In the register of Lincoln diocese, in 1457, we find a record of one Hugh Bernewell, an Irishman, who went about pretending to be a priest, and undertaking to make a pilgrimage to Rome, and say prayers at the _Scala Coeli_, for any who would pay him. He was found to be an impostor, and was put in the pillory.[139]
The next step in the career of the parish priest was his ordination. We have seen that he might receive the minor orders with little difficulty while still a youth pursuing his studies; but when it came to the sacred orders, he had to obtain a "title," _i.e._ a definite place in which to exercise his ministry, and a competent maintenance to prevent the disgrace which pauper clergymen would bring upon the Church. The bishop who ordained a man without a title was liable to maintain him out of his own purse, and there are instances of the enforcement of the liability. A curious instance of it is recorded in the Register of Archbishop Winchelsea of Canterbury, 1297, in a decree that the executors of a bishop, who had ordained a priest without title, should provide for his maintenance when afterwards he became, without his own fault, mutilated so that he could no longer fulfil the office of priest.
But a title was not always a cure of souls; any kind of ecclesiastical benefice which afforded a prospect of maintenance was sufficient; for example, membership of a convent or a hermitage. No doubt there were many young men of good families who desired ordination, not with a view to cure of souls, but with a view to being capable of holding ecclesiastical benefices as the rewards of the career which they proposed to pursue in the civil service of the Crown, or of great men. This partly accounts for the ordinations _ad titulum patrimonii sui quo respondet se esse contentum_ which are not uncommonly found in the Episcopal Registers, and the similar ones _ad titulum_, of lands and of a ville of five marks of annual rent, and of sixty shillings of annual pension, and the like.[140] A great many poor men's sons also got little pensions as titles, and then took chantry priest's places.
The Rules of Examination for Orders were precise and the same in all dioceses. The number of men ordained was very large, and went on rapidly increasing through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; for there were four Orders to be ordained, Acolytes, Sub-deacons, Deacons, and Priests; not only the parishes had to be supplied, but a proportion of the inhabitants of religious houses were also ordained by the bishop on the presentation of the abbot, the candidate's position in the house being a sufficient title.[141] In these ordinations there were frequent dispensations from canonical obstacles; servile condition, illegitimate birth, personal blemish,[142] and insufficient learning.