Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England Part 33

In the "Taxatio" the following is the value of the benefices:--Caldwell, 4 13_s._ 4_d._; St. Clement, 6 13_s._ 4_d._; St. Margaret, 4 13_s._ 4_d._; St. Mary at the Tower, 3 6_s._ 8_d._; St. Lawrence, 3 6_s._ 8_d._; St. Mary Hulme, 1; St. Nichl.

(Michael?), 1 10_s._; St. Peter, 4; Stoke, 10. The Priory had at the Reformation an income of 88 6_s._ 9_d._; St. Ellen was worth 8 13_s._ 7_d._; St. Stephen, 4 12_s._ 8_d._; Stoke, 12; St. Matthew, 5; the Daundy chantry[585] in St. Lawrence worth 6 10_s._ 8_d._

In 1177 a convent of Austin Canons was founded in the Church of Holy Trinity, and shortly afterwards another convent of the same order in the Church of St. Peter; and in course of time all the parishes of the town, except Stoke, which was on the other side of the river, were appropriated to one or other of these two convents. Only one new parish church of St.

Matthew sprang up between the Conquest and the Reformation. A Convent of Dominican Friars was founded here in 1270, and gained so much acceptance among the better cla.s.ses that most of the great people of the town were buried in its cemetery. The Franciscan Friars were established here in 1297.[586] There were also three leper hospitals in the town, and an almshouse, and one chantry in the Church of St. Lawrence.[587]

In not a few cases a great abbey was the origin of the existence of a town. Peterborough, St. Edmund's Bury, and St. Alban's, carry the fact in their names; and there are many others, as Burton, Wenlock, etc., etc. The abbey employed labourers and artificers, who settled in a convenient site under its shadow. If near a high-road, there was a frequent coming and going of travellers of various ranks, who halted for the night, and perhaps remained for a day or two. The abbey would be sure to obtain for its rising town the grant of a weekly market and annual fair. The abbey was the landlord of the ground on which the town was gradually growing; and a wise abbot would encourage the settlement of people in his burgh, build houses, make roads, maintain bridges, build churches, and provide schools.

Then there came a time when the citizens of the towns of England sought to obtain release from feudal claims and jurisdictions, and the right of self-government; the kings encouraged the rising munic.i.p.alities, seeing in them allies for the Crown against the n.o.bles, and gave them charters freely; and the citizens in many cases bought out the manorial rights of private owners. But bishops and monasteries, while not unwilling to give their tenants the right of a.s.sociation into gilds for the regulation of their trades, were unwilling to resign the rights and jurisdiction which they had exercised from the beginning in their lordship. We add two or three ill.u.s.trations of the ecclesiastical life of towns founded by bishops and abbots.

The Benedictine Abbey of Burton was founded by Ulfric Spot, Earl of Mercia, about 1002, and endowed with so many manors that it was as great as a barony. Abbot Bernard (1160-1175) built a church for the use of the people who had settled outside the abbey. Abbot Nicholas, who died in 1187, founded BURTON BURGH, and built the first street there. Abbot Melburne, who died in 1210, enlarged the town from the great bridge of Burton (over the Trent), to the new bridge (over the Dove) towards Horninglowe, and gave the citizens a charter, and established a fair and market. Abbot Lawrence (1228-1260), in a time of fire and flood, took no rent from the people. Abbot John, of Stafford, who died 1280, made the Burgh from Bradwaie to Berele Crosse, built the Monks' Bridge over the Dove, and made (_seldas in foro_) shops in the market-place. Abbot Bernard built the great bridge of thirty-six arches over the Trent, with a chapel at one end of it. It was one of the longest bridges in England--five hundred and fifteen yards long.[588] And during a great famine in 1286, Abbot Thomas Pakington found the people employment and wages in building a new quarter from Cattestrete through the middle of Siwarmore to Hikanelstrete; and built a Chapel of St. Modwen adjoining the abbey, which, after the Reformation, became the parish church. In the time of Abbot William Matthew, who died 1430, the high town was paved with a gutter in the middle, and the _novus vicus_ in front of the abbey gates.

The provision which the abbey made for the tenants of its burgh were the parish church and the Chapel of St. Modwen; and these seem to have been always served from the monastery; for, in the "Valor" there seems to be no Vicar of Burton, but the convent received from the parish church, in t.i.thes and oblations, 32[589] a year, and from offerings at the Chapel of St. Modwenne, 40_s._

The "Valor" speaks of a suburb appropriated to the serfs of the abbey, "Vicus Nativorum."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Abbey Gateway, Bury St Edmund's.]

The church and religious house which King Sigebert of the East Angles built at Bedericsworth was of little importance till the royal martyr, St.

Edmund, was buried there; and a great monastery was built by Canute on the spot in honour of the royal saint of East Anglia. In its most flourishing time the monastery is said to have had 80 Benedictine monks, 15 chaplains of the abbot and chief officials, 111 servants, and 40 priests of chapels, chantries, and monastic appendages in the town. The town which gradually grew up beside the abbey came to be known as the BURY OF ST. EDMUND. Its princ.i.p.al streets are straight and at right angles with one another like a town planned and built by the proprietor of the whole site. The abbey buildings had swallowed up the original Saxon church, and the people attended service in the nave of the abbey church, till Abbot Anselm, wishing, it is said, to be rid of the townspeople out of the abbey church, built the Church of St. James for them in 1125. Soon after a second Church of St. Mary was built by the sacrist at the south-west corner of the abbey cemetery. The abbey appointed the parish priests, and built a college for the parochial clergy. It derived from its rectorial rights at the time of the Reformation, as given in the "Valor," from St. Mary's 16 10_s._ 9_d._, and from St. James's 18.

As the monastery had created the town, so it ruled it without opposition till the desire for civil liberties which stirred the minds of the people led some of the younger townsmen to unite themselves under colour of a gild, the Gild of Bachelors, or young men, to endeavour to obtain munic.i.p.al rights for the town. In 1264 they closed the town gates against an official of the abbey, and engaged in riotous proceedings, when the abbot appealed to the Crown. The more prudent burghers got frightened, and suppressed the Bachelors' Gild. They kept up, however, a chronic quarrel, which culminated in open rebellion; in 1327 the townspeople broke into the abbey, and compelled the abbot to concede the liberties they sought. But the king strengthened the armed force at the command of the abbot, and the townsmen were obliged five years after to renounce their claim, and sue for pardon.

It will be observed that where a great monastery was the lord of the town there was no possibility of a rival monastery, and the monks did not welcome the friars into their neighbourhood.[590] The abbot supplied hospitals and such-like things as they were needed; here, at St. Edmund's, there were four hospitals at its four gates, founded by different abbots, for the entertainment of poor pilgrims. During a vacancy in the abbacy here some Franciscans took the opportunity to establish themselves in a house in the north part of the town; but the new abbot got rid of them in the peremptory way in which a landlord gets rid of a contumacious tenant--he pulled the house down over their heads. The friars appealed to Rome; the pope directed the archbishop, and the archbishop sent his commissaries, to conduct them into a new habitation in the west quarter of the town; but the monks drove out both the Episcopal Commissaries and their clients. The king sent down the chief justice to give them possession of a new site, but the monks did not submit to the chief justice, and made good their opposition. At length a compromise was arrived at, and the friars were allowed to settle "outside the Four Crosses," which marked the Liberties of St. Edmund for a mile in every direction.[591]

Offa, the great King of the Mercians, in the eighth century, is said to have "discovered" the relics of St. Alban, the Proto-Martyr of Britain, and built a monastery to contain them on the site of the martyrdom. A population gathered around the monastery. The founding of ST. ALBAN'S TOWN is ascribed to Usinus, the sixth abbot, in the tenth century. He is said to have built three parish churches for the people: St. Michael's, St.

Peter's, and St. Stephen's, on the north, south, and west sides of the abbey, and established a market for them. From Domesday it appears that the town was then part of the possessions of the abbey, and was held by the abbey in demesne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: St. Albans.]

Early in the fourteenth century, the inhabitants tried to relieve themselves from this hereditary jurisdiction, and wrested from Abbot Eversden (1308-1326) the right to elect two of their number to represent them in Parliament; but a little later Abbot Richard of Wallingford (1326-1334) successfully disputed his predecessor's concessions.

Lastly, we have the case of the towns which grew up from small towns to great ones, in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this case the town often was, and continued to be, a manor, the lord exercising the old feudal jurisdiction and maintaining his manorial rights; the affairs of the people being regulated by the manorial courts.

In these cases there was usually only one parish church, and we have to see the way in which, as the town grew, additional provision was made for the increasing population. One method was by the conversion of the parish church into a collegiate foundation with a staff of three or four clergymen, and choir men and boys, for the maintenance of a dignified service--this was usually done by some one pious benefactor, as at Manchester, Wingham, and Wye.[592] Another method was for the parishioners to provide the vicar with a staff of chaplains, and to endow special services, as at Sheffield and Newark. Each of these methods may be ill.u.s.trated by a brief history of the examples named.

Domesday Survey records the existence of two churches in MANCHESTER of which it is probable that one, St. Mary's, was the parish church of the town; and the other, St. Michael's, a dependent church at Ashton-under-Lyne. In the fourteenth century it was one of the most wealthy and populous towns in the county of Lancaster; and since the priest of the place is sometimes called the Dean of Manchester, it was perhaps the head of an extensive deanery. Its church was of timber, as that of Marston, in Cheshire, is to this day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Manchester Cathedral.]

Thomas la Ware, second son of Roger Lord la Ware, was rector in 1398, when by the death of his elder brother he succeeded to the Barony of la Ware, which included the manor. Desiring to make better provision for the inhabitants of the town, he obtained a licence from King Henry V., in 1421, to convert the parish church into a collegiate church, with a warden and so many fellows as should seem good to the body of feoffees who held the advowson and to the founder. All the powers ecclesiastical and civil having given their consent, the churchwardens and parishioners, including various influential knights, esquires, and gentlemen, were called together by the tolling of the church bell, and then and there expressed their full consent by pet.i.tion to the bishop. The staff was composed of a warden, eight fellows, four clerks, and six choristers; the bishop gave them a body of statutes which occupy a large s.p.a.ce in his extant register; and Lord la Ware built a college for their residence adjoining the church. The first warden, John Huntingdon, began the erection of a new and larger church.

The college was confiscated by Edward VI. and turned into a vicarage, but re-established by Queen Mary. Queen Elizabeth renewed the charter of foundation for a warden and four fellows, two chaplains, four laymen, and four children skilled in music. Charles I. again renewed it. In 1847, the diocese of Manchester was created, and the collegiate foundation afforded a suitable cathedral church with a dean and four canons already endowed.

As another example of the way in which a single benefactor sometimes made extra provision for the spiritual wants of a town, we take the case of the little town of ROTHERHAM, in Yorkshire. It had a church at the time of the Conquest. In subsequent times, two great families, the Vescis and Tillis, shared the manor and the church between them.

At the time of the "Taxatio" (1291) the rectory had been divided into moieties; one moiety had been appropriated to the Abbot of Clairvaux, who received 16 13_s._ 4_d._ from it, besides a stipend of 5, which he paid to the vicar of that moiety; Sir Roger was the rector of the other moiety, who received 21 13_s._ 4_d._, and he also was represented by a vicar; moreover, the prior of Lewes had a pension of 1 6_s._ 8_d._ out of the rectory.[593] The earlier church gave place, in the reign of Edward IV., to a more s.p.a.cious and handsome building, but its clerical staff still consisted of two vicars and several chantry priests.

The Archbishop of York, for the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, was known by the name of Thomas of Rotherham. His family name was Scott, but having been born at Rotherham, he took the name of his native place, as we have seen was the custom of Churchmen in the Middle Ages.

Before his death, he adopted another good custom of the time, by raising for himself a memorial in his native place, and conferring a benefit upon it in the shape of a perpetual foundation. His will is still in existence, and the following particulars are chiefly taken from it. He was, he says, born of people of the yeoman cla.s.s in the town of Rotherham, and baptized in the parish church, "in the sacred fountain flowing from the side of Jesus. O that I loved this Name as I ought and would!" So, lest he should seem ungratefully forgetful of these things, he founded a perpetual college in the Name of Jesus in the said town. This was to take the place of an earlier foundation of the twenty-second year of Edward IV., in which he had received his own education under a teacher of grammar so skilful that other of his scholars as well as he had been enabled to rise to higher fortunes. His first purpose was to establish a learned teacher of grammar there for all time, who should teach gratis all who came to him.

Then, having seen how the chantry priests of the town lived, some in one place, some in another, with the laity, to the scandal of one and the ruin of the others,[594] he determined to erect a college where the first should teach grammar, and the others might live and lodge. Thirdly, since he had observed that there are many parishioners attending the church, and that many rustic people of the neighbourhood flock to it that they may the better love the Christian religion, he establishes a second perpetual fellow to teach singing gratis, and to have for his food and clothing 6 13_s._ 4_d._; and six chorister boys, that they may celebrate the Divine office there more honourably, and each of them to have 40_s._ a year for food and clothing. Fourthly, since there are many very intelligent youths who do not all wish to attain the clerical dignity, but are adapted for mechanical arts and other occupations, he provides a third Socius, who shall teach the arts of writing and reckoning gratis. But since the arts of writing, music, and grammar are subordinate, and servants of the Divine law and the gospel, he ordains that there shall be a theologian placed above the three fellows in the rule and government of the house, with the name of provost, who shall be a B.D. at least, and shall be required to preach the word of G.o.d through the whole of the founder's province of York; he is to have for food and clothing 13 6_s._ 8_d._ "Thus I have incorporated in my college one provost, three fellows, and six choristers, that where I have offended G.o.d in His ten commandments, these ten may pray for me." As to the chantry priests, he gave them their chambers in the college; they were to dine at the college-table, paying for their food, but having the services of the cook, washerwoman, and barber gratis. The provost and fellows were to attend Divine service on festivals in the parish church in their surplices; at other times in the college chapel; and to celebrate his obit. There were five chantry priests living in the college at the time when the foundation, by which good Thomas of Rotherham made a monument for himself, and conferred a great benefit on his native town, was dissolved and swept away at the Reformation.

The neighbouring town of SHEFFIELD will afford an example of the way in which the inhabitants of a town sometimes made extra spiritual provision for themselves. At the Conquest, all this part of Yorkshire was a wild and thinly-peopled region. The Countess Judith, niece of the Conqueror, and wife of Waltheof, placed a colony of monks from Fontenelle near Havre, at Ecclesfield near Sheffield. The whole district of Hallamshire descended from the countess to William de Lovelot, who had his princ.i.p.al castle at Sheffield, and no doubt was the founder of the church here. Subsequently he founded a Priory of Austin Canons at Worksop, and among other property gave to them the church and one-third of the t.i.the of Sheffield.[595]

The canons always presented to the vicarage of Sheffield one of their number, who was not thereby cut off from the convent; for one of them, Upton, was recalled from Sheffield to be the prior of the house at Worksop.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century we learn that there were endowments for a Light or Gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for a Chantry or Service of St. Catherine, in the church.

In 1498, William Hine left certain tenements in trust for the four church greves or church masters to receive the rents, and thereof "to pay yearly to the priest of St. Catherine singing ma.s.s in the said church, 7_s._ at Whitsuntide for the better support and augmentation of the service thereof called St. Catherine's Service, the church maisters to have 12_d._ for attending at his obit." If the conditions of the will were not fulfilled, the feoffees were to pay the profits to the burgesses for the repair of bridges, causeways, and highways within a mile of the town. The history of the matter is a little obscure, but it appears that the inhabitants of the town had by voluntary contributions supplied the vicar with stipends for three chaplains to a.s.sist him in ministering to the town and the scattered hamlets; that about fourteen years before the Statute of Chantries, _i.e._ in the year 1533, the Guardians of the endowed chantry began to contribute 17 a year towards the maintenance of these three chaplains in sums of 7, 5, and 5. The Commissioners of Chantries returned it as "a service or perpetual stipend of three priests in the church there," and it was confiscated with other chantries. On the accession of Queen Mary, at the pet.i.tion of the men of Sheffield, the charity was refounded and put into the hands of twelve church burgesses to hold the property of the ancient endowment and devote it to the support of three chaplains to a.s.sist the vicar as well in the visitation of the people as in Divine service and the other sacraments in church, and to apply the surplus to the repair of bridges and ways.[596]

We find, then, that in a town which was all one parish with one great church, though the person in charge of the souls of the people was only a solitary vicar with a small income, there were often really a considerable number of clergy grouped around him, and that the services of the Church were better maintained than we should perhaps have expected. On a Sunday morning there would be several celebrations of Holy Communion at different hours in the chantry chapels, and some, if not all the priests of the chantries and special services were bound to be in choir at matins, high ma.s.s, and evensong, and take part in the service. Nearly every such town would have its grammar school, taught by a Clerk in Holy Orders; and we may be tolerably sure that the school would furnish choristers for choral matins and evensong. We have learnt that the lay people were solicitous for the honour of Divine service in their parish church, and may be sure that the vicar had little difficulty in obtaining funds for the purchase of "a pair of organs" and the stipend of an organist, and for all other expenses of Divine worship. On week-days the vicar would provide at least daily ma.s.s, matins and evensong, and the chantries and special services would supply other ma.s.ses.

In the pastoral care of the people, too, the vicar of a great parish was not left single-handed. Probably (as has been already said) each chantry priest, and, still more, each priest of a gild or service had a group of persons--the relatives of their founder, or brothers and sisters of their fraternity--who looked to them for spiritual ministrations; but besides these, the vicar sometimes had chaplains who were a.s.sistant-curates. The calendar of chantries, etc., refers to a number of endowments for "stipendiaries," of which some are named in conjunction with chantries and gilds as if they were cantarists, but others in conjunction with parishes as if they were simply parish chaplains.

Let us take NEWARK as our last example.

Leofric, the great Earl of Mercia, and G.o.diva his wife, gave this manor to the monastery of Stow. Remigius, the first Norman Bishop of Lincoln, held it in demesne; and then, according to Domesday, it had ten churches and eight priests; the churches and priests were probably in the place itself and in the sixteen sokes under its jurisdiction, the names of which we recognize in the names of the neighbouring villages for some miles round on the left bank of the Trent. Alexander, the next bishop, built a castle[597] here on the bank of the Trent; and the town seems to have grown up into importance, owing partly to its situation on the Fossway and the Trent, and partly to the protection and fostering care of the bishops. When Henry II. founded the Priory (of Sempringham nuns) of St.

Katherine, near Lincoln, he endowed it, among other properties, with the Church of Newark. A convent of Austin Friars was planted here and another of Observants (Franciscans), and the Knights of the Temple had a preceptory here.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Newark Church, Nottinghamshire.]

The town, as one of the halting-places of the funeral progress of Queen Eleanor, was ornamented with one of the crosses with which the king marked every step of that great pageant.

To come to more recent times, and to the particulars with which we are most concerned, the borough was one parish[598] under the care of a vicar; and its parish church,[599] rebuilt in the reign of Henry VI., is a very large and n.o.ble structure, with its chancel screen and carved stalls, and some fine carving, still remaining uninjured. We have already had occasion to give the particulars of the income of the vicar,[600] which amounted at the time of the "Valor" to 21, and of the outgoings, which included a stipend of 5 for a chaplain,[601] we have to add here the services and priests which helped to complete the religious arrangements of the town.

The Calendar of Chantries, etc., so often quoted, gives the following list of them--

St. Nicholas' Chantry, a chantry at the altar of St. James; Sawcendine's Chantry; "Morrow Ma.s.s" Chantry; St. Catherine's Chantry; Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Fleming;[602] Corpus Christi Chantry, founded by Isabell Caldwell; Newark Chantry; Trinity Chantry; All Saints' Chantry; Foster's Chantry; Trinity Gild[603] Chantry; Trinity Chantry, founded by John Leeke.

There are thirteen chantries in all. One we note was for a "Morrow Ma.s.s,"

_i.e._ a very early celebration of Holy Communion; the rest would be arranged at various hours. The Trinity Gild was the great gild of the town, which here, as in many other towns, supplied, to some extent, the place of a munic.i.p.al corporation.

Some solidarity was given to this group of cantarists by the fact that they lived together in a mansion which a benefactor had provided for them.

The internal economy of the mansion would require some regulation which would not improbably be borrowed from the rules which were customary in a college of priest-vicars, or chantry house of several priests. The rules for the chantry priests lodging in Archbishop Rotherham's College,[604]

and those for the chapel at Kingston-on-Thames,[605] will indicate their general character.

Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of the East Riding of York, a native of the town just before the Reformation (1532), founded at the north-west point of the churchyard a free school for a priest sufficiently learned to teach grammar, who was to be paid 10; together with a song school for a priest[606] sufficiently learned to teach plain song and play the organ, who was to have 8; and six children to be taught music, and to play upon the organs, who were to have 26_s._ 8_d._ each. The founder also founded an obit of 40_s._, and 40_s._ to be given to the alderman [of the Holy Trinity Gild] for the time being.