Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England Part 28

In the following case a license was not asked for, because the marriage was uncanonical:--

In 1434, process was issued against Thomas Grene of Norton by Toucester, Knight, for clandestine marriage with Marnia Belers, _co'matre sue_ (co-sponsors), in the private chapel within the house of Ric. Knyghtley at Ffarvesley, in the presence of Ric. Knyghtley and his son and other witnesses.[486]

The clergy[487] sometimes had a domestic chapel in their houses, but even they were carefully restricted as to the when, and where, and how they might celebrate the Divine service in them.

In the life of J. de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, 1327, we read that in the earlier part of his career, while still Archdeacon of Nottingham, in 1326, he was sent as nuncio by the pope into France and England. He writes to the pope that he is so overwhelmed with business that he prays for leave for himself and his people to have ma.s.s said before daylight. The pope grants it, but desires that the permission be rarely used, because since the Son of G.o.d _qui candor est lucis aeternae_ is immolated in the service of the ma.s.s, such a sacrament ought not to be celebrated in the darkness, but in the light.[488]

In the register of Bishop Grandisson, in 1328, is the record of a licence, only "during pleasure," to the Rector of Southpole (?), for an oratory _infra mansum rectoriae tuae_.[489]

1404. Licence to the Rector of Wodemancote to have service in his house for one year, on account of infirmity.[490]

These domestic chapels were thoroughly furnished with every usual ornament and appliance in a style of sumptuousness proportionate to the rank and means of the master of the house. From the Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland we gather that his chapel had three altars, and that my lord and my lady had each a closet, _i.e._ an oratory, in which were other altars. The chapel was furnished with hangings, and had a pair of organs. The service books were so famous for their beauty that, on the earl's death, Cardinal Wolsey intimated his wish to have them. There is mention, too, of suits of vestments, and single vestments, 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.

Catalogues of the furniture of the smaller domestic chapels are numerous in the inventories attached to ancient wills; two may be given here as examples--

Lady Alice West, of Hinton Marcel, Hants, 1395, bequeaths to her son Thomas, "a pair of matins bookes and a pair of bedas," and to her daughter Iohane, a ma.s.se book and all the books that I have of Latin, English, and French, out-take the foresaid mattins books bequeathed to Thomas. Also all my vestments of my chappel with the towels belonging to the altar, and my tapites white and red paled,[491] and blue and red paled, with all my green tapites that belong to my chappel aforesaid, and with the frontals of the aforesaid altar, and with all the curtains and trussing coffers, and all other apparele that belong to my chapel. Also a chalice and paxbrede and holy-water pot with the sprinklers; two cruets, two chandeliers, two silver basins for the altar with scutcheons of my ancestors' arms, and a sacring bell, and all of silver. Also a table depainted of three (a triptych).[492]

In the inventories of the will of John Smith, Esq., of Blackmore, Ess.e.x, in 1543--

In the chapel chamber, a long setle joyned. In the chapel, one aulter of joyner's work. Item, a table with two leaves of the pa.s.sion gilt [a panelled diptych]. Item, a long setle of wainscott. Item, a bell hanging over the chapel. Chapel stuff, copes and vestments three.

Aulter fronts four, corporal case one, and dyvers peces of silk necessary for cusshyons v.

The altar vessels are not specially mentioned; they were probably included with the other silver, and the altar candlesticks among the "xiiiij latyn candlestics of dyvers sorts," mentioned elsewhere.

It is a very pleasant feature in the daily life of the manor house of mediaeval England which is brought home to us by these studies of ancient domestic architecture and these dry extracts from Episcopal Registers. By the latter part of the fourteenth century it would seem that nearly every manor house had a chapel, and a resident chaplain. Divine services--Matins and ma.s.s before breakfast, and evensong before dinner--were said every day; and when the solemn wors.h.i.+p of Almighty G.o.d held so conspicuous a place in the daily family life, it is not possible that it should not have exercised an influence upon the character and habits of the people; for the family and household really attended the service as a part of the routine of daily duty. There are numerous incidental allusions in the course of historical narratives which prove it. Robert of Gloucester says of William the Conqueror--

In church he was devout enow, for him none day abide That he heard not Ma.s.s and Matins, and Evensong and each tide.

The story that William Rufus, before he succeeded to the throne, was first attracted to William of Corboil by the rapidity with which he got through the ma.s.s, indicates that even that graceless prince submitted to the irksome restraint of the universal custom. And the stories about Hunting Ma.s.ses, in which chaplains omitted everything but the essentials of the Divine service, afford the same sort of confirmation.[493]

The Romance of King Arthur is not often quoted as an historical authority, but romances are a picture of contemporary manners and customs, and may be so far depended upon; and this daily service in the castles and manor houses of the Middle Ages is one of the facts of the life of the time which is abundantly ill.u.s.trated in them. Allusions such as the following are frequent: "And so they went home and unarmed them, and so to evensong and supper. And on the morrow they heard ma.s.s, and after went to dinner and to their counsel, and made many arguments what were best to do."[494]

And in the "Vision of Piers Plowman" we read (Pa.s.sus v)--

The king and his knights to the church wenten, To hear matins and ma.s.s, and to the meat after.

The imagination rests with pleasure on the ordinary orderly life of a mediaeval squire's manor house, sweetened by this domestic religion; on the kindly influence of a pious, sensible chaplain over the whole household, the adviser of the lord, the tutor of the children, the monitor of the domestics. We linger upon the idea of the comfort of it to the widowed Lady Bottreaux, and to the infirm old Sir Peter Fishacre, and to poor old Oliver de Halap, "broken with age, and deprived of the sight of his eyes."

We may add an ill.u.s.trative note, which, though of later date, is true to the habits of this earlier period.

"For many years together I was seldom or never absent from Divine service (in church) at five o'clock in the morning in summer, and six o'clock in the winter." And, again, "at Naworth, the house of Sir Charles Howard, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, there was a chaplain in the house, an excellent preacher, who had service twice every Sunday in the chapel, and daily prayers morning and evening, and was had in such veneration by all as if hee had been their tutelar angel" [which did not prevent him from making love to the eldest daughter of the house, and making mischief for the autobiographer].[495]

By the statute 21 Hen. VIII. c. 13, a limit was set to the number of domestic chaplains. An archbishop might have 8 chaplains; a duke, 6; marquis and earl, 5; viscount, 4; bishop, 6; chancellor, baron, and knight of the garter, 3; d.u.c.h.ess, marchioness, countess, and baroness, being widows, 2; treasurer and controller of the king's house, the king's secretary, the dean of the chapel, the king's almoner, the master of the rolls, 2; the chief justice of the king's bench, and warden of the cinque ports, 1. Proviso, that the king's chaplains may hold as many livings as the king shall give.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CHANTRY.

The characteristic feature of the Church work of the seventh century was the conversion of the Teutonic heathen people who had conquered the eastern half of England, and the foundation of a bishopric in every one of the heptarchic kingdoms; of the eighth century, the multiplication of monastic centres of evangelization; of that and the succeeding centuries the spread of the parochial system of a priest for each manor; of the twelfth century, the foundation of monasteries; of the thirteenth century, the foundation of vicarages in the appropriated parishes, and the inst.i.tution of the new Order of friars; of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the foundation of chantries: during these two centuries about two thousand chantries were founded.

A chantry is a foundation for the maintenance of one or more priests, to offer up prayers for the soul of the founder, his family and ancestors, and usually of all Christian souls; and this was the motive of the founders of the majority of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In the Religious Foundations of earlier times the condition of prayers for the donors was incidental. A man did not build a church for his _ville_ or found a monastery on his estate, with the sole or princ.i.p.al view of securing perpetual prayers for himself; but in accordance with the religious views of those times when a man did found any pious work, from a great monastery intended to be a nursery of saints to an almshouse for twelve poor people, he asked--he stipulated in the terms of his foundation deed--for the prayers of the members of his foundation. It would have looked like a want of proper religious feeling had he neglected to seek the benefit of their intercessory prayers. The desire for the prayers of the Church by those who could not found monasteries or build churches, found its satisfaction in benefactions to religious foundations, which secured for the donors the privileges of confraternity, and among these, the prayers of the community.[496] Every religious house had its catalogue of benefactors, or its list of confraters; and the grateful convent offered prayers for their good estate while living and the repose of their souls after death.[497] At Durham there lay on the altar a book very richly covered with gold and silver containing the names of all the benefactors of the cathedral church collected out of ancient MSS. about the time of the Suppression.[498] But far more interesting is the "Catalogus Benefactorum" of the great monastery of St. Alban, preserved in the British Museum Library; in it the name of every benefactor is entered, with a note of his gift--of an estate, or house, or sum of money, or sacred vessel; and in many cases a picture of the donor and of his gift is given, the house being shown in the background of the picture, the flagon or purse of gold held in his hand.

Error came in when a man founded a Divine service the sole object of which was to obtain prayers for himself; it was mitigated by the a.s.sociation of family, benefactors, and friends, and the usual addition of all faithful souls. After all, a saint of old was glad that his name should be enrolled in the diptych of his Church, and remembered in her prayers. But a saint would have been content to be included in the general sentence with which the roll concluded--"and all those whose names, O G.o.d, Thou knowest." We, at least, may be satisfied with the commemoration by our Church of "all those who have departed in Thy faith and fear," without being too ready to find fault with those whose eschatology differed somewhat from ours, and was less scriptural; but whose simple desire, after all, was for G.o.d's mercy on themselves, and who, in anxiety for themselves, did not forget "all faithful souls."

In some cases it is probable that the common human desire to be remembered after death took this shape; a chantry was a monument; and a monument of living men keeping a name in remembrance has very respectable countenance.

This is the explanation of a good number of English t.i.tles of n.o.bility, with grants of suitable estates to maintain the t.i.tle. The Dukedoms of Marlborough and of Wellington, the Earldoms of St. Vincent and of Nelson, were intended by the sovereign who granted the t.i.tles, and the Parliaments which granted the estates, to keep in memory those great men and their services to the country, and have well served their purpose. So, many a chantry kept the name of the founder fresh in the recollection of his descendants, and of the people of his neighbourhood, which would otherwise have been forgotten. The desire to have one's name kept alive on the lips of prayer was not an unworthy one.

But the two thousand chantries founded between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries were not all of this exclusively personal kind. Many included objects of general utility, which under the name of a chantry could be founded and endowed in a legal way, evading many legal difficulties. Some of the chantries were really chapels-of-ease for an outlying population; some were additions to the working clerical staff of a town; some were grammar schools, the chantry priest being really the schoolmaster.

Chantries began to be founded late in the thirteenth century. The "Taxatio" records only two: one of Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, who died 1225, the other at Hatherton, in the Archdeaconry of Coventry.[499]

The number of them increased more and more, and the greater proportion were founded in the fifteenth century.[500] They were distributed very unequally over the country. Some of the cathedrals served by canons had a considerable number, perhaps because founders of chantries who were great n.o.blemen and ecclesiastics preferred to be commemorated in the mother church of their diocese. Thus, St. Paul's, London,[501] had 37; York, 3; Lichfield, 87; Lincoln, 36; Chichester, 12; Exeter, 11; Hereford, 11; Sarum, 11; none in Wells; none in Bath Abbey Church, but 18 in the adjoining college of Delamond Roy. The cathedrals served by monks seem not to have encouraged the founding of chantries; thus there are none in Durham, Ely, Norwich, Worcester, Winchester, and only, exceptionally, 4 in Canterbury, 2 in Rochester; 4 in the Church of Austin Canons, which was the Cathedral of Carlisle. They were numerous in the great town churches, founded by the wealthy citizens; there were over 180 in the city and suburbs of London; 42 in the city of York; 23 in Newcastle; 4 in the city of Lincoln; 10 in the city of Hereford; 13 in the town of Newark; 7 in Doncaster; 5 in Rotherham, etc. They were unequally distributed over the country parishes; in Norwich diocese, there are very few outside the towns; in Yorks.h.i.+re they are very numerous; in Wales there are almost none.

We give at length the history of a chantry at Ipswich, as an ill.u.s.tration of these personal chantries.

Edmund Daundy, merchant of Ipswich, in 1514, founded a perpetual chantry for a chantry priest at the altar of St. Thomas the Martyr, in the parish church of St. Lawrence, in Ipswich, for the prosperous state of King Henry VIII. and Katharine his queen, of himself, Edmund Daundy, Thomas Wulcy (Cardinal Wolsey), clarke, dean of the cathedral church of Lincoln, and of Wm. Daundy, his son, for the term of their life, and for their souls after their decease; and also for the souls of Anne, his late wife, Robert Wulcy and Jane, his wife, father and mother of the same Thomas Wulcy, etc.

The presentation is to be in the hands of the wardens of the parish and six men nominated by the bailiffs, who shall elect and nominate a man to the Prior of Holy Trinity, who shall present him to the Ordinary for admittance; and if the parish priest refuse to induct him, he may induct himself. He is to take oath to keep the statutes of the foundation, perform the duties personally, not be absent for more than twenty days, except from infirmity, not take any other benefice, office, stipend, trental, nor yearly service, but the 11 6_s._ 8_d._[502] granted by the founder; he shall abstain from all unlawful games and sports.

His duties are, to say twice in the week _dirge_ and _commendations_, and once in the week ma.s.s of _requiem_, with the collect, _Almighty and Everlasting G.o.d, who governest both the quick and dead, etc._, with its ... and post communion thereto pertaining; and each day the same priest, singing his ma.s.s, and going to the altar's end before he washes his hands at the lavatory, shall say this psalm, _De profundis_, with the collect _Fidelium_, etc., at the end whereof he shall say, "May the soul of Edmund Daundy, founder of this chantry, and the souls of his parents and kinsfolk and benefactors, and all Christian souls, rest in peace and quietness. Amen."

Also the priest is to be present in the choir of the parish church of St. Lawrence, having on his surplice, at mattins, processions, ma.s.s, and evensong, singing the psalmodies with the other priests and clarks every Sunday and Doublefeast and other convenient times, in augmenting of the Divine service, except any lawful case do let him.

Further on, he orders that the names of the persons to be prayed for, viz. the king and queen, Edmund Daundy, Thomas Wulcy, and Wm. Daundy, among the quick during their lives, and also the names of Anne, Robert, and Jane among the dead, shall be written on a table, and the said table by the said priest shall be set openly upon the altar of St. Thomas the Martyr, etc., to the intent that every day the said priest, in his ma.s.s, shall pray for the prosperity of our said sovereign lord the king, and the said Edmund the founder, etc., etc.

He a.s.signs for the residence of the priest his messuage lately built, with a garden and a certain lane, and all its appurtenances, lately built in the parish of St. Lawrence.

He has provided for the chantry a ma.s.s-book, two complete vestments, and a book called a Coucher; and he directs that the vestments, books, chalices, and other ornaments of the altar given, or to be given, by him or any other patron, after ma.s.s shall be properly put away in a chest and locked up.[503] He also wills that the priest shall deposit yearly 2_s._ 4_d._ in a box, with two keys, one to be kept by himself and the other by the churchwardens, for the maintenance of the house, chantry, furniture, etc. Also, that every priest shall leave to his successor 40_s._, for the costs and charges of his successor about his presentation, admission, inst.i.tution, and induction.

He makes elaborate arrangements for his year-day, with the whole service ordained for the dead, for ever. The chantry priest is on that day to distribute to the parish priest of St. Lawrence ministering about the same anniversary, 12_s._; to the twelve priests, ma.s.ses and other divine services there doing, 6_s._; to the parish clerk, 12_d._; to the other six clerks there singing and serving G.o.d, 12_d._, equally among them; to twelve children there singing and serving G.o.d, 12_d._; to the s.e.xton and ringing of the bells, 6_d._; to twelve poor indigent persons of the said parish to pray for his soul and the souls above said, 2_s._; and to the two bailiffs of Ipswich, 13_s._ 4_d._--that is to say, to every one of them to offer at the said anniversary, 12_d._, and to control the said anniversary, 6_s._ 8_d._

"And because it is not in man but in G.o.d to foresee and provide all things, and oftentime it fortuneth that what in the beginning was thought to be profitable, afterwards is found not to be so," therefore he reserves to himself only the power to alter these statutes.[504]

The Pudsay Chantry at Bolton-by-Bowland, Yorks.h.i.+re, was founded for a priest to pray for the soul of the founder, etc., and all Christian souls, and also to say ma.s.s at the manor house of Bolton when he shall be required by the said founder or his heirs.[505]