One example of this may be cited. In 1289 the patronage of St. Michael's-on-Wyre was vested in the King, and in the December of that year the Pope granted an indulgence to Walter de Languethon, the King's clerk, Rector of St. Michael's, to hold an additional living: in 1290 he held also the Rectory of Croston, and had a dispensation granted to enable him to accept a third, and in the following year he got an indulgence to retain two of these for five years without residing there or _being ordained priest_, whilst he was engaged in the King's service, the churches in the meantime to be served by vicars. Another vicar of this parish in the next century was also acting as receiver for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and at Preston, a long series of Rectors probably never were within sight of the church of which they held the living. The establishment of these religious houses does not appear to have been immediately followed by any considerable increase in the number of churches, though here and there a new one was erected; the number added to those recognised by the valuation of Pope Nicholas in 1291 was very small indeed. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many chantries were founded by private individuals in the parish churches, very few of the older foundations being without one or more of these altars, nearly all of which were more or less endowed, and there were buried their founders and their successors, to whose memory stately monuments were therein erected. With the birth of the sixteenth century, it was evident that serious abuses had crept into the monastic institutions, which prepared the way for and finally led to their suppression. The change brought about by the violent measure taken by Henry VIII. must have been greatly felt in Lancashire, where then, as now, great difference in opinion must have existed as to its wisdom or otherwise. There are those who now declare that history justifies the course then taken, whilst there are others who maintain that "neither among the friars, with their public ministry and their international character, nor among the Cistercians of Furness and Whalley, with their industries and agriculture, nor among the regular canons, Augustinian and Præmonstratensian, nor among the Benedictines, with their large place in the national history, their local ties, and their varied work, was there found, when the end was at hand, anything to warrant their wholesale suppression."[189] Into this question it is not necessary to enter, but it may be briefly stated that most historians agree that, although many of these houses were well managed and regulated, the abbots and priors were often more concerned about the temporal possessions of their orders than for the spiritual benefit to the community, which alone justified their continued existence. And no one can read the literature of those times without coming to the conclusion that, at all events in the popular mind, there was then a