COMMUNICANTS IN 1548.
The number of communicants at the holy sacrament in 1548 in thirty-five parishes in the diocese of Worcester is given in the certificate of Colleges and Chantries, No. 60, now remaining in the Carlton Ride Record Office. This certificate was made by "Sir John Pakynton, Knyght, Sir Robert Acton, Knyght, John Skewdamour, Esquyer, William Sheldon, Esquyer, George Willoughby, William Grove, Willyam Crouche, and John Bourne, Gentilmen," under a commission from King Edward VI, bearing date the 14th day of February, in the second year of his reign. This certificate contains a column headed "The names of the Townes and Parishes withe the nomber of hosslyng people in the same;" and each entry is in the following form: "1. The parishe of Saynt Ellyns within the said Citie, wherein bee of hoselyng people the nombre of six hunderd."
For the sake of brevity the names and numbers are here given. It is impossible to give the population of these places at the earlier date. The numbers of the communicants were carefully preserved by the ecclesiastical authorities, although the civil authorities paid no attention to the numbers of the population; but it is curious to mark, at a time when the numbers of the population must have been so much less than at present, how large a proportion the numbers of religious communicants in some instances bear to those of the present population.
It has been suggested that the large numbers specified in this certificate were not the numbers of actual communicants, but merely the numbers of persons who were of an age to be so, or perhaps the total number of communicants during the year. This seems, however, not to have been the case, and that these were the numbers of the actual communicants is shown by the fact that in the certificates for Gloucestershire and Wiltshire the numbers are equally high; and on the 14th of May, 1637, the Bishop of Salisbury issued an injunction to the curate and churchwardens of Aldbourne containing (inter alia) as follows: "I doe further appoint that thrice in the yeare at the least there be publique notice given in the church for fower Comunions to be held vpon fower Sundaies together, and that there come not to the Comunion in one day above two hundred at the Most." The population of Aldbourne is 1622. It has been suggested by a Roman Catholic gentleman that, before the Reformation, if any one beyond the age of confirmation had not received the Holy Communion at Easter, he would not be entitled to Christian burial if he died within the year, unless some very special cause could be shown. This also would go to account for the number of communicants in the different places being very large.