Watt, Biographical Dictionary, p. 200 Like other bishops of Brechin, Forrester does not seem to have been very active in his diocese, on several occasions obtaining papal indults legitimizing procurations without visitation. He is recorded presiding over statutes issued by his cathedral chapter in 1410, and later in the year pursued land claims successfully with the support of Governor Albany and his sheriff in Angus. Albany granted him the second tenth of crown revenues from the sheriffdom of Kincardine in 1413 and 1417.
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The latter record that Bricius had solemnly denied practicing divine offices during the interdict. Bricius, however, found his episcopate in disrepute. Church records indicate that the Archdeacon and Chancellor of Moray reported Bricius' corrupt behaviour, including over-taxing his flock, dissolving lawful marriages for payment, tolerating unlawful ones for payment and taking procurations without the appropriate visitations, and spending a good deal of the proceeds on the services of women. On 30 January 1219, Pope Honorius III instructed the abbots of Cupar Angus, Scone and Dunfermline to investigate these claims.
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In the ecclesiastical law of the Church of England, procuration is the provision of necessaries for bishops and archdeacons during their visitations of parochial churches in their dioceses. Procuration originally took the form of meat, drink, provender, and other accommodation, but was gradually changed to a sum of money. Procuration is an ecclesiastical due, and is therefore suable only in a spiritual court. In those dioceses where the bishops' estates have vested in the ecclesiastical commissioners, procurations are payable to the commissioners, who, however, have abandoned their collection.
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In 1397, Boniface IX sent a mandate to the archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishop of Ely, to investigate the charges against William of Beverley, who was elected master in 1393. It was reported that on his visitation, he took immoderate procurations, burdened the houses by the excessive number of the members of his household and of his horses, and committed many grievances and enormities against the statutes of the order. The bishops were to punish him if guilty, to visit the houses, correct and reform what was amiss, to revise the statutes of the order, and frame others if expedient. In 1405, the pope issued another mandate, stating that William of Beverley, master of the order, had dilapidated diverse goods, movable and immovable, had enormously damaged it, reduced it to great poverty, and continued in the same course.
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He was crowned on June 26, 1409, as Alexander V, making him in reality the third rival pontiff. Following his election, most polities in Europe recognised him as the true pontiff with the exceptions of the Kingdom of Aragon and Scotland, which remained loyal to the Avignon pope, and various Italian states, which adhered to the Roman pope. During his ten-month reign, Alexander V's aim was to extend his obedience with the assistance of France, and, notably, of Duke Louis II of Anjou, upon whom he conferred the investiture of the Kingdom of Sicily, having removed it from Ladislaus of Naples. He proclaimed and promised rather than effected a certain number of reforms: the abandonment of the rights of "spoils" and "procurations", and the re-establishment of the system of canonical election in the cathedral churches and principal monasteries.
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