The compromise, which we style the Reformation, at first inclined to the retention of the Saturday fast; and, indeed, the legislature interfered to enforce its more regular observance. In 1548 a remarkable measure was enacted with this object, not so much, it is to be feared, out of any genuine concern for religion as for the benefit of the fishing community, whose interests had been injuriously affected by recent ecclesiastical changes.
"Albeit," it recites, "the King's subjects now having a more perfect and clear light of the Gospel and true word of God, through the infinite cleansing and mercy of Almighty God, by the hand of the King's Majesty and his most noble father of famous memory, promulgate, shewed, declared and opened, and thereby perceiving that one day or one kind of meat of itself is not more holy, more pure, or more clean than another, for that all days and all meats be of their nature of one equal purity, cleanness, and holiness, and that all men should by them live to the glory of God, and at all times and for all meats give thanks unto Him, of which meats none can defile Christian men or make them unclean at any time, to whom all meats be lawful and pure, so that they be not used in disobedience or vice; yet forasmuch as divers of the King's subjects turning their knowledge therein to satisfy their sensuality, when they should thereby increase in virtue, have in late time more than in times past, broken and contemned such abstinence which hath been used in the Realm upon the Fridays and Saturdays, the Embering days, and other days commonly called Vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent and other accustomed times: the King's Majesty, considering that due and godly abstinence is a means to virtue, and to subdue men's bodies to their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that Fishers, and men using the trade of living by fishing in the sea, may thereby the rather be set on work, and that by eating of fish much flesh shall be saved and increased, and also for divers other considerations and commodities of this realm, doth ordain 'that all statutes and constitutions regarding fasting be repealed, but that all persons neglecting to observe the ordinary fast days—Fridays, Saturdays, Ember days, and Lent—be subject to a fine of ten shillings and ten days' imprisonment for the first offence.'"
This measure, so inconsistent with the spirit of the age and so contradictory in its terms, was re-enacted at various dates during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It is perhaps the last "word" as regards the Lady Fast, but the legislature by no means suspended its vigilance in enforcing abstinence at the proper season. Discussion of post-Reformation fasting, however, or fasting in general, forms no part of our present undertaking.
ECCLESIASTICAL
CHAPTER IV
CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL
The fact may not have escaped notice that Domina Alicia Seynt Johan de Baggenet "took the vow of widowhood in the chapel of the Lord of Amberley." Possession of a private chapel was, as it still is, a mark of social distinction. "It was once the constitution of the English," runs a law of King Athelstan, "that the people and their legal condition went according to their merits; and then were the councillors of the nation honoured each one according to his quality, the earl and the ceorl, the thane and the underthane. If a ceorl throve so as to have five hides booked to him, a church, bell-tower, a seat in the borough, and an office in the King's court, from that time forward he was esteemed equal in honour to a thane." Again, the laws of King Edgar relating to tithe ordain "that God's church be entitled to every right, and that every tithe be rendered to the old minster to which the district belongs, and be then so paid, both from the thane's inland and from geneat land, as the plough traverses it. But if there be any thane who on his boc-land has a church at which there is a burial-place, let him give the third part of his own tithe to his church. If anyone hath a church at which there is not a burial-place, then of the same nine parts let him then give to his priest what he will."
Domestic chapels were extremely common all through the Middle Ages. In the parish of Tiverton, Devon, there were at least seventeen, some of them within less than a mile of each other. Allusions to these oratories are found in the registers of the Bishops of Exeter, by whom they were severally licensed for the convenience of the owner, his family, and his tenants. As a rule, they were in rooms of the house or castle, not separate buildings. Andrew Boorde, in his directions for the construction of a sixteenth-century mansion, remarks: "Let the privy chamber be annexed to the great chamber of estate, with other chambers necessary for the building, so that many of the chambers may have a prospect into the chapel."
Great nobles of the post-Conquest period were not content with the services of a priest only. They maintained an establishment of singing men and boys analogous to the vicars-choral and choristers of the present time, who were described as "the gentlemen and children of the chapel." From the household books of the Earl of Northumberland (a.d. 1510-11) we learn that he had "daily abidynge in his household—Gentillmen of the Chapel, ix; viz., the maistre of the Childre, j; Tenors, ij; Counter-tenors, iiij; the Pistoler, j; and oone for the Orgayns; Childer of the Chapell, vj."