INTRODUCTION.

acquired the Prebend of South Newbold in the Cathedral of York. He resigned the latter preferment on receiving the important appointment of Precentor in the same York Cathedral, but resigned this also in the same year. Two other benefices are recorded as having been bestowed upon him, the Rectory of Holworthy in Devonshire by the King, in 1518, and in 1520 the Rectory of Wigan, in Lancashire, on the title of which he received priest's orders, Dec. 22, 1520, and which he held till his death11.

There is no evidence that Linacre resided at any one of the benefices or Cathedral appointments which he received. In fact it is most probable, though not absolutely certain, that he continued to live in his London house. His biographers then have been somewhat puzzled to account for his accepting so many preferments and resigning most of them so soon. But it is probable that a physician and scholar did not hold more rigid notions respecting the evils of pluralism the practice of holding multiple church offices simultaneously than his more strictly clerical contemporaries and that he saw no harm in holding a benefice of which he could not discharge the duty or only did so by deputy. The speedy resignation of a benefice is no evidence that the preferment was unprofitable. It is probable that in accordance with the common custom he resigned only in favour of a consideration paid by an aspirant who desired to be presented to the office, and was willing to pay the holder to vacate it. Such a practice has lasted in regard to secular offices almost to our own time12. Linacre must be judged not by the system which, whatever its faults, gave him leisure for literary work and plans of public usefulness, but by the manner in which he employed the wealth which these benefices placed at his disposal. It must have been from this source that he obtained funds for his munificent endowments.

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