Lastly, we have the case of the towns which grew up from small towns to great ones, in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this case the town often was, and continued to be, a manor, the lord exercising the old feudal jurisdiction and maintaining his manorial rights; the affairs of the people being regulated by the manorial courts. In these cases there was usually only one parish church, and we have to see the way in which, as the town grew, additional provision was made for the increasing population. One method was by the conversion of the parish church into a collegiate foundation with a staff of three or four clergymen, and choir men and boys, for the maintenance of a dignified service—this was usually done by some one pious benefactor, as at Manchester, Wingham, and Wye.[592] Another method was for the parishioners to provide the vicar with a staff of chaplains, and to endow special services, as at Sheffield and Newark. Each of these methods may be illustrated by a brief history of the examples named.
Domesday Survey records the existence of two churches in Manchester of which it is probable that one, St. Mary’s, was the parish church of the town; and the other, St. Michael’s, a dependent church at Ashton-under-Lyne. In the fourteenth century it was one of the most wealthy and populous towns in the county of Lancaster; and since the priest of the place is sometimes called the Dean of Manchester, it was perhaps the head of an extensive deanery. Its church was of timber, as that of Marston, in Cheshire, is to this day.
Manchester Cathedral.
Thomas la Ware, second son of Roger Lord la Ware, was rector in 1398, when by the death of his elder brother he succeeded to the Barony of la Ware, which included the manor. Desiring to make better provision for the inhabitants of the town, he obtained a licence from King Henry V., in 1421, to convert the parish church into a collegiate church, with a warden and so many fellows as should seem good to the body of feoffees who held the advowson and to the founder. All the powers ecclesiastical and civil having given their consent, the churchwardens and parishioners, including various influential knights, esquires, and gentlemen, were called together by the tolling of the church bell, and then and there expressed their full consent by petition to the bishop. The staff was composed of a warden, eight fellows, four clerks, and six choristers; the bishop gave them a body of statutes which occupy a large space in his extant register; and Lord la Ware built a college for their residence adjoining the church. The first warden, John Huntingdon, began the erection of a new and larger church.
The college was confiscated by Edward VI. and turned into a vicarage, but re-established by Queen Mary. Queen Elizabeth renewed the charter of foundation for a warden and four fellows, two chaplains, four laymen, and four children skilled in music. Charles I. again renewed it. In 1847, the diocese of Manchester was created, and the collegiate foundation afforded a suitable cathedral church with a dean and four canons already endowed.
As another example of the way in which a single benefactor sometimes made extra provision for the spiritual wants of a town, we take the case of the little town of Rotherham, in Yorkshire. It had a church at the time of the Conquest. In subsequent times, two great families, the Vescis and Tillis, shared the manor and the church between them.
At the time of the “Taxatio” (1291) the rectory had been divided into moieties; one moiety had been appropriated to the Abbot of Clairvaux, who received £16 13s. 4d. from it, besides a stipend of £5, which he paid to the vicar of that moiety; Sir Roger was the rector of the other moiety, who received £21 13s. 4d., and he also was represented by a vicar; moreover, the prior of Lewes had a pension of £1 6s. 8d. out of the rectory.[593] The earlier church gave place, in the reign of Edward IV., to a more spacious and handsome building, but its clerical staff still consisted of two vicars and several chantry priests.
The Archbishop of York, for the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, was known by the name of Thomas of Rotherham. His family name was Scott, but having been born at Rotherham, he took the name of his native place, as we have seen was the custom of Churchmen in the Middle Ages. Before his death, he adopted another good custom of the time, by raising for himself a memorial in his native place, and conferring a benefit upon it in the shape of a perpetual foundation. His will is still in existence, and the following particulars are chiefly taken from it. He was, he says, born of people of the yeoman class in the town of Rotherham, and baptized in the parish church, “in the sacred fountain flowing from the side of Jesus. O that I loved this Name as I ought and would!” So, lest he should seem ungratefully forgetful of these things, he founded a perpetual college in the Name of Jesus in the said town. This was to take the place of an earlier foundation of the twenty-second year of Edward IV., in which he had received his own education under a teacher of grammar so skilful that other of his scholars as well as he had been enabled to rise to higher fortunes. His first purpose was to establish a learned teacher of grammar there for all time, who should teach gratis all who came to him. Then, having seen how the chantry priests of the town lived, some in one place, some in another, with the laity, to the scandal of one and the ruin of the others,[594] he determined to erect a college where the first should teach grammar, and the others might live and lodge. Thirdly, since he had observed that there are many parishioners attending the church, and that many rustic people of the neighbourhood flock to it that they may the better love the Christian religion, he establishes a second perpetual fellow to teach singing gratis, and to have for his food and clothing £6 13s. 4d.; and six chorister boys, that they may celebrate the Divine office there more honourably, and each of them to have 40s. a year for food and clothing. Fourthly, since there are many very intelligent youths who do not all wish to attain the clerical dignity, but are adapted for mechanical arts and other occupations, he provides a third Socius, who shall teach the arts of writing and reckoning gratis. But since the arts of writing, music, and grammar are subordinate, and servants of the Divine law and the gospel, he ordains that there shall be a theologian placed above the three fellows in the rule and government of the house, with the name of provost, who shall be a B.D. at least, and shall be required to preach the word of God through the whole of the founder’s province of York; he is to have for food and clothing £13 6s. 8d. “Thus I have incorporated in my college one provost, three fellows, and six choristers, that where I have offended God in His ten commandments, these ten may pray for me.” As to the chantry priests, he gave them their chambers in the college; they were to dine at the college-table, paying for their food, but having the services of the cook, washerwoman, and barber gratis. The provost and fellows were to attend Divine service on festivals in the parish church in their surplices; at other times in the college chapel; and to celebrate his obit. There were five chantry priests living in the college at the time when the foundation, by which good Thomas of Rotherham made a monument for himself, and conferred a great benefit on his native town, was dissolved and swept away at the Reformation.