Occasionally a contumacious person resisted the sentence. For example—
In 1315, Lady Plokenet [Plucknet] directed by will that she should be buried in Sherborne Church. Her son, Sir Alan, probably to save expense, buried her “in a less dignified place.” The bishop sent him orders by the Rector of Dowlish Wake, who was the Rural Dean of Crewkerne, to obey his mother’s request. Falling into a rage at this, the knight rushed on the dean, caught him by the throat, and choaked him by twisting his hood, and even caused him to bleed. The dean got away, and fled. At Haslebury, however, Sir Alan and his men caught him, and there the knight made him eat the bishop’s letter, and chew and swallow the wax seals. For this he was excommunicated, but made due submission.[629]
In the “Proceedings of the Durham Court” we read that—
John Doffenby, being a person excommunicate, did come into Mitfourth Church in tyme of service, and being admonished to depart thrice, would not, but gave evil language, saying that he cared not for the commissary and his laws, nor for the curate, and bade them come who durst and carry him out of the church; whereupon the curate was driven to leave off service at the gospel. It does not appear what was the end of the case.
Agnes Hebburne, 1454, having been sentenced to do penance in pannis lineis, impudently pleaded that she had not a fit smock, and was not able to buy one; whereupon the judge ordered her to do her penance in a “tunica habens unam vestem vocatur le napron.”
There are some pictorial illustrations of the subject in the illuminated MSS. The scourging of Henry II. before the shrine of Becket is often portrayed. In the Omne Bonum (Royal, 6 Ed. VI., f. 218 v.) is a very curious picture of a priest giving the discipline to a penitent kneeling before him;[630] and at f. 443 (6 E. VII.), a man scourging himself on the bare back in his bedroom. In a Pontifical printed at Venice, 1520, f. 155, penitents in their shirts are kneeling before the bishop; a man kneeling to a priest who lays the rod of absolution on his shoulder, at 203 v., and Reconciliation of Penitents at the end of Lent, f. 177.
There are two sides to most questions, and what a man will say upon any question depends upon his point of view. What we are told of clergy and laity of those ages by courts of discipline which dealt exclusively with their peccadilloes, and by the satirists whose motive was the scourging of the peccators, gives us one side of the subject. Nobody took the trouble to tell the obvious, uninteresting story of the ruck of parsons of respectable character who were doing their daily round of duty, Sunday and workaday, fairly well, except Chaucer, and he—great student of human life and manners that he was—while scourging with a whip of scorpions the faults of monks and friars, and pardoners and “sompnours,” completes his gallery of ecclesiastical characters with the loveliest portrait of the typical parish priest.
The inquisitorial meddling of the courts of spiritual discipline, their pecuniary exactions and shameful penances, were by no means the least of the abuses which made men cry out for a reformation.
In connection with this system of discipline was the custom of pronouncing a general sentence of excommunication in church several times a year which is mentioned by John Myrc (p. 238). We may add here that it was not at all uncommon to try to bring an unknown thief to make restitution by the threat of a sentence of excommunication; thus Bishop Thomas, in 1376, at the request of Philip de Nevile, directs all the clergy to give notice that some persons unknown have knowingly detained a very valuable hawk, and they are to restore it within ten days on pain of the greater excommunication.[631] Two years afterwards (1378), the same bishop excommunicates certain persons who have stolen some “merlions” from his forest of Wesdale, and destroyed their nests.[632] On the other hand, the old Saxon system of purgation of oath still continued, e.g. in 1458, William Godthank, accused of theft, appeared in Gnosall Church, Lichfield, with eight of his neighbours, and standing before the altar he swore that he was innocent, and his neighbours that they believed him, whereupon the bishop threatened excommunication against any one who should in future slander him.[633]