ignifies a person provided with a chapel, or who discharges the duty thereof.

Chaplain is also used for an ecclesiastical person in the house of a prince, or a person of quality, who officiates in their chapels, and performs other clerical duties.

In England there are forty-eight chaplains to the king, who wait four each month, preach in the chapel, read the service to the family, and to the king in his private oratory, and say grace in the absence of the clerk of the closet. While in waiting they have a table and attendance, but no salary. In Scotland the king has six chaplains, with a salary of £50 each, three of them having in addition the deanery of the chapel-royal divided among them, making up above £100 to each. The only duty at present is to say prayers at the election of representative peers for Scotland.

Chaplains of the Pope are the auditors or judges of cause in the sacred palace; so called, because the pope anciently gave audience in his chapel, for the decision of causes sent from the several parts of Christendom. He summoned hither as assessors the most learned lawyers of his time, who hence acquired the appellation of capellani, chaplains. It is from the decrees formerly pronounced by these assessors that the body of Decretals is composed; Pope Sixtus IV. reduced their number to twelve. Some say the shrines of relics were covered with a kind of tent-cape, or capella, that is, little cape; and that hence the priests, who had the care of them, were called chaplains. In time these relics were deposited in a little church, either contiguous to a larger, or separate from it; and the same name, capella, which was given to the cover, was also applied to the place where it was lodged; and hence the priest who superintended it came to be called chaplain.