Calicem Ad Vincula

Suffering Sedevacantists! Can it be Ash Wednesday already? For my sins, I have been kept extremely busy sorting out a bit of a PR disaster over the weekend, and have been up to my eyes in Curricula Vitae yesterday and today, interviewing for a new Communications Director. It's a long story, but first I had better return to the Dramatis Personae gathered in the Trollchester Auction Rooms and update you on the denoument of this curious tale. 


I think that where I left off, I was praying for help. I find the whole business of prayer a bit shy-making to explain to strangers, but my belief (for what it's worth - and Canon Lewis frequently remarks that it is worth considerably less than a footnote on a cornflake packet) is that when I pray for something specific, I get one of three answers - "Yes" (evidenced by a sunny day for Summer Fair); "Later",(evidenced by an initial shower, followed by a lovely fresh damp afternoon, with no old ladies fainting from heatstroke); or "We've got something better in mind"(evidenced by torrential rain ruining the outdoor folk choir performance of "Now That's What I Call Kevin Mayhew's Greatest Hits" Volume 163, saving on copyright fees, and thus ensuring the Fair turns a profit for a change, as the grateful licensee of the Cat and Fiddle does unprecedented trade in the Trollstons Old Peculiar Tent).


I turned my attention to Fr Crusty's photostats. They were as follows:


1.was a long treatise in High Gaelic on the Brehon Laws covering agnastic kinship and inheritance (called Slainte Mor or some such).

The Marriage of Aoife - I do love a Traveller Wedding

2. was a grant from Dermot McMurrough, King of Leinster to Aoife, McMurrough of all rights to personal and movable property listed as including  a debt of honour pertaining to a donkey and trap race between the said Dermot and the Bishop of Clonard in 1160 in which all the possessions of the latter wheresoever located and whensoever inherited were forfeited by the said cleric who had the misfortune to have bet the diocesan silver on a three-legged specimen of Equus africanus asinus, and presumably felt himself to be rather an two legged member of the same species as a consequence.


3. was an extract from the Synod of Rath Breasail confirming the above


4. was a marriage contract between Aoife and some chap called Richard De Clare, Second Earl of Pembroke in 1167.

At this point, the documents became a little easier to read, being in good old Latin, with marginal notes in  medieval Norman-French, and mainly concerned rights of turbary, pescary and advowsons pertaining to the Earls of Pembroke, and a series of conveyances taking us to the era where one of Aoife's remote protestant descendants had lost a packet at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo in 1830 odd, and sold off some land to the Roman Catholic Church (which they had stolen at the Reformation, as evidenced by a photostat of a report by Thomas Cromwell on the wilful non-compliance of the "Abbot of Trolefast" in the matter of refusing to re-order the old Abbey and celebrate a service facing the congregation. Cromwell then re-ordered it by taking the roofs off both the Abbey and its inhabitants in short order).

The gist of it was that  under English Irish and Welsh Law, the chalice was not Treasure Trove, and, when the Diocese bought the land the "new" Abbey was built upon in fee simple, they got the chalice as a free gift, rather like those little plastic toys I used to so look forward to in a cornflake packet.

All documentation was as watertight as the Trollstons tent, so I apologised to the auctioneer and shepherded  the rather disconsolate monks outside to the car park. Goodness me - is that the time? I haven't even burnt my old palms for tomorrow morning yet. More tomorrow. TTFN