Richard de Marisco, one of King
John's profligate councillors, who was eventually foisted into the
see of Durham, gave the Abbey of St. Alban's the tithes of Eglingham,
in Northumberland, to help them to make their ale better--"taking
compassion upon the weakness of the convent's drink," as the
chronicler tells us. The small beer of St. Alban's, it seems, was not
so much improved as was to be desired, notwithstanding this
appropriation of Church property, for twice after this the abbey had
the same delicate hint given to it that its brewing was not up to the
mark, when the rectory of Norton, in Hertfordshire, and two-thirds of
the tithes of Hartburn, in Northumberland, were given to the
monastery that no excuse might remain for the bad quality of the malt
liquor.
And here let me remark in passing that another wide-spread delusion
needs to be removed from the popular mind with regard to the
relations between the monks and the clergy. We have again and again
heard people say, "Wonderfully devoted men, those monks! Look at the
churches all over the land! If it had not been for the monks how
could all the village churches have been built? The monks built them
all!" Monks build parish churches! Why, the monks were always robbing
the country parsons, and the town parsons, too, for that matter.
Every vicarage in England represents a spoliation of the church,
whose rectorial tithes had been appropriated by a religious house,
the parson being left with the vicarial tithes, and often not even
with them, but thrown for his daily bread upon the voluntary
offerings of his parishioners.
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