William Rayne (of Coltisbroke, 1535), leaves to his nephew, if he shall be ordained “a priest, to have £5 a year to sing for me for five years, except he be at my wyf’s bording and bedding, and if he soo be, then four marks a yere.”[539]
So that a priest’s board and lodging was worth £5 - 4 × 13s. 4d. = £2 13s. 4d. The lodging with the widow would be consistent with the idea that a chantry priest or annueller was a kind of chaplain to the family. This conjecture is supported by the statute of 36 Ed. III., c. 8, which, in consequence of the dearth of parish priests after the Black Plague, desired to lessen the number engaged in mortuary services; it forbade any layman to pay a priest more than 5 marks, and if retained to abide at his table, that was to be reckoned as equal to 40s.[540] As part of the same policy, a constitution of Archbishop Islop, in 1362, fixed the stipend of a chantry priest at 5 marks.[541]
Archbishop Islip, 1362,[542] says, “We are certainly informed by common fame and experience that modern priests, through covetousness and love of ease, not content with reasonable salaries, demand excessive pay for their labours, and receive it; and do so despise labour and study that they wholly refuse as parish priests to serve in churches or chapels, or to attend the cure of souls, though fitting salaries are offered them, and prefer to live in a leisurely manner by celebrating annuals for the quick and dead; and so parish churches and chapels remain unofficiated, destitute of parochial chaplains, and even proper curates, to the grievous danger of souls; whereupon he goes on to decree that all unbeneficed chaplains fitted for cure of souls shall be required to put aside any private obsequies, and officiate wherever the ordinary shall appoint them, and at six marks of annual stipend, while priests without cure of souls shall be content with five marks.”
These services for the dead made work for a considerable number of clerics. Sometimes, no doubt, the parish priest celebrated the month’s mind and the obit, and perhaps the trental also; but when a competent provision had been made for the purpose it is probable that it was usual to employ a distinct person to fulfil the stipulated services. The beneficed clergy are indeed accused of sometimes running away from their own poor benefices to take engagements of this sort. “Piers Ploughman” says:—
Parsons and parish preistes pleyned hem to the bisshope,
That hire parishes weren povere sith the pestilence tyme,[543]
To have a licence and leve at London to dwelle,
And syngen ther for symonie, for silver is swete.
Chaucer says of his poor parson—
He sett not his benefice to hire,
And lefte his sheep accombred in the mire,
And ran unto London unto Sainte Poules,[544]
To seeken him a chanterie for souls,
Or with a Brotherhode to be withold,
But dwelt at home and kepte well his fold.
But that some poor parsons did so, and that their bishops allowed it, we have the evidence of the Episcopal Registers.[545]
One result of these occasional engagements for a month, or a year, or a few years, was that a considerable number of priests made a precarious living in this easy way, and in many cases were not very useful members of society or very respectable members of the clerical body.[546]
Chaucer has introduced into his “Shipman’s Tale” one of these priests “living in a leisurely manner by celebrating annuals for the quick and dead”:—