Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England Part 34

The cathedral-like choir of the church would then be well filled on Sundays and holy days by the vicar and his chaplain and the thirteen cantarists and the children of the song school, and the Divine service honourably rendered, and the long nave would doubtless be filled with the devout people. The whole clerical staff of the town consisted of the vicar, his chaplain and clerk, the brethren of the two friaries, perhaps a dozen in each, the thirteen cantarists in their chantry house: nearly forty men, besides the military monks in the preceptory.

Besides monks and friars, rectors and vicars, cantarists, and chaplains of various kinds, there was still another kind of religious persons to be found in many towns, viz. Recluses. The first recluses were enclosed in the Egyptian deserts in a narrow cell; but in process of time a churchyard was taken to be a sufficiently solitary place, and the cell sometimes consisted of two or more fairly comfortable rooms built against the chancel wall of the church. There lived an old hermit or priest, or a religious woman, supported partly by an endowment, partly by the offerings and bequests of the people. Their picturesque asceticism attracted the interest and veneration of impressible people, who would consult them in the affairs of their souls, and no doubt in their social difficulties also, and receive more or less good council according to the character of the recluse.[607]

BRIDGE-CHAPELS.

There is still another feature wanting to complete (in many cases) this survey of the ecclesiastical aspect of a mediaeval town. A good hard road through a wild boggy tract, or a raised causeway across the often flooded valley in which the town was situated, or a stone bridge in place of a dangerous ford or inconvenient ferry, conferred a very real benefit upon the whole community, from the king in his royal progresses through the country to the peasantry who brought their produce to the weekly market.

Men wisely included road-making and bridge-building among meritorious acts of charity, and the calendar of chantries, etc., contains a number of endowments which were given or bequeathed for these purposes. Very frequently the pious builder of a bridge added a religious foundation to it in the shape of a little chapel; sometimes the chapel was built at one end of the bridge; more commonly, perhaps, the central pier on one side of the bridge was enlarged, and the chapel picturesquely erected upon it. The chapel was endowed with a stipend for a perpetual chantry priest to say prayers there for the family of the bridge-builder, and for all Christian people; and no doubt the founder hoped for himself the prayers of all the Christian people who used his bridge. Those of us who, lounging about the churches of other countries as sight-seers, have seen the market women come in, set down their baskets on the floor, and kneel down for a few moments for silent prayer, will easily understand the practical religious uses of these bridge-chapels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bridge and Chapel, Wakefield.]

Perhaps the chapel built on the new stone London Bridge of 1176 was one of the earliest and the most important of them. It was built over a crypt on the central pier on the eastern side of the bridge, and dedicated to St.

Thomas the Martyr, who had been canonized three years before. It had a master and fraternity, and several chantries were founded in it. Bideford Bridge, one of the longest at that time in the kingdom, was built in 1350, on the initiative of the parish priest, Sir R. Gurney, who had a vision of an angel showing him where to build. The lord of the manor, Sir Theodore Granville, Knight, gave the undertaking his countenance and aid; Grandisson, the Bishop of Exeter, gave his licence to collect money backed by the promise of indulgences, and the bridge was made with its 23 arches, 177 yards long. In later times, the estates of the Bridge Gild were under the management of a warden and brethren, who not only kept the bridge in repair, but also built a hall for their meetings and a school beside it, founded charities, gave dinners, and kept to that end--Charles Kingsley in "Westward Ho!" is our authority for saying it--the best stocked cellar in all Devon. There is a good example of a bridge-chapel still remaining on the centre pier of Rotherham bridge, and another at Wakefield, served by two chaplains. We have remains or notes of others: two at Nottingham, one, _super altem pontem_, dedicated to St. James, the other, _ad finem pontis_, dedicated to St. Mary; at Newcastle, dedicated to St. Thomas; at Camelford, dedicated to St. Thomas, built by the burgesses of the town; at Exeter, founded by the mayor and bailiffs of the city; at Stamford, dedicated to St. Thomas; at Elvet, dedicated to St. James; two at York, St. Anne's on Fossbridge and St. William's on Ouse bridge; Burton, at one end of the long bridge over the Trent; at Doncaster, where the bridge had a stone gateway with a chapel of "Our Lady" beside it at one end, and a stone cross beside the entrance to the bridge at the other end; and at many other places, as Durham, Manchester, Rochester, Bidenham, Totton, Gronethe, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; at Sheffield, Darfield, etc. Sometimes a hospital for the entertainment of poor travellers was built at the end of a bridge, as at Burton and at Nottingham;[608] at Brandford there was a chapel-house and hospital _juxta pontem_.[609]

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

DISCIPLINE.

The average Englishman of the present day has hardly an idea of what is meant by ecclesiastical discipline, and is quite ignorant of the large part which it played in the practical religious life of people in ancient times. Yet its principles are laid down in the New Testament; the right and duty of the Church to hear and determine causes between Christian men is contained in our Lord's command, "If thy brother trespa.s.s against thee ... tell it to the Church; and if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican" (Matt. xviii. 17). The general recognition and exercise of this jurisdiction is alluded to in the apostolic writings (1 Cor. vi. 4; x. 32); and St. Paul gives several actual examples of its enforcement (1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20). The Church in all times and places has maintained this power of spiritual discipline to be one of its fundamental principles.

The special jurisdiction which the decree of William the Conqueror gave to the Ecclesiastical Courts over ecclesiastical persons, and over lay persons in ecclesiastical cases, was perhaps an encroachment upon the province of the civil law, but the spiritual jurisdiction involved in our Lord's Command is independent of the sanction of the civil magistrate.

This spiritual discipline is an important aid to the power of the civil magistrate in the Christian community. Where the magistrate's power stops, that of the pastorate steps in. The magistrate can only take cognizance of crimes, and punish a man for offences against another; the Church takes cognizance of sins, and deals with a man _pro salute animae_. If the sin has not caused scandal, the penance inflicted may be of a private nature; but if it has caused scandal, the punishment is public, "that others may learn not to offend."

The penitential system in the Saxon Church, as we learn it from the penitential known by the name of Archbishop Theodore, was a very elaborate system, cla.s.sifying sins and a.s.signing penalties to them; it was confirmed in some particulars by the ecclesiastical enactments of kings. In greater matters the case came before the sheriff and bishop at the s.h.i.+remote or Hundredmote, and the sentence was enforced by the same power which executed the civil sentences of the same court. In the Ecclesiastical Courts after the Norman Conquest, the bishop, and in some matters the archdeacons under his authority, tried the cause, and in case of resistance to the sentence applied for a royal writ to be sent to the sheriff to enforce it. In most cases the knowledge that the Bishop's Court had the civil power at its back was enough to lead men to submit to its authority. In the last resort the spiritual authority had the sentence of excommunication to fall back upon.[610]

The discipline of the clergy was specially in the hands of the bishop and his archdeacons, who dealt with moral offences and ecclesiastical irregularities in their courts. The famous Const.i.tutions of Otho (1237), followed up by those of Archbishop Stephen Langton, enacted, that in every rural deanery one rector should be appointed to hear the confessions of the clergy. Archbishop Peckham, in 1281, complains that it had not been done, and renews the ordinance. This was not to prevent the clergy from going to other penitentiaries appointed by the bishop.

Archbishop Greenfield of York (1310) issued an injunction, engrossed by a public notary, ordering a certain Ralph de Grave, Canon of Worksop, who had proved contumacious, to betake himself within three days to the monastery of Bridlington, and there to do penance for his rebellious behaviour.[611]

Among Grostete's letters is one to a cleric, in which he rebukes his luxurious and licentious life, and tells him roundly that he is "a blot on the clergy, a shame to theologians, a delight to the enemies of religion, a derision and song and story to the vulgar."[612]

Robert Coton, for a sermon preached at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, containing heretical teaching, was sentenced to carry a f.a.ggot in procession round the cathedral, and afterwards round Atcham Church.[613]

Robert Segefeld, chaplain, in 1455, confessing immorality, is sentenced to public penance in his chapel and in the cathedral, and to pay 6_s._ 8_d._ to St. Cuthbert's shrine. This penance consisted in walking barefoot, in linen vestments (_pannis lineis_), carrying a candle before the procession, on a Sunday.[614]

Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be released from the excommunication he had incurred for procuring the celebration of a clandestine marriage in St. Paul's Cray Church. As a penance, he was ordered to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day, and there offer a wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was to be made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst Church. In addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars at Oxford for two years. Ferby afterwards came to an understanding with his diocesan, and was dismissed from the suit. In the next February, John, chaplain of Paul's Cray, doubtless the priest who had officiated on the occasion, swore before the bishop, in the cathedral, not to offend again, and was absolved.[615] He redeemed his penance by taking an oath to pay a mark at Lady Day in that and the two ensuing years.[616]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIX KNIGHTS DOING PENANCE AT THE SHRINE OF ST. EDMUND. XV.

CENT. MS., 2278 f., 108 v., HARL.]

The bishops had to deal, not only with the moral offences of the clergy, but also with the occasional crimes committed by members of this privileged cla.s.s. Degradation from Orders, and imprisonment with penitential discipline, seems to have been the usual mode of punishment.

We have seen that a Const.i.tution of Archbishop Boniface, 1260, directed every bishop to have in his diocese one or two prisons for confining clerics flagitious in crime, or convicted by canonical censure, and that any cleric committing a crime such that if he were a layman he would, according to the secular law, suffer the extreme penalty, should be adjudged to perpetual imprisonment.

This spiritual power was strong enough to cope with the most powerful offenders. We all remember how Henry II., able and powerful king as he was, submitted to discipline at the hands of the monks of Canterbury Cathedral, before the shrine of St. Thomas.

The turbulent Fulke de Breaute, in the reign of Henry III., had plundered St. Alban's Abbey and taken some refugees out of its sanctuary. Being warned by the saint in a dream, he offered himself at the monastery to suffer penance; and there despoiled of his clothes, with his knights similarly stripped, bearing in hand a rod, "which is vulgarly called baleis," and confessing his fault, he received the discipline from each of the brothers on his naked flesh.[617] He refused, however, to make rest.i.tution.

When Thomas of Cantilupe was Bishop of Hereford (1275-1283), Lord Clifford plundered his cattle and ill-treated his tenants. When summoned by the bishop to make amends for his misconduct, he offered to do so by a money payment; but the bishop compelled him to walk barefoot as a penitent to the altar, while the bishop himself inflicted chastis.e.m.e.nt upon him as he walked.[618]

John Langton, Bishop of Chichester, c. 1314, excommunicated Earl Warren for adultery. The earl came to Chichester and endeavoured to seize the bishop; but Langton and his servants not only repelled the attack, but captured the earl and his retinue and put them all in prison.

The accompanying plate is from Lydgate's "Life of Edmund VI." (Harl. 2278, f. 108 and f. 108 v.). Preceding it is a picture of five knights issuing from the gate of the abbey laden with plunder, and keeping the monks at bay at the sword's point; next this picture of the knights stripped to their drawers, making their submission to the abbot and his clerks at the shrine of the saint. Between the two pictures the story is told thus:

Knightes of yoe of malice and ravyne, Agen the fredom of Edmund ful confiable, Habergowned and in platis fyne, Entered his court, took hors out yf his stable, With swerdes drawe to shewe hemself vengable, Lyst any man wolde make resistence, Hadde forth the pray beytort violence.

But sodenly thus with hem it stood, Or they pa.s.syd the boudes of the gate, Travayled with furye and echon was wood, Repented, after offered up mayl and plate, Confessed, a.s.soiled, in cronycle set the date, Ever after off hool affeccion, Hadde to the martyr gret devocion.

We must bear in mind that these were the days when civil penalties included the stocks and the pillory and whipping through the streets at a cart's tail.

In 1344, a sheriff's officer, who slew a rector, resisting the attempt to arrest him, was, with his followers, condemned to walk, stripped to their breeches, like the knights at St. Edmund's, round the princ.i.p.al churches of the district, and to be whipped at the door of each church.[619] And such instances might be indefinitely multiplied.

About 1284, Archbishop Peckham made a provincial visitation, in which he exercised severe discipline on both clergy and laity. For example, in Lichfield Diocese, the bishop being a foreigner and non-resident, the archbishop sent a public summons to him to reside, on penalty of deprivation, telling him that since he could not preach to his people, he was the rather bound to reside among them, and to spend his revenue in hospitality and relieving the poor. In Chichester Diocese, he inflicted upon one John Ham, a priest, convicted of immorality, a three years' penance of fasting, prayers, and pilgrimage, during which time the profits of his living were sequestrated to the poor. In Wilts, being informed that Sir Osborn Gyfford had carried off two nuns from the Monastery of Wilton, he proceeded to excommunication against him, and only consented to remit the censure on these conditions: that he should be stripped to the waist on three Sundays in Wilton Parish Church and beaten with rods; the discipline to be publicly repeated both in the market-place and parish church of Shaftesbury; should fast for three months, and go on a three years' pilgrimage to Jerusalem; should not wear a sword, or appear in the habit of a gentleman.

Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, inst.i.tuted an inquiry into the morals of the laity as well as clergy in his diocese, but the king, Henry III., interposed, and obliged him to desist.

But to come to a different cla.s.s of offenders, and to various kinds of misdoing. It will be enough to select a few examples.

1253. Hugo de Berewyk found surety of ten marks to behave properly to his wife, and he was sentenced, for "that he had long been excommunicate, that without shoes or girdle or [sword ?] he should receive the discipline in the porch of the Church of Gysele, before the whole procession, once on the day of the Holy Trinity, a second time on the day of St. John Baptist, and the third time on the day of SS. Peter and Paul."[620]

When Bishop Ralph, of Bath and Wells, in 1348, visited Ilchester, the people of the place made a riot, attacked the bishop and his people, and shut them up in the church for some hours, till they were rescued by the well-affected. The riot was punished by excommunication of the offenders, and interdict of the Church. One of the ringleaders, Roger Warmville, was tried at Taunton by the Commissary, and sentenced to penance. He was to walk on three several occasions, bareheaded and barefoot, round Ilchester Church, in front of the procession made on Sundays and feast days, holding a candle, which he was to present at the altar during ma.s.s, while a chaplain declared his sin to the congregation in the vulgar tongue. Moreover, he was to be flogged thrice on market days at Ilchester, Wells, Bath, Glas...o...b..ry, and Somerton; he was to pay a fine of 20, and make a pilgrimage to Canterbury in honour of St. Thomas the Martyr.[621]

In 1474, a case of homicide between the Lamberts and the Knolls, by the award of Wm. Blackburn, Canon of Bolton, it was awarded and ordained that Thomas, Henry, Richard, Stephen and Thomas Knoll of Floder, "come to the parish church of Preston, and there in tyme of service, kneling on their knees, loose gerded, ask G.o.d forgivenes of ye dethe of Henrie Lambert, and ask forgivenes of his fader John Lambert, and pay xl marks to ye behofe of Jo. Lambert and his children, unto Ric. Pilkinton, Esq., on the awter of St. Nicholas, in the parish church of Skypton."[622]

All kinds of offences were dealt with by similar penalties. Richard Ram confessing that he had not paid the t.i.the of his corn to his rector of Cliffe, in 1363, was sentenced to carry a sheaf of corn on his shoulder to the altar of Cliffe Church, and there to offer it and the value of the t.i.the withheld.[623]

Among the cases recorded in the "Proceedings of the Courts of Durham,"

p. 26, we find, in a case of immorality, the man sentenced to receive four "fustigations" round the church, and the woman two.

For non-attendance at church on Sundays, we have already quoted several cases (p. 201).

In 1480, nine paris.h.i.+oners of Halling and Snodland[624] were summoned to the court for playing tennis on Thursday in Whitsun-week in time of matins and ma.s.s. They pleaded guilty, and took an oath to perform whatever penance the bishop might impose. The sentence was that those of Snodland should walk barefoot after the procession on the following Sunday, each carrying a taper worth a halfpenny, which they should offer at the Holy Cross. The Halling men were to do the like, with this difference, that they were each to offer two tapers at the high altar and two at the altar of St. John.

William Bek, of Cooling, was cited into the court of John Alc.o.c.k (1476-1486), Bishop of Rochester, in consequence of having been detected by his wife and neighbours in eating meat on Fridays and other fasts. Bek confessed his guilt, though he doubted if he had offended in Lent, but pleaded that he was not responsible for his actions, since his mind had been so much disturbed for three years that he only knew Sunday because his wife on that day offered him the consecrated bread. The plea did not avail. It was ordered that as a penance he should be thrice whipped round Cooling Church, before the procession, clad in a white cloth, with bare head and feet, and carrying a taper of the value of one penny. Further, that on Friday he should be whipped in Rochester market in like manner, and should offer a taper at the shrine of St. William.[625]

Margaret Reed, in 1469, is brought before the Court for using ill language to Martha Howkett, in that she told her she was a "horse G.o.dmother and waterwitch." So, in 1560, Wm. Lee is reported to have said to Bayle, who was reported to be a deacon at Durham, "Methenketh ye goeth not lyk a man of the church, but lyk a ruffing." To whom the said Bayle answered, "What hast thou to do with my apparell or my going? Thou art a slave and a knave to find fault with me."[626]

There are many other instances of defamation, at p. 90, etc. Here is an example of a little later date than our period, which shows exactly what was the way of making amends for the offence of defamation:--

A confession to be made by Charles Shawe for slandering Bar. Mitforth in St. Nicoles Church, in lynen apparell, after the reading of the third chapter of St. James' Epistle--

"Beloved neighbours, I am now comen hither to shewe myself sory for slannderinge one Bartram Midforde, namely in that I called him openly 'beggerly harlot and cutthrote,' saying that he 'was a covitous snowge, and such as he by G.o.dd's worde aught to be weded out of the Coomenwelthe.' I acknowledge that thus to slannder my Xtian brother is an heynouse offence, first towardes G.o.d, who hathe straightly forbydden it in his holy lawes, accountyng it to be a kind of murderinge my neighbour, and threatninge to punyshe it with h.e.l.l fire and the losse of the kyngdome of heavene. Also the Queen's lawes, against which I have stubbornely stande, doth grevously punyshe all slannderers, backbiters, and sowers of discorde, debate, hatred, and disquietnes, to the shame of the offenders and feare of others.

Agayne, my unruly tongue, if it were not punished, it wolde not only set mo of you on fire, but also it wolde bolden others to do the like.