Rome during the thirteenth century caused more deep discontent among
the laity than those which threatened interference with their right of
patronage to ecclesiastical benefices, and actually did interfere with
those rights. The disgraceful recklessness with which Italians,
ignorant of our language, were forced into English livings, and the
best preferment was claimed for Papal nominees, produced an amount of
irritation and revolt against Roman interference which had never been
known before. The feeling of the laity became more and more outspoken,
and at last Innocent IV. gave way, and the rights of private patronage
were assured to the great lords--assured, at any rate, in word--though
the Papal rescript "paltered with them in a double sense" and the
quibbles and reservations, which could always be resorted to under
colour of the _non obstante_ clause, constantly afforded excuse for
fresh encroachments and evasions when the opportunity occurred. The
jealousy of Roman interference continued to increase, and the
legislation of the first half of the fourteenth century was largely
taken up with enactments to guard the rights of English patrons, from
the King downwards. But there was always a feeling of insecurity on the
part of those who had any benefices in their gift, and a corresponding
feeling on the part of those who were candidates for preferment. This
led to a vicious system, whereby appointments were made with almost
indecent haste to every vacant cure; institution was granted to an
applicant for a benefice with the least possible delay after a vacancy
had once been made known; the patron was willing to exercise his right
in favour of any one, rather than not exercise it at all; the candidate
for the living knew that it was a case of now or never; the Bishop had
nothing to gain, and something to fear, from asking too many questions;
and there is some reason to think that the parishioners had more voice
in the matter than they have now. That followed which was likely to
follow, namely, that the institutions to vacant benefices were made as
a rule within a very few weeks, or even days, after the death of an
incumbent. A man who had got his nomination lost no time in presenting
himself to the Bishop. There was no widow or family of his predecessor
to consider; and for every reason, the sooner the new man got into the
parsonage the better for all parties concerned. Moreover, to guard
against all chances of a disputed claim, the Bishops' Registers of
Institution were kept with the most scrupulous care, and while enormous
masses of ecclesiastical records in every diocese in England have
perished, the Institution Books have been preserved with extraordinary
fidelity, have survived all the troubles and wars and spoliation that
have gone on, and, speaking within certain limits, have been preserved
for five hundred years from one end of England to the other. It is no
exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of parishes in England of
whose incumbents for centuries not only a complete list may be made
out, but the very day and place be set down where those incumbents
received institution into the benefice either at the hands of the
Diocesan or his official. This is certainly the case in the great East
Anglian diocese of Norwich, which comprehended, in the fourteenth
century, the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and a portion of
Cambridgeshire. We may safely say that we are able to tell
approximately--within a few weeks or days--when any living fell vacant
during the period under review, who succeeded, and who the patron was
who presented to the cure. Nor is this true only of the secular or
parochial clergy. Jealous as the religious houses were of their rights
and privileges, the heads of monasteries, as a rule, were compelled to
receive institution too at the hands of the Bishops of the see in which
they were situated. They too presented themselves to their Diocesan
that their elections might be formally recognized; and thus the
Institution Books contain not only the records of the various changes
in the incumbency of the secular clergy, but also of such as were
occasioned by the death of all abbots, or priors or abbesses as
presided over that large number of religious houses as were not exempt
from Episcopal jurisdiction. It is obvious that these Records
constitute an invaluable body of evidence, from which important
information may be drawn regarding our parochial and ecclesiastical
history. The Institution Books, as might be expected, contain a great
deal of curious matter besides the mere records of admission to
benefices, but with this I am at present not concerned.
II. I come now to the Court Rolls, which throw much more light upon our
parochial history than any other documents that have come down to us;
their information is concerned exclusively with the civil, domestic,
sometimes with the political life of our forefathers; about their
religious life, or their contentions with ecclesiastics, they have
rarely a word to say.
* * * * * * *
All who have at any time owned or purchased what is known as copyhold
land might be supposed to know something of the nature of the title on
which such land is held. If they do not it is not for want of being
reminded from time to time, in a very vexatious way, that they are in
theory and in fact not so much owners of their several holdings as
_tenants_ of the Lord of the Manor to which such holdings appertain.
But inasmuch as a great deal of ignorance prevails as to the nature of
this tenure, and as it is impossible to estimate the value and
importance of the evidence which the Rolls of the Manor Courts supply
in the inquiry on which we are engaged, I feel it necessary to
introduce at this point a few paragraphs introductory to and
explanatory of what follows.
* * * * * * *
In the thirteenth century it may be said that _in theory_ the land of
England belonged to the sovereign. The sovereign had indeed assigned
large tracts of territory to A or B or C; but under certain
circumstances, of no very unfrequent occurrence, these tracts of
territory came back into the hands of the sovereign, and were
re-granted by him at his will to whom he chose. In return for such
grants, A or B or C were bound to perform certain _services_ in
recognition of the fact that they were _tenants_ of the king; and by
virtue of such _services_-the equivalents of what we now understand by
_rent_-they were called _tenants in chief_, or tenants _in capite_.
The tracts of territory held by A or B or C were in almost every case
made up of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The
tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion, [Footnote: Experts
will object to the use of this term and other terms as strictly
inaccurate. I am not writing for experts.]which was supposed to be his
abode; but as far as the larger portion--immensely the larger
portion--of his possessions, he was necessarily a non-resident
landlord, getting what he could out of them either by farming them
through the agency of a bailiff, or letting out his estates to be held
under himself in precisely the same way as he held his _fief_, or
original grant, from the King.
_In theory_, the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could
sublet it to a _mesne tenant_, who stood to himself precisely in the
same relation as he--the tenant _in capite_--stood to the sovereign,
the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain _services_
to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his _lease_--for in theory it
was that--if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as
time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and
that the same necessities which compelled the tenant _in capite_ to
relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne
tenant to follow his example. The process went on till it was becoming
a serious difficulty to discover how the King was to get his _services_
from the tenant _in capite_, who had practically got rid of two-thirds
of his _fief_, and how he again was to get _his services_ from the
mesne tenant, who had parted with two-thirds of _his_ estate to half a
dozen under tenants. Obviously, when the King's _scutage_ had to be
levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be
apportioned.
It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing
sub-division of land--_sub-infeudation_ men called it then--that the
statute of _Quia Emptores_ was passed in the eighteenth year of King
Edward I. [A.D. 1290]. The result of all the sub-division that been
going on had been that the number of what we now call _landed estates_
had largely increased, each of them administered on the model of the
larger _fiefs_ originally granted to the tenants _in capite_. There was
a capital mansion in which the _lord_ resided, or was supposed to
reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying
to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain
_services_. The _estate_ comprehended the capital mansion with its
appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common
lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands
in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less
freedom for their own behoof,--the whole constituting a manor whose
owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to
appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that
is, to show cause why they had not performed their _services_; bound to
pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a
great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present
purpose is concerned, _to do fealty_ to the lord of the manor in every
case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine
for entering upon land acquired by the various forms of alienation or
by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to
some of his live stock as a _heriot_, which was forthwith seized by the
bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs,
his land _escheated_ to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to
the lord who _in theory_ was the owner of the soil.
These periodical meetings at which all this business and a great deal
else was transacted were called the _Courts_ of the Manor, and the
Records of these Courts were kept with exceeding and most jealous
scrupulousness; they were invariably drawn up in Latin, according to a
strictly legal form, and were inscribed on long _rolls_ of parchment,
and are known as Manor Court Rolls. This is not the time to say much
more about the Court Rolls. They are not very easy reading--they
require a somewhat long apprenticeship before they can be readily
deciphered; but when one has once become familiar with them, they
afford the student some very curious and unexpected information from
time to time, though it must be allowed that you have to do a good deal
of digging for every nugget that you find.
Observe, however, this--that it is not far from the truth to say that
in East Anglia--for I will not travel out of my own province--every
tiller of the soil who occupied a plot of land, however small, was sure
to be a tenant under some lord of the manor; when he died _a record of
his death was entered upon the_ _Court Rolls of the Manor_; the name of
his successor was inscribed; the amount of fine set down which his heir
paid for entering upon his inheritance; and if he died _without heirs_
the fact was noticed, the lands which he had held being forfeited, or
_escheating_, as it was called, to the lord.
Thus the Court Rolls of a manor of the fourteenth century--for before
the statute _Quia Emptores_ I suspect that they were kept with much
less regularity and much less care than they were afterwards--are
practically the _registers of the deaths_ of all occupiers of land
within the manor; and, as every householder was an occupier of land,
the death of every householder may be said to be inscribed upon the
Rolls.
* * * * * * *
Taken together, then, we have in the Diocesan Institution Books, on the
one hand, and in the Court Rolls, on the other, two sources of
information which--as far as they go--furnish us with a mass of
evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of clergy
and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say "as far as
they go," for it might happen that a country benefice--and still more
frequently that a town benefice--had been so cruelly pillaged by a
religious house, that little or nothing remained to support the
wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would accept the
cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where this happened
the death of the previous incumbent would not appear on the Records for
years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be taken of the long
vacancy when the next parson was instituted. In a period of dreadful
mortality, if the parsons died off in large numbers, it would be
inevitable that the impoverished livings would "go a begging." It might
be difficult to get the most valuable pieces of preferment filled--it
would be impossible to fill such as could not offer a bare maintenance.
Hence the Institution Books can only be accepted as giving a part of
the evidence with regard to the clerical mortality. However startling
the number of deaths of clergy within a certain area during a given
period may appear to be, they certainly will not represent the whole
number--only the number of such incumbents as were forthwith replaced
by their successors; and, taking one year with another, it is fair to
say that within any diocese the _larger the number of institutions_
recorded in a given time, the _more incomplete_ will be the record of
the deaths among the clergy during that time. When there are more men
than places the places are soon filled. When there are more places than
men there must needs be vacancies--square holes and round ones.
So much for the Institution Books. With regard to the Court Rolls,
there the evidence is even much less exhaustive; for here we have the
registers of the deaths of the landholders within the manor, great and
small--_i.e._, of the heads of families; but, except in rare instances,
we have no notice of any other member of the household, or of what
happened to them. A man's whole household may have been swept
off--young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged
mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend--every soul of
them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the
manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house--the tenant
of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of
the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague!
Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcases huddled in
sweltering masses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the
pitiless July sun blazed overhead, "Calmer than clock-work, and not
caring!"
The steward made his entry of one fact only. Thus:--
"The Jurors do present that Simon Must died seized of a Messuage and 4
acres of land in Stradset, and that he has no heir. Therefore it is
fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord."
Also that Matilda Stile... was she married or single, widow or mother
or maid? What cared the precise man of business on that 24th of July,
1349, as his pen moved over the parchment?...--"Matilda Stile died
seized of one acre and one rood of land held in Villenage. Therefore it
is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord
until such time as the heir may appear in court."
He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to
another. She was the last of her line.
Such entries as these swarm in the Court Rolls of this year 1349. They
tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is incomplete,
and that we must form our own conclusions from the number of the deaths
recorded as to the probable number of those whose names have been quite
passed over, sometimes, too, these Rolls are eloquent in their silence.
When country parsons were dying by scores and hundreds, and the tillers
of the soil by thousands and tens of thousands, it could not but be
that the lords of manors and their stewards died also. Yes! they, too,
were struck down. In one instance that I have met with the first half
of the entries of the business carried on at one of these courts in the
summer of this year is written in the ordinary court hand of the time,
and the rest is rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is _not yet
formed;_ it looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the
scrivener's business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by
the plague as he was holding the court--a subordinate taking his place
and awkwardly finishing the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps
never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of Court
Rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty-two
years of Edward III. and no record remains for the next year or two.
Then they begin once more, and have been preserved with unbroken
regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of 1,400 acres, there were three
small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the
year 1348. _Upon the same parchment,_ and immediately following the
records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a
court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries
scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of
the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer. He bungled
so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court of
the manor was not held till three years had gone by. At Hellhoughton, a
manor now belonging to the Marquis of Townshend, where two courts were
held annually, the series of rolls for the first twenty-two years of
Edward III. is complete. Then comes one which scarcely deserves to be
called a Court Roll, so entirely informal is it, and so evidently drawn
up by some one who did not know his business, and who did not pretend
to know it. It is little more than a collection of rough memoranda of
deaths. Twelve of the _suitors_ of the court had died without heirs;
seven others had come to do fealty to the lord as successors to those
whose heirs they presumably were. Nothing else is recorded. At another
manor of Lord Townshend's, Raynham Parva, between the years 1347 and
1350 no court seems to have been held, though the lord of the manor,
Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, had died in the interval. The scourge of the
plague had been so awful in its incidence that when the next court was
held on the 24th July, 1350, fourteen men and four women (holders of
land, be it remembered) are named as having died off, not one of whom
had left a living representative behind them. In all cases their little
holdings had escheated to the lord. Amongst them was one "John Taleour,
clericus." Was he the clerk who, up to this time, had kept the Rolls so
neatly, and who could not be easily replaced after he fell a victim to
the plague?
Indeed, the inquirer who is desirous of pursuing researches in this
field must be prepared for frequent disappointment just at the moment
when he thinks he has made a "find." The Court Rolls for this
particular year are comparatively scarce, and this is true not only for
East Anglia, but for the whole of England, as any one may see who will
only cast his eye down those pages of the Deputy-Keeper's Forty-third
Annual Report, which are concerned with the Records of the Duchy of
Lancaster. These _registers of deaths_ are, as I have before said, only
_complete as far as they go._
* * * * * * *
Let us now return to the point at which the King's letter of
prorogation left us on the 10th March, 1349. At that time it is certain
that the pestilence was raging fiercely in London and Westminster, and
almost as certain that it had abated in Avignon and other towns in
France. Two or three days after this date the Bishop of Norwich crossed
the Channel, leaving his diocese in the hands of his officials. Had the
plague broken out with any severity in East Anglia? I think it almost
demonstrable that it had not. A day or two before the Bishop left
London he instituted his friend Stephen de Cressingham to the Deanery
of Cranwich--in the west of Norfolk--which had fallen vacant, but there
is nothing to show that the vacancy was due to anything out of the
common. During the year ending 25th of March, 1349, there were 80
institutions in the diocese of Norwich, as against 92 in the year 1347
and 59 in the year 1346. The average number of institutions for the
five years ending 25th of March, 1349, was 77. Between this date and
the end of the month there were four institutions only--that is, there
was nothing abnormal in the condition of the diocese.
East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile or
two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between
Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in
the township of Little Cornard--the one was called Caxtons, the other
was the Manor of Cornard Parva. At this latter manor a court was held
on the 31st of March--the number of tenants of the manor can at no time
have exceeded fifty--yet at this court six women and three men are
registered as having died since the last court was held, two months
before.
This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance of
the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to
have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or
village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence
lasted. On the 1st of May another court was held, fifteen more deaths
are recorded--thirteen men and two women. _Seven of them without
heirs._ On the 3rd of November, apparently when the panic abated, again
the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths
had occurred, and _thirteen more households_ had been left without a
living soul to represent them. In this little community, in six months'
time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated--men, women
and children--and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can have
been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some
time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the
scourge, and on the 2nd of October another was instituted in his room.
Who reaped the harvest? The tithe sheaf too--how was it garnered in the
barn? And the poor kine at milking time? Hush! Let us pass on.
* * * * * * *
Little Cornard lies almost at the extreme south of the county of
Suffolk. At the extreme north of Norfolk, occupying the elbow of the
coast, having the Wash on the west and the German Ocean on the north,
lies the deanery of Heacham, a district in which the Le Stranges have
for at least seven centuries exercised their beneficent influence.
Heacham itself is a large township extending over some 4,900 acres. The
manorial rights appear to have extended over the whole parish. The
series of Court Rolls is almost unbroken for the reign of Edward III.
During the years 1346, 1347, and 1348, ten, six, and nine deaths are
registered respectively. The courts were held every two months. In
December, 1348, there is no death recorded; in February, 1349, again
there is none. On the 28th of April a dispute was set down for hearing
to be adjudicated upon by the steward and a jury of the homage. It was
a dispute between a husband and wife on a question of dower. The man's
name was Reginald Goscelin, his wife's name was Emma. The dispute was
never settled. Before the day of hearing came on, _every one_ of Emma
Goscelin's witnesses was dead, and her husband was dead too. Four other
landowners had died. One of these latter had a son and heir to succeed,
but two months later the boy had gone, and the sole representative of
the family was a little girl, who became straightway the ward of the
lord of the manor.