§ 10. Parish churches in England may be divided, for historical purposes, into four classes. (1) In some monastic churches, as in the Benedictine priory of Selby and the Augustinian priory of Bridlington, the parochial altar was in the nave of the church, west of the rood screen, and was served by a vicar or a curate, who was responsible for the spiritual welfare of the parish. (2) In collegiate churches a similar arrangement existed; but in the majority of such cases the dean or warden of the college was regarded as the parson of the parish, and had the cure of souls. (3) Of parish churches appropriated to monasteries, we have spoken already. (4) There remains the very large number of unappropriated parish churches, in which the rector or parson was directly responsible for the cure of souls. The duties of the rector were regarded in the middle ages with considerable latitude. Nothing was more usual than for a man of good family, or one whose clerkly talents made him a constant attendant on the king or the great officers of state, to obtain a number of benefices which provided him with a necessary income. Such parsons were naturally non-resident: as often as not, they had not proceeded to full orders. The Patent Rolls are full of grants of benefices to persons engaged in the work of the royal chancery or exchequer; while the papal registers in the Vatican library contain thousands of dispensations by which pluralists were enabled to hold several benefices at a time, to acquire benefices up to a stated value, or to defer their ordination to the priesthood. Popes and bishops alike kept a careful watch on the attempt to obtain additional benefices without licence; but it is quite obvious that little discrimination could be exercised, and that dispensations became matters of form, for which the applicant, backed by a request from the king or some magnate, made a payment in money. Pluralism was further increased by the pope's claim to reserve certain benefices on a vacancy, and provide incumbents to them. This claim, which originally was intended to prevent patrons from keeping benefices vacant and appropriating their fruits, led to the enactment of the statute of provisors in 1351. Papal provisions, though nominally forbidden, were not stopped by this law, but became subject to regulation.