In this little sanctuary now lay the remains of its lord.  The cold February sleet pattered fitfully against the narrow panes; and the shivering mourners muffled themselves in their dark hoods, while they knelt devoutly on the hard bare pavement of the chapel.  Oliver de Worsthorn, the old seneschal, knelt at the foot of the bier; his white locks covered his thin features like a veil, hiding their intense and heart-withering expression.  He felt without a stay or helper in his last hours—­a sapless, worthless stem in this wilderness of sorrow.

Robert, the Dean of Whalley, attended as chief mourner.  Being descended from a distant branch of the Lacies, he had long thrown a covetous glance towards the inheritance.  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.

Long before the Conquest the advowson had become far more valuable than the manor, and the lords, who were also patrons, saw the advantage and convenience of qualifying themselves by inferior orders for holding so rich a benefice; and thus the manor itself in time ceased to be considered as a lay fee, and became confounded with the glebe of the church.[50]

The office of dean, at the period in which our history commences, had for centuries been considered as a dignity rather secular than ecclesiastical, and the pursuits of the incumbent had doubtless assimilated generally with those of his lay associates.  Indeed, it is recorded that Dean Liulphus, in the reign of Canute, had the name of Cutwulph, from having cut off a wolf’s tail whilst hunting in the forest of Rossendale, at a place called Ledmesgreve, or more properly Deansgreve.  Like many other ancient