The financial advantages of the education offered by the church became obvious after the Norman Conquest, and arose out of an undesigned circumstance. Prior to the Conquest, the parishes of this country were under the spiritual care of Saxon rectors who were generally well-born and whose position was well-endowed. The Norman Conquest ultimately resulted in these men being deprived of their cures and being replaced by ill-paid vicars or parochial chaplains. The chief factors which brought about this condition of things were impropriations, papal provisors, pluralities, and the custom, which gradually grew up, of appointing to livings men who had only been admitted to minor orders in the church. The practice of impropriation was an indirect result of the revival of the monastic principle. The custom of endowing a newly founded monastery with the patronage of existing churches gradually came into being. When a vacancy occurred, the monastery as patrons of the benefice bestowed it upon themselves as a corporation, and drew the stipend attached to it, appointing a "vicar" to perform the requisite spiritual duties, and allowing the vicar only a comparatively insignificant share of the temporalities of the benefice. The position of the incumbent was consequently considerably degraded both in dignity and in emolument. The custom of papal provisors dates from the thirteenth century when the popes began to assume a power of nominating to vacant benefices. In this way foreigners were appointed to many of the most lucrative of the English benefices. Naturally they never came near their parishes, but contented themselves with the appointment of an ill-paid parochial chaplain to discharge the necessary duties. This custom was put an end to by the Statute of Praemunire (1392). We must also note that the system of pluralities was carried on in the Middle Ages to an extent which seems to us almost incredible to-day. One man might hold several valuable livings which he never went near, whilst a clerk, who was frequently paid a miserable wage, was expected to do the work. Equally vicious was the custom of appointing to benefices men who had only been admitted to minor clerical orders. "A glance at the lists of incumbents of parishes in any good county history will reveal the fact that rectors of parishes were often only deacons, sub-deacons, or acolytes. It is clear that in many of these cases--probably in the majority of them--the men had taken minor orders only to qualify themselves for holding the temporalities of a benefice and never proceeded to the priesthood at all."[742] Just as in the other cases we have mentioned, these men drew the revenues of the living and then appointed a deputy at a small salary to be responsible for the duty.