A frequent guest at the castle, he had
been useful as an auxiliary in the management and control of the secular
concerns; the spiritual interests of its head were in the keeping of
another and more powerful agent, little suspected by the dean of
applying the influence he had acquired to purposes of secular
aggrandisement.
It may not be deemed irrelevant that we give a brief outline of the
constitution or office of dean, as then held by the incumbents of
Whalley. The beautiful abbey, now in ruins, was not as yet built. Some
Saxon lord of [Illustration: Dpaellej] had, about the seventh century,
founded a parish church, dedicated to All Saints, called The White
Church under the Leigh. The first erection was of wood, many years
afterwards replaced by a plain building of stone. The rectors or deans
were also lords of the town, and married men, who held it not by
presentation from the patron, but as their own patrimonial estate, the
succession being hereditary. In this manner the deanery of Whalley was
continued until the Lateran Council, in the year 1215, which, by
finally prohibiting the marriage of ecclesiastics, put an end to this
order of hereditary succession, and occasioned a resignation of the
patronage to the chief lord of the fee, after which the church of
Whalley sunk, by two successive appropriations, into an impoverished
vicarage.
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