That this settlement was not at all exceptional could be proved by many documents; one must suffice. When Bodmin church was rebuilt between the years 1469 and 1472 the patrons, the Monastery of St. Petrock, defrayed the entire expenses connected with the chancel. On the other hand, to illustrate the usual practice, the case of the vicarage of Launcells in Devonshire may be cited. The Abbot and Monastery of Hartland held the appropriated tithes, and in 1382, the chancel standing in need of great repairs, apparently amounting almost to rebuilding, the vicar refused to carry out the injunctions of the archdeacon forthwith to undertake the work, on the plea that this was the duty of the Abbey of Hartland. The convent denied their obligation, but submitted themselves in the matter to the judgment of the bishop of the diocese. After holding an inquiry, Bishop Thomas Brantyngham declared that the vicar received tithes for the purpose of carrying out all repairs to the chancel, and that consequently the monks were free from the obligation. What the material church was to the parishioners of a mediæval parish is well described in the synodical Constitutions of Bishop Woodlock, of Winchester, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. “If the Israelites,” he says, “living in the shadow of the law, required specially dedicated places in which to worship the Lord, with how much more reason are Christians, to whom the loving-kindness and the humanity of the Saviour has appeared, bound by all the means at their disposal to obtain consecrated churches, in which day by day the Son of God is offered in Sacrifice.” Then after saying that churches that have not been consecrated are to be solemnly dedicated as soon as possible, he continues-- “The anniversaries of the dedications of parish churches are to be kept by the parishioners, and those attending chapels in the neighbourhood not themselves dedicated. The day and the year of the consecration, with the name of the consecrating prelates, are to be entered in the calendar and other books belonging to the church.” The dedication of the church to God was the essential condition of its endowment. According to Bracton, the dower made to the church with church lands at its dedication, was a possession of “pure and free alms,” in distinction “from a lay feud,” seeing that it “is with more propriety called free, since it is dedicated as it were to God.” “If,” says the Constitution of Cardinal Otho for the English Church--“if under the Old Testament the Temple was dedicated to God for the offering of dead animals, with how much more reason should the churches of the New Law be specially consecrated to Him when on the altars is daily offered for us by the hands of the priest the living and true Victim, that is, Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.”