Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England

by Edward Lewes Cutts

The western end of the chapel is sometimes divided into two stories, both opening upon the sacrarium; the upper story was usually intended for the family, and the lower for the domestics. Sometimes the chapel on the principal floor has, besides its internal approaches, an external stone stair by which people from other parts of the house could enter the chapel without passing through the house, as at the fourteenth-century houses of Inceworth (?) and Earth, both in Cornwall.

The principal residence of a great noble needed a chapel of considerable size to accommodate the number of people, as numerous as the population of a country parish or a small town, who were gathered into the castle during the residence of its lord:—the lord’s household of knights and squires, yeomen and pages; his lady’s separate household of ladies, bower-women, and women in various kinds of service; the garrison of the castle, with its commanders of knightly degree, their squires, men-at-arms, yeomen, and grooms; the several staffs which looked after the various departments of the service, the chambers, kitchens, stables, kennels, and mews; besides a constant flow of visitors, with their complex trains of guards and attendants.

In England only the chief royal houses have maintained the mediæval dignity of their ecclesiastical domestic establishments. Windsor Castle, besides its oratory, has its noble chapel dedicated to St. George the Patron Saint of England,[452] and its establishment of dean and canons, singing men and boys, housed in a picturesque group of collegiate buildings arranged round several cloistered courts. The Tower of London, besides its chapel in the White Tower, has its church of St. Peter ad Vincula in the courtyard.

Many of the great nobles, who maintained a state little inferior to that of royalty, had their chapel establishment of proportionate dignity. In the opinion of that time, a man of great rank and estate owed it to the glory of God that the worship of his household should be offered with circumstances of solemn splendour; he owed it to the well-being of the numerous people who depended upon him; and to the still more numerous people of all estates, who looked to him for an example.

The Duke of Buckingham’s house at Thornbury had a chaplain, eighteen clerks of the chapel, and nine boys.[453]

The household book of Henry Algernon, the fifth Earl of Northumberland, who was born in 1477, and died in 1527, gives us very full details of the organization of the chapel staff of a great nobleman, their duties, and their emoluments in money and kind. They consisted of a dean, who was to be a D.D., or LL.D., or B.D., and ten other priests, eleven gentlemen, and six children who composed the choir.[454] The secular duties which were assigned to some of them will perhaps be better understood by a reference to the past. The clergy had always been the advisers of the English kings and nobles in the ordinary affairs of life: the Archbishop of Canterbury was the king’s official chief counsellor till long after the Norman Conquest. Every ealdorman and great thane probably had a learned clerk in his house, not only as a chaplain, but as an adviser in general affairs. Henry II. organized his domestic religious establishment into a Department of State, and used Churchmen in the civil administration as ministers, ambassadors, and judges—there were none others so capable. The nobles were following on the same lines, when they made one chaplain steward, another secretary, and another tutor, in addition to their not burdensome duties in the maintenance of Divine worship. So the people resorted to their parish priest to advise them in their domestic difficulties and extraordinary matters of business, to arbitrate in their differences, and make their wills, for the simple natural reason of his wider knowledge of affairs, his greater experience of mankind, his disinterestedness, and, not least, his sacred character.

In the castles of less noble and wealthy persons it is not uncommon to find that there were several chaplains organized into a college of secular priests, as at Colchester, Exeter, Hastings, Pontefract, etc., and not infrequently endowed out of the rectories in the lord’s gift. In some instances the lord of numerous estates endowed the chapel of his principal castle with the churches upon all his estates, as at Colchester, Clitheroe, etc. The intention probably was not so much to enrich the chaplain or form an endowment for the collegiate staff of the chapel, as to make the castle chapel the mother church of the village churches on the surrounding estates; just as the seneschal of the castle was the superior officer of the bailiffs of the various manors; and so to concentrate the ecclesiastical administration of all the estates, as well as their civil administration, under the eye of the lord and his most trusted agents.

Sometimes, on the other hand, the lord gave the service of the castle chapel into the hands of some neighbouring monastery (probably of his own founding), as at Colchester to the Abbey of St. John, at Brecon to the Priory of Brecon. When Robert de Haia, in 1120, founded the Priory of Boxgrove, Sussex, he stipulated that he should choose one of the canons to officiate in the chapel of his neighbouring manor house of Holnaker. So Sir Ralph de Eccleshall, temp. Edward I., gave his mill, etc., to the monks of Beauchief, who covenanted in return to find him a priest for his chapel at Eccleshall. They stipulated, however, that in floods or snow they shall be excused from sending one of their canons to Eccleshall, but may say the due masses in their own church at Beauchief. So the chapel of the De Lovelot’s castle at Sheffield was served by the canons of their Priory of Worksop.

The Collegiate Church of St. George within the royal castle of Windsor had, and still has, an establishment consisting of a dean, twelve canons, eight minor canons, eight vicars choral, and eight chorister boys.[455] The Chapel of Wallingford Castle[456] was served by a dean, five prebendaries, and a deacon. Tickhill had four prebendaries;[457] three was a common number, as at Exeter, etc.; Pontefract had two. The chapel of Bridgenorth Castle had a college of secular priests, and in later times served as a parish church to the people of the borough. The castle chapels at Nottingham and Skipton were rectories. The Castle Chapel at Kirby Ravensworth had a chantry of two priests.

The chapels of Skipton, Tutbury, and Stafford Castles are called “free chapels.” Of Skipton Castle Chapel certain liberties and duties of the parson or chaplain were written in two mass-books, one new, the other old, in one of which the earl granted that the said chaplain should have meat and drink sufficient within the hall of the lord of the castle for him and one garçon[458] with him. And if the lord be absent, and no house kept, he and his successors shall have for every ten weeks one quarter of wheat and vis. viiid.; and vid. in money and one robe or gown yerely at ye Nativity of o’r Lord, or xiiis. ivd. in monie. An inquisition of Edward III. adds as part of the endowment one cameram fenestratam (a chamber with a window) and pasture for viii oxen, vi cows, and two horses, and sufficient timber for repairing his house and chamber, and dry wood for firing. At the dissolution of chantries and free chapels, it became a question whether this was not a parsonage.[459] In other cases, the chaplain had a definite endowment, which seems to have been calculated upon the not very large income of a parish chaplain. The four chaplains of Tickhill were endowed with £5 each; the chaplain of Nottingham Castle with £5; the chaplain at Pleshey Castle, Essex, with £5;[460] the chaplain at Denbeigh with £8, the foundation of the king; at Southampton with £10, payable by Royal Letters out of the customs of that port. Probably in many cases there was no endowment; the chapel was practically a “free chapel,” and the emoluments such as were agreed upon between the patron and his nominee; these would naturally tend to become a customary payment and perquisites; the Skipton agreement gives an instance of what was probably customary: viz. a corrody for himself and a boy, and a small sum in money.