The priest of the Chapel of Skelton Castle, Yorkshire, was, at the time of the Suppression, only partly paid by Lady Conyers, 23s.; and his stipend was made up of payments from half a dozen other persons, from the 18s. of R. Robinson, down to the 3s. 10d. of John Gyll, making a total of £4 2s. 10d.[461]
The domestic chapels of the nobility and great men were always consecrated, and had a perpetual licence for Divine service.
Very probably, where there were several chaplains, they all served their lord in various clerkly capacities. So Piers Plowman:—
Somme serven the Kyng, and the silver tellen
In chequer and chauncerie, challengen his dettes
Of wardes, and of wardemotes, weyes and theyves;
And some serven as servants lordes and ladies,
And in stede of stewardes sitten and demen.
The domestic chaplain is frequently named in wills as a witness or an executor, and not infrequently as a legatee; e.g. Giles de Gadlesmere, knight, 1337, leaves to Wm. Ocham, clerk, 100 shillings, unless he be promoted before my death; Wm. de Ocham is one of the witnesses to the will.[462]
We find in the “Valor Eccl.” a considerable number of chantries recorded as founded in the chapels of castles. There is doubt in some cases whether these were the ordinary endowments of the chaplain, made under the name of a Chantry, for reasons of legal convenience, or whether, in addition to the ordinary chaplain, a special endowment had been made for mortuary masses, and, if so, whether the ordinary chaplain was also the Cantarist and received the chantry endowment in addition to his normal stipend. The chaplain celebrating in the chapel of the Castle of Downhead received from the grant of King Stephen £5 a year, and chaplain for celebrating mass twice every week at Penhill, for the soul of the founder, £2 13s. 4d.[463] There were chantries in the chapels of the castles of Chester, Sherifhoton, Pickering, Malton, Pontefract, Penrith, Sandall, Skelton, Whorleton, Kermerdenin in Wales, Durham, Barnard Castle, Tutbury, Stafford, Wilton, Norham, Alnwick, etc. The lord of Bridgenorth Castle arranged with the Dean and Canons of Windsor to supply a priest to celebrate three days a week for the founder and King John.
Any one might build an oratory in his house,[464] but Divine service, that is the Holy Communion, might not be celebrated in it without the bishop’s permission. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, the lesser gentry began to include a chapel in the plan of their manor houses, and the custom seems to have become almost universal in the following centuries. We may take it as an indication of a growing desire to maintain the regular daily practice of religious worship in a seemly solemn way for their families and households.
In the valuable digest of the Exeter Registers, for which historical students are much indebted to Canon Hingeston-Randolph, the licences issued during the twenty-four years of Edmund Stafford’s Episcopacy (1395-1419) are arranged under the family names of the persons to whom they were granted, and there are two hundred and seventy-two names. In many cases the licence extends to all their mansions and manors in the Diocese of Exeter; which gives a rough estimate of about three hundred domestic chapels in the manor houses of the two counties of Devon and Cornwall; if we multiply that figure by twenty-six, we get a rough estimate of over seven thousand domestic chapels in England and Wales.
All these domestic chapels, except those of royal houses[465] and of some free chapels, were under the jurisdiction of the bishop, and a constant and perhaps jealous oversight was maintained lest they should detract from the general assembly of all the parishioners for united worship in the parish church, or interfere with the pastoral position and rights of the rectors of the parishes. People with interest at Rome sometimes obtain their licence direct from the pope. There is an example of the king’s ambassador obtaining a batch of them in 1343, but they are granted with strict limitations.
Among the Constitutions of Archbishop Stratford, made at the Council of London (1342), is one which even restricts the power of the bishops to grant licences: it decrees that “all licences granted by the bishops for celebrating mass in places not consecrated other than to noble men and great men of the realm, and to persons living at a considerable distance from the church, or notoriously weak or infirm, shall be void.” The decree goes on to say that “whosoever, against the prohibition of the canon, shall celebrate mass in oratories, chapels, houses, or other places, not consecrated, without having obtained the licence of the diocesan, shall be suspended from the celebration of Divine service for the space of a month.”[466]