In the “Calendar of Chantries,” etc., there are recorded 107 services, of which 64 are in Gloucestershire, 12 in Herefordshire, 7 in Chester, 5 in Yorkshire, 4 in Shropshire, 3 in Derbyshire, 2 in Staffordshire, and 2 in Somerset, 1 each in Dorset, Durham, Essex, and Wilts, and 4 in Wales. There are a few entries of “Stipendiaries of our Lady,” who were probably priests serving “Services of our Lady.”
There was a service in the parish church of St. Ellen, Worcester; the chaplain “exercens” the “servicium” of the Blessed Virgin there received by the hands of the wardens of the said “servicium,” 45s., and he received 75s. more from the benevolence and charity of the parishioners there. In the same church was a Service of St. Katharine, for “exercens” which the chaplain received from the wardens a clear stipend of £5 1s. 11½d.[567]
The Vicar of Cirencester received payments from the Feoffees of the service of the Name of Jesus for the use of a chapel, £6; from the wardens of the service of St. Christopher, for the use of a chapel, £6 0s. 5d.; from the Feoffees of the Fraternity of St. Katharine, 9s. 9d.; and from the Feoffees of the Fraternity of St. John Baptist, 17s. We have already seen in the chapter on Chantries,[568] that in villages the people sometimes provided services for themselves, which might be classed with these.
In the fifteenth century every market town had one or more gilds,[569] not necessarily with the costly adjuncts of a hall for their meetings, and a chaplain and services of their own in church, but each with its charities, and social customs, and always with its annual service and festival. Even in many villages and rural parishes a gild helped to draw neighbours together into friendly association, organized their charities, and stimulated their village festivities. Even the humblest of them had its little fund, formed by the annual subscriptions of the members, and perhaps a little “stock”[570] of a few cows or sheep fed on the common pasture, the profit of which swelled the common fund of the gild, out of which they helped a member in a strait, and gave alms to their poor. They made much of the funerals of their departed members, following them in a long procession. The humblest had a few cooking utensils, and pots, and pans, and pewter dishes and plates[571] for their convivial meetings, and perhaps a mazer with a silver rim as the loving cup, out of which they drank to one another’s health and prosperity; and on their annual feast day the vicar said a special mass for them, and preached them a sermon.
The suppression of all these gilds on the pretext of their prayers for their deceased members, and the confiscation of their property (except in London, whose great Trading Gilds were too powerful to be meddled with), was the very meanest and most inexcusable of the plunderings which threw discredit upon the Reformation.
We have some general reflections to make on these three chapters on Domestic Chaplains, Chantries, and Gilds.
The appropriation of so many parochial benefices to the religious houses in the twelfth century had greatly reduced the provision for the parochial clergy on whom the burden of the parochial care of the people rested. The institution during the thirteenth century of vicars in the appropriated parishes, with perpetuity of tenure, fixed endowment, and responsibility to the bishop, had done something to alleviate the evil. The institution of the orders of friars in the same thirteenth century had effected a great revival of religion; and when the work of the new order had settled down to its normal level it still supplied a valuable auxiliary of religion among the lower classes of the population. By the end of the thirteenth century things had settled down. Very few new monasteries were founded after the twelfth century; very few friaries after the thirteenth century.
Of the rural benefices many were in the hands of rectors in minor orders who employed chaplains at such stipends as they could agree with them to accept. Many in the hands of absentee and pluralist rectors were similarly served by parish chaplains. The remainder were served by vicars whose endowments we have seen were small. The natural result of such a state of things must have been that a great proportion of the rural parishes were taught and tended by vicars and parish chaplains who might be good men, doing their duty to the best of their ability, but not always men of the breeding and learning which would make them very suitable pastors for the country gentry and their families. It seems probable that, in the fashion which sprung up among the country gentry at the close of the thirteenth century, and continued through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of founding chantries, and entertaining domestic chaplains, the gentry were seeking to provide for themselves and their families additional and sometimes more acceptable spiritual teachers and guides. A wealthy lord sometimes met the difficulty by converting the parish church into a collegiate church, with a considerable clerical staff adequately endowed.
In the ancient towns, we have seen the parishes were small and their endowments miserable. In the more modern towns, which had grown into great towns, with the general increase of the population and its tendency then, as now, to gravitate into the towns, the one vicar of the one parish church was often quite unable to cope with the spiritual needs of a large and difficult flock; and the townspeople themselves sometimes made better provision for their own spiritual needs. The gilds, which provided two or three or half a dozen chaplains with singing boys to conduct service in the parish church, were clearly providing for a more dignified service for the honour of God than the vicar and his clerk could offer; the Servicia called by the name of this and that saint, seem to have been intended to multiply the number of services for the greater convenience of the people. The gild chaplains would certainly be expected to undertake special personal ministrations—without infringing on the legal rights of the vicar—to the brothers and sisters of their gild. It is very interesting to see that the people thus set themselves to supplement the deficiencies of the ecclesiastical organization, by providing for their own spiritual needs. It reminds us of the way in which, in more modern times, earnest people supplied the deficiencies in the supply of their spiritual cravings by holding “prophecyings” in the time of Elizabeth, and by the foundation of lectureships in the parish churches in the time of the Georges.