128 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January cover only ninety-three parishes in the south and east of the county; those for the north and west are missing. The 1553 returns deal with sixty-six parishes ; they show how harshly the commissioners interpreted their instructions, leaving in many places only the bells and one chalice. Occasionally it is noticeable that they left ' berying cloths ' or ' herse cloths ', and among the altar linen a ' hande towell ' (as at Waterstock) for the lavabo, and 'two rochettes ' besides surplices (as at Cuddesdon). They appear to have taken the patens, because their instructions per- mitted them only to leave ' one or two chalices '. In Buckinghamshire, on the other hand, the patens seem generally to have been left. The editor states that ' owing to the limits of space, it has not been found possible to print a series of supplementary documents to the Chantry Certificates and the Inventories '. It would have been an advantage if the character of these had been indicated, for it would be interesting to know whether there are any documents similar to those printed among the Edwardian Inventories for Bedfordshire (Alcuin Club Collections, vol. vi) which record the attempts under Philip and Mary to recover and return the pillaged goods. An interesting point in the chantry certificates is the endowment for a clerk ' for playing yerely at the orgayns and singynge in the quyer ' (p. 22), for which he received as much as many a chantry priest. The glossary appended to this volume is useful ; it owes much, as the editor duly acknowledges, to the most valuable glossary in English Liturgical Colours. Occasionally where that guide is not at hand, it slips ; thus
- Basen and euer ' were not used for ' washing the hands of ministering
clergy at the altar ', but only for washing the fingers of the celebrant. Corporases, it is said, ' were kept in cases ' ; these are commonly known as ' burses ' ; and a pix was not a vessel ' in which the Eucharist was re- served ', but a vessel in which the consecrated Host reserved from a previous Eucharist was kept. The term ' towel ', it might be noticed, was used occasionally (as in Buckinghamshire) for a houseling cloth. Miss Graham explains the fact that almost all the inventories for 1552 bear the dates of 28, 29, and 30 July by supposing that these dates were written on to the headings ^of the list at a sitting of the commissioners before they began their visitation. The inventories of the 1553 commission are all dated either 17 or 18 May. In any case it is impossible that the commissioners could have viewed all the goods in these widely separated parishes on two or three successive days ; but it is more probable, as Mrs. S. C. Lomas has shown was almost certainly the case in Huntingdon- shire (in her introduction to the Edwardian Inventories for that county, Alcuin Club Collections, vol. vii), that the commissioners made their rounds of visitation first and that the indentures were drawn up afterwards. These are small points ; the main fact is that the Oxfordshire Record Society is to be warmly congratulated on this beginning : the book has but one grave fault — its flimsy paper binding. The Alcuin Club have generously helped with the cost of printing the book by accepting the great bulk of it for their own series, and Mr. T. Craib of the Public Record Office, who has transcribed several of these inventories of church goods, generously gave his transcript of those for Oxfordshire to the Record Society. S. L. Ollard.
