The neighbouring town of Sheffield will afford an example of the way in which the inhabitants of a town sometimes made extra spiritual provision for themselves. At the Conquest, all this part of Yorkshire was a wild and thinly-peopled region. The Countess Judith, niece of the Conqueror, and wife of Waltheof, placed a colony of monks from Fontenelle near Havre, at Ecclesfield near Sheffield. The whole district of Hallamshire descended from the countess to William de Lovelot, who had his principal castle at Sheffield, and no doubt was the founder of the church here. Subsequently he founded a Priory of Austin Canons at Worksop, and among other property gave to them the church and one-third of the tithe of Sheffield.[595]
The canons always presented to the vicarage of Sheffield one of their number, who was not thereby cut off from the convent; for one of them, Upton, was recalled from Sheffield to be the prior of the house at Worksop.
In the latter part of the fifteenth century we learn that there were endowments for a Light or Gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for a Chantry or Service of St. Catherine, in the church.
In 1498, William Hine left certain tenements in trust for the four church greves or church masters to receive the rents, and thereof “to pay yearly to the priest of St. Catherine singing mass in the said church, 7s. at Whitsuntide for the better support and augmentation of the service thereof called St. Catherine’s Service, the church maisters to have 12d. for attending at his obit.” If the conditions of the will were not fulfilled, the feoffees were to pay the profits to the burgesses for the repair of bridges, causeways, and highways within a mile of the town. The history of the matter is a little obscure, but it appears that the inhabitants of the town had by voluntary contributions supplied the vicar with stipends for three chaplains to assist him in ministering to the town and the scattered hamlets; that about fourteen years before the Statute of Chantries, i.e. in the year 1533, the Guardians of the endowed chantry began to contribute £17 a year towards the maintenance of these three chaplains in sums of £7, £5, and £5. The Commissioners of Chantries returned it as “a service or perpetual stipend of three priests in the church there,” and it was confiscated with other chantries. On the accession of Queen Mary, at the petition of the men of Sheffield, the charity was refounded and put into the hands of twelve church burgesses to hold the property of the ancient endowment and devote it to the support of three chaplains to assist the vicar as well in the visitation of the people as in Divine service and the other sacraments in church, and to apply the surplus to the repair of bridges and ways.[596]
We find, then, that in a town which was all one parish with one great church, though the person in charge of the souls of the people was only a solitary vicar with a small income, there were often really a considerable number of clergy grouped around him, and that the services of the Church were better maintained than we should perhaps have expected. On a Sunday morning there would be several celebrations of Holy Communion at different hours in the chantry chapels, and some, if not all the priests of the chantries and special services were bound to be in choir at matins, high mass, and evensong, and take part in the service. Nearly every such town would have its grammar school, taught by a Clerk in Holy Orders; and we may be tolerably sure that the school would furnish choristers for choral matins and evensong. We have learnt that the lay people were solicitous for the honour of Divine service in their parish church, and may be sure that the vicar had little difficulty in obtaining funds for the purchase of “a pair of organs” and the stipend of an organist, and for all other expenses of Divine worship. On week-days the vicar would provide at least daily mass, matins and evensong, and the chantries and special services would supply other masses.
In the pastoral care of the people, too, the vicar of a great parish was not left single-handed. Probably (as has been already said) each chantry priest, and, still more, each priest of a gild or service had a group of persons—the relatives of their founder, or brothers and sisters of their fraternity—who looked to them for spiritual ministrations; but besides these, the vicar sometimes had chaplains who were assistant-curates. The calendar of chantries, etc., refers to a number of endowments for “stipendiaries,” of which some are named in conjunction with chantries and gilds as if they were cantarists, but others in conjunction with parishes as if they were simply parish chaplains.
Let us take Newark as our last example.
Leofric, the great Earl of Mercia, and Godiva his wife, gave this manor to the monastery of Stow. Remigius, the first Norman Bishop of Lincoln, held it in demesne; and then, according to Domesday, it had ten churches and eight priests; the churches and priests were probably in the place itself and in the sixteen sokes under its jurisdiction, the names of which we recognize in the names of the neighbouring villages for some miles round on the left bank of the Trent. Alexander, the next bishop, built a castle[597] here on the bank of the Trent; and the town seems to have grown up into importance, owing partly to its situation on the Fossway and the Trent, and partly to the protection and fostering care of the bishops. When Henry II. founded the Priory (of Sempringham nuns) of St. Katherine, near Lincoln, he endowed it, among other properties, with the Church of Newark. A convent of Austin Friars was planted here and another of Observants (Franciscans), and the Knights of the Temple had a preceptory here.
