Humdrum and unglamorous as the subject of patronage might appear, it was important to contemporaries and so must be of concern to historians. Although the foundation of colleges demonstrated success and prestige, the exercise of patronage – the choosing of canons and prebendaries – endured long after the first excitement of foundation, or the commissioning of new buildings, decoration and furnishings, had faded. Colleges, and their ‘little brothers’, chantries – and there was no hard-and-fast demarcation between the two – were a valuable, and growing, source of patronage to be exercised by those at the top of society in the later Middle Ages. They were also important to the clerical class, since, because they were based on endowment, their benefices offered their holders permanent jobs in the Church. Yet perhaps it is patronage that helps to explain the somewhat poor image of the college and consequent scholarly neglect. Crudely put, their benefices did not normally involve cure of living souls, as in parishes, but praying and saying masses for dead ones, duties which, in theory, could be performed anywhere. While such flexibility helped to make colleges attractive to the very rich of the period, posterity has judged the frequently absent, multi-tasking incumbents as worldly gold-diggers. They took income, exercised power and enjoyed status without contributing to the spiritual welfare of their community – indeed, the royal free college of St Martin le Grand in London, where such trends were long entrenched, has been described as ‘a corporation of officials rather than a religious house’. True, parish churches could also be exploited, served by a deputy and held in plurality, but such privileges needed licences and these took time and money to organise. Where colleges were concerned, irresponsibility was standard: their revenues might support whole careers without any particular spiritual effort being needed in return.

The worst abuse of patronage was the right to hold benefices in commendam. Although the exact size of this problem is unclear, the privilege seems to have been sparingly used in colleges during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Isolated cases can be found at Crediton, Crantock and Glasney in Exeter diocese, and at St Mary’s Warwick in Worcester. Typically, these were for short, fixed terms. Walter Stapledon made two such grants of Crediton prebends, and in 1335 Bishop Grandisson granted the deanery of Crantock (Cornwall) to William de Londay, on similar conditions.