The question of manumission, or the freeing from serfdom, is almost too important to take up, save in a separate chapter; but a brief comment may here be made upon this subject, as it has a distinct bearing upon monastic education. The freeing of a villein from his tied condition to a particular manor was very rarely done by a secular lord, but it was a matter of common occurrence on monastic manors. Mr. J. Willis Bund, who has recently edited the highly interesting _Sede Vacante_ register of Worcester, which covers the various intervals when that see was vacant and administered by the Priors of Worcester, draws attention to the fact that fourteen cases of manumission occurred on the priory estates during a very brief period about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and points out how very large must have been the instances of freedom-granting by the monasteries if this case can be taken as a sample. Much evidence can be gained from episcopal act-books in various dioceses in corroboration of manumission for the purpose of taking Orders. The register of Bishop Drokinsford, of Bath and Wells (1309-1329), shows that formal manumission was often granted at the self-same time as the newly-created freeman was admitted to the first tonsure. Bishop Hobhouse, in editing this register for the Somerset Record Society, seems to think that there was something rather shocking in thus taking a rough country lad fresh from the plough-tail and admitting him to minor Orders in an uneducated condition. But there is every probability that the young aspirant for the first step in clerkship, freed for the purpose, was one of the humbler monastic tenants who had already received at least the rudiments of a clerkly education at the hands of his patrons. This, too, is the probable explanation for the great number of monastic “titles,” or pledges for the temporal support of those ordained to the sub-diaconate, or the diaconate, that are to be found in many episcopal registers throughout the fourteenth century. Those of course who were being ordained to serve in monasteries required no title; but those who were ordained as seculars, with monastic titles--and they often formed a large majority of the whole candidates--had almost certainly received their primary education (whether from the ranks of the villeins or free tenants) at the hands of the particular monastery that vouched, if necessary, for their maintenance. No other explanation of these very frequent monastic titles for seculars--mostly before the Black Death of 1349--has as yet been offered.