St. Nicholas’ Chantry, a chantry at the altar of St. James; Sawcendine’s Chantry; “Morrow Mass” Chantry;St. Catherine’s Chantry; Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Fleming;[602]Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Isabell Caldwell; Newark Chantry; Trinity Chantry; All Saints’ Chantry; Foster’s Chantry; Trinity Gild[603]Chantry; Trinity Chantry, founded by John Leeke.
St. Nicholas’ Chantry, a chantry at the altar of St. James; Sawcendine’s Chantry; “Morrow Mass” Chantry;St. Catherine’s Chantry; Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Fleming;[602]Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Isabell Caldwell; Newark Chantry; Trinity Chantry; All Saints’ Chantry; Foster’s Chantry; Trinity Gild[603]Chantry; Trinity Chantry, founded by John Leeke.
There are thirteen chantries in all. One we note was for a “Morrow Mass,”i.e.a very early celebration of Holy Communion; the rest would be arranged at various hours. The Trinity Gild was the great gild of the town, which here, as in many other towns, supplied, to some extent, the place of a municipal corporation.
Some solidarity was given to this group of cantarists by the fact that they lived together in a mansion which a benefactor had provided for them. The internal economy of the mansion would require some regulation which would not improbably be borrowed from the rules which were customary in a college of priest-vicars, or chantry house of several priests. The rules for the chantry priests lodging in Archbishop Rotherham’s College,[604]and those for the chapel at Kingston-on-Thames,[605]will indicate their general character.
Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of the East Riding of York, a native of the town just before the Reformation (1532), founded at the north-west point of the churchyard a free school for a priest sufficiently learned to teach grammar, who was to be paid £10; together with a song school for a priest[606]sufficiently learned to teach plain song and play the organ, who was to have £8; and six children to be taught music, and to play upon the organs, who were to have 26s.8d.each. The founder also founded an obit of 40s., and 40s.to be given to the alderman [of the Holy Trinity Gild] for the time being.
The cathedral-like choir of the church would then be well filled on Sundays and holy days by the vicar and his chaplain and the thirteen cantarists and the children of the song school, and the Divine service honourably rendered, and the long nave would doubtless be filled with the devout people. The whole clerical staff of the town consisted of the vicar, his chaplain and clerk, the brethren of the two friaries, perhaps a dozen in each, the thirteen cantarists in their chantry house: nearly forty men, besides the military monks in the preceptory.
Besides monks and friars, rectors and vicars, cantarists, and chaplains of various kinds, there was still another kind of religious persons to be found in many towns, viz. Recluses. The first recluses wereenclosed in the Egyptian deserts in a narrow cell; but in process of time a churchyard was taken to be a sufficiently solitary place, and the cell sometimes consisted of two or more fairly comfortable rooms built against the chancel wall of the church. There lived an old hermit or priest, or a religious woman, supported partly by an endowment, partly by the offerings and bequests of the people. Their picturesque asceticism attracted the interest and veneration of impressible people, who would consult them in the affairs of their souls, and no doubt in their social difficulties also, and receive more or less good council according to the character of the recluse.[607]
Bridge-Chapels.
There is still another feature wanting to complete (in many cases) this survey of the ecclesiastical aspect of a mediæval town. A good hard road through a wild boggy tract, or a raised causeway across the often flooded valley in which the town was situated, or a stone bridge in place of a dangerous ford or inconvenient ferry, conferred a very real benefit upon the whole community, from the king in his royal progresses through the country to the peasantry who brought their produce to the weekly market. Men wisely included road-making and bridge-building among meritorious acts of charity, and the calendar of chantries, etc., contains a numberof endowments which were given or bequeathed for these purposes. Very frequently the pious builder of a bridge added a religious foundation to it in the shape of a little chapel; sometimes the chapel was built at one end of the bridge; more commonly, perhaps, the central pier on one side of the bridge was enlarged, and the chapel picturesquely erected upon it. The chapel was endowed with a stipend for a perpetual chantry priest to say prayers there for the family of the bridge-builder, and for all Christian people; and no doubt the founder hoped for himself the prayers of all the Christian people who used his bridge. Those of us who, lounging about the churches of other countries as sight-seers, have seen the market women come in, set down their basketson the floor, and kneel down for a few moments for silent prayer, will easily understand the practical religious uses of these bridge-chapels.
Bridge and Chapel, Wakefield.
Perhaps the chapel built on the new stone London Bridge of 1176 was one of the earliest and the most important of them. It was built over a crypt on the central pier on the eastern side of the bridge, and dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr, who had been canonized three years before. It had a master and fraternity, and several chantries were founded in it. Bideford Bridge, one of the longest at that time in the kingdom, was built in 1350, on the initiative of the parish priest, Sir R. Gurney, who had a vision of an angel showing him where to build. The lord of the manor, Sir Theodore Granville, Knight, gave the undertaking his countenance and aid; Grandisson, the Bishop of Exeter, gave his licence to collect money backed by the promise of indulgences, and the bridge was made with its 23 arches, 177 yards long. In later times, the estates of the Bridge Gild were under the management of a warden and brethren, who not only kept the bridge in repair, but also built a hall for their meetings and a school beside it, founded charities, gave dinners, and kept to that end—Charles Kingsley in “Westward Ho!” is our authority for saying it—the best stocked cellar in all Devon. There is a good example of a bridge-chapel still remaining on the centre pier of Rotherham bridge, and another at Wakefield, served by two chaplains. We have remains or notes of others: two at Nottingham, one,super altem pontem, dedicatedto St. James, the other,ad finem pontis, dedicated to St. Mary; at Newcastle, dedicated to St. Thomas; at Camelford, dedicated to St. Thomas, built by the burgesses of the town; at Exeter, founded by the mayor and bailiffs of the city; at Stamford, dedicated to St. Thomas; at Elvet, dedicated to St. James; two at York, St. Anne’s on Fossbridge and St. William’s on Ouse bridge; Burton, at one end of the long bridge over the Trent; at Doncaster, where the bridge had a stone gateway with a chapel of “Our Lady” beside it at one end, and a stone cross beside the entrance to the bridge at the other end; and at many other places, as Durham, Manchester, Rochester, Bidenham, Totton, Gronethe, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; at Sheffield, Darfield, etc. Sometimes a hospital for the entertainment of poor travellers was built at the end of a bridge, as at Burton and at Nottingham;[608]at Brandford there was a chapel-house and hospitaljuxta pontem.[609]
DISCIPLINE.
The average Englishman of the present day has hardly an idea of what is meant by ecclesiastical discipline, and is quite ignorant of the large part which it played in the practical religious life of people in ancient times. Yet its principles are laid down in the New Testament; the right and duty of the Church to hear and determine causes between Christian men is contained in our Lord’s command, “If thy brother trespass against thee ... tell it to the Church; and if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican” (Matt. xviii. 17). The general recognition and exercise of this jurisdiction is alluded to in the apostolic writings (1 Cor. vi. 4; x. 32); and St. Paul gives several actual examples of its enforcement (1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20). The Church in all times and places has maintained this power of spiritual discipline to be one of its fundamental principles.
The special jurisdiction which the decree of William the Conqueror gave to the Ecclesiastical Courts over ecclesiastical persons, and over lay persons in ecclesiastical cases, was perhaps an encroachment upon the province of the civil law, but the spiritual jurisdiction involved in our Lord’s Command is independent of the sanction of the civil magistrate.
This spiritual discipline is an important aid to the power of the civil magistrate in the Christian community. Where the magistrate’s power stops, that of the pastorate steps in. The magistrate can only take cognizance of crimes, and punish a man for offences against another; the Church takes cognizance of sins, and deals with a manpro salute animæ. If the sin has not caused scandal, the penance inflicted may be of a private nature; but if it has caused scandal, the punishment is public, “that others may learn not to offend.”
The penitential system in the Saxon Church, as we learn it from the penitential known by the name of Archbishop Theodore, was a very elaborate system, classifying sins and assigning penalties to them; it was confirmed in some particulars by the ecclesiastical enactments of kings. In greater matters the case came before the sheriff and bishop at the Shiremote or Hundredmote, and the sentence was enforced by the same power which executed the civil sentences of the same court. In the Ecclesiastical Courts after the Norman Conquest, the bishop, and in some matters the archdeacons under his authority, tried the cause, and in case of resistance to the sentenceapplied for a royal writ to be sent to the sheriff to enforce it. In most cases the knowledge that the Bishop’s Court had the civil power at its back was enough to lead men to submit to its authority. In the last resort the spiritual authority had the sentence of excommunication to fall back upon.[610]
The discipline of the clergy was specially in the hands of the bishop and his archdeacons, who dealt with moral offences and ecclesiastical irregularities in their courts. The famous Constitutions of Otho (1237), followed up by those of Archbishop Stephen Langton, enacted, that in every rural deanery one rector should be appointed to hear the confessions of the clergy. Archbishop Peckham, in 1281, complains that it had not been done, and renews the ordinance. This was not to prevent the clergy from going to other penitentiaries appointed by the bishop.
Archbishop Greenfield of York (1310) issued an injunction, engrossed by a public notary, ordering a certain Ralph de Grave, Canon of Worksop, who had proved contumacious, to betake himself within three days to the monastery of Bridlington, and there to do penance for his rebellious behaviour.[611]
Among Grostete’s letters is one to a cleric, in which he rebukes his luxurious and licentious life, and tells him roundly that he is “a blot on the clergy, a shame to theologians, a delight to the enemies of religion, a derision and song and story to the vulgar.”[612]
Robert Coton, for a sermon preached at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, containing heretical teaching, was sentenced to carry a faggot in procession round the cathedral, and afterwards round Atcham Church.[613]Robert Segefeld, chaplain, in 1455, confessing immorality, is sentenced to public penance in his chapel and in the cathedral, and to pay 6s.8d.to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. This penance consisted in walking barefoot, in linen vestments (pannis lineis), carrying a candle before the procession, on a Sunday.[614]Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be released from the excommunication he had incurred for procuring the celebration of a clandestine marriage in St. Paul’s Cray Church. As a penance, he was ordered to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day, and there offer a wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was to be made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst Church. In addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars at Oxford for two years. Ferby afterwards came to an understanding with his diocesan, and was dismissed from the suit. In the next February, John, chaplain of Paul’s Cray, doubtless the priest who had officiated on the occasion, swore before the bishop, in the cathedral, not to offend again, and was absolved.[615]He redeemed his penance by takingan oath to pay a mark at Lady Day in that and the two ensuing years.[616]
Robert Coton, for a sermon preached at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, containing heretical teaching, was sentenced to carry a faggot in procession round the cathedral, and afterwards round Atcham Church.[613]
Robert Segefeld, chaplain, in 1455, confessing immorality, is sentenced to public penance in his chapel and in the cathedral, and to pay 6s.8d.to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. This penance consisted in walking barefoot, in linen vestments (pannis lineis), carrying a candle before the procession, on a Sunday.[614]
Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be released from the excommunication he had incurred for procuring the celebration of a clandestine marriage in St. Paul’s Cray Church. As a penance, he was ordered to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day, and there offer a wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was to be made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst Church. In addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars at Oxford for two years. Ferby afterwards came to an understanding with his diocesan, and was dismissed from the suit. In the next February, John, chaplain of Paul’s Cray, doubtless the priest who had officiated on the occasion, swore before the bishop, in the cathedral, not to offend again, and was absolved.[615]He redeemed his penance by takingan oath to pay a mark at Lady Day in that and the two ensuing years.[616]
SIX KNIGHTS DOING PENANCE AT THE SHRINE OF ST. EDMUND.XV. CENT. MS., 2278 f., 108 v., HARL.
The bishops had to deal, not only with the moral offences of the clergy, but also with the occasional crimes committed by members of this privileged class. Degradation from Orders, and imprisonment with penitential discipline, seems to have been the usual mode of punishment. We have seen that a Constitution of Archbishop Boniface, 1260, directed every bishop to have in his diocese one or two prisons for confining clerics flagitious in crime, or convicted by canonical censure, and that any cleric committing a crime such that if he were a layman he would, according to the secular law, suffer the extreme penalty, should be adjudged to perpetual imprisonment.
This spiritual power was strong enough to cope with the most powerful offenders. We all remember how Henry II., able and powerful king as he was, submitted to discipline at the hands of the monks of Canterbury Cathedral, before the shrine of St. Thomas.The turbulent Fulke de Breauté, in the reign of Henry III., had plundered St. Alban’s Abbey and taken some refugees out of its sanctuary. Being warned by the saint in a dream, he offered himself at the monastery to suffer penance; and there despoiled of his clothes, with his knights similarly stripped, bearing in hand a rod, “which is vulgarly called baleis,” and confessing his fault, he received the discipline from each of the brothers on his naked flesh.[617]He refused, however, to make restitution.When Thomas of Cantilupe was Bishop of Hereford(1275-1283), Lord Clifford plundered his cattle and ill-treated his tenants. When summoned by the bishop to make amends for his misconduct, he offered to do so by a money payment; but the bishop compelled him to walk barefoot as a penitent to the altar, while the bishop himself inflicted chastisement upon him as he walked.[618]John Langton, Bishop of Chichester, c. 1314, excommunicated Earl Warren for adultery. The earl came to Chichester and endeavoured to seize the bishop; but Langton and his servants not only repelled the attack, but captured the earl and his retinue and put them all in prison.
This spiritual power was strong enough to cope with the most powerful offenders. We all remember how Henry II., able and powerful king as he was, submitted to discipline at the hands of the monks of Canterbury Cathedral, before the shrine of St. Thomas.
The turbulent Fulke de Breauté, in the reign of Henry III., had plundered St. Alban’s Abbey and taken some refugees out of its sanctuary. Being warned by the saint in a dream, he offered himself at the monastery to suffer penance; and there despoiled of his clothes, with his knights similarly stripped, bearing in hand a rod, “which is vulgarly called baleis,” and confessing his fault, he received the discipline from each of the brothers on his naked flesh.[617]He refused, however, to make restitution.
When Thomas of Cantilupe was Bishop of Hereford(1275-1283), Lord Clifford plundered his cattle and ill-treated his tenants. When summoned by the bishop to make amends for his misconduct, he offered to do so by a money payment; but the bishop compelled him to walk barefoot as a penitent to the altar, while the bishop himself inflicted chastisement upon him as he walked.[618]
John Langton, Bishop of Chichester, c. 1314, excommunicated Earl Warren for adultery. The earl came to Chichester and endeavoured to seize the bishop; but Langton and his servants not only repelled the attack, but captured the earl and his retinue and put them all in prison.
The accompanying plate is from Lydgate’s “Life of Edmund VI.” (Harl. 2278, f. 108 and f. 108 v.). Preceding it is a picture of five knights issuing from the gate of the abbey laden with plunder, and keeping the monks at bay at the sword’s point; next this picture of the knights stripped to their drawers, making their submission to the abbot and his clerks at the shrine of the saint. Between the two pictures the story is told thus:
Knightes of yoe of malice and ravyne,Agen the fredom of Edmund ful confiable,Habergowned and in platis fyne,Entered his court, took hors out yf his stable,With swerdes drawe to shewe hemself vengable,Lyst any man wolde make resistence,Hadde forth the pray beytort violence.But sodenly thus with hem it stood,Or they passyd the boūdes of the gate,Travayled with furye and echon was wood,Repented, after offered up mayl and plate,Confessed, assoiled, in cronycle set the date,Ever after off hool affeccion,Hadde to the martyr gret devocion.
We must bear in mind that these were the days when civil penalties included the stocks and the pillory and whipping through the streets at a cart’s tail.
In 1344, a sheriff’s officer, who slew a rector, resisting the attempt to arrest him, was, with his followers, condemned to walk, stripped to their breeches, like the knights at St. Edmund’s, round the principal churches of the district, and to be whipped at the door of each church.[619]And such instances might be indefinitely multiplied.About 1284, Archbishop Peckham made a provincial visitation, in which he exercised severe discipline on both clergy and laity. For example, in Lichfield Diocese, the bishop being a foreigner and non-resident, the archbishop sent a public summons to him to reside, on penalty of deprivation, telling him that since he could not preach to his people, he was the rather bound to reside among them, and to spend his revenue in hospitality and relieving the poor. In Chichester Diocese, he inflicted upon one John Ham, a priest, convicted of immorality, a three years’ penance of fasting, prayers, and pilgrimage, during which time the profits of his living were sequestrated to the poor. In Wilts, being informed that Sir Osborn Gyfford had carried off two nuns from the Monastery of Wilton, he proceeded to excommunication against him, and only consented to remit the censure on these conditions: that he should be stripped to the waist on three Sundays in Wilton Parish Church and beaten with rods; the discipline to be publicly repeated both in the market-place and parish church of Shaftesbury; should fast for three months, and go on athree years’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem; should not wear a sword, or appear in the habit of a gentleman.Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, instituted an inquiry into the morals of the laity as well as clergy in his diocese, but the king, Henry III., interposed, and obliged him to desist.
In 1344, a sheriff’s officer, who slew a rector, resisting the attempt to arrest him, was, with his followers, condemned to walk, stripped to their breeches, like the knights at St. Edmund’s, round the principal churches of the district, and to be whipped at the door of each church.[619]And such instances might be indefinitely multiplied.
About 1284, Archbishop Peckham made a provincial visitation, in which he exercised severe discipline on both clergy and laity. For example, in Lichfield Diocese, the bishop being a foreigner and non-resident, the archbishop sent a public summons to him to reside, on penalty of deprivation, telling him that since he could not preach to his people, he was the rather bound to reside among them, and to spend his revenue in hospitality and relieving the poor. In Chichester Diocese, he inflicted upon one John Ham, a priest, convicted of immorality, a three years’ penance of fasting, prayers, and pilgrimage, during which time the profits of his living were sequestrated to the poor. In Wilts, being informed that Sir Osborn Gyfford had carried off two nuns from the Monastery of Wilton, he proceeded to excommunication against him, and only consented to remit the censure on these conditions: that he should be stripped to the waist on three Sundays in Wilton Parish Church and beaten with rods; the discipline to be publicly repeated both in the market-place and parish church of Shaftesbury; should fast for three months, and go on athree years’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem; should not wear a sword, or appear in the habit of a gentleman.
Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, instituted an inquiry into the morals of the laity as well as clergy in his diocese, but the king, Henry III., interposed, and obliged him to desist.
But to come to a different class of offenders, and to various kinds of misdoing. It will be enough to select a few examples.
1253. Hugo de Berewyk found surety of ten marks to behave properly to his wife, and he was sentenced, for “that he had long been excommunicate, that without shoes or girdle or [sword ?] he should receive the discipline in the porch of the Church of Gysele, before the whole procession, once on the day of the Holy Trinity, a second time on the day of St. John Baptist, and the third time on the day of SS. Peter and Paul.”[620]When Bishop Ralph, of Bath and Wells, in 1348, visited Ilchester, the people of the place made a riot, attacked the bishop and his people, and shut them up in the church for some hours, till they were rescued by the well-affected. The riot was punished by excommunication of the offenders, and interdict of the Church. One of the ringleaders, Roger Warmville, was tried at Taunton by the Commissary, and sentenced to penance. He was to walk on three several occasions, bareheaded and barefoot, round Ilchester Church, in front of the procession made on Sundays and feast days, holding a candle, which he was to present at the altar during mass, while a chaplain declared his sin to the congregation in the vulgar tongue. Moreover, he was to be flogged thrice on market days at Ilchester, Wells, Bath, Glastonbury, and Somerton; he wasto pay a fine of £20, and make a pilgrimage to Canterbury in honour of St. Thomas the Martyr.[621]In 1474, a case of homicide between the Lamberts and the Knolls, by the award of Wm. Blackburn, Canon of Bolton, it was awarded and ordained that Thomas, Henry, Richard, Stephen and Thomas Knoll of Floder, “come to the parish church of Preston, and there in tyme of service, kneling on their knees, loose gerded, ask God forgivenes of ye dethe of Henrie Lambert, and ask forgivenes of his fader John Lambert, and pay xl marks to ye behofe of Jo. Lambert and his children, unto Ric. Pilkinton, Esq., on the awter of St. Nicholas, in the parish church of Skypton.”[622]All kinds of offences were dealt with by similar penalties. Richard Ram confessing that he had not paid the tithe of his corn to his rector of Cliffe, in 1363, was sentenced to carry a sheaf of corn on his shoulder to the altar of Cliffe Church, and there to offer it and the value of the tithe withheld.[623]Among the cases recorded in the “Proceedings of the Courts of Durham,” p. 26, we find, in a case of immorality, the man sentenced to receive four “fustigations” round the church, and the woman two.For non-attendance at church on Sundays, we have already quoted several cases (p. 201).In 1480, nine parishioners of Halling and Snodland[624]were summoned to the court for playing tennis on Thursday in Whitsun-week in time of matins and mass. They pleaded guilty, and took an oath to perform whatever penance the bishop might impose. The sentence was that those of Snodland should walk barefoot after the procession on the following Sunday, each carrying a taper worth a halfpenny,which they should offer at the Holy Cross. The Halling men were to do the like, with this difference, that they were each to offer two tapers at the high altar and two at the altar of St. John.William Bek, of Cooling, was cited into the court of John Alcock (1476-1486), Bishop of Rochester, in consequence of having been detected by his wife and neighbours in eating meat on Fridays and other fasts. Bek confessed his guilt, though he doubted if he had offended in Lent, but pleaded that he was not responsible for his actions, since his mind had been so much disturbed for three years that he only knew Sunday because his wife on that day offered him the consecrated bread. The plea did not avail. It was ordered that as a penance he should be thrice whipped round Cooling Church, before the procession, clad in a white cloth, with bare head and feet, and carrying a taper of the value of one penny. Further, that on Friday he should be whipped in Rochester market in like manner, and should offer a taper at the shrine of St. William.[625]Margaret Reed, in 1469, is brought before the Court for using ill language to Martha Howkett, in that she told her she was a “horse godmother and waterwitch.” So, in 1560, Wm. Lee is reported to have said to Bayle, who was reported to be a deacon at Durham, “Methenketh ye goeth not lyk a man of the church, but lyk a ruffing.” To whom the said Bayle answered, “What hast thou to do with my apparell or my going? Thou art a slave and a knave to find fault with me.”[626]
1253. Hugo de Berewyk found surety of ten marks to behave properly to his wife, and he was sentenced, for “that he had long been excommunicate, that without shoes or girdle or [sword ?] he should receive the discipline in the porch of the Church of Gysele, before the whole procession, once on the day of the Holy Trinity, a second time on the day of St. John Baptist, and the third time on the day of SS. Peter and Paul.”[620]
When Bishop Ralph, of Bath and Wells, in 1348, visited Ilchester, the people of the place made a riot, attacked the bishop and his people, and shut them up in the church for some hours, till they were rescued by the well-affected. The riot was punished by excommunication of the offenders, and interdict of the Church. One of the ringleaders, Roger Warmville, was tried at Taunton by the Commissary, and sentenced to penance. He was to walk on three several occasions, bareheaded and barefoot, round Ilchester Church, in front of the procession made on Sundays and feast days, holding a candle, which he was to present at the altar during mass, while a chaplain declared his sin to the congregation in the vulgar tongue. Moreover, he was to be flogged thrice on market days at Ilchester, Wells, Bath, Glastonbury, and Somerton; he wasto pay a fine of £20, and make a pilgrimage to Canterbury in honour of St. Thomas the Martyr.[621]
In 1474, a case of homicide between the Lamberts and the Knolls, by the award of Wm. Blackburn, Canon of Bolton, it was awarded and ordained that Thomas, Henry, Richard, Stephen and Thomas Knoll of Floder, “come to the parish church of Preston, and there in tyme of service, kneling on their knees, loose gerded, ask God forgivenes of ye dethe of Henrie Lambert, and ask forgivenes of his fader John Lambert, and pay xl marks to ye behofe of Jo. Lambert and his children, unto Ric. Pilkinton, Esq., on the awter of St. Nicholas, in the parish church of Skypton.”[622]
All kinds of offences were dealt with by similar penalties. Richard Ram confessing that he had not paid the tithe of his corn to his rector of Cliffe, in 1363, was sentenced to carry a sheaf of corn on his shoulder to the altar of Cliffe Church, and there to offer it and the value of the tithe withheld.[623]
Among the cases recorded in the “Proceedings of the Courts of Durham,” p. 26, we find, in a case of immorality, the man sentenced to receive four “fustigations” round the church, and the woman two.
For non-attendance at church on Sundays, we have already quoted several cases (p. 201).
In 1480, nine parishioners of Halling and Snodland[624]were summoned to the court for playing tennis on Thursday in Whitsun-week in time of matins and mass. They pleaded guilty, and took an oath to perform whatever penance the bishop might impose. The sentence was that those of Snodland should walk barefoot after the procession on the following Sunday, each carrying a taper worth a halfpenny,which they should offer at the Holy Cross. The Halling men were to do the like, with this difference, that they were each to offer two tapers at the high altar and two at the altar of St. John.
William Bek, of Cooling, was cited into the court of John Alcock (1476-1486), Bishop of Rochester, in consequence of having been detected by his wife and neighbours in eating meat on Fridays and other fasts. Bek confessed his guilt, though he doubted if he had offended in Lent, but pleaded that he was not responsible for his actions, since his mind had been so much disturbed for three years that he only knew Sunday because his wife on that day offered him the consecrated bread. The plea did not avail. It was ordered that as a penance he should be thrice whipped round Cooling Church, before the procession, clad in a white cloth, with bare head and feet, and carrying a taper of the value of one penny. Further, that on Friday he should be whipped in Rochester market in like manner, and should offer a taper at the shrine of St. William.[625]
Margaret Reed, in 1469, is brought before the Court for using ill language to Martha Howkett, in that she told her she was a “horse godmother and waterwitch.” So, in 1560, Wm. Lee is reported to have said to Bayle, who was reported to be a deacon at Durham, “Methenketh ye goeth not lyk a man of the church, but lyk a ruffing.” To whom the said Bayle answered, “What hast thou to do with my apparell or my going? Thou art a slave and a knave to find fault with me.”[626]
There are many other instances of defamation, at p. 90, etc. Here is an example of a little later date than our period, which shows exactly what was the way of making amends for the offence of defamation:—
A confession to be made by Charles Shawe for slandering Bar. Mitforth in St. Nicoles Church, in lynen apparell, after the reading of the third chapter of St. James’ Epistle—“Beloved neighbours, I am now comen hither to shewe myself sory for slannderinge one Bartram Midforde, namely in that I called him openly ‘beggerly harlot and cutthrote,’ saying that he ‘was a covitous snowge, and such as he by Godd’s worde aught to be weded out of the Coomenwelthe.’ I acknowledge that thus to slannder my Xtian brother is an heynouse offence, first towardes God, who hathe straightly forbydden it in his holy lawes, accountyng it to be a kind of murderinge my neighbour, and threatninge to punyshe it with hell fire and the losse of the kyngdome of heavene. Also the Queen’s lawes, against which I have stubbornely stande, doth grevously punyshe all slannderers, backbiters, and sowers of discorde, debate, hatred, and disquietnes, to the shame of the offenders and feare of others. Agayne, my unruly tongue, if it were not punished, it wolde not only set mo of you on fire, but also it wolde bolden others to do the like. Wherefore, as I am now called back frome myne inordinate doinges by this correction, with my coste and shame, so I beseche yow all to be witnesses with me that I am sory frome the verrey bottome of my harte for this and my other like offences against God, the Quene’s majestie, and the said Bertram Mydforde; promysinge before God and you here present, that I fully intende to amende my outerageous tonge and wilfull behaviour, as maye please Almightie God, satisfye the Quene’s lawes, and towrne to yur good example and myne owne sowle’s health; for the obteyninge and performinge thereof I humbly beseche yow all, with me and for me, to pray unto God as our Saviour Jesus Xt. himself, beinge on earth, taught us, sayinge ‘Our Father,’ etc.A.D.1570.”[627]A suit was begun in 1458 against John Andrew ofCobham and Margery Allyn, late of Shorne, for having clandestinely married while a matrimonial cause was pending between her and Richard Coke. They were sentenced, December 20, to be whipped “after the manner of penitents” once in Rochester market and thrice round their parish church. Walter Crepehogg, who had promoted the marriage, was thought the worst offender, for besidessixwhippings he was condemned to carry a torch worth 6s.8d.to the altar of the cathedral, and to make a similar offering to St. Blaize at Bromley.[628]
A confession to be made by Charles Shawe for slandering Bar. Mitforth in St. Nicoles Church, in lynen apparell, after the reading of the third chapter of St. James’ Epistle—
“Beloved neighbours, I am now comen hither to shewe myself sory for slannderinge one Bartram Midforde, namely in that I called him openly ‘beggerly harlot and cutthrote,’ saying that he ‘was a covitous snowge, and such as he by Godd’s worde aught to be weded out of the Coomenwelthe.’ I acknowledge that thus to slannder my Xtian brother is an heynouse offence, first towardes God, who hathe straightly forbydden it in his holy lawes, accountyng it to be a kind of murderinge my neighbour, and threatninge to punyshe it with hell fire and the losse of the kyngdome of heavene. Also the Queen’s lawes, against which I have stubbornely stande, doth grevously punyshe all slannderers, backbiters, and sowers of discorde, debate, hatred, and disquietnes, to the shame of the offenders and feare of others. Agayne, my unruly tongue, if it were not punished, it wolde not only set mo of you on fire, but also it wolde bolden others to do the like. Wherefore, as I am now called back frome myne inordinate doinges by this correction, with my coste and shame, so I beseche yow all to be witnesses with me that I am sory frome the verrey bottome of my harte for this and my other like offences against God, the Quene’s majestie, and the said Bertram Mydforde; promysinge before God and you here present, that I fully intende to amende my outerageous tonge and wilfull behaviour, as maye please Almightie God, satisfye the Quene’s lawes, and towrne to yur good example and myne owne sowle’s health; for the obteyninge and performinge thereof I humbly beseche yow all, with me and for me, to pray unto God as our Saviour Jesus Xt. himself, beinge on earth, taught us, sayinge ‘Our Father,’ etc.A.D.1570.”[627]
A suit was begun in 1458 against John Andrew ofCobham and Margery Allyn, late of Shorne, for having clandestinely married while a matrimonial cause was pending between her and Richard Coke. They were sentenced, December 20, to be whipped “after the manner of penitents” once in Rochester market and thrice round their parish church. Walter Crepehogg, who had promoted the marriage, was thought the worst offender, for besidessixwhippings he was condemned to carry a torch worth 6s.8d.to the altar of the cathedral, and to make a similar offering to St. Blaize at Bromley.[628]
Occasionally a contumacious person resisted the sentence. For example—
In 1315, Lady Plokenet [Plucknet] directed by will that she should be buried in Sherborne Church. Her son, Sir Alan, probably to save expense, buried her “in a less dignified place.” The bishop sent him orders by the Rector of Dowlish Wake, who was the Rural Dean of Crewkerne, to obey his mother’s request. Falling into a rage at this, the knight rushed on the dean, caught him by the throat, and choaked him by twisting his hood, and even caused him to bleed. The dean got away, and fled. At Haslebury, however, Sir Alan and his men caught him, and there the knight made him eat the bishop’s letter, and chew and swallow the wax seals. For this he was excommunicated, but made due submission.[629]
In 1315, Lady Plokenet [Plucknet] directed by will that she should be buried in Sherborne Church. Her son, Sir Alan, probably to save expense, buried her “in a less dignified place.” The bishop sent him orders by the Rector of Dowlish Wake, who was the Rural Dean of Crewkerne, to obey his mother’s request. Falling into a rage at this, the knight rushed on the dean, caught him by the throat, and choaked him by twisting his hood, and even caused him to bleed. The dean got away, and fled. At Haslebury, however, Sir Alan and his men caught him, and there the knight made him eat the bishop’s letter, and chew and swallow the wax seals. For this he was excommunicated, but made due submission.[629]
In the “Proceedings of the Durham Court” we read that—
John Doffenby, being a person excommunicate, did come into Mitfourth Church in tyme of service, and being admonished to depart thrice, would not, but gave evil language, saying that he cared not for the commissary and his laws, nor for the curate, and bade them come who durst and carry him out of the church; whereupon the curate was driven to leave off service at the gospel. It does not appear what was the end of the case.Agnes Hebburne, 1454, having been sentenced to do penance inpannis lineis, impudently pleaded that she had not a fit smock, and was not able to buy one; whereupon the judge ordered her to do her penance in a “tunica habens unam vestem vocatur le napron.”
John Doffenby, being a person excommunicate, did come into Mitfourth Church in tyme of service, and being admonished to depart thrice, would not, but gave evil language, saying that he cared not for the commissary and his laws, nor for the curate, and bade them come who durst and carry him out of the church; whereupon the curate was driven to leave off service at the gospel. It does not appear what was the end of the case.
Agnes Hebburne, 1454, having been sentenced to do penance inpannis lineis, impudently pleaded that she had not a fit smock, and was not able to buy one; whereupon the judge ordered her to do her penance in a “tunica habens unam vestem vocatur le napron.”
There are some pictorial illustrations of the subject in the illuminated MSS. The scourging of Henry II. before the shrine of Becket is often portrayed. In the Omne Bonum (Royal, 6 Ed. VI., f. 218 v.) is a very curious picture of a priest giving the discipline to a penitent kneeling before him;[630]and at f. 443 (6 E. VII.), a man scourging himself on the bare back in his bedroom. In a Pontifical printed at Venice, 1520, f. 155, penitents in their shirts are kneelingbefore the bishop; a man kneeling to a priest who lays the rod of absolution on his shoulder, at 203 v., and Reconciliation of Penitents at the end of Lent, f. 177.
There are two sides to most questions, and what a man will say upon any question depends upon his point of view. What we are told of clergy and laity of those ages by courts of discipline which dealt exclusively with their peccadilloes, and by the satirists whose motive was the scourging of the peccators, gives us one side of the subject. Nobody took the trouble to tell the obvious, uninteresting story of the ruck of parsons of respectable character who were doing their daily round of duty, Sunday and workaday, fairly well, except Chaucer, and he—great student of human life and manners that he was—while scourging with a whip of scorpions the faults of monks and friars, and pardoners and “sompnours,” completes his gallery of ecclesiastical characters with the loveliest portrait of the typical parish priest.
The inquisitorial meddling of the courts of spiritual discipline, their pecuniary exactions and shameful penances, were by no means the least of the abuses which made men cry out for a reformation.
In connection with this system of discipline was the custom of pronouncing a general sentence of excommunication in church several times a year which is mentioned by John Myrc (p. 238). We may add here that it was not at all uncommon to try to bring an unknown thief to make restitutionby the threat of a sentence of excommunication; thus Bishop Thomas, in 1376, at the request of Philip de Nevile, directs all the clergy to give notice that some persons unknown have knowingly detained a very valuable hawk, and they are to restore it within ten days on pain of the greater excommunication.[631]Two years afterwards (1378), the same bishop excommunicates certain persons who have stolen some “merlions” from his forest of Wesdale, and destroyed their nests.[632]On the other hand, the old Saxon system of purgation of oath still continued,e.g.in 1458, William Godthank, accused of theft, appeared in Gnosall Church, Lichfield, with eight of his neighbours, and standing before the altar he swore that he was innocent, and his neighbours that they believed him, whereupon the bishop threatened excommunication against any one who should in future slander him.[633]
Archbishop Peckham’s third constitution at Reading (1279) orders the General Excommunications to be explained to the people on the Sundays after every Rural Chapter, and the archdeacons to see that it is done.[634]
RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
The subject of the religious condition of the parish priests and their people in the Middle Ages—their belief and life—brings us into a polemical atmosphere. There are some admirers of those times who look upon them as “the Ages of Faith;” there are others who think that in those times of false doctrines and manifold superstitions priests and people were generally degraded and vicious.
The truth lies somewhere between the two. We do not propose to enter into polemical discussion. Our business, as it seems to us, is to try to put ourselves into the midst of the people, to enter into their minds, to study their lives, and to represent as fairly as we can what manner of men priests and people were, what they believed, and how they lived.
We seem to see on the whole that there were two “schools of thought” in the Middle Ages. Oneconsisted of learned men of a speculative turn of mind, who explained and developed ancient doctrines and practices into new and erroneous meanings; followed by a crowd of devout people who adopted their views, and sometimes degraded philosophical speculations and pious opinions, which they hardly understood, into gross misapprehensions and superstitions. On the other hand, there were people of competent learning, who read the Scriptures and the ancient Fathers, and in substance adhered to their teaching; and with them remained a crowd of people whose Christian common sense kept them fairly free of extravagances. We must be careful in judging people who have been brought up in a faulty system. We must not take for granted that everybody believed in every error and in the conclusions logically involved in it, or approved of every superstitious custom. On the contrary, the soul, like the stomach, seems to discriminate what it lives on, and to have a power of assimilating what is good, and rejecting more or less what is noxious. Why should we doubt that God watches over His people, and helps the ignorant, well-intentioned Christian man unconsciously to refuse the evil and choose the good?
If we look at the general character of the centuries we have been studying, there is no denying that there was a great deal which was good in them. The people in the twelfth century had a great zeal for religion of an ascetic type, and amidst the violence and oppression of the times there was a great deal of religious feeling of an exalted character,and many a saintly life. It was the great age of the Latin hymns.
Early English architecture.North-west transept of Beverley Minster.
In the thirteenth century, the enthusiasm for the ascetic life had cooled down, having been to some extent disappointed; the monks were not so highly thought of, and the more sober type of religion represented by the bishop and secular clergy came to the front. It was a great century of intense vitality; the spirit of freedom was moving the middle classes of the people, and the Church was in hearty sympathy with them. It was the age of organization of civil institutions. Very few monasteries were built, but every cathedral was enlarged, and churcheswere rebuilt; there was never so active an architectural period. The new religious spirit of the age showed itself in that rare event, the introduction of a new style of architecture, bold engineering skill in its construction, with pointed arches soaring heavenwards, ornamentations of acanthus leaves just unfolding in the vigour of the spring-time of a new year.
In the fourteenth century, the history of the Lollard movement is enough to show the strong religious feeling of the people and its tendency towards sounder views of religion. The saying that, “Where you saw three people talking together, two of them were Lollards,” was said by a Lollard, and may be an exaggeration; but there is no question that (while some went to extremes, as always in an age of great intellectual movement and strong feeling) the mass of the people was leavened by what there was—and there was much—that was true in the new ideas.[635]
It has been suggested by ingenious critics that Chaucer, being connected by marriage and sympathy with the leader of the party which favoured the opinion of the school of Wiclif, his famous description of “a poure parson of a town” is only the ideal of what a parish priest ought to be according to the view of that school. It may be maintained, on the other hand, that Chaucer’s sketches of the clergy of all orders are conceived in a spirit of genial satire;and that if the parish priests had been generally worldly-minded and negligent of their duties, unclerical in attire and weapons, attendants on field-sports and haunters of taverns, the great artist would have put a man of that type among his inimitable gallery of contemporary character sketches. We have no fear of being mistaken when we take it that his “poure parson of a town” (which does not necessarily mean a town but quite possibly a village rector[636]) had many prototypes among the parochial clergy of the fourteenth century.
A good man there was of religioun,That was a poure parson of a toun;But riche was of holy thought and werk.He was also a lerned man, a clerk,That Christe’s Gospel treweley would preche.His parishens devoutly wolde he teche.Benigne he was, and wonder diligent,And in adversity ful patient;And such he was y proved often sithes,Ful loth were he to cursen for his tithes,But rather would he given, out of doubte,Unto his poure parishens about,Of his offering, and eke of his substance.He could in litel thing have suffisance.Wide was his parish, and houses fer asunder,But he ne left nought, for no rain ne thunder,In siknesse and in mischief to visiteThe farthest in his parish much and lite,Upon his fete, and in his hand a staff.This noble example to his sheep he gaf,That first he wrought and afterward he taughtOut of the gospel he the wordes caught,And this figure he added yet thereto,That if gold ruste what should iron do,For if a priest be foul on whom we trust,No wonder is a leude man to rust;And shame it is if that a priest take kepe,To see a filthy shepherd and clene shepe.Well ought a priest example for to giveBy his clenenesse how his shepe shulde live.He sette not his benefice to hire,And left his shepe accumbered in the mire,And ran unto London unto Saint Poule’sTo seeken him a chanterie for souls,Or with a brotherhede to be withold,But dwelt at home and kepte well his fold,So that the wolfe made him not miscarry.He was a shepherd and no mercenarie,And though he holy were and virtuous,He was to sinful men not despitous,Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,[637]But in his teaching discrete and benigne.To drawen folk to heaven with fairenesseBy good ensample was his businesse.But if it were any persone obstinat,What so he were of highe or low estate,Him wolde he snibben[638]sharply for the nones.A better priest I trow nowhere non is.He waited after no pomp ne reverence,Ne maked him no spiced[639]conscience,But Christes love and His apostles twelve,He taught, but first he followed it himselve.
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, 15th century.
The fifteenth century is generally believed to have been especially religiously dead. There are two ways of looking at it; we may talk, not without some reason, of the stagnation of the fag end of mediævalism, of the wealth and worldliness and neglect of the prelates, of the superstition of the people, and so forth; but one fact, which still exists all over the country, is enough by itself to work instant conviction that there is another side to the question—the church building of the century. Our forefathers in the fifteenth century had enough of life and originality to develop here in England a new variety of Gothic art distinctly different from the development of the art on the Continent of Europe; a reaction against the luxuriant beauty of the Decorated; with a masculine strength in its lines, and a practical modification of plan and elevation so as to obtain spacious, lofty interiors. Take its grand towers as a measure of its artistic power; call to mind the use of painted windows as the great means of coloured decoration; study the elaboration and richness of the roofs and chancel screens of Norfolk and Devon. Calculate the immense quantity of church architecture and art executed in the fifteenth century, not only in monasteries and cathedrals, but in parish churches; think of the magnificent parish churches of Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Somerset, and of the rising towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Remember that they were not commissioned and paid for by the parochial clergy, for we have shown that they had nothing to spare;not by the nobility, for they were half ruined by the Wars of the Roses; but by the large minds of the rising middle class, and out of the wealth which trade and commerce brought them.
Magdalen College, Oxford,15th century.
St. Michael’s, Coventry, 15th century.
This one piece of evidence is enough to prove the existence of vigorous religious faith among the people. At the same time, kings and prelates were founding colleges and schools,e.g.Winchester and Eton, New and King’s. Country gentlemen were founding chantries and supplying themselves with domestic chaplains, and the traders of the towns were founding gilds and services in order to obtain for themselves and those belonging to them additional means of grace and closer pastoral care. It is not possible to believe in the face of such facts that there was not a great deal of very earnest religion in the fifteenth century. Abuses and false doctrines and superstitions there were in abundance, but the religious spirit of thefifteenth century was already striving earnestly for reform, and accumulating that force of public opinion which broke out in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and compelled Rome itself, after frustrating the Councils of Constance and Basle, to make the reforms of the Council of Trent.
Contrast this with the three centuries which followed; with the cessation of all building of new churches and the neglect of the old ones, and the shameful condition of the services in many of them; with the absence of the extension of Church machinery to meet the needs of the increasing population; and it will be hard to believe that there was not much more of religious earnestness in the fifteenth century than in those which followed it. TheItalian relation of England[640]says of the people of the later part of this century: “They all attend mass every day, and say many paternosters in public, the women carrying long rosaries in their hands, and any who can read taking the office of Our Lady with them, and, with some companion, reciting it in the church verse by verse in a low voice, after the manner of the religious. They always hear mass on Sunday in their parish church, and give liberal alms because they may not offer less than a piece of money whereof fourteen are equal to a gold ducat, nor do they omit any form incumbent upon good Christians.”
The history of the parish of Whalley in Lancashire affords an interesting illustration of the growth of parochial organization. The original parish was a vast tract of wild hilly country, fifty miles long, covering two hundred superficial miles, in the north-west corner of Lancashire, chiefly forest and moor, with fertile pastures in the broad valleys of the Ribble, the Hodder, the Calder, and their tributaries. The Saxon rectors were also lords of the manor; they were married men, and the rectory, together with the manor, descended from father to son. These facts suggest that the lord of the manor, in early days after the Conversion, turned his house into a semi-secular monastery such as those we have described (p. 35), retaining the headship of it for himself, and handing it down to his heirs; and that in course of time, instead of developing into a monastery of a stricter kind, it changed into the parochial type of rectory. From the earliest known time, and throughout the Saxon period, however, the reverend lords of the manor rejoiced in the title of dean, the Bishop of Worcester havingcommitted to them large ecclesiastical jurisdiction over this remote and inaccessible corner of his diocese.
After the Conquest, the lordship of this part of the country, including the Manor of Whalley, was given to Henry de Lacy, who laid claim to the advowson of the benefice of Whalley; but for a time the difficulty was got over by De Lacy presenting the hereditary claimant, De Lacy thus establishing a precedent of right of presentation, the hereditary claimant treating it as nothing more than a certificate that he was the rightful heir.
The names of the deans for several generations are given in a “Description of Blackburnshire,” which was probably written by J. Lindlay, Abbot of Whalley (A.D.1342-1377); they are Spartlingus, Lewlphus, Cutwulph, Cudwolphus, Henry the Elder, Robert, Henry the Younger, William, Geoffry the Elder, Geoffry the Younger, and Roger.
The decree of the Lateran Council in 1215 prohibited these hereditary successions to benefices, and Roger, the last dean, resigned the benefice and surrendered the advowson to the De Lacys, and “settled at the Ville of Tunlay as the progenitor of a flourishing family yet subsisting after a lapse of six centuries, legitimate descendants of the Deans of Whalley and Lords of Blackburnshire.”[641]Thereupon De Lacy presented Peter de Cestria to the rectory,[642]and during his incumbency (in 1284) appropriated the rectory to the Monastery of Stanlaw.
Before this date—how long before is not known—there were already in the parish seven chapels of old foundation.Three of them—Clitherhow, Calne, and Burnley—are named in a charter of the time of Henry I.; a fourth—Elvethan—is named in a charter of the time of Richard I.; the rest are not named till the grant of the advowson of H. de Lacy in 1284. The probability is that the first three or four had, from time to time, been founded by the old Saxon deans, in the villages which sprang up in their extensive manor; the remainder, perhaps, at a later period between the Conquest and the last quarter of the thirteenth century. They were all endowed with glebe land of about thirty-five acres each.
At the next vacancy, the convent of Stanlaw entered upon its enjoyment of the Rectory of Whalley. How they served it is not known. In old times there is evidence that the dean had at least a chaplain and clerk to aid him in his duties. Probably the convent retained the staff of assistant clergy, whatever it might be, and added another in place of the rector.
In 1296 the abbot and convent of Stanlaw, with the leave of their founder, H. de Lacy, and with the sanction of Pope Nicholas IV., removed their house to the more healthy site afforded by their new estate at Whalley. Two years after, in 1298, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, ordained the foundation of a perpetual vicarage with a manse, thirty acres of meadow and corn land, with rights of pasturage, etc., and the altarage of the mother church and its seven chapels.
Thirty-two years afterwards, on the petition of the abbot and convent, who represented the necessities of the house (it was in that year that the foundation of the abbey church was laid) and the immoderate endowment of the vicarage, Roger, Bishop of Lichfield, reduced the endowment of thevicarage to a manse and yard within the abbey close, with a pittance, for which he was to pay 13s.4d.a year, hay and oats for his horse, the glebe lands of the chapels, and fifty-six marks in money, for which he was to bear the burden of the chapels, find a priest for each chapel, bread and wine for the Holy Communion, etc. The fourth vicar, William de Wolf, was required, before his presentation, to bind himself by oath never to procure an augmentation of the endowment.
So things continued till the death of the fifth vicar, John of Topcliffe, brother of the abbot, when the abbot and convent presented one of themselves to the vicarage, and so added its endowment to the revenues of the house.
The next matter of interest in the history of the parish is the beginning of new foundations to supply the spiritual needs of new centres of population. Padiham was founded in 30 Henry VI.; Whitewell, Holme, and Marsden between the reigns of Henry VI. and Henry VII.; then Newchurch in Rossendale, 3 Henry VIII.; Goodshaw, 32 Henry VIII.; Newchurch in Pendle, 35 Henry VIII.; Accrington was taken out of Alvetham in 1577; and lastly, Bacup in Rossendale was founded in 1788.
To complete the story: at the dissolution of the monasteries the Abbot of Whalley was hanged on a charge of treason. The king made a compulsory exchange of the great tithes of the parish of Whalley, on which he seized as part of the abbey property, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, for some of the lands which belonged to the Kentish see. Archbishop Juxon augmented the living by surrendering to it, on the renewal of a lease which brought it within his power, the whole Easter roll and surplicefees, on condition that the curates of the chapels should receive the house, and pay to the vicar in different proportions £42, which, with £38 hitherto paid, would augment the vicarage to £80. Archbishop Sancroft, on a subsequent renewal (1685), with the fine purchased lands to provide stipends for the curates of the chapels-of-ease hitherto unprovided for.
The record of an inquisition in the time of the Commonwealth into this and neighbouring churches survives, and gives an interesting account of the parish and its chapelries. In every case the account ends with the statement that the inhabitants desire to be made a parish.
We have in the case of two Rural Deaneries, by way of sample, tabulated the benefices as entered in the “Taxatio” and the “Valor” with one another and with the modern Clergy List; with a few notes upon them.
DIOCESE OF LONDON.—DEANERY OF BERDESTAPLE.