Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England

by Edward Lewes Cutts

At length the multiplication of chapels was regulated by legislation. The synod of Westminster (1102), under Anselm, decreed that no more should be erected without the bishop’s leave.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the endowment of many of these chapels, the concession to them of the right of baptism, marriage, and burial, the assignment of a district within which the priest had pastoral jurisdiction, and the concession to the mesne lord of the patronage of the chapel which he had built and endowed, amounted to the practical elevation of such chapels to the status of parish churches. The natural tendency of things was in this direction. A landholder who had built a church for himself and his people would naturally desire that it should possess the dignity of a parish church, and was thus induced to provide a sufficient endowment for it. The people would naturally desire the convenience of having all the means of grace at their own church instead of having to carry their children to a distance for baptism and their dead for burial, and in some cases the more well-to-do freeholders would be willing to contribute to the cost of it. The quotation of some actual examples will be the most interesting way of illustrating the general history of this development.[103]

Domesday speaks of one church in the Hundred of Alnodestreu and County of Salop, viz. that of St. Gregory. When Bishop Robert de Betun (about 1138) granted this church to the Abbey of Shrewsbury, St. Gregory’s became the priory church of Momerfeuld, or Morville, and it had three dependent chapels, which were also appropriated to the priory, viz. at Billingsley which had as its endowment half the corn tithes of the said ville and paid 6s. 8d. to the mother church, at Olbury which paid 5s. and at Tasley which paid 6s. 8d.[104]

Within a year or two Robert Fitz Aer[105] founded another chapel at Aston Aer, endowing it with sixty acres and a house and all tithes of the domain. Within ten years two other such chapels were built, viz. at Aldenham and Underdon with separate endowments. By the appropriation deed, which gives St. Gregory and its chapels to the convent, it is ordained that these chapels shall be subject to the mother church of Morville, so that on great festivals the people shall attend there, and the priest of Morville shall, if he pleases, have the dead carried thither for burial. Again, the same bishop consecrated a new chapel at Astley Abbots, endowed by the Abbot of Salop himself with thirty acres, a house, and a parcel of land worth 4s. per ann.

These seven chapels in one parish, nearly all consecrated by one bishop, seem to mark a time of active extension. It is curious that, whereas Orderic Vitalis says that there was much building of monasteries and churches in the reign of Henry I., because the country had settled down, after the troubles of the Conquest, into peace and security,[106] Bishop de Betun says that he has consented to consecrate so many chapels as a protection for the poor, and out of regard to the warlike troubles of the time—for it was during the stormy reign of Stephen.[107]

In many cases the owners of the estates on which the chapels were situated, or the tenants, or both together, made an agreement with the rector to augment the stipend of a chaplain so that he might give additional services and pastoral care in their ville. Thus, when Gilbert Norman (1130?) gave the church of Kingston-on-Thames to Merton Priory, the parish had already four chapelries, Thames Ditton, East Moulsey, Petersham, and Shene (now Richmond). In 1211 the inhabitants of Petersham complained of the paucity of services in their chapel, and the matter came before the Ecclesiastical Courts. It would appear that lack of funds was at the bottom of the deficiency of service. The prior and convent, “of their great piety, and for the good of the souls of their parishioners,” granted to the vicar and his successors two quarters of corn, one of barley, and one of oats; and the Abbot and Convent of Chertsey, who were considerable landowners there, also of their good will granted a quarter of corn from their lands there, for the sustentation of a chaplain who should celebrate in the chapel thrice a week, viz. on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday.[108] A like complaint was made again in 1266, when the appropriators increased their grant to four quarters of wheat, one of barley, and one of oats; and seventeen of the parishioners for themselves and heirs granted a payment of one bushel of wheat for every ten acres of their land, making twenty-four and a half bushels. Other cases in which the people themselves contributed to the support of their priest will be found in the chapter on Chantries.

Clearly the thing to be desired was to get resident chaplains appointed to all the villes with a considerable population, and to that end to get endowments for them, and much was done in this direction in the thirteenth century. We shall find ample illustrations of various features of the work in the forty years’ episcopate of Archbishop Walter Gray. The archbishop wrote to the Pope, Gregory IX., on the subject, desiring, no doubt, to get the support of the Papal sanction for the measures which he desired to take. We gather from the pope’s reply that the archbishop had represented to him that “many parishes in his diocese were so widely spread that the parishioners were at a great distance from their church, and were not able, without much inconvenience, to come to the Divine services; and that it often happened, when the priest was summoned by the sick, that before he could arrive they had died without confession and the viaticum;” and no doubt the archbishop had suggested what he desired to do; whereupon the pope grants to him leave that, after due consideration of the distance of places, the difficulties of the roads, and the number of the increasing population, in parishes of this sort, he should build oratories and institute priests in them.[109]

The way in which the archbishop set to work (1233) to strengthen the existing machinery is admirably illustrated in the ordinance which he drew up with the concurrence of the dean for the vicarages with their chapels belonging to the deanery. There were three vicarages, Pocklington, Pickering, and Kellum. Pocklington had six chapels, Pickering four, and it does not appear that Kellum had any. First he strengthened the mother churches by the requirement that each of the vicars should, “besides all other necessary ministers,” have a chaplain—an assistant priest—always with him. Then he consolidated the six chapels of Pocklington and the four of Pickering, two and two, into five vicarages, i.e. two neighbouring chapels were formed into a vicarage, the incumbent of which was to have in nomine vicaragiæ certain endowments, and the vicar was to find the necessary ministers for both chapels; but the dignity of the mother churches was reserved by the provision that the new vicars were to pay a small annual sum to their mother churches nomine subjectionis.[110] Another illustration of the way in which the improved condition of things was brought about is in the case of Roundelay. Sir John de Roundelay and his heirs and the men of that ville had licence (A.D. 1231) to establish a perpetual chantry in their chapel every day in the year save Christmas, Purification, Easter (“Parasceues”), and All Saints, and if they had service on Palm Sunday, it was to be without procession and the blessing of the Palms; neither were they to have the celebration of baptism, marriage, or churching; on all these occasions they were to repair to the mother church, and the chaplain and people were to swear obedience to the mother church and its rectors. Sir John provided an endowment for the new incumbent, and the vicar of the mother church was to give him half a mark a year (6s. 8d.), in consideration, no doubt, that it had hitherto been a charge upon him to that extent or more to make provision for the partial services at the chapel.[111]

Again, Berneston Chapel, Notts, had been accustomed to have only three services a week. The people had the archbishop’s licence to give an endowment to provide for having full services in their chapel pro habendo plenario servitio by a chaplain and clerk residing there.[112]

There are many other examples in the Archbishop’s Register of similar extensions of the usefulness of the existing ecclesiastical machinery, but these are enough to show the way in which it was done. There can be no doubt that the work was done in the same way where it was needed in the other dioceses of the kingdom.