PARISH LIFE IN CATHOLIC ENGLAND
To understand the attitude of men’s minds to the ecclesiastical
system on the eve of the great religious changes of the sixteenth
century, some knowledge of the parochial life of Catholic England is
necessary. Under present conditions, when unity has given place to
diversity, and three centuries of continuous wrangling “over secret
truths which most profoundly affect the heart and mind” have done much
to coarsen and deaden our spiritual sense; when the religious mind of
England manifests every shade of belief and unbelief without conscious
reflection on the logical absurdity of the position, it is by no means
easy to realise the influence of a state of affairs when all men, from
the highest to the lowest, in every village and hamlet throughout the
length and breadth of the land, had but one creed, worshipped their
Maker in but one way, and were bound together with what most certainly
were to them the real and practical ties of the Christian brotherhood.
It is hardly possible to overestimate the effect of surroundings upon
individual opinion, or the influence of a congenial atmosphere both
on the growth and development of a spirit of religion and on the
preservation of Christian morals and religious practices generally.
When all, so far as religious faith is concerned, thought the same, and
when all, so far as religious observance is concerned, did the same,
the very atmosphere of unity was productive of that spirit of common
brotherhood, which appears so plainly in the records of the period
preceding the religious revolt of the sixteenth century. Those who will
read below the surface and will examine for themselves into the social
life of that time must admit, however much they feel bound to condemn
the existing religious system, that it certainly maintained up to the
very time of its overthrow a hold over the minds and hearts of the
people at large, which nothing since has gained. Religion overflowed,
as it were, into popular life, and helped to sanctify human interests,
whilst the affection of the people was manifested in a thousand ways in
regard to what we might now be inclined to consider the ecclesiastical
domain. Whether for good or evil, religion in its highest and truest
sense, at least as it was then understood, was to the English people
as the bloom upon the choicest fruit. Whatever view may be taken as
to advantage or disadvantage which came to the body politic, or to
individuals, by the Reformation, it must be admitted that at least
part of the price paid for the change was the destruction of the sense
of corporate unity and common brotherhood, which was fostered by the
religious unanimity of belief and practice in every village in the
country, and which, as in the main-spring of its life, and the very
central point of its being, centred in the Church with its rites and
ceremonies.
A Venetian traveller at the beginning of the sixteenth century bears
witness to the influence of religion upon the English people of that
time. His opinion is all the more valuable, inasmuch as he appeals
to the experience of his master, who was also the companion of his
travels, to confirm his own impressions, and as he was fully alive to
the weak points in the English character, of which he thus records his
opinion: “The English are great lovers of themselves and of everything
belonging to them; they think that there are no other men but
themselves and no other world but England. Whenever they see a handsome
foreigner they say that ‘he looks like an Englishman,’ or that ‘it is a
great pity that he should not be an Englishman,’ and when they partake
of any delicacy with a foreigner they ask him whether such a thing is
made in his country.”[314] In regard to the religious practices of
the people, this intelligent foreigner says, “They all attend mass
every day, and say many _Paternosters_ in public. The women carry long
rosaries in their hands, and any who can read take the Office of Our
Lady with them, and with some companion recite it in Church verse by
verse, in a low voice, after the manner of churchmen. On Sundays they
always hear Mass in their parish church and give liberal alms, because
they may not offer less than a piece of money of which fourteen are
equivalent to a golden ducat. Neither do they omit any form incumbent
on good Christians.”[315]
In these days perhaps the suggestion that the English people commonly
in the early sixteenth century were present daily at morning Mass is
likely to be received with caution, and classed among the strange tales
proverbially told by travellers, then as now. It is, however, confirmed
by another Venetian who visited England some few years later, and who
asserts that every morning “at daybreak he went to Mass arm-in-arm with
some English nobleman or other.”[316] And, indeed, the same desire of
the people to be present daily at the Sacrifice of the Mass is attested
by Archbishop Cranmer when, after the change had come, he holds up
to ridicule the traditional observances previously in vogue. What he
specially objected to was the common practice of those who run, as
he says, “from altar to altar, and from sacring, as they call it, to
sacring, peeping, tooting, and gazing at that thing which the priest
held up in his hands … and saying, ‘this day have I seen my Maker,’ and
‘I cannot be quiet except I see my Maker once a day.’”[317]
If there were no other evidence of the affection of the English people
on the eve of the Reformation for their religion, that of the stone
walls of the churches would be sufficient to prove the sincerity of
their love. In the whole history of English architecture nothing is
more remarkable than the activity in church building manifested during
the later half of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth
centuries. From one end of England to the other in the church walls
are to be seen the evidences of thought and skill, labour and wealth,
spent freely upon the sacred buildings during a period when it might
not unnaturally have been thought that the civil dissensions of the
Wars of the Roses, and the consequent destruction of life and property,
would have been fatal to enterprise in the field of church building and
church decoration and enrichment. It is not in any way an exaggeration
to say that well-nigh every village church in England can show signs
of this marvellous activity, whilst in many cases there is unmistakable
evidence of personal care and thought in the smallest details.
No less remarkable than the extent of this movement is the source
from which the money necessary for all the work upon the cathedrals
and parish churches of the country came. In previous centuries, to
a great extent churches and monastic buildings owed their existence
and embellishment mainly to the individual enterprise of the powerful
nobles or rich ecclesiastics; but from the middle of the fifteenth
century the numerous, and, in many cases, even vast operations,
undertaken in regard to ecclesiastical buildings and ornamentation,
were the work of the people at large, and were mainly directed by their
chosen representatives. At the close of the fifteenth century, church
work was in every sense of the word a popular work, and the wills,
inventories, and churchwardens’ accounts prove beyond question that the
people generally contributed generously according to their means, and
that theirs was the initiative, and theirs the energetic administration
by which the whole was accomplished.[318] Gifts of money and valuables,
bequests of all kinds, systematic collections by parish officials, or
by directors of guilds, often extending over considerable periods,
and the proceeds of parish plays and parish feasts, were the ordinary
means by which the sums necessary to carry out these works of building
and embellishment were provided. Those who had no money to give brought
articles of jewellery, such as rings, brooches, buckles, and the
like, or articles of dress or of domestic utility, to be converted
into vestments, banners, and altar hangings to adorn the images and
shrines, to make the sacred vessels of God’s house, or to be sold for
like purposes. For the same end, and to secure the perpetuity of lamps
before the Blessed Sacrament, or lights before the altars of saints,
people gave houses and lands into the care of the parish officials, or
made over to them cattle and sheep to be held in trust, which, when
let out at a rent, formed a permanent endowment for the furtherance of
these sacred purposes.
Undoubtedly the period with which we are concerned was not merely an
age of building, but an age of decoration, and of decoration which
may almost be described as “lavish.” The very architecture of the
time is proof of the wealth of ornament with which men sought to give
expression to their enthusiastic love of the Houses of God, which
they had come to regard as the centre of their social no less than
of their religious life. Flowing lines in tracery and arch moulding
gave place to straight lines, groined roofs were enriched by extra
ribs, and panels of elaborate work covered the plain surfaces of
former times; the very key-stones of the vaulting became pendants,
and the springers branched out like palm trees, forming that rich and
entirely English variety of groin called “fan-tracery,” such as we
see at Sherborne, Eton, King’s College, Cambridge, and Henry VII.’s
Chapel at Westminster. “In other respects,” says a modern writer, “the
architects of the fifteenth century were very successful. Few things
can be seen more beautiful than the steeples of Gloucester Cathedral
and St. Mary’s, Taunton. The open roofs, as for example that of St.
Peter Mancroft, Norwich, are superb, and finally they have left us a
large number of enormous parish churches all over the country, full of
interesting furniture and decoration.”
The fact is, that this was the last expression of Gothic as a living
art. The builders and beautifiers of the English churches on the eve of
the religious changes spoke still a living language, and their works
still tell us of the fulness of the hearts which planned and executed
such works. It is somewhat difficult for us to understand this, when
living in an age of imitation, and at a time when architecture has no
longer a language of its own. “Imitation,” writes Mr. Ferguson, “is
in fact all we aim at in the architectural art of the present day. We
entrust its exercise to a specially educated class, most learned in the
details of the style they are called upon to work in, and they produce
buildings which delight the scholars and archæologists of the day, but
which the less educated classes neither understand nor appreciate,
and which will lose their significance the moment the fashion which
produced them has passed away.
“The difference between this artificial state of things and the
practice of a true style will not be difficult to understand. When,
for instance, Gothic was a living art in England, men expressed
themselves in it as in any other part of the vernacular. Whatever
was done was a part of the usual, ordinary every-day life, and men
had no more difficulty in understanding what others were doing than
in comprehending what they were saying. A mason did not require to be
a learned man to chisel what he had carved ever since he was a boy,
and what alone he had seen being done during his lifetime, and he
adapted new forms just in the same manner and as naturally as men adapt
new modes of expression in language as they happen to be introduced,
without even remarking it. At that time any educated man could design
in Gothic Art, just as any man who can read and write can now compose
and give utterance to any poetry or prose that may be in him.
“Where art is a true art, it is naturally practised and as easily
understood, as a vernacular literature of which, indeed, it is an
essential and most expressive part, and so it was in Greece and
Rome, and so, too, in the Middle Ages. But with us it is little more
than a dead corpse, galvanised into spasmodic life by a few selected
practitioners for the amusement and delight of a small section of
the specially educated classes. It expresses truthfully neither our
wants nor our feelings, and we ought not to be surprised how very
unsatisfactory every modern building really is, even when executed
by the most talented architects as compared with the productions of
our village mason or parish priest at an age when men sought only to
express clearly what they felt strongly, and sought to do it only in
their natural mother tongue, untrammelled by the fetters of a dead or
familiar foreign form of speech.”[319]
To any one who will examine the churchwardens’ accounts of the period
previous to the religious changes, the truth of the above quotation
will clearly appear. Then, if ever, ecclesiastical art and architecture
was the living expression of popular feeling and popular love of
religion, and the wholesale destruction of ancient architectural
monuments throughout the land, the pulling down of rood and screen and
image, the casting down of monuments sacred to the memory of the best
and holiest and most venerated names in the long roll of English men
of honour, the breaking up of stone-work and metal-work upon which
the marks of the chisel of the mason and graver were yet fresh, the
whitewash daubed over paintings which had helped to make the parish
churches objects of beauty and interest to the people, the ruthless
smashing of the pictured window lights, and the pillage of the sacred
vessels and vestments and hangings, which the people and their fathers
had loved to provide for God’s service--all this and much more of the
same kind, the perhaps inevitable accompaniments of the religious
change, was nothing less to the people than proscription by authority
of the national language of art and architecture, such as they had
hitherto understood it. And never probably had the language been more
truly the language of the people at large. For reasons just assigned,
the work of church building and church decoration, and the provision
of vestments and plate, the care of the fabric and the very details
of things necessary for the church services, were in the hands of the
people. The period in question had given rise to the great middle
class, and here, as in Germany, the burgher folk, the merchants and
traders, began literally to lavish their gifts in adornment of their
parish churches, and to vie one with another in the profusion of their
generosity.
It is somewhat difficult for us, as we look upon the generally bare
and unfurnished churches that have been left to us as monuments of
the past about which we are concerned, to realise what they must have
been before what a modern writer has fitly called “the great pillage”
commenced. All, from the great minsters and cathedral churches down
to the poorest little village sanctuary, were in those days simply
overflowing with wealth and objects of beauty which loving hands had
gathered together to adorn God’s house, and to make it the best and
brightest spot in their little world, and so far as their means would
allow the very pride of their hearts. This is no fancy picture. The
inventories of English churches in this period when compared, say,
with those of Italy, reveal the fact that the former were in every
way incomparably better furnished than the latter. The Venetian
traveller in England in 1500 was impressed by this very thing during
his journeyings throughout the country. He notes and comments upon the
great sums of money regularly given to the church as a matter of course
by Englishmen of all sorts. Then after speaking of the important wealth
of the country as evidenced by the silver plate possessed by all but
the poorest in the land, he continues: “But above all are their riches
displayed in the church treasures, for there is not a parish church
in the kingdom so mean as not to possess crucifixes, candlesticks,
censers, patens and cups of silver, nor is there a convent of mendicant
friars so poor as not to have all these same articles in silver,
besides many other ornaments worthy of a cathedral church in the same
metal. Your magnificence may therefore imagine what the decorations
of those enormously rich Benedictine, Carthusian, and Cistercian
monasteries must be.… I have been informed that amongst other things
many of these monasteries possess unicorns’ horns of an extraordinary
size. I have also been told that they have some splendid tombs of
English saints, such as St. Oswald, St. Edmund, and St. Edward, all
kings and martyrs. I saw, one day being with your magnificence, at
Westminster, a place out of London, the tomb of that saint, King Edward
the Confessor, in the church of the foresaid place, Westminster; and
indeed, neither St. Martin of Tours, a church in France, which I have
heard is one of the richest in existence, nor anything else that I have
ever seen, can be put into comparison with it. The magnificence of the
tomb of St. Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury, surpasses all
belief.”
Our present concern, however, is not with the greater churches of
the kingdom, but with the parish churches which were scattered in
such profusion all over the country. An examination of such parochial
accounts as are still preserved affords an insight into the working
of the parish, and evidences the care taken by the people to maintain
and increase the treasures of their churches. What is most remarkable
about the accounts that remain, which are, of course, but the scanty
survivals from the wreck, is their consistent tenor. They one and all
tell the same story of general and intelligent interest taken by the
people as a whole in the beautifying and supporting of their parish
churches. In a very real sense, that seems strange to us now, it was
_their_ church; their life centred in it, and they were intimately
concerned in its working and management. The articles of furniture and
plate, the vestments and hangings had a well-known history, and were
regarded as--what in truth they were--the common property of every
soul in the particular village or district. Such accounts as we are
referring to prove that specific gifts and contributions continued to
flow in an ample stream to the churches from men and women of every
sort and condition up to the very eve of the great religious changes.
From these and similar records we may learn a good deal about parochial
life and interests in the closing period of the old ecclesiastical
system. The church was the common care and business. Its welfare was
the concern of the people at large, and took its natural place in their
daily lives. Was there any building to be done, a new peal of bells to
be procured, the organs to be mended, new plate to be bought, or the
like, it was the parish as a corporate body that decided the matter,
arranged the details, and provided for the payment. At times, say for
example when a new vestment was in question, the whole parish would be
called to sit in council in the church house upon this matter of common
interest, and discuss the cost, and stuff, and make.
To take some examples: the inventory of Cranbrook parish church for
1509 shows that all benefactors were regularly noted down on a roll of
honour, that their gifts might be known and remembered. The presents,
of course, vary greatly in value: thus, there was a monstrance of
silver and gilt of the “value of £20, of Sir Robert Egelonby’s gift;
which Sir Robert was John Roberts’ priest thirty years, and he never
had other service nor benefice; and the said John Roberts was father to
Walter Roberts, Esquire.” And the foresaid Sir Robert gave also to the
common treasury of the parish “two candlesticks of silver and twenty
marks of old nobles.” Again John Hendely “gave three copes of purple
velvet, whereof one was of velvet upon velvet with images broidered,”
and, adds the inventory, “for a perpetual memory of this deed of
goodness to the common purposes of the parish church, his name is to be
read out to the people on festival days.” “He is grandfather of Gervase
Hendely of Cushorn, and of Thomas of Cranbrook Street.” Or once more,
it is recorded that “old mother Hopper” gave the “two long candlesticks
before Our Lady’s altar, fronted with lions, and a towel on the rood of
Our Lady’s chancel.”
So, too, the inventory of the church goods of St. Dunstan’s,
Canterbury, includes a wonderful list of furniture, plate, and
vestments to which the names of the donors are attached. Thus, the best
chalice was the gift of one “Harry Bole”; the two great candlesticks of
laten of John Philpot; and “a kercher for Our Lady and a chapplet and a
powdryd cap for her Son,” the gift of Margery Roper.
The memory of these gifts was kept alive among the people by the
“bede-roll” or list of those for whom the parish was bound to pray
in return for their benefactions to the public good. Thus to take an
example: at Leverton, in the county of Lincoln, the parson, Sir John
Wright, presented the church with a suit of red purple vestments, “for
the which,” says the note in the churchwardens’ accounts, “you shall
all specially pray for the souls of William Wright and Elizabeth his
wife (father and mother of the donor), and for the soul of Sir William
Wright, their son, and for the soul of Sir John, sometime parson of
this place, and for the souls of Richard Wright and Isabel his wife,
John Trowting and Helen his wife, and for all benefactors, as well them
that be alive as them that be departed to the mercy of God, for whose
lives and souls are given here (these vestments) to the honour of God,
His most blessed Mother, Our Lady Saint Mary, and all His Saints in
Heaven, and the blessed matron St. Helen his patron, to be used at such
principal feasts and times as it shall please the curates as long as
they shall last. For all these souls and all Christian souls you shall
say one Paternoster.”[320]
In this way the memory of benefactors and their good deeds was ever
kept alive in the minds of those who benefited by their gifts. The
parish treasury was not to them so much stock, the accumulation
of years, without definite history or purpose; but every article,
vestment, banner, hanging, and chalice, and the rest called for the
affectionate memories of both the living and the dead. On high day
and festival, when the church was decked with all that was best and
richest in the parochial treasury, the display of the parish ornaments
recalled to the mind of the people assembled within its walls the
memory of good deeds done by neighbours for the common good. “The
immense treasures in the churches,” writes Dr. Jessop, “were the joy
and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who day by day
and week by week assembled to worship in the old houses of God which
they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice
and candlestick and banner, organs and bells and picture and image
and altar and shrine, they looked upon as their own and part of their
birthright.”[321]
What seems so strange about the facts revealed to us in these church
accounts of bygone times is that, where now we might naturally be
inclined to look for poverty and meanness, there is evidence of the
contrary, so far as the parish church is concerned. Even when the
lives of the parishioners were spent in daily labours to secure the
bare necessities of life, and the village was situated in the most
out-of-the-way part of the country, the sordid surroundings of a hard
life find no counterpart in the parish accounts so far as the church
is concerned, but even under such unfavourable circumstances there
is evidence of a taste for things of art and beauty, and of both the
will and power to procure them. To take some examples: Morebath was
a small uplandish parish of no importance lying within the borders
of Devon, among the hills near the sources of the river Exe. The
population was scanty, and worldly riches evidently not abundant.
Morebath may, consequently, be taken as a fair sample of an obscure
and poor village community. For this hamlet we possess fairly full
accounts for the close of the period under consideration, namely, from
the year 1530. At this time, in this poor place, there were no less
than eight separate accounts kept of money intended for the support of
different altars, or for carrying out definite decorations, such as,
for example, the chapels of St. George and Our Lady, and the guilds
of the young men and maidens of the parish. To the credit of these
various accounts, or “stores,” as they are called, are entered numerous
gifts of money, or articles of value, and even of kind, like cows and
swarms of bees. Most of them are possessed of cattle and sheep, the
proceeds from the rent of which form a considerable portion of their
endowment. The accounts as a whole furnish abundant evidence of active
and intelligent interest in the support and adornment of the parish
church on the part of the people at large. Voluntary rates to clear
off obligations contracted for the benefit of the community, such as
the purchase of bells, the repair of the fabric, or even the making of
roads and bridges, were raised. Collections for Peter’s pence, for the
support of the parish clerk, and for various other church purposes,
are recorded, and the spirit of self-help is evidenced in every line
of these records. In 1528 the vicar gave up his rights to certain wool
tithes in order to purchase a complete set of black vestments, which
were only finished and paid for, at the cost of £6, 5s. 0d., in 1547.
In the year 1538, the parish made a voluntary rate to purchase a new
cope, and the collection for the purpose secured £3, 6s. 8d. When in
1534 the silver chalice was stolen, “ye yong men and maydens of ye
parysshe dru themselffe together, and at ther gyfts and provysyon they
bought in another chalice without any charge of the parysshe.” Sums of
money big and small, specific gifts in kind, the stuff or ornaments
needed for vestments, were apparently always forthcoming when occasion
required. Thus at one time a new cope is suggested, and Anne Tymwell
of Hayne gave the churchwardens her “gown and ring,” Joan Tymwell a
cloak and girdle, and Richard Norman “seven sheep and three shillings
and four pence in money,” towards the expenses. At another time it is
a set of black vestments; at another a chalice; at another a censer;
but whatever it was, the people were evidently ready and desirous
of taking their share in the common work of the parish. In 1529 the
wardens state that Elinor Nicoll gave to the store of St. Sydwell her
wedding-ring--“the which ring,” they add, “did help to make Saint
Sydwell’s shoes.” Then she gave to “the store of Jesus” a little silver
cross, parcel gilt, of the value of 4d. In 1537 there is one item which
deserves to be noted, as it records the arrival of a piece of spoil
from Barlinch Abbey Church, which was dissolved by the king’s orders
the previous year. “Memorandum,” runs the entry, “Hugh Poulett gave to
the church one of the glass windows of the Barlinch, with the iron and
stone and all the price” for setting it up.[322]
To understand the working of the pre-Reformation parish, it is
necessary to enter in detail into some one of the accounts that are
still preserved to us. We may conveniently take those of Leverton in
Lincolnshire, printed in the _Archæologia_, which commence in the year
1492. It is well to note, however, that the same story of self-help and
the same evidence of a spirit of affection for the parish church and
its services, is manifested in every account of this kind we possess.
It must be remembered that it was popular government in a true sense
that then regulated all parochial matters. Every adult of both sexes
had a voice in this system of self-government, and what cannot fail to
strike the student of these records is that, in the management of the
fabric, in the arrangements for the services, and all things necessary
for the due performance of these, diocesan authorities evidently
left to the parish itself a wise discretion. No doubt the higher
ecclesiastical officials could interfere in theory, but in practice
such interference was rare. If the means necessary to carry out repairs
and keep the church in an efficient state, both as to fabric and
ornaments, were apparently never wanting, it must be borne in mind that
it was then regarded as a solemn duty binding on the conscience of each
parishioner to maintain the House of God and the parochial services.
Bishop Hobhouse, from an examination of the churchwardens’ accounts
for some parishes in Somerset, is able to describe the various ways
in which the parochial exchequer was replenished. First, there were
the voluntary rates, called “setts,” and these, though voluntary in
the sense that their imposition depended on the will of the people at
large, when once the parish had declared for the rate, all were bound
to pay. Then the mediæval church authorities cultivated various methods
of eliciting the goodwill of the people, and after prohibiting work
on Sundays and certain festivals, busied themselves with the finding
of amusements. Amongst these were the parish feasts and church ales,
at which collections for various public purposes were made, which,
together with the profits made from such entertainments by those who
managed them for the benefit of the public purse, formed one of the
chief sources of parochial income. Beyond this, the principle of
association was thoroughly understood and carried out in practice in
the village and town communities. People banded themselves together
in religious guilds and societies, the _raison d’être_ of which was
the maintenance of special decorations at special altars, the support
of lamps and lights, or the keeping of obits and festivals. These
societies, moreover, became the centres of organisation of any needed
special collections, and from their funds, or “stores” as they were
called, they contributed to the general expenses of maintaining the
fabric and the services. Popular bounty was, moreover, elicited by
means of the “bede-roll,” or list of public benefactors, for whom
the prayers of the parishioners were asked in the church on great
festivals. On this list of honour, all--even the poorest--were anxious
that their names should appear, and that their memory be kept and their
souls prayed for in the House of God which they had loved in life. Even
more than money, which in those days, especially in out-of-the-way
places, was not over plentiful, the churchwardens’ accounts show that
specific gifts of all kinds, either to be sold for the profit of the
purpose for which they were bestowed, or to form a permanent part of
the church treasury, were common in pre-Reformation times.
Added to these sources of income were the profits of trade carried
on in the “church house.” Besides the church itself, the wardens’
accounts testify to the existence of a church house, if not as a
universal feature in mediæval parish life, at least as a very common
one. It was the parish club-house--the centre of parochial life and
local self-government; the place where the community would assemble
for business and pleasure. It was thus the focus of all the social
life of the parish, and the system was extending in influence and
utility up to the eve of the great religious changes which put an end
to the popular side of parochial life. At Tintinhull, a small village
in Somerset, for example, the accounts help us to trace the growth
of this parish club-house. Beginning as a place for making the altar
bread, it developed into a bakery for the supply of the community. It
then took up the brewing of beer to supply the people and the church
ales and similar parish festivals. This soon grew into the brewing of
beer to supply those who required a supply, and at the same time the
oven and brewing utensils were let out to hire to private persons. In
the reign of Henry VII. a house was bought by the wardens for parish
purposes, and one Agnes Cook was placed in it to manage it for the
common benefit. In 1533 it was in full swing as a parish club-house,
used for business and pleasure.[323] The “ale”--the forerunner of the
wardens’ “charity dinner”--was the ordinary way of raising money to
meet extraordinary expenses; and as an incidental accompaniment came
invitations to other parishes in the neighbourhood, and we find items
charged for the expenses of churchwardens attending at other parochial
feasts, and the sums they there put into the collection plate.
Beyond this, the parish, as a corporate body generally, if not
invariably, possessed property in land and houses, which was
administered by the people’s wardens for the public good. The annual
proceeds lightened the common burdens, as indeed it was intended that
they should. A further source of occasional income was found in the
parish plays which were managed for the common profit. Very frequently
the production was entrusted to some local guild, and the expenses
of mounting were advanced by the parochial authorities, who not
infrequently had amongst the church treasures the dress and other stage
properties necessary for the proper productions. At Tintinhull, in
Somerset, for instance, in 1451, five parishioners got up a Christmas
play for the benefit of the fund required for the erection of the
new rood loft. At Morebath there was an Easter play representing the
Resurrection of our Lord, to defray the expenses incurred by the parish
on some extensive repairs.[324]
With this general notion of the working of pre-Reformation parochial
accounts, we are now in a position to turn by way of a particular
example to those of Leverton. The village is situated about six miles
from Boston. The church, until the neglect of the past three hundred
years had disfigured it, must have been very beautiful when decked with
the furniture and ornaments which the loving care of the people of the
neighbourhood had collected within its walls. When first the accounts
open in 1492, the parish was beginning to be interested, as indeed, by
the way, so many parishes were at this period, in the setting up of
a new peal of bells. The people had evidently made a great effort to
get these, and they contributed most generously. The rector promised
ten shillings and sixpence--which sum, by the way, some one paid for
him--but the whole arrangement for the purchase and hanging of the
bells was in the hands of the churchwardens. The bell chamber was
mended and timber was bought to strengthen the framework. When this
was ready, the great bell was brought over from the neighbouring town,
and money is disbursed for the carriage and the team of horses, not
forgetting a penny for the toll in crossing a bridge. One William
Wright of Benington came over professionally to superintend the hanging
and “trossyng” of this great service bell. We may judge, however, that
it was not altogether satisfactory, for in 1498 the two wardens made
a “move” to “the gathering of the township of Leverton in the kirk,”
in which they collected £4, 13s. 0d., and they forthwith commenced
again the building of a steeple for another set of bells. The stone
was given to them, but they had to see to the work of quarrying it,
and to all the business of collecting material and of building. Trees
in a neighbouring wood were bought, were cut and carried, and sawn
into beams and boards, and poles were selected for scaffolding. Lime
was burnt and sand was dug for the mortar, and tubs were purchased to
mix it in, whilst Wreth, the carpenter, was retained to look after the
building in general, and the timberwork of the new belfry in particular.
This seems to have exhausted the parish exchequer for a year or two,
but in 1503 the two wardens attended at Boston to see their bell
“shot,” and to provide for its transport to Leverton. Here Richard
Messur, the local blacksmith, had prepared the necessary bolts and
locks to fasten it to the swinging beam, and he was in attendance
professionally to see the bell hung, with John Red, the bellmaker of
Boston, who, moreover, remained for a time to teach the parish men how
to ring a peal upon their new bells.
As the sixteenth century progressed, a great deal of building and
repairs was undertaken by the parish authorities. In 1503, a new font
was ordered, and a deputation went to Frieston, about three miles from
Leverton, to inspect and pass the work. The lead for the lining was
procured, and it was cast on the spot. In 1517, repairs on the north
side of the church were undertaken, and these must have been extensive,
judging from the cost of the timber employed to shore up the walls
during the progress of the work. Two years later, on the completion
of these extensive building operations, which had been going on for
some time, the church and churchyard were consecrated at a cost to
the public purse of £3. In 1526, the rood loft was decorated, and the
niches intended for images of the saints, but which had hitherto been
vacant, were filled. One of the parishioners, William Frankish, in that
year left a legacy of 46s. 8d. for the purpose. The wardens hired a
man, called sometimes “the alabaster man,” and sometimes “Robert Brook
the carver,” and in earnest for the seventeen images of alabaster of
the rood loft they gave him a shilling. At the same time a collection
was made for the support of the artist during his stay; some of the
parishioners gave money, but most of them apparently contributed
“cheese” for his use.
So much with regard to the serious building operations which were
continued up to the very eve of the Reformation. They by no means
occupied all the energies of the parish officials. If the books
required binding, a travelling workman was engaged on the job, and
leather, thread, wax, and other necessary materials were purchased for
the work; the binder’s wife was paid extra for stitching, and he was
apparently lodged by one of the townspeople as a contribution to the
common work. Then there were vestments to be procured, and surplices
and other church linen to be made, washed, and marked; the very marks,
by the way, being given in the accounts. So entirely was the whole
regarded as the work of the people, that just as we have seen how the
parish paid for the consecration of their parish church and graveyard,
so did they pay a fee to their own vicar for blessing the altar linen
and the new vestments, and entering the names of benefactors on the
parish bede-roll.[325]
Details such as these, which might be multiplied to any extent,
make it abundantly clear that the church was the centre and soul of
village life in pre-Reformation times, and that up to the very eve of
the religious revolution it had not lost its place in the hearts of
the people. In this connection it is useful to bear in mind, though
somewhat difficult to realise, inasmuch as it is now too foreign to our
modern experience, that in the period about which we are concerned the
“parish” meant the whole community of a well-defined area “organised
for church purposes and subject to church authority.” In such a
district, writes Bishop Hobhouse, “every resident was a parishioner,
and, as such, owed his duty of confession and submission to the
official guidance of a stated pastor. There was no choice allowed.
The community was completely organised with a constitution which
recognised the rights of the whole and of every adult member to a voice
of self-government when assembled for consultation under” their parish
priest.[326] In this way the church was the centre of all parish life,
in a way now almost inconceivable. “From the font to the grave,” says
an authority on village life at this time, “the greater number of the
people lived within the sound of its bells. It provided them with all
the consolations of religion, and linked itself with such amusements as
it did not directly supply.”[327]
The writer of the above words was specially interested in the accounts
of the parish of St. Dunstan in the city of Canterbury, and some few
notes on those accounts founded upon his preface may usefully be added
to what has already been said. The parochial authorities evidently
were possessed of considerable power either by custom or consent over
the inhabitants. In St. Dunstan’s, for example, somewhere about 1485,
there was some disagreement between a man named Baker and the parish,
and an item of 2½d. appears in the accounts as spent on the arbitration
that settled it. Later on, two families fell out, and the vicar and
a jury of four parishioners met in council to put an end to what was
considered a scandal. A parish so managed had necessarily some place
in which the inhabitants of the district could meet, and this in St.
Dunstan’s is called the _church house_, and sometimes the _parish
house_. It is frequently mentioned in the matters of repairs, &c.,
and two dozen trenchers and spoons, the property of the parish, were
placed there for use at the common feasts, and for preparation of food
distributed to the poor. The annual dinner is named in the accounts,
and there is no doubt the young people too had dancing, bowling, and
other games, while “the ancients sat gravely by.”
The money needed for the repairs of the fabric and for parish work
generally was here collected by the various brotherhoods connected
with the church. Some wore “scutchons” or badges to show that they
were authorised to beg. These brotherhoods were possessed of more than
money; malt, wheat, barley, besides parish sheep and parish cows let
out to the highest bidder, are mentioned in the accounts as belonging
to them. One Nicholas Reugge, for example, left four cows to the people
of the parish to free them for ever from the cost of supplying the
“paschal,” or great Easter candle. These four cows were valued by the
churchwardens at 10s. apiece, and were each let at a rent of 2s. a
year. In 1521, one John Richardson rented five-and-twenty of the parish
sheep, and the wardens received rent of lambs, wool, &c. The chief
of the brotherhoods connected with St. Dunstan’s was that named the
“Schaft,” and it had the principal voice in the ultimate management
of parochial affairs. Besides this, however, there were many other
associations, such as that of St. Anne for women and that of St. John
for youths, and various wardens were appointed to collect the money
necessary to keep the various lights, such as St. Anne’s light, St.
John’s light, St. Katherine’s light, and the light of the Holy Rood.
“These things,” writes the editor of these interesting accounts, “all
go to show what life and activity there was in this little parish,
which never wanted willing men to devote their time and influence to
the management of their own affairs.”
The parish was small, numbering perhaps hardly more than 400 souls.
“But if small,” says the same authority, “it was thoroughly efficient,
and the religious and intellectual work was as actively carried on
as the social.” At the close of the reign of Henry VIII. the church
possessed a library of some fifty volumes. Of these about a dozen were
religious plays, part, no doubt, of the Corpus Christi mystery plays,
which were carried out at St. Dunstan’s with undiminished splendour
till the advent of the new ideas in the reign of Edward VI.
These parish accounts prove that many cases of disagreement and
misunderstanding, which in modern times would most likely lead to
long and protracted cases in the Law Courts, were not infrequently
settled by arbitration, or by means of a parish meeting or a jury
of neighbours. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the law had to be invoked
in defence of parochial rights. A case in point is afforded in the
accounts of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury. Nicholas Reugge, as we have
said above, had left money to purchase four cows as an endowment for
the Paschal candle and the Font taper. Things went well, apparently,
till 1486, when William Belser, who rented the stock, died, and his
executors either could not or would not, or, at any rate, did not pay.
To recover the common property, the churchwardens, as trustees for
the parish, had to commence a suit at law. Chief-Justice Fineux and
Mr. Attorney-General John Roper were two of the parishioners, and the
parish had their advice, it may be presumed gratuitously. The case,
however, seems to have dragged on for five years, as it was finally
settled only in 1491, when the parish scored a pyrrhic victory, for
although they recovered 30s., the value of three of the cows, their
costs had mounted up to 35s. 2d., and as they never could get more than
a third of that amount from the defendants, on the whole they were out
of pocket by their adventure with the law.
For the most part, however, the parish settled its own difficulties in
its own way. Documents preserved almost by chance clearly show that
a vast number of small cases--police cases we should call them--were
in pre-Reformation days arranged by the ecclesiastical authority.
Disputes, brawls, libels, minor immoralities, and the like, which
nowadays would have to be dealt with by the local justices of the peace
or by the magistrates at quarter sessions, or even by the judges at
assizes, were disposed of by the parson and the parish. It may not
have been an ideal system, but it was patriarchal and expeditious. The
Sunday pulpit was used not only for religious instruction, properly
so called, and for the “bedes-bidding,” but for the publication of
an endless variety of notices of common interest. The church was,
as we have said, the centre of popular life, and it was under
these circumstances the natural place for the proclamation of the
commencement of some inquiry into a local suit, or one in which local
people were concerned. It was here, in the house of God, and at the
Sunday service at which all were bound to be present, that witnesses
were cited and accused persons warned of proceedings against them. Here
was made the declaration of the probate of wills of deceased persons,
and warning given to claimants against the estate to come forward
and substantiate their demands. Here, too, were issued proclamations
against such as did not pay their just debts or detained the goods
of others; here those who had been guilty of defamation of character
were ordered to restore the good name of those they had calumniated;
and those who, having been joined in wedlock, had separated without
just and approved cause, were warned of the obligations of Christian
marriage. The transactions of business of this kind in the parish
church by the parish officials made God’s house a practical reality
and God’s law a practical code in the ordinary affairs of life, and
gave religion a living importance in the daily lives of every member of
every parish throughout the country.