of forty cases which were dealt with by the Chancellor, Dr. Cosin, at the Consistory Court held on that day, and the deposition book contains the evidence of several witnesses in the suits then pending.

The loss of a part of the documents accumulated for many centuries at the diocesan registry may well be due to accident, for Worcester sustained considerable injury during the siege of 1642, when the city and cathedral were pillaged by the victorious Parliamentary forces. An item in the accounts of the Dean and Chapter states that the sum of 48. 4d. was paid "To the mason for tyles, lyme and work done, in reparation of Mr. Organist's house ruined by a canon shott when Waller attempted the taking of the city." After the siege of 1646 the cathedral was damaged, and some of the adjacent buildings were destroyed. In the hurried removal of the contents of the muniment rooms, when their safety became threatened, the wills and bound volumes would be first cared for; 2 but many books as well as loose papers, including the earlier marriage licence allegations, may have been destroyed or lost during the first years of the Commonwealth. The surviving records were, however, in safe keeping during the occupation of the city by Cromwell's army after the battle of Worcester on September 3rd, 1651. Considering the liability at such times to damage by damp, the documents at this registry are in a good state of preservation, and only a few show signs of having suffered from that cause. The destruction of old documents may, in some cases, have been caused by the necessity of making room for the new. The removals, sometimes to less spacious premises, which the offices of the Worcester Registry are known to have experienced since the Reformation would be likely occasions for the destruction of such papers as were considered to be of little value, and the fact that one of them bore the name of Shakespeare would not, until late in the

8

1 John Noake, The Monastery and Cathedral of Worcester, p. 562.

2 Many similar documents were, no doubt, destroyed with old St. Paul's during the great fire of London.

3 At some of the diocesan registries various series of books and papers commence on the return of the bishops at the Restoration.

EDGAR TOWER, WORCESTER

211

eighteenth century, have saved it from the common fate. The loss of many records was, no doubt, due to preventable causes. The personal interest of the officials in the historical treasures in their charge has of late years contributed to a better appreciation of their value.

The records now at Edgar Tower, with the exception of a few of little historical value, are well arranged and cared for. The only urgent need is protection from fire, and it may be hoped that for this some provision will be made during the present restoration of the building.

XII

MARRIAGE LICENCES OR DISPEN

SATIONS

THE oldest records of licences or dispensations granted for marriages in England are "doubtless in the Vatican." Licences "are to be found of as early a date as the year 1300, in the library at Lambeth; and some as early as the twelfth century are in the British Museum." Sims, Manual for the Genealogist, pp. 362-3. The earliest licence recorded in the registers of the bishops of Worcester was granted on January 27th, 1446, to Richard Beauchamp, son of Sir John Beauchamp, and Elizabeth Stafford; the next is dated 1465,1 and no other licence appears until 1530, during the episcopate of Jerome de Ghinucciis, the last of the four Italians who occupied the see from 1497 until the abolition of the Pope's authority over the church in England. There can be no doubt, however, that many licences were granted between 1465 and 1530, and at earlier dates, which were not entered in the registers. After the Reformation the entries gradually become more numerous. Though alien bishops no longer augmented the revenues of the Church by the sale of indulgences and dispensations, the change was not productive of any reduction in the number of licences.

On the subject of the cost of licences at the date of the Shakespeare grant I have no definite information. In the

1 Both of these licences were granted by Bishop Carpenter. Register, No. XXII., folios 47a and 1886.

2 The ancient right of dispensation formerly held by the Pope in England was transferred to the archbishops and bishops by the Act 25 Hen. VIII., c. 21,

8. 3.

FEES FOR MARRIAGE LICENCES

213

Articles agreed upon at a Convocation in 1575, a fee of 10s. is named for licences to marry without banns granted at the Archbishop's Faculty office for the provinces of Canterbury and York. In the table of fees payable to the officers of ecclesiastical courts issued by Archbishop Whitgift in 1597 the charges for the two kinds of licences are as follows:

A fee of four pence was also payable to the Keeper of the seal.

1

Before the above table was issued a bill had been brought in "against excessive fees of ecclesiastical judges, and other officers and ministers; and delivered to Mr. Speaker,” 1 and it may be inferred that the cost of licences had previously been irregular and excessive. The social position of many of those to whom licences were granted in Whitgift's time points, however, to the conclusion that the cost, especially for marriages during the prohibited seasons, was moderate, and that the fee paid by Shakespeare would approximate to that named in the table of 1597, viz. 3s. 8d., which is a smaller sum relatively than the £2 15s. now charged at the Worcester Diocesan Registry.

Among the means used to effect irregular marriages the licence has played a prominent part.2 In 1584 a "Book of Articles" was offered to Parliament, and it is stated in the thirteenth that "There is one facultie of great inconvenience granted not only by the court of Faculties, but by the chancellor of every diocese, viz., the dispensation for marriage without banns asking. By occasion whereof children make disordered matches without the assent of their parents and

1 Strype, Life of Whitgift, ii. 377.

In addressing the bishops on these and other abuses in the church, Queen Elizabeth warned them in 1584 "That if they . . . did not amend she was minded to depose them." Strype, Life of Whitgift, i. 393.

orphans are left to the spoil of unthrift persons." To this article the bishops made answer: "1. It may be so qualified that no inconvenience shall ensue thereof. 2. There be divers reasonable occasions, that daily happen which may hinder the thrice asking of banns; which causes are meet to be considered of and allowed by the Ordinary or his deputy. 3. The inconvenience that is proposed is in most dioceses already met withal, by putting these conditions in the faculty; viz. that they have their governor's consent; that there is no suit for matrimony depending; no pre-contract; nor any other impediment; which the party is by a bond with sureties bound unto. So that by this means, this inconvenience is better met withal, than by asking the banns thrice; which may be done, and yet these impediments remain. 4. And since the bonds have been qualified as is abovesaid, being about one twelve month past, experience doth teach, that none of the pretended inconveniences have happened." In 1597 "Informations were also brought of some of these marriages by licence very incestuous and abominable: as of some marrying two sisters: another marrying his brother's wife, another marrying his own mother's sister; and another that married his own father's wife. Some married by a pretended minister without holy orders and by a parish clerk and fall by licences. And because some in parliament had set so hard against licences to marry without banns; shewing the many mischiefs that had followed upon them, or at least upon the granting of them so hastily, and to any persons; and that therefore it were better that the bishops and their courts were wholly deprived of the power of granting them; (a thing that seemed to be aimed at)." 2

The following is a note to an edition of the Canons of 1597: "But heavy complaints were still continued against its courts and the details of its government, and they acquired additional force at this period from some notorious instances of

1 Dr. Wilkins, Concilia, pp. 309-14. No. 4 is probably a reference to Whitgift's Articles of September 1583. See Strype, Life of Whitgift, i. 227. 2 Strype, Life of Whitgift, ii. 381. "It is thought that this revenue is a profit to the church against the law of God. And is wished generally by the house [of Parliament] to be taken away."

Ibid., iii. 379.