In the churchyard of Llanfihangel-Aber-Cowen, Carmarthenshire, there are three graves,[226]which are assigned by the local tradition to three holypalmers, “who wandered thither in poverty and distress, and being about to perish for want, slew each other: the last survivor buried his fellows and then himself in one of the graves which they had prepared, and pulling the stone over him, left it, as it is, ill adjusted.” Two of the headstones have very rude demi-effigies, with a cross patée sculptured upon them. In one of the graves were found, some years ago, the bones of a female or youth, and half-a-dozen scallop-shells. There are also, among the curious symbols which appear on mediæval coffin-stones, some which are very likely intended for pilgrim staves. There is one at Woodhorn, Northumberland, engraved in the “Manual of Sepulchral Slabs and Crosses,” and another at Alnwick-le-Street, Yorkshire, is engraved in Gough’s “Sepulchral Monuments,” vol. i. It may be that these were men who had made a vow of perpetual pilgrimage, or who died in the midst of an unfinished pilgrimage, and therefore the pilgrim insignia were placed upon their monuments. If every man and woman who had made a pilgrimage had had its badges carved upon their tombs, we should surely have found many other tombs thus designated; but, indeed, we have the tombs of men who we know had accomplished pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but have no pilgrim insignia upon their tombs.
Other illustrations of pilgrim costume may be found scattered throughout the illuminated MSS. References to some of the best of them are here added. In the Royal, 1,696, at f. 163, is a good drawing of St. James as a pilgrim. In the Add. MS. 17,687, at f. 33, another of the pilgrim saints with scrip and staff; in the MS. Nero E 2, a half-length of the saint with a scallop-shell in his hat; in the MS. 18,143, of early sixteenth-century date, at f. 57 v., another. In Lydgate’s “History of St. Edmund,” already quoted for its pictures of shrines, there are also several good pictures of pilgrims. On f. 79 is a group of three pilgrims, who appear again in different parts of the history, twice on page 80, and again at 84 and 85. At f. 81 the three pilgrims have built themselves a hermitage and chapel, surrounded by a fence of wicker-work. In Henry VII.’s chapel, Westminster, the figure of a pilgrim is frequently introduced in the ornamental sculpture of the side chapels and on the reredos, in allusion, no doubt, to the pilgrims who figure in the legendary history of St. Edmund the Confessor.
Having followed the pilgrim to his very tomb, there we pause. We cannot but satirise the troops of mere religious holiday-makers, who rode a pleasant summer’s holiday through the green roads of merry England, feasting at the inns, singing amorous songs, and telling loose stories by the way; going through a round of sight-seeing at the end of it; and drinking foul water in which a dead man’s blood had been mingled, or a dead man’s bones had been washed. But let us be allowed to indulge the hope that every act of real, honest, self-denial—however mistaken—in remorse for sin, for the sake of purity, or for the honour of religion, did benefit the honest, though mistaken devotee. Isourreligion so perfect and so pure, and isourpractice so exactly accordant with it, that we can afford to sit in severe judgment upon honest, self-denying error?
THE SECULAR CLERGY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
THE PAROCHIAL CLERGY.
The present organisation of the Church of England dates from the Council of Hertford,A.D.673. Before that time the Saxon people were the object of missionary operations, carried on by two independent bodies, the Italian mission, having its centre at Canterbury, and the Celtic mission, in Iona. The bishops who had been sent from one or other of these sources into the several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, gathered a body of clergy about them, with whom they lived in common at the cathedral town; thence they made missionary progresses through the towns and villages of the Saxon “bush;” returning always to the cathedral as their head-quarters and home. The national churches which sprang from these two sources were kept asunder by some differences of discipline and ceremonial rather than of doctrine. These differences were reconciled at the Council of Hertford, and all the churches there and then recognised Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, as the Metropolitan of all England.
To the same archbishop we owe the establishment of the parochial organisation of the Church of England, which has ever since continued.He pointed out to the people the advantage of having the constant ministrations of a regular pastor, instead of the occasional visits of a missionary. He encouraged the thanes to provide a dwelling-house and a parcel of glebe for the clergyman’s residence; and permitted that the tithe of each manor—which the thane had hitherto paid into the common church-fund of the bishop—should henceforth be paid to the resident pastor, for his own maintenance and the support of his local hospitalities and charities; and lastly, he permitted each thane to select the pastor for his own manor out of the general body of the clergy. Thus naturally grew the whole establishment of the Church of England; thus each kingdom of the Heptarchy became, in ecclesiastical language, a diocese, each manor a parish; and thus the patronage of the benefices of England became vested in the lords of the manors.
At the same time that a rector was thus gradually settled in every parish, with rights and duties which soon became defined, and sanctioned by law, the bishop continued to keep a body of clergy about him in the cathedral, whose position also gradually became defined and settled. The number of clergy in the cathedral establishment became settled, and they acquired the name of canons; they were organised into a collegiate body, with a dean and other officers. The estates of the bishops were distinguished from those of the body of canons. Each canon had his own house within the walled space about the cathedral, which was called the Close, and a share in the common property of the Chapter. Besides the canons, thus limited in number, there gradually arose a necessity for other clergymen to fulfil the various duties of a cathedral. These received stipends, and lodged where they could in the town; but in time these additional clergy also were organised into a corporation, and generally some benefactor was found to build them a quadrangle of little houses within, or hard by, the Close, and often to endow their corporation with lands and livings. The Vicars’ Close at Wells is a very good and well-known example of these supplementary establishments. It is a long quadrangle, with little houses on each side, a hall at one end, and a library at the other, and a direct communication with the cathedral. There also arose in process of time many collegiate churches in the kingdom, which,resembled the cathedral establishments of secular canons in every respect, except that no bishop had his see within their church. Some of the churches of these colleges of secular canons were architecturally equal to the cathedrals. Southwell Minster, for example, is not even equalled by many of the cathedral churches. It would occupy too much space to enter into any details of the constitution of these establishments.
These canons may usually be recognised in pictures by their costume. The most characteristic features were the square cap and the furred amys. The amys was a fur cape worn over the shoulders, with a hood attached, and usually has a fringe of the tails of the fur or sometimes of little bells, and two long ends in front. In the accompanying very beautiful woodcut we have a semi-choir of secular canons, seated in their stalls in the cathedral, with the bishop in his stall at the west end. They are habited in surplices, ornamented with needlework, beneath which may beseen their robes, some pink, some blue in colour.[227]One in the subsellæ seems to have his furred amys thrown over the arm of his stall; his right-hand neighbour seems to have his hanging over his shoulder. He, and one in the upper stalls, have round skull caps (birettas); others have the hood on their heads, where it assumes a horned shape, which may be seen in other pictures of canons. The woodcut is part of a full-page illumination of the interior of a church, in the Book of Hours of Richard II., in the British Museum (Domit. xvii.).
These powerful ecclesiastical establishments continued to flourish throughout the Middle Ages; their histories must be sought in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” or Britton’s or Murray’s “Cathedrals,” or the monographs of the several cathedrals. In the registers of the cathedrals there exists also a vast amount of unpublished matter, which would supply all the little life-like details that historians usually pass by, but which we need to enable us really to enter into the cathedral life of the Middle Ages. The world is indebted to Mr. Raine for the publication of some such details from the registry of York, in the very interesting “York Fabric Rolls,” which he edited for the Surtees Society.
To return to the Saxon rectors. By the end of the Saxon period of our history we find the whole kingdom divided into parishes, and in each a rector resident. Probably the rectors were often related to the lords of the manors, as is natural in the case of family livings; they were not a learned clergy; speaking generally they were a married clergy; in other respects, too, they did not affect the ascetic spirit of monasticism; they ate and drank like other people; farmed their own glebes; spent a good deal of their leisure in hawking and hunting, like their brothers, and cousins, and neighbours; but all their interests were in the people and things of their own parishes; they seem to have performed their clerical functions fairly well; and they were bountiful to the poor; in short, they seem to have had the virtues and failings of the country rectors of a hundred years ago.
After the Norman conquest several causes concurred to deprive a largemajority of the parishes of the advantage of the cure of well-born, well-endowed rectors, and to supply their places by ill-paid vicars and parochial chaplains. First among these causes we may mention the evil of impropriations, from which so many of our parishes are yet suffering, and of which this is a brief explanation. Just before the Norman conquest there was a great revival of the monastic principle; several new orders of monks had been founded; and the religious feeling of the age set in strongly in favour of these religious communities which then, at least, were learned, industrious, and self-denying. The Normans founded many new monasteries in England, and not only endowed them with lands and manors, but introduced the custom of endowing them also with the rectories of which they were patrons. They gave the benefice to the convent, and the convent, as a religious corporation, took upon itself the office of rector, and provided a vicar to perform the spiritual duties of the cure. The apportionment of the temporalities of the benefice usually was, that the convent took the great tithe, which formed the far larger portion of the benefice, and gave the vicar the small tithe, and (if it were not too large) the rectory-house and glebe for his maintenance. The position of a poor vicar, it is easy to see, was very different in dignity and emolument, and in prestige in the eyes of his parishioners, and the means of conferring temporal benefits upon them, from that of the old rectors his predecessors in the cure. By the time of the Reformation, about half of the livings of England and Wales had thus become impropriate to monasteries, cathedral chapters, corporations, guilds, &c.; and since the great tithe was not restored to the parishes at the dissolution of the religious houses, but granted to laymen together with the abbey-lands, about half the parishes of England are still suffering from this perversion of the ancient Saxon endowments.
Another cause of the change in the condition of the parochial clergy was the custom of papal provisors. The popes, in the thirteenth century, gradually assumed a power of nominating to vacant benefices. Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., who ruled the church in the middle of this century, are said to have presented Italian priests to all the best benefices in England. Many of these foreigners, having preferment in their own country, never came near their cures, but employed parish chaplains to fulfil their duties,and sometimes neglected to do even that. Edward III. resisted this invasion of the rights of the patrons of English livings, and in the time of Richard II. it was finally stopped by the famous statute of Præmunire (A.D.1392).
The custom of allowing one man to hold several livings was another means of depriving parishes of a resident rector, and handing them over to the care of a curate. The extent to which this system of Pluralities was carried in the Middle Ages seems almost incredible; we even read of one man having from four to five hundred benefices.
Another less known abuse was the custom of presenting to benefices men who had taken only the minor clerical orders. A glance at the lists of incumbents of benefices in any good county history will reveal the fact that rectors of parishes were often only deacons, sub-deacons, or acolytes.[228]It is clear that in many of these cases—probably in the majority of them—the men had taken a minor order only to qualify themselves for holding the temporalities of a benefice, and never proceeded to the priesthood at all; they employed a chaplain to perform their spiritual functions for them, while they enjoyed the fruits of the benefice as if it were a lay fee, the minor order which they had taken imposing no restraint upon their living an entirely secular life.[229]It is clear that a considerable number of priestswere required to perform the duties of the numerous parishes whose rectors were absent or in minor orders, who seem to have been called parochial chaplains. The emolument and social position of these parochial chaplains were not such as to make the office a desirable one; and it would seem that the candidates for it were, to a great extent, drawn from the lower classes of the people. Chaucer tells us of his poor parson of a town, whose description we give below, that
“With him there was aploughmanwas his brother.”
In the Norwich corporation records of the time of Henry VIII. (1521A.D.), there is a copy of the examination of “Sir William Green,” in whose sketch of his own life, though he was only a pretended priest, we have a curious history of the way in which many a poor man’s son did really attain the priesthood. He was the son of a labouring man, learned grammar at the village grammar school for two years, and then went to day labour with his father. Afterwards removing to Boston, he lived with his aunt, partly labouring for his living, and going to school as he had opportunity. Being evidently a clerkly lad, he was admitted to the minor orders, up to that of acolyte, at the hands of “Friar Graunt,” who was a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Lincoln. After that he went to Cambridge, where, as at Boston, he partly earned a livelihood by his labour, and partly availed himself of the opportunities of learning which the university offered, getting his meat and drink of alms. At length, having an opportunity of going to Rome, with two monks of Whitby Abbey (perhaps in the capacity of attendant, one Edward Prentis being of the company, who was, perhaps, his fellow-servant to the two monks), he there endeavoured to obtain the order of the priesthood, which seems to have been conferred rather indiscriminately at Rome, and without a “title;” but in this he was unsuccessful. After his return to England he laboured for his living, first with his brother in Essex, then at Cambridge, then at Boston, then in London. At last he went to Cambridge again, and, by the influence of Mr. Coney, obtained of the Vice-Chancellor a licence under seal to collect subscriptions for one year towards an exhibition to completehis education in the schools, as was often done by poor scholars.[230]Had he obtained money enough, completed his education, and obtained ordination in due course, it would have completed the story in a regular way. But here he fell into bad hands, forged first a new poor scholar’s licence, and then letters of orders, and then wandered about begging alms as an unfortunate, destitute priest; he may furnish us with a type of the idle and vagabond priests, of whom there were only too many in the country, and of whom Sir Thomas More says, “the order is rebuked by the priests’ begging and lewd living, which either is fain to walk at rovers and live upon trentals (thirty days’ masses), or worse, or to serve in a secular man’s house.”[231]The original of this sketch is given at length in the note below.[232]
This custom of poor scholars gaining their livelihood and the means of prosecuting their studies by seeking alms was very common. It should be noticed here that the Church in the Middle Ages was the chief ladder by which men of the lower ranks were able to climb up—and vast numbers did climb up—into the upper ranks of society, to be clergymen, and monks, and abbots, and bishops, statesmen, and popes. Piers Ploughman, in a very illiberal strain, makes it a subject of reproach—
“Now might each sowter[233]his son setten to schole,And each beggar’s brat in the book learne,And worth to a writer and with a lorde dwelle,Or falsly to a frere the fiend for to serven.So of that beggar’s brat a Bishop that worthen,Among the peers of the land prese to sythen;And lordes sons lowly to the lorde’s loute,Knyghtes crooketh hem to, and coucheth ful lowe;And his sire a sowter y-soiled with grees,[234]His teeth with toyling of lether battered as a sawe.”
The Church was the great protector and friend of the lower classes of society, and that on the highest grounds. In this very matter of educating the children of the poor, and opening to such as were specially gifted a suitable career, we find so late as the date of the Reformation, Cranmer maintaining the rights of the poor on high grounds. For among the Royal Commissioners for reorganising the cathedral establishment at Canterbury “were more than one or two who would have none admitted to the Grammar School but sons or younger brothers of gentlemen. As for others, husbandmen’s children, they were more used, they said, for the plough and to be artificers than to occupy the place of the learned sort. Whereto the Archbishop said that poor men’s children are many times endowed with more singular gifts of nature, which are also the gifts of God, as eloquence, memory, apt pronunciation, sobriety, and such like; and also commonly more apt to study than is the gentleman’s son, more delicately educated. Hereunto it was, on the other part, replied that it was for the ploughman’s son to go to plough, and the artificer’s son to apply to the trade of his parent’s vocation; and the gentleman’s children are used to have the knowledge of government and rule of the commonwealth. ‘I grant,’ replied the Archbishop, ‘much of your meaning herein as needful in a commonwealth; but yet utterly to exclude the ploughman’s son and the poor man’s son from the benefit of learning, as though they were unworthy to have the gifts of the Holy Ghost bestowed upon them as well as upon others, was much as to say as that Almighty God should not be at liberty to bestow his great gifts of grace upon any person, but as we and other men shall appoint them to be employed according to our fancy, and not according to his most goodly will and pleasure, who giveth his gifts of learning and other perfections in all sciences unto all kinds and states of people indifferently.’”
Besides the rectors and vicars of parishes, there was another class of beneficed clergymen in the middle ages, who gradually became very numerous, viz., the chantry priests. By the end of the ante-Reformation period there was hardly a church in the kingdom which had not one or more chantries founded in it, and endowed for the perpetual maintenanceof a chantry priest, to say mass daily for ever for the soul’s health of the founder and his family. The churches of the large and wealthy towns had sometimes ten or twelve such chantries. The chantry chapel was sometimes built on to the parish church, and opening into it; sometimes it was only a corner of the church screened off from the rest of the area by openwork wooden screens. The chantry priest had sometimes a chantry-house to live in, and estates for his maintenance, sometimes he had only an annual income, charged on the estate of the founder. The chantries were suppressed, and their endowments confiscated, in the reign of Edward VI., but the chantry chapels still remain as part of our parish churches, and where the parclose screens have long since been removed, the traces of the chantry altar are still very frequently apparent to the eye of the ecclesiastical antiquary. Sometimes more than one priest was provided for by wealthy people. Richard III. commenced the foundation of a chantry of one hundred chaplains, to sing masses in the cathedral church of York; the chantry-house was begun, and six altars were erected in York Minster, when the king’s death at Bosworth Field interrupted the completion of the magnificent design.[235]
We have next to add to our enumeration of the various classes of the mediæval clergy another class of chaplains, whose duties were very nearly akin to those of the chantry priests. These were the guild priests. It was the custom throughout the middle ages for men and women to associate themselves in religious guilds, partly for mutual assistance in temporal matters, but chiefly for mutual prayers for their welfare while living, and for their soul’s health when dead. These guilds usually maintained a chaplain, whose duty it was to celebrate mass daily for the brethren and sisters of the guild. These guild priests must have been numerous,e.g., we learn from Blomfield’s “Norfolk,” that there were at the Reformation ten guilds in Windham Church, Norfolk, seven at Hingham, seven at Swaffham, seventeen at Yarmouth, &c. Moreover, a guild, like a chantry, had sometimes more than one guild priest. Leland tells us the guild of St. John’s, in St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, had ten priests, “living in a fayre house at the west end of the parish church yard.” In St. Mary’s Church, Lichfield, was a guild which had five priests.[236]
The rules of some of these religious guilds may be found in Stow’s “Survey of London,”e.g., of St. Barbara’s guild in the church of St. Katherine, next the Tower of London (in book ii. p. 7 of Hughes’s edition.)
We find bequests to the guild priests, in common with other chaplains, in the ancient wills,e.g., in 1541, Henry Waller, of Richmond, leaves “to every gyld prest of thys town, vid. ytar at my beryall.”[237]
Dr. Rock says,[238]“Besides this, every guild priest had to go on Sundays and holy days, and help the priests in the parochial services of the church in which his guild kept their altar. All chantry priests were bidden by our old English canons to do the same.” The brotherhood priest of the guild of the Holy Trinity, at St. Botolph’s, in London, was required to be “meke and obedient unto the qu’er in alle divine servyces duryng hys time, as custome is in the citye amonge alle other p’sts.” Sometimes a chantry priest was specially required by his foundation deed to help in the cure of souls in the parish, as in the case of a chantry founded in St. Mary’s, Maldon, and Little Bentley, Essex;[239]sometimes the chantry chapel was built in a hamlet at a distance from the parish church, and was intended to serve as a chapel of ease, and the priest as an assistant curate, as at Foulness Island and Billericay, both in Essex.
But it is very doubtful whether the chantry priests generally considered themselves bound to take any share in the parochial work of the parish.[240]In the absence of any cure of souls, the office of chantry or guild priest was easy, and often lucrative; and we find it a common subject of complaint, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, that it was preferred to a cure of souls; and that even parochial incumbents were apt to leave their parishes in the hands of a parochial chaplain, and seek for themselves a chantry or guild, or one of the temporary engagements to celebrate annals, of which there were so many provided by the wills of which we shall shortly have to speak. Thus Chaucer reckons, among the virtues of his poore parson, that—
“He set not his benefice to hire,And let his shepe accomber in the mire,And runne to London to Saint Poule’s,To seken him a chauntrie for soules,Or with a brotherhood to be with-held,But dwelt at home, and kepte well his fold.”
So also Piers Ploughman—
“Parsons and parisshe preistes, pleyned hem to the bisshope,That hire parishes weren povere sith the pestilence tyme,To have a licence and leve at London to dwelleAnd syngen ther for symonie, for silver is swete.”
Besides the chantry priests and guild priests, there was a great crowd of priests who gained a livelihood by taking temporary engagements to say masses for the souls of the departed. Nearly every will of the period we are considering provides for the saying of masses for the soul of the testator. Sometimes it is only by ordering a fee to be paid to every priest who shall be present at the funeral, sometimes by ordering the executors to have a number of masses, varying from ten to ten thousand, said as speedily as may be; sometimes by directing that a priest shall be engaged to say mass for a certain period, varying from thirty days to forty or fifty years. These casual masses formed an irregular provision for a large number of priests, many of whom performed no other clerical function, and too often led a dissolute as well as an idle life. Archbishop Islip says in his “Constitutions:”[241]—“We are certainly informed, by common fame and experience, that modern priests, through covetousness and love of ease, not content with reasonable salaries, demand excessive pay for their labours, and receive it; and do so despise labour and study pleasure, that they wholly refuse, as parish priests, to serve in churches or chapels, or to attend the cure of souls, though fitting salaries are offered them, that they may live in a leisurely manner, by celebrating annals for the quick and dead; and so parish churches and chapels remain unofficiated, destitute of parochial chaplains, and even proper curates, to the grievous danger of souls.” Chaucer has introduced one of this class into the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale:—
“In London was a priest, an annueller,[242]That therein dwelled hadde many a year,Which was so pleasant and so serviceableUnto the wife there as he was at tableThat she would suffer him no thing to payFor board ne clothing, went he never so gay,And spending silver had he right ynoit.”[243]
Another numerous class of the clergy were the domestic chaplains. Every nobleman and gentleman had a private chapel in his own house, and an ecclesiastical establishment attached, proportionate to his own rank and wealth. In royal houses and those of the great nobles, this private establishment was not unfrequently a collegiate establishment, with a dean and canons, clerks, and singing men and boys, who had their church and quadrangle within the precincts of the castle, and were maintained by ample endowments. The establishment of the royal chapel of St. George, in Windsor Castle, is, perhaps, the only remaining example. The household book of the Earl of Northumberland gives us very full details of his chapel establishment, and of their duties, and of the emoluments which they received in money and kind. They consisted of a dean, who was to be a D.D. or LL.D. or B.D., and ten other priests, and eleven gentlemen and six children, who composed the choir.[244]But countrygentlemen of wealth often maintained a considerable chapel establishment. Henry Machyn, in his diary,[245]tells us, in noticing the death of Sir Thomas Jarmyn, of Rushbrooke Hall, Suffolk, in 1552, that “he was the best housekeeper in the county of Suffolk, and kept a goodly chapel of singing men.” Knights and gentlemen of less means, or less love of goodly singing men, were content with a single priest as chaplain.[246]Even wealthy yeomen and tradesmen had their domestic chaplain. Sir Thomas More says,[247]there was “such a rabel [of priests], that every mean man must have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife, which no man almost lacketh now.” The chapels of the great lords were often sumptuous buildings, erected within the precincts, of which St. George’s, Windsor, and the chapel within the Tower of London may supply examples. Smaller chapels erected within the house were still handsome and ecclesiastically-designed buildings, of which examples may be found in nearly every old castle and manor house which still exists;e.g., the chapel of Colchester Castle of the twelfth century, of Ormsbro Castle of late twelfth century, of Beverstone Castle of the fourteenth century, engraved in Parker’s “Domestic Architecture,” III. p. 177; that at Igtham Castle of the fifteenth century, engraved in the same work, III. p. 173; that at HaddonHall of the fifteenth century. In great houses, besides the general chapel, there was often a small oratory besides for the private use of the lord of the castle, in later times called a closet; sometimes another oratory for the lady, as in the case of the Earl of Northumberland.[248]In some of these domestic chapels we find a curious internal arrangement; the western part of the apartment is divided into two stories by a wooden floor. This is the case also with the chapel of the preceptory of Chobham, Northumberland, of the Coyston Almshouses at Leicester (Parker’s “Dom. Arch.”). It is the case in one of the chapels in Tewkesbury Abbey Church, and in the case of a priory church in Norway. In some cases it was probably to accommodate the tenants of different stories of the house. The frequency with which in later times the lord of the house had a private gallery in the chapel (a similar arrangement occasionally occurs in parish churches) leads us to conjecture that in these cases of two floors the upper floor was for the members of the family, and the lower for the servants of the house. These chapels were thoroughly furnished with vessels, books, robes, and every usual ornament, and every object and appliance necessary for the performance of the offices of the church, with a splendour proportioned to the means of the master of the house. From the Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland, we gather that the chapel had three altars, and that my lord and my lady had each a closet,i.e., an oratory, in which there were other altars. The chapel was furnished with hangings, and had a pair of organs. There were four antiphoners and four grails—service books—which were so famous for their beauty, that, at the earl’s death, Wolsey intimated his wish to have them. We find mention, too, of the suits of vestments and single vestments, and copes and surplices, and altar-cloths for the five altars. All these things were under the care of the yeoman of the vestry, and were carried about with the earl at his removals from one to another of his houses. Minute catalogues and descriptions of the furniture of these domestic chapels may also be found in the inventories attached to ancient wills.[249]
We shall give hereafter a picture of one of these domestic chaplains, viz., of Sir Roger, chaplain of the chapel of the Earl of Warwick at Flamstead. There is a picture of another chaplain of the Earl of Warwick in the MS. Life of R. Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (Julius E. IV.), where the earl and his chaplain are represented sitting together at dinner.
Besides the clergy who were occupied in these various kinds of spiritual work, there were also a great number of priests engaged in secular occupations. Bishops were statesmen, generals, and ambassadors, employing suffragan bishops[250]in the work of their dioceses. Priests were engaged in many ways in the king’s service, and in that of noblemen and others. Piers Ploughman says:—
“Somme serven the kyng, and his silver tellen,In cheker and in chauncelrie, chalangen his dettes,Of wardes and of wardemotes, weyves and theyves.And some serven as servantz, lordes and ladies,And in stede of stywardes, sitten and demen.”
The domestic chaplains were usually employed more or less in secular duties. Thus such services are regularly allotted to the eleven priests in the chapel of the Earls of Northumberland; one was surveyor of my lord’s lands, and another my lord’s secretary. Mr. Christopher Pickering, in his will(A.D.1542), leaves to “my sarvands John Dobson and Frances, xxs. a-pece, besydes ther wages; allso I gyve unto Sir James Edwarde my sarvand,” &c.; and one of the witnesses to the will is “Sir James Edwarde, preste,” who was probably Mr. Pickering’s chaplain.[251]Sir Thomas More says, every man has a priest to wait upon his wife; and in truth the chaplain seems to have often performed the duties of a superior gentleman usher. Nicholas Blackburn, a wealthy citizen of York, and twice Lord Mayor, leaves (A.D.1431-2) a special bequest to his wife “to find her a gentlewoman, and a priest, and a servant.”[252]Lady Elizabeth Hay leaves bequests in this order, to her son, her chaplain, her servant, and her maid.[253]
CLERKS IN MINOR ORDERS.
It is necessary, to a complete sketch of the subject of the secular clergy, to notice, however briefly, the minor orders, which have so long been abolished in the reformed Church of England, that we have forgotten their very names. There were seven orders through which the clerk had to go, from the lowest to the highest step in the hierarchy. The Pontifical of Archbishop Ecgbert gives us the form of ordination for each order; and the ordination ceremonies and exhortations show us very fully what were the duties of the various orders, and by what costume and symbols of office we may recognise them. But these particulars are brought together more concisely in a document of much later date, viz., in the account of the degradation from the priesthood of Sir William Sawtre, the first of the Lollards who died for heresy, in the year 1400A.D., and a transcript of it will suffice for our present purpose. The archbishop, assisted by several bishops, sitting on the bishop’s throne in St. Paul’s—Sir William Sawtre standing before him in priestly robes—proceeded to the degradation as follows:—“In the name, &c., we, Thomas, &c., degrade and depose you from the order of priests, and in token thereof we take from you the paten and the chalice, and deprive you of all power of celebrating mass; we also strip you of the chasuble, take from you the sacerdotal vestment, and deprive you altogether of the dignity of the priesthood. Thee also, the said William, dressed in the habit of a deacon, and having the book of the gospels in thy hands, do we degrade and depose from the order of deacons, asa condemned and relapsed heretic; and in token hereof we take from thee the book of the gospels, and the stole, and deprive thee of the power of reading the gospels. We degrade thee from the order of subdeacons, and in token thereof take from thee the albe and maniple. We degrade thee from the order of an acolyte, taking from thee in token thereof this small pitcher and taper staff. We degrade thee from the order of an exorcist, and take from thee in token thereof the book of exorcisms. We degrade thee from the order of reader, and take from thee in token thereof the book of divine lessons. Thee also, the said William Sawtre, vested in a surplice as an ostiary,[254]do we degrade from that order, taking from thee the surplice and the keys of the church. Furthermore, as a sign of actual degradation, we have caused the crown and clerical tonsure to be shaved off in our presence, and to be entirely obliterated like a layman; we have also caused a woollen cap to be put upon thy head, as a secular layman.”
The wordclericus—clerk—was one of very wide and rather vague significance, and included not only the various grades of clerks in orders, of whom we have spoken, but also all men who followed any kind of occupation which involved the use of reading and writing; finally, every man who could read might claim the “benefit of clergy,”i.e., the legal immunities of a clerk. The word is still used with the same comprehensiveness and vagueness of meaning. Clerk in Orders is still the legal description of a clergyman; and men whose occupation is to use the pen are still called clerks, as lawyers’ clerks, merchants’ clerks, &c. Clerks were often employed in secular occupations; for example, Alan Middleton, who wasemployed by the convent of St. Alban’s to collect their rents, and who is represented on page 63 ante in the picture from their “Catalogus Benefactorum” (Nero D. vii., British Museum), is tonsured, and therefore was a clerk. Chaucer gives us a charming picture of a poor clerk of Oxford, who seems to have been a candidate for holy orders, and is therefore germane to our subject:—
“A clerke there was of Oxenforde also,That unto logike hadde long ygo,As lene was his horse as is a rake,And he was not right fat, I undertake,But looked holwe and thereto soberly.Ful thredbare was his overest courtepy,[255]For he hadde getten him yet no benefice,Ne was nought worldly to have an office.[256]For him was lever han at his beddes hedA twenty bokes, clothed in black or red,Of Aristotle and his philosophie,Than robes riche, or fidel or sautrie.But all be that he was a philosophre,Yet hadde he but little gold in cofre,But all that he might of his frendes hente,[257]On bokes and on lerning he it spente;And besely gan for the soules prayeOf hem that yave him wherewith to scholaie,[258]Of studie toke he moste cure and hede.Not a word spake he more than was nede,And that was said in forme and reverence,And short and quike, and ful of high sentence.Souning in moral vertue was his speche,And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”
In the Miller’s Tale Chaucer gives us a sketch of another poor scholar of Oxford. He lodged with a carpenter, and
“A chambre had he in that hostelerie,Alone withouten any compaynie,Ful fetisly ’ydight with herbés sweet.”
His books great and small, and his astrological apparatus
“On shelvés couched at his beddé’s head,His press ycovered with a falding red,And all about there lay a gay sautrieOn which he made on nightés melodieSo swetély that all the chamber rung,AndAngelus ad Virginemhe sung.”
We give a typical illustration of the class from one of the characters in a Dance of Death at the end of a Book of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the British Museum. It is described beneath as “Un Clerc.”[259]
A Clerk.
One of this class was employed by every parish to perform certain duties on behalf of the parishioners, and to assist the clergyman in certain functions of his office. The Parish Clerk has survived the revolution which swept away the other minor ecclesiastical officials of the middle ages, and still has his legal status in the parish church. Probably many of our readers will be surprised to hear that the office is an ancient one, and will take interest in a few original extracts which throw light on the subject.
In the wills he frequently has a legacy left, together with the clergy—e.g., “Item I leave to my parish vicar iijs.iiijd.Item I leave to my parish clerk xijd.Item I leave to every chaplain present at my obsequies and mass iiijd.” (Will of John Brompton, of Beverley, merchant, 1443.)[260]Elizabeth del Hay, in 1434, leaves to “every priest ministering at my obsequies vid.; to every parish clerk iiijd.; to minor clerks to each one ijd.”[261]Hawisia Aske, of York, in 1450-1A.D., leaves to the “parish chaplain of St. Michael iijs.iiijd.; to every chaplain of the said church xxd.; tothe parish clerk of the said church xxd.; to the sub-clerk of the same church xd.”[262]John Clerk, formerly chaplain of the chapel of the Blessed Mary Magdalen, near York, in 1449, leaves to “the parish clerk of St. Olave, in the suburbs of York, xijd.; to each of the two chaplains of the said church being present at my funeral and mass iiijd.; to the parish clerk of the said church iiijd.; to the sub-clerk of the said church ijd.; among the little boys of the said church wearing surplices iiijd., to be distributed equally.”[263]These extracts serve to indicate the clerical staff of the several churches mentioned.
From other sources we learn what his duties were. In 1540 the parish of Milend, near Colchester, was presented to the archdeacon by the rector, because in the said church there was “nother clerke nor sexten to go withe him in tyme of visitacion [of the sick], nor to helpe him say masses, nor to rynge to servyce.”[264]And in 1543 the Vicar of Kelveden, Essex, complains that there is not “caryed holy water,[265]nor ryngyng to evensonge accordyng as the clerke shuld do, with other dutees to him belongyng.”[266]In the York presentations we find a similar complaint at Wyghton in 1472; they present that the parish clerk does not perform his services as he ought, because when he ought to go with the vicar to visit the sick, the clerk absents himself, and sends a boy with the vicar.[267]The clerk might be a married man, for in 1416 Thomas Curtas, parish clerk of the parish of St. Thomas the Martyr, is presented, because with his wife he has hindered, and still hinders, the parish clerk of St. Mary Bishophill, York [in which parish he seems to have lived] from entering his house on the Lord’s days with holy water, as is the custom of the city. Also it is complained that the said Thomas and his wife refuse to come to hear divine service at their parish church, and withdraw their oblations.[268]In the Royal MS., 10, E iv., is a series of illustrations of a mediæval tale, whichturns on the adventures of a parish clerk, as he goes through the parish aspersing the people with holy water. Two of the pictures will suffice to show the costume and the holy water-pot and aspersoir, and to indicate how he went into all the rooms of the house—now into the kitchen sprinkling the cook, now into the hall sprinkling the lord and lady who are at breakfast. In the woodcut on p. 241, will be seen how he precedes an ecclesiastical procession, sprinkling the people on each side as he goes. The subsequent description (p. 221) of the parish clerk Absolon, by Chaucer, indicates that sometimes—perhaps on some special festivals—the clerk went about censing the people instead of sprinkling them.
The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Cook.
The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Knight and Lady.
To continue the notes of a parish clerk’s duties, gathered from the churchwardens’ presentations: at Wyghton, in 1510, they find “a faut with our parish clerk yt he hath not done his dewtee to ye kirk, yt is to say, ryngyng of ye morne bell and ye evyn bell; and also another fawt [which may explain the former one], he fyndes yt pour mene pays hym not his wages.”[269]At Cawood, in 1510A.D., we find it the duty of the parish clerk “to keepe ye clok and ryng corfer [curfew] at dew tymes appointed by ye parrish, and also to ryng ye day bell.”[270]He had his desk in church near the clergyman, perhaps on the opposite side of the chancel, as we gather from a presentation from St. Maurice, York, in 1416, that the desks in the choir on both sides, especially where the parish chaplain and parish clerk are accustomed to sit, need repair.[271]A story in Matthew Paris[272]tells us what his office was worth: “It happened that an agent of the pope met a petty clerk of a village carrying water in a little vessel, with a sprinkler and some bits of bread given him for having sprinkled some holy water, and to him the deceitful Roman thus addressed himself: ‘How much does the profit yielded to you by this church amount to in a year?’ To which the clerk, ignorant of the Roman’s cunning, replied, ‘To twenty shillings I think;’ whereupon the agent demanded the per-centage the pope had just demanded on all ecclesiastical benefices. And to pay that small sum this poor man was compelled to hold schools for many days, and by selling his books in the precincts, to drag on a half-starved life.” The parish clerks of London formed a guild, which used to exhibit miracle plays at its annual feast, on the green, in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell. The parish clerks always took an important part in the conduct of the miracle plays; and it was natural that when they united their forces in such an exhibition on behalf of their guild the result should be an exhibition of unusual excellence. Stow tells us that in 1391 the guild performed before the king and queen and whole court three days successively, and that in 1409 they produced a play of the creation of the world, whose representation occupiedeight successive days. The Passion-play, still exhibited every ten years at Ober-Ammergau, has made all the world acquainted with the kind of exhibition in which our forefathers delighted. These miracle-plays still survive also in Spain, and probably in other Roman Catholic countries.
Chaucer has not failed to give us, in his wonderful gallery of contemporary characters (in the Miller’s Tale), a portrait of the parish clerk:—
“Now was ther of that churche a parish clerk,The which that was ycleped Absolon.Crulle was his here,[273]and as the gold it shon,And strouted as a fanne large and brode;Ful streight and even lay his jolly shode.His rode[274]was red, his eyen grey as goos,With Poules windowes carven on his shoos,In hosen red he went ful fetisly,[275]Yclad he was ful smal and proprely,All in a kirtle of a light waget,[276]Ful faire and thicke ben the pointes set.An’ therupon he had a gay surplise,As white as is the blossome upon the rise.[277]A mery child he was, so God me save,Wel coud he leten blod, and clippe, and shave,And make a chartre of lond and a quitance;In twenty manere could he trip and dance,(After the scole of Oxenforde tho)And playen songes on a smal ribible.[278]Therto he song, sometime a loud quinible.[278]And as wel could he play on a giterne.In all the toun n’as brewhouse ne taverneThat he ne visited with his solas,Ther as that any galliard tapstere was.This Absolon, that joly was and gay,Goth with a censor on the holy day,Censing the wives of the parish faste,[279]And many a lovely loke he on hem caste.******Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie,He plaieth Herode on a skaffold hie.”
THE PARISH PRIEST.
We shall obtain further help to a comprehension of the character, and position, and popular estimation of the mediæval seculars—the parish priests—if we compare them first with the regulars—the monks and friars—and then with their modern representatives the parochial clergy. One great point of difference between the regulars and the seculars was that the monks and friars affected asceticism, and the parish priests did not. The monks and friars had taken the three vows of absolute poverty, voluntary celibacy, and implicit obedience to the superior of the convent. The parish priests, on the contrary, had their benefices and their private property; they long resisted the obligations of celibacy, which popes and councils tried to lay upon them; they were themselves spiritual rulers in their own parishes, subject only to the constitutional rule of the bishop. The monks professed to shut themselves up from the world, and to mortify their bodily appetites in order the better, as they considered, to work out their own salvation. The friars professed to be the schools of the prophets, to have the spirit of Nazariteship, to be followers of Elijah and John Baptist, to wear sackcloth, and live hardly, and go about as preachers of repentance. The secular clergy had no desire and felt no need to shut themselves up from the world like monks; they did not feel called upon, with the friars, to imitate John Baptist, “neither eating nor drinking,” seeing that a greater than he came “eating and drinking” and living the common life of men. They rather looked upon Christian priests and clerks as occupying the place of the priests and Levites of the ancient church, set apart to minister in holythings like them, but not condemned to poverty or asceticism any more than they were. The difference told unfavourably for the parish clergy in the popular estimation; for the unreasoning crowd is always impressed by the dramatic exhibition of austerity of life and the profession of extraordinary sanctity, and undervalues the virtue which is only seen in the godly regulation of a life of ordinary every-day occupations. The lord monks were the aristocratic order of the clergy. Their convents were wealthy and powerful, their minsters and houses were the glory of the land, their officials ranked with the nobles, and the greatness of the whole house reflected dignity upon each of its monks.
The friars were the popular order of the clergy. The Four Orders were great organizations of itinerant preachers; powerful through their learning and eloquence, their organization, and the Papal support; cultivating the favour of the people by which they lived by popular eloquence and demagogic arts.
Between these two great classes stood the secular clergy, upon whom the practical pastoral work of the country fell. A numerous body, but disorganized; diocesan bishops acting as statesmen, and devolving their ecclesiastical duties on suffragans; rectors refusing to take priests’ orders, and living like laymen; the majority of the parishes practically served by parochial chaplains; every gentleman having his own chaplain dependent on his own pleasure; hundreds of priests engaged in secular occupations.
Between the secular priests and the friars, as we have seen, pp. 46et seq., there was a direct rivalry and a great deal of bitter feeling. The friars accused the parish priests of neglect of duty and ignorance in spiritual things and worldliness of life, and came into their parishes whenever they pleased, preaching and visiting from house to house, hearing confessions and prescribing penances, and carrying away the offerings of the people. The parish priests looked upon the friars as intruders in their parishes, and accused them of setting their people against them and undermining their spiritual influence; of corrupting discipline, by receiving the confessions of those who were ashamed to confess to their pastor who knew them, and enjoining light penances in order to encourage people to come to them; and lastly, of using all the arts of low popularity-seeking in order to extract gifts and offerings from their people.
We have already given one contemporary illustration of this from Chaucer, at p. 46ante. We add one or two extracts from Piers Ploughman’s Vision. In one place of his elaborate allegory he introduces Wrath, saying:—
“I am Wrath, quod he, I was sum tyme a frere,And the convent’s gardyner for to graff impes[280]On limitoures and listers lesyngs I impedTill they bere leaves of low speech lordes to pleaseAnd sithen thier blossomed abrode in bower to hear shriftes.And now is fallen therof a fruite, that folk have well lieverShewen her shriftes to hem than shryve hem to ther parsones.And now, parsons have perceyved that freres part with hem,These possessioners preache and deprave freres,And freres find hem in default, as folk beareth witness.”—v. 143.
And again on the same grievance of the friars gaining the confidence of the people away from their parish priests—
“And well is this y-holde: in parisches of Engelonde,For persones and parish prestes: that shulde the peple shryve,Ben curatoures called: to know and to hele.Alle that ben her parishens: penaunce to enjoine,And shulden be ashamed in her shrifte: an shame maketh hem wende,And fleen to the freres: as fals folke to Westmynstere,That borwith and bereth it thider.”[281]
When we compare the mediæval seculars with the modern clergy, we find that the modern clergy form a much more homogeneous body. In the mediæval seculars the bishop was often one who had been a monk or friar; the cathedral clergy in many dioceses were regulars. Then, besides the parsons and parochial chaplains, who answer to our incumbents and curates, there were the chantry and gild priests, and priests who “lived at rovers on trentals;” the great number of domestic chaplains must have considerably affected the relations of the parochial clergy to the gentry. Of the inferior ecclesiastical people, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, readers, exorcists, and ostiaries it is probable that in an ordinary parish therewould be only a parish clerk and a boy-acolyte; in larger churches an ostiary besides, answering to our verger, and in cathedrals a larger staff of minor officials; but it is doubtful whether there was any real working staff of sub-deacons, readers, exorcists, any more than we in these days have a working order of deacons; men passed through those orders on their way upwards to the priesthood, but made no stay in them.
But a still greater difference between the mediæval secular clergy and the modern parochial clergy is in their relative position with respect to society generally. The homogeneous body of “the bishops and clergy” are the only representatives of a clergy in the eyes of modern English society; the relative position of the secular clergy in the eyes of the mediæval world was less exclusive and far inferior. The seculars were only one order of the clergy, sharing the title with monks and friars, and they were commonly held as inferior to the one in wealth and learning, and to the other in holiness and zeal.
Another difference between the mediæval seculars and the modern clergy is in the superior independence of the latter. The poor parochial chaplain was largely dependent for his means of living on the fees and offerings of his parishioners. The domestic chaplain was only an upper servant. Even the country incumbent, in those feudal days when the lord of the manor was a petty sovereign, was very much under the influence of the local magnate.
In some primitive little villages, where the lord of the manor continues to be the sovereign of his village, it is still the fashion for the clergyman not to begin service till the squire comes. The Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry gives two stories which serve to show that the deference of the clergyman to the squire was sometimes carried to very excessive lengths in the old days of which we are writing. “I have herde of a knight and of a lady that in her youthe delited hem to rise late. And so they used longe, tille many tymes that thei lost her masse, and made other of her parisshe to lese it, for the knight was lorde and patron of the chirche, and therfor the priest durst not disobeye hym. And so it happed that on a Sunday the knight sent unto the chirche that thei shulde abide hym. And whane he come, it was passed none, wherfor thir might not that dayhave no masse, for every man saide it was passed tyme of the day, and therfor thei durst not singe. And so that Sunday the knight, the lady, and alle the parisshe was without masse, of the whiche the pepelle were sori, but thir must needs suffre.” And on a night there came a vision to the parson, and the same night the knight and lady dreamed a dream. And the parson came to the knight’s house, and he told him his vision, and the priest his, of which they greatly marvelled, for their dreams were like. “And the priest said unto the knight, ‘There is hereby in a forest an holy ermyte that canne telle us what this avision menithe.’ And than thei yede to hym, and tolde it hym fro point to point, and as it was. And the wise holi man, the which was of blessed lyff, expounded and declared her avision.”
The other story is of “a ladi that dwelled faste by the chirche, that toke every day so long time to make her redy that it made every Sunday the person of the chirche and the parisshenes to abide after her. And she happed to abide so longe on a Sunday that it was fer dayes, and every man said to other, ‘This day we trow shall not this lady be kemed and arraied.’”
The condition of the parochial clergy being such as we have sketched, it might seem as if the people stood but a poor chance of being Christianly and virtuously brought up. But when we come to inquire into that part of the question the results are unexpectedly satisfactory. The priests in charge of parishes seem, on the whole, to have done their duty better than we should have anticipated; and the people generally had a knowledge of the great truths of religion, greater probably than is now generally possessed—it was taught to them by the eye in sculptures, paintings, stained glass, miracle plays; these religious truths were probably more constantly in their minds and on their lips than is the case now—they occur much more frequently in popular literature; and though the people were rude and coarse and violent and sensual enough, yet it is probable that religion was a greater power among them generally than it is now; there was probably more crime, but less vice; above all, an elevated sanctity in individuals was probably more common in those times than in these.
One interesting evidence of the actual mode of pastoral ministrations in those days is the handbooks, which were common enough, teaching the parish priest his duties. The Early English Text Society has lately done us a service by publishing one of these manuals of “Instructions for Parish Priests,” which will enable us to give some notes on the subject. “Great numbers,” says the editor, “of independent works of this nature were produced in the Middle Ages. There is probably not a language or dialect in Europe that has not now, or had not once, several treatises of this nature among its early literature. The growth of languages, the Reformation, and the alteration in clerical education consequent on that great revolution, have caused a great part of them to perish or become forgotten. A relic of this sort fished up from the forgotten past is very useful to us as a help towards understanding the sort of life our fathers lived. To many it will seem strange that these directions, written without the least thought of hostile criticism, when there was no danger in plain speaking, and no inducements to hide or soften down, should be so free from superstition. We have scarcely any of the nonsense which some people still think made up the greater part of the religion of the Middle Ages, but instead thereof good sound morality, such as it would be pleasant to hear preached at the present day.”