Lincoln Cathedral Statutes. Arranged by the late Henry Brad- shaw.
Edited by Chr. Wordsworth. Part IL (Cambridge Uni- versity Press. 30s.)—This second part has, for convenience' sake, been divided into two volumes, in which we have an introduction running to 290 pages, and a text, continuously paginated, to 888, with a copious index, increasing the total to 953. The documents extend over many centuries, reaching, indeed, down to the present time ; for we have a form, dated as late as 1895, for the admission of a chorister. Canon Wordsworth, who has taken up in this matter a paternal inheritance, supplies an admirable guidance through this vast mass of material. It is not easy to choose an example which shall indicate the value of what has been thus collected and illustrated by him and by the great scholar whose work he has taken up. Perhaps the story of the visitation of Bishop Alnwick (1437-40) is as good as any. The Bishop found the Chapter in a condition of scandalous disturbance. A deluge of complaints from all sides poured in upon him. On these, after a very careful inquiry into facts, he adjudicated. Not content with this, he went on to lay down a new constitution for the future, a task in which be was, naturally, not so successful. Canon Words- worth's judgment on the whole runs thus : " Knowing what we do of the internal life of Lincoln, we do not hesitate to say that even in the lowest ebb of spiritual life in the later years of King George III. or under the Regency, our Cathedral was in a less corrupt and unhealthy state than it was in the days when Bp. Alnwick held his visitations." This agrees only too well with the contents of the volume edited by Mr. A. F. Leach for the Camden Society six years ago, " Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster." One of the main questions of order was the relation of Residentiary and non-Residentiary Canons. The very hasty legislation of fifty years ago irredeemably mutilated our Cathedral establishments. Something has been done to restore them to their proper dignity. But much remains to be done. There was a plan of the late Bishop of Lincoln, founded, as be believed, on Bishop Alnwick's Corpus Turis, to reconstitute the Chapter as a Concilium Episcopi. Might not such a body be entrusted with a part at least of the patronage which it is so difficult to deal with ? The Church historian will find no small amount of valuable matter in these two volumes.
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