Market Harborough Church, Leicestershire.
Chapel of Edward the Confessor, Westminster Abbey.
We shall see from the Constitution of Archbishop Gray, quoted below, that the parishioners were, by ancient custom, liable for the maintenance and repair of the body and tower of their church; the fifth of the “extravagants” of Stratford, Archbishop of York (1342),[183] records that this was done by means of a proportionate tax on the estates and farms of the parish. From the records of bishops’ Visitations, we learn, further, that the bishops exercised greater power in the matter of church building in old times than they do now. They had not only the power to require that the church should be kept in good repair, but that, where necessary, it should be enlarged. Thus, Bishop Stapledon (1309) orders the parishioners of Ilfracombe, since the church is not capable of holding all the parishioners, to enlarge it by lengthening the body of the church by 24 feet at least, and adding two aisles, within two years, under a penalty of £40.[184]
At a Visitation of Sturton parish church, in 1314, in the time of the same bishop, it was returned that, in addition to defects in the furniture, the church is too small (strictus) and dark; the nave of the church likewise. Therefore, “the lord bishop enjoins the rectors, vicar, and parishioners, that they cause the said defects to be made good, according to what belongs to them severally, before the next feast of St. Michael, under penalty of £20 to the fabric of the [cathedral] Church of Exeter; except the construction of the new chancel and the enlargement of the church, and they to be done before St. Michael day twelve-month.”[185]
From the thirteenth century we have full information of the furniture and utensils, vestments, and books which the canons required to be provided in every church for the performance of Divine service and the ministration of the offices of the Church. Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, c. 1250, made a constitution which we subjoin; and similar lists occur from time to time, for both provinces, in visitation inquiries, inventories and constitutions;[186] e.g. in the Constitutions of Robert of Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1305.
Since much altercation has arisen between some of the rectors and vicars and their parishioners about the various ecclesiastical ornaments as to what it belonged to the rectors or their vicars to provide and maintain and what to the parishioners, we ordain and appoint that the parishioners provide a chalice, missal, the principal vestment of the church, viz. a chasuble, white albe, amice, stole, maniple, zone, with three towels, a corporal, and other decent vestments for the deacon and sub-deacon, according to the means of the parishioners and of the church, together with a principal silk cope for chief festivals, and with two others for the rulers of the choir in the foresaid festivals, a processional cross and another smaller cross for the dead, and a bier for the dead, a vase for holy water, an osculatory, a candlestick for the Paschal candle, a thurible, a lantern with a bell, a Lent veil, two candlesticks for the taper bearers; of books, a Legendary, Antiphonary, Gradual, Psalter, Topiary, Ordinale, Missal, Manual; a frontal to the great altar, three surplices, a suitable pyx for the “Corpus Christi,” a banner for the Rogations, great bells with their ropes, a holy font with fastening, a chrismatory, images in the church, and the principal image in the church of the person to whom the church is dedicated, the repair of books and vestments so often as they require repair; and in addition to all the aforesaid things a light in the church, the repair of the nave of the church, with its bell-tower, internally and externally, viz. with glass windows, with the enclosure of the cemetery, with other things belonging to the nave of the church, and other things which by custom belong to the parishioners. To the rectors or vicars belong all other things according to various ordinances, viz. the principal chancel with its repairs both in walls and roofs and glass windows belonging to the same, with desks and forms and other ornaments suitable, so that with the prophet they may be able to sing, “Lord, I have loved the honour of Thy house,” etc. As to the manse of the rectory and its repair, and other things which are not written in this book, let the rectors or vicars know that they may be compelled by the ordinary of the place, to do according to this constitution and others in this case provided.[187]