The Romance of King Arthur is not often quoted as an historical authority, but romances are a picture of contemporary manners and customs, and may be so far depended upon; and this daily service in the castles and manor houses of the Middle Ages is one of the facts of the life of the time which is abundantly illustrated in them. Allusions such as the following are frequent: “And so they went home and unarmed them, and so to evensong and supper. And on the morrow they heard mass, and after went to dinner and to their counsel, and made many arguments what were best to do.”[494]
And in the “Vision of Piers Plowman” we read (Passus v)—
The king and his knights to the church wenten,
To hear matins and mass, and to the meat after.
The imagination rests with pleasure on the ordinary orderly life of a mediæval squire’s manor house, sweetened by this domestic religion; on the kindly influence of a pious, sensible chaplain over the whole household, the adviser of the lord, the tutor of the children, the monitor of the domestics. We linger upon the idea of the comfort of it to the widowed Lady Bottreaux, and to the infirm old Sir Peter Fishacre, and to poor old Oliver de Halap, “broken with age, and deprived of the sight of his eyes.”
We may add an illustrative note, which, though of later date, is true to the habits of this earlier period.
“For many years together I was seldom or never absent from Divine service (in church) at five o’clock in the morning in summer, and six o’clock in the winter.” And, again, “at Naworth, the house of Sir Charles Howard, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, there was a chaplain in the house, an excellent preacher, who had service twice every Sunday in the chapel, and daily prayers morning and evening, and was had in such veneration by all as if hee had been their tutelar angel” [which did not prevent him from making love to the eldest daughter of the house, and making mischief for the autobiographer].[495]
By the statute 21 Hen. VIII. c. 13, a limit was set to the number of domestic chaplains. An archbishop might have 8 chaplains; a duke, 6; marquis and earl, 5; viscount, 4; bishop, 6; chancellor, baron, and knight of the garter, 3; duchess, marchioness, countess, and baroness, being widows, 2; treasurer and controller of the king’s house, the king’s secretary, the dean of the chapel, the king’s almoner, the master of the rolls, 2; the chief justice of the king’s bench, and warden of the cinque ports, 1. Proviso, that the king’s chaplains may hold as many livings as the king shall give.
