The accompanying plate is from Lydgate’s “Life of Edmund VI.” (Harl. 2278, f. 108 and f. 108 v.). Preceding it is a picture of five knights issuing from the gate of the abbey laden with plunder, and keeping the monks at bay at the sword’s point; next this picture of the knights stripped to their drawers, making their submission to the abbot and his clerks at the shrine of the saint. Between the two pictures the story is told thus:
Knightes of yoe of malice and ravyne,
Agen the fredom of Edmund ful confiable,
Habergowned and in platis fyne,
Entered his court, took hors out yf his stable,
With swerdes drawe to shewe hemself vengable,
Lyst any man wolde make resistence,
Hadde forth the pray beytort violence.
But sodenly thus with hem it stood,
Or they passyd the boūdes of the gate,
Travayled with furye and echon was wood,
Repented, after offered up mayl and plate,
Confessed, assoiled, in cronycle set the date,
Ever after off hool affeccion,
Hadde to the martyr gret devocion.
We must bear in mind that these were the days when civil penalties included the stocks and the pillory and whipping through the streets at a cart’s tail.
In 1344, a sheriff’s officer, who slew a rector, resisting the attempt to arrest him, was, with his followers, condemned to walk, stripped to their breeches, like the knights at St. Edmund’s, round the principal churches of the district, and to be whipped at the door of each church.[619] And such instances might be indefinitely multiplied.
About 1284, Archbishop Peckham made a provincial visitation, in which he exercised severe discipline on both clergy and laity. For example, in Lichfield Diocese, the bishop being a foreigner and non-resident, the archbishop sent a public summons to him to reside, on penalty of deprivation, telling him that since he could not preach to his people, he was the rather bound to reside among them, and to spend his revenue in hospitality and relieving the poor. In Chichester Diocese, he inflicted upon one John Ham, a priest, convicted of immorality, a three years’ penance of fasting, prayers, and pilgrimage, during which time the profits of his living were sequestrated to the poor. In Wilts, being informed that Sir Osborn Gyfford had carried off two nuns from the Monastery of Wilton, he proceeded to excommunication against him, and only consented to remit the censure on these conditions: that he should be stripped to the waist on three Sundays in Wilton Parish Church and beaten with rods; the discipline to be publicly repeated both in the market-place and parish church of Shaftesbury; should fast for three months, and go on a three years’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem; should not wear a sword, or appear in the habit of a gentleman.
Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, instituted an inquiry into the morals of the laity as well as clergy in his diocese, but the king, Henry III., interposed, and obliged him to desist.
But to come to a different class of offenders, and to various kinds of misdoing. It will be enough to select a few examples.
1253. Hugo de Berewyk found surety of ten marks to behave properly to his wife, and he was sentenced, for “that he had long been excommunicate, that without shoes or girdle or [sword ?] he should receive the discipline in the porch of the Church of Gysele, before the whole procession, once on the day of the Holy Trinity, a second time on the day of St. John Baptist, and the third time on the day of SS. Peter and Paul.”[620]
When Bishop Ralph, of Bath and Wells, in 1348, visited Ilchester, the people of the place made a riot, attacked the bishop and his people, and shut them up in the church for some hours, till they were rescued by the well-affected. The riot was punished by excommunication of the offenders, and interdict of the Church. One of the ringleaders, Roger Warmville, was tried at Taunton by the Commissary, and sentenced to penance. He was to walk on three several occasions, bareheaded and barefoot, round Ilchester Church, in front of the procession made on Sundays and feast days, holding a candle, which he was to present at the altar during mass, while a chaplain declared his sin to the congregation in the vulgar tongue. Moreover, he was to be flogged thrice on market days at Ilchester, Wells, Bath, Glastonbury, and Somerton; he was to pay a fine of £20, and make a pilgrimage to Canterbury in honour of St. Thomas the Martyr.[621]
In 1474, a case of homicide between the Lamberts and the Knolls, by the award of Wm. Blackburn, Canon of Bolton, it was awarded and ordained that Thomas, Henry, Richard, Stephen and Thomas Knoll of Floder, “come to the parish church of Preston, and there in tyme of service, kneling on their knees, loose gerded, ask God forgivenes of ye dethe of Henrie Lambert, and ask forgivenes of his fader John Lambert, and pay xl marks to ye behofe of Jo. Lambert and his children, unto Ric. Pilkinton, Esq., on the awter of St. Nicholas, in the parish church of Skypton.”[622]