times what it is today, this was probably considered too great a
burden by the parishioners of Dengie. A petition must have been
presented to be allowed to procure a cheaper surplice, for on the 6th
October following the wardens were permitted to prepare a surplice
containing six ells only at the reduced price of 2s. 8d. per ell.[29]

It seems to have been the practice in the Dean of York's Peculiar for
the judge to threaten the churchwardens occasionally with a fine for
failure to repair their church or supply missing requisites for
service by a fixed day. Thus at Dean Matthew Hutton's visitation,
July, 1568, the churchyards of Hayton and of Belby were found to be
insufficiently fenced. The order of the court was: "_Habent ad
reparanda premissa citra festum sancti Michaelis proximum sub pena XX
s_."[30]

So, too, the Thornton wardens at the same visitation are warned to
repair the body of their church "betwixt this and Michlmes next upon
paine of X s."[31] But as spiritual tribunals had no legal power to
fine[32] or to imprison, apparently the usual penalty prescribed by
the judges in case of disobedience to, or neglect of, their orders to
repair or replace by a certain day, was, in the words of Bishop Barnes
addressed to the churchwardens in Durham diocese, the "paynes of
interdiction and suspencion [_i.e._, temporary excommunication] to be
pronounced against themselves."[33] Yet here, too, the wardens did not
escape indirect amercement, for absolution from interdiction or
excommunication often meant a payment of various court fees, which in
many cases were by no means light. These fines the wardens put to
their credit in the expense items of their accounts if they could
possibly do so, and it is probable that the parish always paid them
except in cases of very gross individual delinquency in office. Thus