of Canterbury and the public notary were affixed at Charing.³ In the preamble to the document the Archbishop stated that a rector and one vicar could not minister to parishioners who numbered over a thousand under Archbishop Peckham, and were continually increasing. In the past the rector had appointed as vicar an ignorant priest removable at his will. Therefore Winchelsey ordained that there should be three perpetual vicars, one for the parish church of Reculver and the nearby chapel at Hoath, another for the two chapels in Thanet, St. Nicholas and All Saints, and a third for the chapel at Herne, all three to serve their cures under the rector to whom they owed canonical obedience. To the vicar of Reculver the Archbishop assigned all oblations in that church and in the chapel at Hoath, the tithes of hay, flax, wool and milk, of lambs, gardens and other small tithes and the land on which the rector's house stood. To the vicar of the chapels of St. Nicholas and All Saints the Archbishop assigned
  ¹ Calendar of Letters Close 1302-7, p. 419.
   ²  Winchelsey, II, pp. 1044-6.
   ³  Ibid., II, pp. 1127-31.