Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England

by Edward Lewes Cutts

The next question to which we turn is the income of the Church as a whole, and of the parochial benefices in particular, and a comparison in this respect also between the “Taxatio” and the “Valor.”

The ostentation of minute accuracy on the part of the taxers is almost ludicrous, the princely income of the Bishop of Lincoln is returned at £1962 17s. 4½d. In dividing a sum of money among the minor canons of that cathedral, the accountant points out that a farthing remained over, which was indivisible; and in dividing the gross income of the benefices by ten, it was constantly recorded that there was a remainder of so much, which was “undecimable.”

Very few new religious houses were founded after the thirteenth century; the cause was not so much that the Statute of Mortmain interposed a check to the free action of pious munificence, as that there was a general recognition that enough had been done in this direction. The two thousand chantries which had been founded in the two centuries probably did not average £5 a year income, and did not swell the general income by so much as £10,000 a year. The parochial benefices are seen, by actual comparison of the figures, to have increased in nominal amount of income, but the purchasing value of money had decreased, so that the real value of the benefices was probably somewhat less. The produce of the annual tenths would seem to indicate that the income of the Church had largely diminished, for whereas we have seen that by the “Taxatio” of 1291 it amounted to £20,000, we learn, from a letter of Henry VII., to the Bishop of Chichester, that it had fallen by that time to £10,000; the Bishop of Oxford[425] attributes this to the multiplication of exemptions, especially of livings under ten marks.

One valuable feature of the “Valor” is the schedules of incomings and outgoings of the livings, and the incidental notices contained in them, which give glimpses of the economy of the parishes.

We give first one example, which is expressed in English, at full length, as a clue to the meaning of the more abbreviated form in which some others are given.

From the “Valor Ecclesiasticus,” vol. vi. p. 2:—

Compotus of Wm. Richardson “Vicegerent” of John Emott rector, of his benefice of Brancaster in 1535.

First in glebe land, x acr’, by the yearly value of vj.

Item in wheté, xx cūbe [cumbes].

Item in myxteleyn, xl cūbe.