Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England Part 5

CHAPTER VIII.

PAROCHIAL CHAPELS.

At a rather early period, so the evidence leads us to conclude, all the great Saxon landowners had founded a religious house or a rectory on their estates, and these had, first by custom and then by legal recognition of the custom, obtained certain rights; on one hand, the sole right of spiritual ministration and pastoral jurisdiction among the people on those estates; and, on the other hand, to certain payments from them. Many of these estates were very large in area, embracing what at first were tracts of uninhabited and uncultivated country. But as population increased, and new lands were brought under cultivation, the spiritual needs of the new halls and new hamlets which came into being were supplied by chapels; these were built sometimes by the munificence of the lord of the whole estate, sometimes by the pious zeal of the rector who felt himself responsible for these new parishioners; sometimes by the mesne lord to whom the land of the new clearing had been granted; sometimes by the group of farmers whose labour had cleared the forest or broken up the waste.

The old Saxon parish priests frequently had one or more chaplains and clerks living with them and a.s.sisting them in their duties;[100] and this continued to be the case down to the Reformation, the bishops taking such steps as they could to perpetuate the maintenance of these chaplains.

When these _chapels_ were erected, care was taken of the rights of the mother church. Const.i.tutions of Egbert, Archbishop of York in 750, decree that the mother church shall not be deprived of t.i.thes or other rights by allotment of them to new chapels. The same is ordered in a council under King Ethelred, by the advice of his two archbishops, Alfege and Wulfstan.

Clun, Shropshire, is an example of the great Saxon parishes. In the time of Richard I., Isabel de Saye gave the church and its chapels to Wenlock Priory for the safety of her soul and the souls of her husband and son, her father and mother, and all her ancestors and successors. The chapels enumerated are at the vill of St. Thomas de Waterdene, de Clumbire, de Cluntune, de Oppetune, and the chapels de Eggedune and Sebbidune, and all other chapels and belongings. The donor, however, reserves her free chapels, viz. the chapel of her castle, and any others.[101]

Shawbury was a Saxon foundation mentioned in Domesday. A certificate of Bishop Roger de Clinton (1130-1148) shows that there were then four villes, viz. of Aston Reynald, Moreton Corbet, Grenvill, and Great Withyford, and that the bishop consecrated chapels in three of them, there being one already existing. The bishop decided that such lands and endowment as the lords of the fees had offered when he consecrated the new cemeteries were offered to the mother church. The church, with its chapels, was appropriated to Haughmond Abbey; the canons of Haughmond being required to present fit chaplains to the Church and a.s.sign them a proper sustenance, the residue they might appropriate to their own uses and the entertainment of guests.[102]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clun Church, Shropshire.]

At length the multiplication of chapels was regulated by legislation. The synod of Westminster (1102), under Anselm, decreed that no more should be erected without the bishop's leave.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the endowment of many of these chapels, the concession to them of the right of baptism, marriage, and burial, the a.s.signment of a district within which the priest had pastoral jurisdiction, and the concession to the mesne lord of the patronage of the chapel which he had built and endowed, amounted to the practical elevation of such chapels to the status of parish churches. The natural tendency of things was in this direction. A landholder who had built a church for himself and his people would naturally desire that it should possess the dignity of a parish church, and was thus induced to provide a sufficient endowment for it. The people would naturally desire the convenience of having all the means of grace at their own church instead of having to carry their children to a distance for baptism and their dead for burial, and in some cases the more well-to-do freeholders would be willing to contribute to the cost of it. The quotation of some actual examples will be the most interesting way of ill.u.s.trating the general history of this development.[103]

Domesday speaks of one church in the Hundred of Alnodestreu and County of Salop, viz. that of St. Gregory. When Bishop Robert de Betun (about 1138) granted this church to the Abbey of Shrewsbury, St. Gregory's became the priory church of Momerfeuld, or Morville, and it had three dependent chapels, which were also appropriated to the priory, viz. at Billingsley which had as its endowment half the corn t.i.thes of the said ville and paid 6_s._ 8_d._ to the mother church, at Olbury which paid 5_s._ and at Tasley which paid 6_s._ 8_d._[104]

Within a year or two Robert Fitz Aer[105] founded another chapel at Aston Aer, endowing it with sixty acres and a house and all t.i.thes of the domain. Within ten years two other such chapels were built, viz.

at Aldenham and Underdon with separate endowments. By the appropriation deed, which gives St. Gregory and its chapels to the convent, it is ordained that these chapels shall be subject to the mother church of Morville, so that on great festivals the people shall attend there, and the priest of Morville shall, if he pleases, have the dead carried thither for burial. Again, the same bishop consecrated a new chapel at Astley Abbots, endowed by the Abbot of Salop himself with thirty acres, a house, and a parcel of land worth 4_s._ per ann.

These seven chapels in one parish, nearly all consecrated by one bishop, seem to mark a time of active extension. It is curious that, whereas Orderic Vitalis says that there was much building of monasteries and churches in the reign of Henry I., because the country had settled down, after the troubles of the Conquest, into peace and security,[106] Bishop de Betun says that he has consented to consecrate so many chapels as a protection for the poor, and out of regard to the warlike troubles of the time--for it was during the stormy reign of Stephen.[107]

In many cases the owners of the estates on which the chapels were situated, or the tenants, or both together, made an agreement with the rector to augment the stipend of a chaplain so that he might give additional services and pastoral care in their ville. Thus, when Gilbert Norman (1130?) gave the church of Kingston-on-Thames to Merton Priory, the parish had already four chapelries, Thames Ditton, East Moulsey, Petersham, and Shene (now Richmond). In 1211 the inhabitants of Petersham complained of the paucity of services in their chapel, and the matter came before the Ecclesiastical Courts. It would appear that lack of funds was at the bottom of the deficiency of service. The prior and convent, "of their great piety, and for the good of the souls of their parishioners," granted to the vicar and his successors two quarters of corn, one of barley, and one of oats; and the Abbot and Convent of Chertsey, who were considerable landowners there, also of their good will granted a quarter of corn from their lands there, for the sustentation of a chaplain who should celebrate in the chapel thrice a week, viz. on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday.[108] A like complaint was made again in 1266, when the appropriators increased their grant to four quarters of wheat, one of barley, and one of oats; and seventeen of the parishioners for themselves and heirs granted a payment of one bushel of wheat for every ten acres of their land, making twenty-four and a half bushels. Other cases in which the people themselves contributed to the support of their priest will be found in the chapter on Chantries.

Clearly the thing to be desired was to get resident chaplains appointed to all the villes with a considerable population, and to that end to get endowments for them, and much was done in this direction in the thirteenth century. We shall find ample ill.u.s.trations of various features of the work in the forty years' episcopate of Archbishop Walter Gray. The archbishop wrote to the Pope, Gregory IX., on the subject, desiring, no doubt, to get the support of the Papal sanction for the measures which he desired to take. We gather from the pope's reply that the archbishop had represented to him that "many parishes in his diocese were so widely spread that the parishioners were at a great distance from their church, and were not able, without much inconvenience, to come to the Divine services; and that it often happened, when the priest was summoned by the sick, that before he could arrive they had died without confession and the viatic.u.m;" and no doubt the archbishop had suggested what he desired to do; whereupon the pope grants to him leave that, after due consideration of the distance of places, the difficulties of the roads, and the number of the increasing population, in parishes of this sort, he should build oratories and inst.i.tute priests in them.[109]

The way in which the archbishop set to work (1233) to strengthen the existing machinery is admirably ill.u.s.trated in the ordinance which he drew up with the concurrence of the dean for the vicarages with their chapels belonging to the deanery. There were three vicarages, Pocklington, Pickering, and Kellum. Pocklington had six chapels, Pickering four, and it does not appear that Kellum had any. First he strengthened the mother churches by the requirement that each of the vicars should, "besides all other necessary ministers," have a chaplain--an a.s.sistant priest--always with him. Then he consolidated the six chapels of Pocklington and the four of Pickering, two and two, into five vicarages, _i.e._ two neighbouring chapels were formed into a vicarage, the inc.u.mbent of which was to have _in nomine vicaragiae_ certain endowments, and the vicar was to find the necessary ministers for both chapels; but the dignity of the mother churches was reserved by the provision that the new vicars were to pay a small annual sum to their mother churches _nomine subjectionis_.[110]

Another ill.u.s.tration of the way in which the improved condition of things was brought about is in the case of Roundelay. Sir John de Roundelay and his heirs and the men of that ville had licence (A.D. 1231) to establish a perpetual chantry in their chapel every day in the year save Christmas, Purification, Easter ("Parasceues"), and All Saints, and if they had service on Palm Sunday, it was to be without procession and the blessing of the Palms; neither were they to have the celebration of baptism, marriage, or churching; on all these occasions they were to repair to the mother church, and the chaplain and people were to swear obedience to the mother church and its rectors. Sir John provided an endowment for the new inc.u.mbent, and the vicar of the mother church was to give him half a mark a year (6_s._ 8_d._), in consideration, no doubt, that it had hitherto been a charge upon him to that extent or more to make provision for the partial services at the chapel.[111]

Again, Berneston Chapel, Notts, had been accustomed to have only three services a week. The people had the archbishop's licence to give an endowment to provide for having full services in their chapel _pro habendo plenario servitio_ by a chaplain and clerk residing there.[112]

There are many other examples in the Archbishop's Register of similar extensions of the usefulness of the existing ecclesiastical machinery, but these are enough to show the way in which it was done. There can be no doubt that the work was done in the same way where it was needed in the other dioceses of the kingdom.

There is a curious instance at Stokesay, in Shropshire. Before the Conquest, the parish church of that estate had been at Aldon, which is mentioned in Domesday. After the Conquest, the status of parish church had been given to a new church at Stokesay, on the same estate, and Aldon Church had been left in the status of a chapel. In 1367, the chief parishioners of Aldon took proceedings against the vicar, Walter of Greneburg, for neglecting them, and he was required by the bishop to find a chaplain to celebrate three days a week--Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday--except on great festivals.[113]

The following seems to be an instance of the transition of dependent chapels into independent parish churches, and an ill.u.s.tration of the way in which sometimes it came about. At Newnham, Gloucestershire, in 1260, an inquisition _post mortem_ found that the Rector of Westbury held the chapels of Newnham and Munstreworth as pertaining to the Church of Westbury. In 1309, in the Pleas before the King, the jurors declared on oath that the churches of Newnham and Munstreworth were mother churches with cure of souls before the time of King Henry III., and in the presentation of the king.

Here is an example at Whalley of the way in which great landed proprietors brought new tracts of their forest and waste under cultivation, and created new manors.

In a suit in the reign of Edward III., the jurors found that in the time of King John there was not in the aforesaid place of Brandwode any manor or manses, but it was waste, neither built upon nor cultivated, and was parcel of the aforesaid forest of Penhul [Pendle], and it is said that in the time of Henry, the ancestor [proavus] of the present king, the then abbot [of Whalley] built houses on the aforesaid waste of Brandwode, and caused a great part of the waste to be enclosed, which is now called the Manor of Brandwode.[114]

And here is a late example of the people reclaiming waste, and building a chapel for themselves:--

In the end of the fifteenth century the forest of Rossendale was inhabited only, or chiefly, by foresters and the keepers of the deer.

Upon representation to King Henry VII., and afterwards to Henry VIII., that if the deer were taken away, the forest was likely to come to some good purpose, it was disafforested, and let forth in divers sorts, some for a term of years, some by copy of Court Roll; so that where there was nothing else but deer and other savage and wild beasts, by the industry of the inhabitants, there is since grown to be very fertile ground well replenished with people. And inasmuch as the Castle Church of c.l.i.theroe, being their parish church, was distant twelve miles, and the ways very foul, painful, and perilous, and the country in the winter season so extremely and vehemently cold, that infants borne to the church are in great peril of their lives, and the aged and impotent people and women great with child not able to travel so far to hear the Word of G.o.d, and the dead corpses like to remain unburied till such time as great annoyance to grow thereby, the inhabitants about 1512, at their proper costs, made a chapel-of-ease in the said forest; since the disafforesting of the said forest from eighty persons there are grown to be a thousand young and old. At the same time, one Lettice Jackson, a widow, vested in feoffees certain lands for the use of the new church of our Saviour in Rossendale. The population seems to have continued to increase, for, thirty years afterwards, the people founded and edified a chapel in Morell Height in honour of G.o.d, our Blessed Lady and All Saints.[115]

We have seen that the law carefully safeguarded the rights of the mother churches, as against the new chapels which sprang up. The Church also was careful to maintain their dignity in a way which calls for some remark.

The curate of a chapel, on his inst.i.tution, made a vow of reverence and obedience to his rector. Very generally some small payment was required from the chapelry to the rector _in nomine subjectionis_, as an acknowledgment of dependence. The people of the chapelries were required on several of the great festivals of the Church to communicate at the mother church, and on one or more of these festivals to visit the mother church in procession with flags flying.

There was another custom, very like this, on a larger scale, viz. the custom for the parishioners of all the parishes of a diocese to visit the cathedral church in procession on a given day in the year. This seems to have been a very old custom, for which Sir R. Phillimore quotes the Council of Agde and the Decretum of Gratian,[116] and suggests that it was probably introduced into England at the Norman Conquest. We find it enjoined in the canons of several Diocesan Councils; and it is tolerably certain that it was a general custom.

We suggest that the idea at the back of these customs was not merely that the offerings of the people of the chapelries should not be lost to the rector of the mother church on the three great days of offering; and that the cathedral should receive a yearly tribute from every subject of the bishop. We suggest that the purpose of the custom was to maintain the idea of the unity of the Church. The chapels had received their Christianity from the mother church, and all the "houseling people" in recognition of it worshipped there three times a year. The mother churches received their Christianity from the bishop's see, and were his spiritual subjects, and once a year went up in procession to worship at the cathedral as an act of homage. And these reunions would, in fact, promote the idea of brotherly communion and Christian unity, as the attendance of the Israelites on the three great festivals at their one temple in Jerusalem tended to maintain the national unity of the people as the people of G.o.d.

Nothing is free from abuse. We learn from the Register of Bishop Storey, of Chichester, that in 1478 the people who came yearly to visit the shrine of St. Richard on his commemoration day (April 3), had been accustomed to carry long painted wands, and in struggles for precedence had used these wands upon one another's heads and shoulders; wherefore the bishop directs that in future they shall, instead of wands, carry banners and crosses, that the several parishes shall march up reverently from the west door of the cathedral in a prescribed order, of which notice should be given by the inc.u.mbents in their churches on the Sunday preceding the festival.

Royal chapels were, on no sound ecclesiastical principle, but by an exercise of the royal prerogative, from an early period held to be outside any episcopal jurisdiction.[117] For example, a series of churches along the old Mercian border, Stone, Stafford, and Gnosall, Penkridge and Wolverhampton, Tettenhall, as having been built by King Wulfhere, or by Elfleda, the Lady of Mercia, claimed exemption from all control. Clinton Bishop of Lichfield (1129-48) tried to bring them under his rule by purchasing them of the king, and annexing them bodily to the possessions of his see but that did not hinder them from still claiming their ancient privileges.

The lawyers[118] say that the king may by charter license a subject to build a free chapel similarly free from the jurisdiction of the ordinary, but they are not able to quote any instances of it. Some barons, however, did claim freedom from jurisdiction for the chapels of certain castles; perhaps on the ground that the castles were royal castles, and that they held or had received them from the crown with all their privileges and exemptions. For example, the chapel of St. Mary, in the castle at Hastings, enlarged, if not founded, soon after the Conquest, by the Count of Eu, for a dean and ten prebendaries, was claimed by successive lords of the castle to be a free chapel; and in spite of repeated attempts by the bishops of Chichester to a.s.sert their rights, the privilege was successfully maintained till the fifteenth century.

A number of chapels were called free chapels, apparently because they were free from subjection to the mother church of the parish. We have already seen that the free chapels, built for the convenience of outlying groups of population, were at first served by chaplains from the mother church; then the chaplains nominated by the rector resided at the chapelries; and when the chapels were endowed and a.s.signed districts, and obtained the rights of baptism, marriage, and burial, still the patronage to the chapelries was in the rector, and the sentiment of subjection to the mother church was carefully kept up by the payment of a pension from the one to the other, and the custom of a procession to the service of the mother church on one or more great occasions. But in some cases a chapel became freed from this subjection by the action of the neighbouring squire, who, by purchase or agreement, obtained special rights over it; or some private patron built and endowed a new chapel with the stipulation for certain rights. We have seen that, when Isabel de Saye gave the parish of Clun and all its chapels to Wenlock Priory, the donor reserved her free chapels.

Here is an instance of a chapel which is called a free chapel, but was technically a chantry, and clearly intended to serve also as a chapel-of-ease to the town in which it was situated.

In 1309, Edward Lovekyn, of Kingston-on-Thames, had leave to build a chapel there, and endow it with lands and rent. Robert Lovekyn, his brother and successor, withheld some of the income, and was compelled to restore it by threat of excommunication with bell and candle. In 1352, John Lovekyn rebuilt the chapel and increased the endowment for the sustentation of one or more additional chaplains, one to be warden (it does not appear that there ever were more than the warden and one brother), who had a manse. The rules and ordinances are given at length in the book from which we quote. They were to live together in the manse, with separate sleeping rooms, and a common table. The warden was to provide suitable provision, and give to each brother a gown of the same kind which he wore, and forty silver shillings a year for his other necessaries. The warden was also to provide a clerk to serve ma.s.s and wait upon the chaplains in their rooms; and to provide honest surplices and amyces furred with black fur to wear in chapel.

The warden to be always in residence, and not to take any other cure; not to give or sell any corrody; the warden might have guests at table; if any other had a guest, he was to pay 3_d._ for his dinner and 2_d._ for any other meal.[119] Ma.s.ses to be said for the founder and his family, and also to grace after dinner was to be added, "May the souls of John Edward and Robert Lovekyn, our founders, and of the Lord William, Bishop of Winchester, and all faithful deceased, rest in peace through the mercy of G.o.d." On the four princ.i.p.al feasts the chaplains were to attend the parish church and make their offerings like other parishioners. In consideration that John Lovekyn gave a manse to the vicarage, his chapel was to have all oblations which came to it.[120]

The calendar of the chapels, chantries, etc., at the time of the Reformation, mentions 432 chapels, of which 198 are called "free chapels."

CHAPTER IX.

THE PARISH PRIEST--HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION.

The early Saxon bishops were very often men of royal and n.o.ble families.

The religious houses, which were the centres of evangelization in the early missionary phase of the history, were often founded by royal and n.o.ble persons, who were not seldom themselves the first abbots and abbesses, and handed down their houses and offices as hereditary possessions. The parish churches were founded by the lords of the land, who made the advowson appendant to the manor, and very usually brought up a younger son to be the spiritual rector of the family estate. The natural result of all this would be that a large proportion of the Saxon clergy would be men of good family; not by any means exclusively, for we have seen that even slaves[121] were sometimes admitted to Holy Orders, and we have read[122] a kindly warning to priests of n.o.ble birth not to despise their brethren of humbler origin; and the law a.s.signed to every priest--_qua_ priest--the rank of thane (p. 77).

We know that the founders of the English churches established schools, and finding their converts apt pupils, soon raised up a learned native clergy.

The young men intended for the pastoral office were taught the learning and trained in the ascetic discipline of these monastic schools.[123]

The natural result would be that the Saxon clergy would not only be generally of good birth and breeding, but also religious, learned, and capable men; the natural spiritual rulers, teachers, and protectors of the population of freemen, villeins, and serfs who peopled the estate of which the civil lord and ruler was often the rector's father or brother.

The Norman Conquest introduced confusion for a time into both monasteries and parishes. Norman abbots intruded into the religious houses, sometimes quarrelled with the Saxon monks, and the first inhabitants of the newly-founded monasteries were usually imported from abroad; as the rectories fell vacant, they would be filled with the sons of the new Norman lords of manors, and there could be little sympathy between the Norman rector and the Saxon flock. But things soon settled down upon a new course. In a very few generations Normans and Saxons amalgamated. The old monasteries, revived and reformed, and the new ones added to them, were filled with zealous English communities; and in the parishes an English lord of the manor and an English rector ruled an English people. With the thirteenth century we begin a new period of parish history, continuing down to the sixteenth century, and extending all over the country, of which the general features are very uniform; so that it is only necessary occasionally to point out new inst.i.tutions and phases of character.