a large parsonage house compass’d with a mote, a gate-house, with a large chamber, and a substantial bridge of timber adjoining it; a little yard, an orchard and a little garden all within the mote, which, together with the circuit of the house, contains about half an acre of ground; and without the mote there is a yard in which there is another gate-house, and a stable, and a hay-house adjoining, also a barn of twenty-five yards long, and nine yards wide, and about seventy-nine and a half acres of glebe land.[155]
North Benfleet Rectory is described as consisting of—
a hall with a loft over it, two cross ends, with lofts and chambers, a kitchen with a hen-house, a barn and a little stable at the end of it, built in ancient time, a garden made, an orchard planned, a milk-house and a dove-house.[156]
West Hanningfield is described as—
one dwelling-house tiled, having in it a hall with a loft over it for corn, a closet in the hall, two butteries, with a loft over them for servants’ lodging, an entry, a large parlour, with two lodging chambers over it for servants, a study new built, also a kitchen tiled, with a corn-loft over it, a boulting-house with a cheese-loft over it, a brew-house newly set up, with a fair corn-lift over it, and a garret over that, and a hen-house tiled at the end of it, a barn newly built, and a porch thatched, a hay-house at the end of it, a hogs’-coat boarded, a stable, a quern-house, two small cotes to fat fowl in, a cow-house newly built, with a cart-house at the end of it; another cart-house newly built with a room over it to hold hay; one large hay-house with a cart-house at the end of it; another cart-house newly built; a gate-house, wherein is a milk-house, with a loft over it for cheese and fish; the site of the house and yards with two gardens contains two roods.[157]
We easily recognize the normal plan of the house; the large accommodation outside—some of it new—for carts and hay, and for the storing of corn inside the house, indicates that the rector was farming on rather a large scale.
We have seen in the foregoing description of the vicarage house at Kelvedon, Essex, that a special chamber was provided for the entertainment of guests, and at Kingston-on-Thames a stable for six horses was attached to the vicarage house. This was no doubt needed because the one was on the high-road from London into Essex, and the other on the high-road from London into Surrey, and so westward, and the accommodation was needed for travellers. In those times there were no inns at convenient distances along the main roads of the country, nor even in the towns, except in some of the largest. Few people travelled except on business, so that hospitality was little liable to abuse; and travellers sought entertainment for man and horse at the monasteries and the parsonage houses.
It was regarded as a duty of the clergy to “entertain strangers,” and to be “given to hospitality;” and the duty was fulfilled ungrudgingly, without fee or reward, and entailed a heavy charge upon the income of the clergy. One of the common reasons which a monastery[158] alleges for asking the bishop to allow them to impropriate an additional benefice is that their expenditure on the entertainment of travellers is beyond their means; the country rectors, also, in their remonstrance against the exactions of the popes, complain that they will be left without means to fulfil their duty of hospitality;[159] and the matter is very frequently alluded to and illustrated by examples in mediæval history. Off the great roads, the rector would put an extra pewter platter and horn drinking-cup on the board for an accidental passenger who claimed hospitality—he brought his own knife, and there were no forks—and gave him a liberal “shakedown” of clean straw, or at best a flock mattress, in a corner of the hall. But, just as in the monasteries it was necessary to have a special guest-house for travellers, so that they should not interfere with the seclusion of the religious, so it would seem at the rectories along the great roads it was necessary that there should be special provision made for the frequent influx of guests. This is the explanation of the chamber for guests at Kelvedon, and for the vicar’s six-stall stable at Kingston.