Canon 55. “And we enjoin that the priest so distribute the people’s alms, that they do both give pleasure to God and accustom the people to alms.” The following is a gloss on this canon:—“And it is right that one part be delivered to the priest, a second part for the need of the church, and a third part for the poor.” The text is taken from MS. 201 in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The gloss is taken, by Mr. Thorpe, from a Bodleian MS., Junius 121, fol. 25_b_, which he calls “X” in a page between his Preface and Table of Contents. He says the Bodleian MS. is of the tenth century. Mr. Thorpe’s commanding position as an Anglo-Saxon scholar is generally admitted; yet Lord Selborne questions his opinion as to the date of the Bodleian MS. He says it must have been written in the eleventh century, and was copied from the Church Grith; thus dating the MS. a century later than Mr. Thorpe.[167] That could not have been, for the Church Grith law deals only with the tithe, but Edgar’s canon deals with all alms, including tithe. And as to the date of the MS., I should prefer the opinion of a disinterested Anglo-Saxon scholar and expert like Mr. Thorpe. It is probable that the Cambridge MS. is a late copy made in Cnute’s reign, and that the Bodleian MS. was a gloss made in the tenth century on the original copy of the canons. The force of the gloss is that the priest was entitled only to one-third part of the people’s alms, which included the tithe. The Church Grith law deals only with the tithe, of which a third part was the priest’s. The gloss gives the general custom of all the churches of giving the priest only one-third part of all alms, oblations, tithes, etc., and not ALL the alms and oblations in addition to one-third part of the tithes. In principle, the words of the gloss do not differ from the wording of Ethelred’s law. Canon 56. “And we enjoin that priests sing psalms when they distribute the alms, and that they earnestly desire the poor to pray for the people.” Why pray for the people? Because they gave alms to them. ODO, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. He was of Danish birth. His father was one of the Danish chiefs who were engaged in the invasions of England in A.D. 870. Odo was first a soldier in the wars of Edward the Elder. In 926 he was appointed bishop of Ramsbury. He was three times engaged on the battle-field after he became a bishop. In 942 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Odo’s canons were compiled from Egbert’s Excerptions and Legatine Injunctions; the former I have shown not to be Egbert’s production. Odo’s tenth canon on tithes is the seventeenth Injunction passed at the Council at Calchyth, _i.e._, Chelsea, in 787. THE MONKS.