We have given a—perhaps disproportionately—long chapter to a not very agreeable subject; but it seemed desirable to take the pains necessary to put the matter in its proper light, and not to allow the Englishmen of the great period, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, to lie under the suspicion of being so ungodly that the clergy generally lived in open immorality, and the laity thought little the worse of them for it.
An entry in a MS. Book of Ecclesiastical Causes reveals the possible complications which might arise out of these marriages. Marriages of the clergy were not null and void, they were only voidable by proceedings which must be taken in the lifetime of the parties. So that it was always possible that the children of such a marriage might after their father’s death claim as heirs to his estate, and might have the means of proving their parents’ marriage; in which case they would inherit to the exclusion of those who had thought themselves the heirs. For example, Sir John de Sudley, knight, and Elizabeth, wife of Sir Baldwyn de Frevyle, knight, relatives and heirs of Peter, the uncle of the said Sir John, a sub-deacon, alleged that marriage had been contracted by the said sub-deacon, to their exclusion from the heirship, and prayed that the marriage might be pronounced null, lest the children of the said sub-deacon should claim his heirship. Sir Peter de Montford seems to be the name of the sub-deacon aforesaid, and Margaret Furnivale that of his wife.[261]
Chaucer, in “The Miller’s Tale,” seems incidentally to show what was the popular view of the children of a cleric. The Miller, a Yeoman, a man of comparative wealth and consideration in his village, had married a parson’s daughter:—
A wife he hadde commen of noble kin,
The parson of the town her father was.
Her “noble kin” points perhaps to the fact that the parson of the town was of the family of the lord of the manor. She had received the education of a lady—
She was yfostered in a nonnerie.
As to her personal character—
She was proud and pert as is a pie.