Micklegate Bar, York.
The people he saw in the streets were in picturesque costumes of all colours and fashions: a cavalcade of a knight, in flashing armour, with a squire carrying his helm and spear and two or three yeomen in buff-coats and helmets behind him; a monk in his flowing black benedictine robe; a couple of Franciscan Friars in their grey gowns rope-girdled; a parish priest or cantarist returning from his service; the citizens in dress which indicated their quality—some in their burgess gowns, others in the livery of their gild; the shopmen at their open booths at work at their craft and soliciting the passers-by, “What d’ye lack? What d’ye lack? Buy, buy, buy, buy!” In the central market-place the traveller found crowds of the country-people grouped round the market cross with their panniers of country produce, and the housekeepers of the town busily cheapening their goods.
When we apply ourselves to the consideration of the ecclesiastical history of the towns, we have to bear in mind their various origins. Nearly all the towns which the Romans left when they evacuated the Province of Britain were stormed and sacked by the Teutonic invaders, and left ruined and empty. But as the Saxon settlers grew in numbers, wealth, and civilization, the force of circumstances must have led to the reoccupation of a number of these towns; for some were at the natural harbours, some at convenient points on the lines of internal traffic; and so new towns of timber houses arose within the old Roman walls. Other towns of later origin grew up about the chief residence of a Saxon king, or, later still, of a Norman noble; or about a cathedral or great monastery; later still, at the convenient centre of the trade of a fertile district, or where natural advantages encouraged the growth of a manufacture.
The parochial history of the towns is very obscure. The facts point to the conclusion that the origin of parishes here was the same as in the country. There the lord of an estate built a church and provided a maintenance for a priest to minister to his family and dependents; and the priest’s spiritual authority was conterminous with the area of his patron’s civil jurisdiction; i.e. the estates were the parishes. The ancient towns, it is found, were frequently divided between several principal proprietors, who had rights of jurisdiction over their own land and the people living on it. The facts seem to indicate that the lords of these sokes, or peculiar jurisdictions, usually—like a country thane in his manor—built a church, and provided a maintenance for a priest to minister to his own family and people; and that these sokes became the parishes of the town.
The great landowners of Saxon or Norman times very frequently had a residence in the chief town of the county in which their principal estates were situated; a custom which continued so long that it is not yet forgotten how the great county families used to have their houses in their county town. But the residence of a great Saxon or Norman lord was the home of a numerous household, and the lord’s dignity required that he should have a chapel and a priest of his own. This perhaps is the explanation of the fact that there were numerous chapels in many of the oldest towns.
In borough towns the community of burgesses, it is probable, usually made provision for the religious wants of that part of the population which was not in any of the peculiar jurisdictions above mentioned, or within the walls of the residences of the nobles; and we find groups of burgesses, and individual burgesses, possessing a church, in the sense of having the rights and responsibilities of patrons. The result of this origin of town parishes was that many of the older towns had a number of parish churches which seems to us out of all proportion to the number of their population; it was never a question of how many churches were needed for a town of such-and-such a population; the question was how many lords there were who felt bound, in their own opinion and that of the time, to provide for Divine worship and pastoral care for their own people.[573]
A few actual examples will illustrate these general observations.
Norwich, at the end of the Saxon period, was one of the greatest towns in the kingdom, containing 1320 burgesses. The king, Archbishop Stigand in private property, and Earl Harold were the principal lords. The king’s burgesses had two churches in the burgh and one-sixth of a third church; the earl’s tenants had the Church of All Saints; and Stigand had two churches, St. Michael’s and St. Martin’s. The burgesses held fifteen churches; and twelve burgesses held Holy Trinity Church (the Conqueror afterwards gave it to the Bishop of the Diocese); the Abbot of St. Edmund had a house and the mediety of the Church of St. Lawrence. The Church of SS. Simon and Jude was held successively by Aylmer, the last Saxon bishop, and by Herbert, the first Norman bishop, and by Bishop William, who came after him, and must therefore have belonged to the see. The Domesday Survey also enters forty-three chapels as belonging to the burgesses at the time of the Survey, of the existence of which, in King Edward’s time, there is no mention; and yet Norwich had suffered much in the political changes of the time, the number of its burgesses being reduced to half their number in the time of King Edward.
It seems clear that each owner of a separate jurisdiction or soke, king, earl, Stigand, bishop, and abbot, had a church for his own people; that the burgesses as a community had provided fifteen other churches in the town, that another church was held by a group of twelve burgesses, associated, perhaps, in a gild, and making provision for their own spiritual needs. There were, thus, at least twenty-five churches in Saxon times; in the Conqueror’s time Domesday Book enumerates fifty-four churches and chapels; at the end of the thirteenth century, the “Taxatio” records forty-five; and just before the Reformation, the “Valor” names the cathedral, the collegiate church of St. Mary in the Fields, the two hospitals of St. Giles, Tombland, the rectory of SS. Edward, Julian, and Clement, thirty-seven vicarages, and one free chapel of St. Katharine.[574]