Temporary licences were sometimes granted in special cases of temporary sickness or chronic infirmity; Bishop Stapledon, in 1312, permits Dame Isabella de Fishacre to have Divine service at home, not only on week days but also on festivals when, through the inclemency of the weather or bodily infirmity, she cannot conveniently attend the parish church. In 1317, in consideration of Sir Peter Fishacre’s impotency, he is allowed to have Divine service celebrated in his own chamber in his house of Lupton. In 1310, Oliver de Halap, who is broken with age, and has lost the sight of his eyes, senio fractus et luminibus occulorum privatus, is compassionately allowed by the same considerate bishop to have Divine service celebrated in his manor house of Hertleghe.
The custom of having a domestic chaplain extended, in the latter part of the period with which we have to do, not only to the majority of the country gentry, but to wealthy yeomen and well-to-do citizens. Mere country gentlemen sometimes maintained a considerable chapel establishment. Henry Machyn, in his diary,[476] says, in noticing the death, in 1552, of Sir Thomas Jarmyn, of Rushbrook Hall, that “he was the best housekeeper in the county of Suffolk, and kept a goodly chapel of singing men.”
Richard Burre, a wealthy yeoman and farmer of the parsonage of Souwntyng, in 1529, directs in his will that “Sir Robert Beckton,” my chaplain, syng ffor my sowle by the space of ix. yers.[477]
When Alderman Monmouth took Tyndale into his house, and “did promys him x pounds sterling to praye for his father, mother, their soules and all christen soules,”[478] he clearly engaged that greatest of the translators of the Bible as his domestic chaplain. It was very natural, and no doubt usual, that special services for the deceased members of the family should be celebrated in the chapel of the house, and by the chaplain of the family. Not infrequently a chantry was founded in domestic chapels; e.g. “Thomas de Ross, lord of Hamelak and Belvoir, 1412, leaves 400li for ten chaplains to say mass, etc., in his chapel of Belvoir for eight years.”[479]
Some further examples of it will be found in the chapter on chantries and chantry-priests.
Mr. Christopher Pickering, in his will, dated 1542, leaves “to my sarvands John Dobson and Frances, xxs. a-piece, besydes ther wages; allso I give unto Sir James Edwarde, my sarvand,” etc.[480] One of the witnesses to the will is “Sir James Edwarde, preste,” so that the person whom Mr. Pickering describes as his servant seems to have been his domestic chaplain. Sir Thomas More says “every man has a priest to wait upon his wife;” so Nicholas Blackburn, a wealthy citizen of York, and twice Lord Mayor, leaves in 1431-2 a special bequest to his wife, “to find her a gentlewoman, and a priest, and a servant.”[481]
We have seen that the lord of the house usually selected his own chaplain, and made his own arrangements with him on the subject of remuneration, which most likely consisted of his lodging in the chaplain’s chamber and his board at the lord’s table, and a fixed sum of money, as at Skipton. But there were cases in which the chaplain was nominated by some outside authority, as the rector or vicar of the parish, as in the case of the Vyne, as if to lessen the likelihood of friction between the parish priest and the chaplain of the manor house.
The frequent occurrence of licences to solemnize the marriage of specified persons in the chapel of the bride’s home shows that then, as now, a special licence was required for such occasions.