The custom of allowing one man to hold several livings was another means of depriving parishes of a resident rector, and handing them over to the care of a curate. The extent to which this system of Pluralities was carried in the Middle Ages seems almost incredible; we even read of one man having from four to five hundred benefices. Another less known abuse was the custom of presenting to benefices men who had taken only the minor clerical orders. A glance at the lists of incumbents of benefices in any good county history will reveal the fact that rectors of parishes were often only deacons, sub-deacons, or acolytes.[228] It is clear that in many of these cases--probably in the majority of them--the men had taken a minor order only to qualify themselves for holding the temporalities of a benefice, and never proceeded to the priesthood at all; they employed a chaplain to perform their spiritual functions for them, while they enjoyed the fruits of the benefice as if it were a lay fee, the minor order which they had taken imposing no restraint upon their living an entirely secular life.[229] It is clear that a considerable number of priests were required to perform the duties of the numerous parishes whose rectors were absent or in minor orders, who seem to have been called parochial chaplains. The emolument and social position of these parochial chaplains were not such as to make the office a desirable one; and it would seem that the candidates for it were, to a great extent, drawn from the lower classes of the people. Chaucer tells us of his poor parson of a town, whose description we give below, that "With him there was a _ploughman_ was his brother."