The churchyard also gave a certain protection.[324] Ordericus Vitalis relates that the villagers in time of war sometimes removed themselves and their goods thither, and built themselves huts within the precincts, and were left unmolested. From a canon of the Synod of Westminster, 1142, we learn that ploughs and other agricultural implements placed in the churchyard had certain immunities, probably freedom from seizure for debt. The canon decreed that the ploughs in the fields, with the husbandmen, should have the same immunity.[325]
A similar privilege attached to the persons of bishops; Bishop St. Hugh of Lincoln meeting the sheriff and his men taking a man to execution, claimed the criminal, and carried him off. The Abbot of Battle on one occasion claimed and exercised the same episcopal privilege.
Pilgrimage was a popular act of devotion from Saxon times downwards, and afforded a relief to the stay-at-home habits of the people. The pilgrimage to the Holy Land was the most highly esteemed, after that, to the thresholds of the apostles at Rome, and to Compostella, and great numbers went thither. The most famous native pilgrimages were to St. Thomas of Canterbury and Our Lady of Walsingham, but every cathedral had its shrine, and many monasteries and many churches their relics. It would occupy pages even to give a list of the known places of pilgrimage in every county. Let it suffice to mention the shrines of St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. William at York, and little St. William at Norwich, St. Hugh at Lincoln, St. Edward Confessor at Westminster, St. Erkenwald at London, St. Wulstan at Worcester, St. Swithun at Winchester, St. Edmund at Bury, SS. Etheldreda and Withburga at Ely, St. Thomas at Hereford, St. Frideswide at Oxford, St. Werburgh at Chester, St. Wulfstan at Worcester, St. Wilfrid at Ripon, St. Richard at Chichester, St. Osmund at Salisbury, St. Paulinus at Rochester. There were famous roods, as that near the north door of St. Paul’s, London, and the roods of Chester and Bromholme; and statues, as that of Our Lady of Wilsden, and of Bexley, and of other places. There were scores of sacred wells; that of St. Winifred at Holywell, near Chester, with its exquisite architectural enclosure and canopy, is still almost perfect, and still resorted to for its supposed healing virtues.
Before a man went on any of the greater pilgrimages, he obtained a licence from his parish priest, and first went to church and received the Church’s blessing on his pious enterprise, and her prayers for his good success and safe return, and was formally invested with his staff, scrip, and bottle (water-bottle). The office for blessing pilgrims may be found in the old service books. While he was away he was mentioned every Sunday, as we have seen, in the Bidding Prayer, in his parish church. On the road, and at the end of his journey, he found hospitals founded by pious people on purpose to entertain pilgrims, and on the exhibition of his formal licence he received kindly hospitality. At every great place of pilgrimage “signs” were sold to the pilgrims, the palm at Jerusalem, scallop shells at St. James of Compostella, and the like. In many places water, in which had been dipped one of the relics, was sold, to be used in case of sickness, enclosed in a leaden ampul, and was worn suspended by a cord from the neck. Fragments of the pilgrim roads may still be traced in narrow deep overgrown lanes on the hillsides between Guildford and Reigate, between Westerham and Seven Oaks, leading towards Canterbury, and in green lanes through Norfolk leading towards Walsingham. On his return the pilgrim went to church to return thanks, and hung up his signs over his bed as treasured mementoes of his adventurous journey. Sometimes the palmer’s staff, or the scallop shells, were, on his death, hung on the church wall, as the knight’s gauntlets, sword, and helmet were.[326]
The whole body of the people had an opportunity of a short pilgrimage on the occasion of the annual procession of the parishes to the cathedral church, or if that were too far, to some other central church with special attractions, with banners waving and most likely music playing, there to meet the processions from other parishes, as has been already described at p. 121.
Very frequently at the great Festivals there was some picturesque addition to the services in church; as the grotto and cradle at Christmas, the sprinkling of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the veiling of the rood during Lent, the procession bearing palms round the churchyard on Palm Sunday, the creeping to the cross on Good Friday, the Easter sepulchre, on Whitsunday the white dresses of the baptizands, the blessing of the fields on Rogation days, the festival of the Dedication of the parish church which was held on its saint’s day, and was a great day of social feasting. Every Sunday the procession (Litany) round the church, sometimes preceded by a miserable figure in white, bearing a taper, doing penance. At funerals there was a great display of mournful pageantry; and month’s-minds, and obits, frequently occurring, added a feature to the service in which everybody took a personal interest; for the good people then, when the banns of a marriage were published, kindly responded with a “God speed them well”; and when the names of the departed were proclaimed, prayed “God rest their souls.”
In the Middle Ages, all the services of the church, attended by the people, were celebrated by daylight, except, perhaps, the first evensong on the eves of saint days, and very early celebrations, and then the attendants probably brought a taper or a coil of wax-light for themselves, so that there was no need of provision for the lighting up of the whole interior of churches, such as is customary in these days; but lights in churches were a conspicuous part of their furniture, and the provision of them was a source of general interest to the people.