Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England Part 30

Here is a very curious example of a nun being paid to say prayers for people living and dead: John of Leek, Rector of Houghton, 1459, leaves--

to Isabella Chawelton, sister of St. Katharine's, Lincoln, 40_s._ to pray for the soul of her sister Grace, and my soul.[538]

When we refer to the returns of the "Valor," we are confirmed in the conclusion that 5 was the normal stipend of a chantry priest; but a few, through the liberality of the endowment, received more, like the two chaplains of the Black Prince's chantry with their 12 a year; and many received less, as may be seen in the volumes of the "Valor" _pa.s.sim_.

William Rayne (of Coltisbroke, 1535), leaves to his nephew, if he shall be ordained "a priest, to have 5 a year to sing for me for five years, except he be at my wyf's bording and bedding, and if he s...o...b.., then four marks a yere."[539]

So that a priest's board and lodging was worth 5 - 4 13_s._ 4_d._ = 2 13_s._ 4_d._ The lodging with the widow would be consistent with the idea that a chantry priest or annueller was a kind of chaplain to the family.

This conjecture is supported by the statute of 36 Ed. III., c. 8, which, in consequence of the dearth of parish priests after the Black Plague, desired to lessen the number engaged in mortuary services; it forbade any layman to pay a priest more than 5 marks, and if retained to abide at his table, that was to be reckoned as equal to 40_s._[540] As part of the same policy, a const.i.tution of Archbishop Islop, in 1362, fixed the stipend of a chantry priest at 5 marks.[541]

Archbishop Islip, 1362,[542] says, "We are certainly informed by common fame and experience that modern priests, through covetousness and love of ease, not content with reasonable salaries, demand excessive pay for their labours, and receive it; and do so despise labour and study that they wholly refuse as parish priests to serve in churches or chapels, or to attend the cure of souls, though fitting salaries are offered them, and prefer to live in a leisurely manner by celebrating annuals for the quick and dead; and so parish churches and chapels remain unofficiated, dest.i.tute of parochial chaplains, and even proper curates, to the grievous danger of souls; whereupon he goes on to decree that all unbeneficed chaplains fitted for cure of souls shall be required to put aside any private obsequies, and officiate wherever the ordinary shall appoint them, and at six marks of annual stipend, while priests without cure of souls shall be content with five marks."

These services for the dead made work for a considerable number of clerics. Sometimes, no doubt, the parish priest celebrated the month's mind and the obit, and perhaps the trental also; but when a competent provision had been made for the purpose it is probable that it was usual to employ a distinct person to fulfil the stipulated services. The beneficed clergy are indeed accused of sometimes running away from their own poor benefices to take engagements of this sort. "Piers Ploughman"

says:--

Parsons and parish preistes pleyned hem to the bisshope, That hire parishes weren povere sith the pestilence tyme,[543]

To have a licence and leve at London to dwelle, And syngen ther for symonie, for silver is swete.

Chaucer says of his poor parson--

He sett not his benefice to hire, And lefte his sheep accombred in the mire, And ran unto London unto Sainte Poules,[544]

To seeken him a chanterie for souls, Or with a Brotherhode to be withold, But dwelt at home and kepte well his fold.

But that some poor parsons did so, and that their bishops allowed it, we have the evidence of the Episcopal Registers.[545]

One result of these occasional engagements for a month, or a year, or a few years, was that a considerable number of priests made a precarious living in this easy way, and in many cases were not very useful members of society or very respectable members of the clerical body.[546]

Chaucer has introduced into his "Shipman's Tale" one of these priests "living in a leisurely manner by celebrating annuals for the quick and dead":--

In London was a priest, an annueller, That therein dwelled hadde many a year, Which was so pleasant and so serviceable Unto the wife thereas he was at table, That she would suffer him no thing to pay For board ne lodging, went he never so gay And spending silver had he ryht ynoil.[547]

The ordinary chantry priest was under no canonical obligation to help the parish priest in his general duties; but in some cases the foundation deed of the chantry required that the cantarist should a.s.sist at Divine worship on Sundays and festivals for the greater honour of the service; and in some cases the priest is expressly required by his foundation deed to help the vicar in the cure of souls, as in the parish churches of Helmsley, Middleton, etc.

Our Lady's chantry priest in Rothwell Church (1494), to celebrate ma.s.s daily in chantry and other Divine service, and be in the high quire all festival days at mattins, ma.s.s, and evensong; and to help to minister sacraments in the parish.

Margaret Blade, widow, endowed the chantry of our Lady in Kildewick Parish, in 1505, for a priest to help Divine service in the quire, to help the curate in time of necessity, and also to sing ma.s.s of our Lady on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, "if he have convenient help."[548]

Sometimes the chantry priest was required to say Divine service at an unusual hour for the convenience of portions of the people; thus, at St.

Agnes, York, the chantry service had been between eleven and twelve, unusually late, and was altered by the advice of the parishioners to an equally abnormal early hour, viz. between four and five in the morning, as well for their accommodation as for travelling people, who desired to hear ma.s.s before setting out on their journey.[549] Many churches had such an early service, called the "Morrow Ma.s.s."

If thou have eny wey to wende, I rede thou here a ma.s.se to ende, In the morennynge if thou may, Thou shalt not leose of thi travayle, Not half a foote of wey.[550]

Some of the chantry chapels were practically chapels-of-ease at a distance from the parish church. For parishes having once been established, the rights of the patrons, inc.u.mbents, parishioners, and others interested were so safely secured by the law that it was difficult for any one to make an alteration in the existing arrangements. Even down to the pa.s.sing of the general Church Building Acts in the present century, a private Act of Parliament was necessary to legalize the subdivision of a parish. When the growth of new groups of population at a distance from the parish church made it desirable to provide the means of Divine worship and pastoral oversight there, if the inc.u.mbent desired to make the provision, he could do it by building chapels, and supplying them with chaplains at his own cost, and under his own control. If a lay proprietor desired to make the provision for the people about him, he could do it by getting the bishop's leave to found a chantry, and the king's licence to endow it notwithstanding the Mortmain Act. Accordingly, a number of chapels were founded, which were technically chantry chapels, but really chapels-of-ease for an outlying population; _e.g._ the chantries at Brentwood, in the parish of Southweald; Billericay, in the parish of Great Burstead; Foulness island, in the parish of Wakering; in the street of Great Dunmow, half a mile from the parish church, all in Ess.e.x; of Woodstock; of Quarrindon, in the parish of Barrow; of St. Giles, in the parish of Stretton, both in Notts, were all built at a distance of a mile or more from their parish churches. At Macclesfield, the Savage Chantry, founded by the Archbishop of York of that name, who died 1506, was a chapel-of-ease two miles distant from the parish church. There were a considerable number of these outlying chantries in the extensive parishes of Yorkshire, at distances of from half a mile to two or three miles from the parish church, and in some cases divided from the parish church by waters liable to be flooded; in some parishes there were two or three such chantries; as two at Topcliff, two in Sherifholm, two in Strenshall, two in Wath, three in Northallerton, besides a chapel seven miles off served by the vicar's chaplain; one in each of the parishes of Helmsley, Kirby Misperton, Malton, etc.

In some of these chapels there was no endowment for a priest, or it was insufficient, and the inhabitants of the villages taxed themselves voluntarily to make up a stipend; thus, at Ayton, the rate of payment was for a husbandman (? tenant farmer) 8_d._, a cottager with land 4_d._, a cottager without land 2_d._ a quarter.

Here is another similar case which presents us with quite a picture:--In 1472, the people of Haxby complain to the archdeacon that "they inhabit so unreasonable fer from ther parisch chirche that the substance [majority]

of the said inhabitauntes for impotenseye and feblenes, farrenes of the long way, and also for grete abundance of waters and perlouse pa.s.sages at small brigges for people in age and unweldye, bethurn these and ther nex parische chirche, they may not come with ese or in seasonable tyme at their saide parishe chirche, as Cristen peple should, and as they wold, so they pray for leave and help for a chaplain of their own."[551]

A grammar school was often provided for a parish under the convenient conditions of a chantry; the schoolmaster being a priest, it was no great addition to his duties to require him to add to his ma.s.s prayer for his founders; it was very natural that the boys who profited by the foundation should also be required to join in the commemoration services for their benefactor.[552]

We quote the whole scheme of the foundation at Blackburn as an example of its kind.

In 1514, fifth year of Henry VIII., Thomas, Earl of Derby, and the parishioners of Blackburn, each contributed lands, etc., to be held by certain trustees for the foundation of a chantry in the church there, in the chapel of our blessed Lady, in the south aisle there. The chantry priest was to be "an honest seculer prest, and no reguler, sufficiently lerned in gramer and playn song, y{f} any such can be gotten, that shall kepe continually a fre gramer schole, and maintaine and kepe the one syde of the quire, as one man may, in his surplice, every holiday throughout the year." And if no secular priest can be found that is able and sufficiently "lerned in gramer and plain song,"

then they were to find "an able secular priest, who is expert, and can sing both p.r.i.c.ke song and plain song, and hath a sight in descant, who shall teach a free song school in Blackburn." In all his ma.s.ses he was to pray for the good estate of the then Earl and Lady of Derby, and their ancestors, and all benefactors to the chantry, quick or dead, and for all Christian souls. And every Sunday and holiday in the year, after his ma.s.s, he was to turn him to the people, and exhort them to prayer for all the said persons, and to say "the salme _De profundis_, with a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave Maria_, with special suffrages after, and funeral collect, as well for the quick as for the dead. And every Sat.u.r.day and holiday he shall sing the ma.s.se of Our Lady to note, and every quarter day he and his scholars shall sing a solemn dirge for the souls aforesaid. And if the chantry priest shall take any money or profit to say any trental, or otherwise to pray for souls other than those specified in the present foundation, he shall give half the profit towards the reparation or ornament of the said chantry; and if he shall make default in any of his duties, he shall pay 4_d._ for each such default, to be bestowed on the reparation and ornamentation of the chantry." In summer he was to say his ma.s.ses at 8 a.m., and in winter at 10 a.m.[553]

So, in 1468, Richard Hammerton endowed a chantry in the chapel of Our Lady and St. Anne, in the church of Long Preston, co. York, "that the inc.u.mbent should pray for the soul of the founder, help to perform divine service in the choir in time of necessity, teach a grammar and song school to the children of the parish, make a special obit yearly for the soul of the founder, distribute at the same time six shillings to the poor in bread, and make a sermon by himself or deputy once a year."[554]

There were four chantries in Burnley Church, and belonging to the Townley Chantry a _parva aula_, on the west side of the churchyard,[555] occupied as a grammar school till 1695, when another was erected in a more convenient situation.[556]

At Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, and at Tutthill, in the same county, the rood chantry priest was required to be "sufficiently seen" in plain song and grammar, and therefore, no doubt, was intended to teach them.[557]

The gild priest of the Jesus Gild, Prittlewell, Ess.e.x, celebrated daily at the altar of St. Mary, in the parish church, and had also charge of the education of the youth of the parish.

Skipton Grammar School was founded in 1548. The appointment vested in the vicar and churchwardens, for the time being. The master was to teach certain Latin authors, to attend in the choir of the parish church on all Sundays and festivals, and when service is performed by p.r.i.c.k song, unless hindered by some reasonable excuse; to celebrate before seven in the morning on such days, and three other days in the week; to be vested in a surplice, and sing or read as shall seem meet to the vicar.[558]

In 1529 an act pa.s.sed forbidding any one after Michaelmas to receive any stipend for singing ma.s.ses for the dead; some of the patrons proceeded to seize upon the chantry lands and furniture. Another act on the accession of Ed. VI., put all the colleges, chantries, free chapels, and other miscellaneous "endowments for superst.i.tious uses"

into the hands of the king, and commissioners were appointed to search them out and take possession of them. Some few of the chapels which had served outlying populations continued to exist and serve their purpose, the endowments were ruthlessly confiscated, but the inhabitants purchased the building of the crown or the grantee, and subscribed among themselves to provide a scanty stipend for a curate.[559]

Many of the grammar schools which were suppressed were refounded and endowed as King Edward VI. Grammar Schools.

The Returns of the Commissioners are in the Record Office, and there is an index to them arranged under counties. The Harleian MS., 605, in the British Museum, is also a catalogue of gilds and chantries.

Here follow some notes, from these sources, of curious endowments--

Fernditch and at Ordell, Beds., for "a Lamp and a Drinking" in the church.

Emberton, Bucks., "for a Drinking."

Great Horkesley, Ess.e.x; Cranfield and Steventon, Beds.; for "a Drink for the Poor."

Uppingham, Rutland, for "a Drinking on Rogation Day."

Wynge, Bucks., "for Bride Ale, Child Ale, Marriages, and Dirges, with lawful games."

Coventry, "for a preacher."

Townley, Suffolk, for "a Lamp and watching the Sepulchre."

Hempstead, Ess.e.x, "for discharging the Tax of the poor who may not have to dispend yearly above 40_s._"

"For the Bead Roll," at Barford, Beds., Chulgrave, Polloxhill, Richmond, Sondon, Wichhampstead, Eston, Dorlaston.

"For finding a Conduit," at St. Mary Aldermary.

"For repairing Roads and Bridges," in several places.