§ 11. To the medieval mind, the habit of a non-resident rector, holding several churches in plurality, was a matter of course, which cannot be judged by the moral standard of our own day. It must be regarded simply as a fact, not as an abuse. The rector was required to see that his churches were properly served, and probably, like his successors after the Reformation, he paid a curate to do his work in each of his churches. In some cases, like monastic impropriators, he made an arrangement by which a vicar was provided with a fixed stipend; and now and then a vicar was properly instituted by the bishop at his presentation. This was the regular course of procedure in parish churches attached to prebends in cathedral and collegiate churches, which were held for the most part by king's clerks, and often by foreigners appointed by the pope. But it is clear that, where a man held ten or twelve churches at once, they might be served very irregularly. Again, no form of litigation in the middle ages was so common as that between two or more claimants of an advowson. The sub-division of the ownership of a manor might and did constantly lead to a dispute between rival patrons for the presentation to a living. Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, the church of Adlingfleet in Yorkshire became the subject of a long law-suit between two separate patrons, the archbishop of York, and their presentees, which was protracted for nearly thirty years before the royal and papal courts. The candidates, all non-residents, strove to obstruct each other. In the parish itself they made attempts to defend their rights by force, and it is difficult to see how, during this period of strife, the cure of souls could have been adequately served. Churches appropriated to monasteries were more fortunate; for they, in most instances, had the advantage of a resident vicar, and the appropriation removed disputes as to the patronage.