Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

This claim, there can be no doubt, was fully accepted and carried out. If a rector was for some reason or other non-resident, by law his charity or “hospitality” had to be administered either by the curate who served the church, or by a resident proctor appointed for the purpose. In acknowledgment of this obligation, in the wills of the period we find the clergy directing money to be paid by their executors to the poor of the parishes which they had served. Thus William Sheffield, Dean of York, who died in 1496, after arranging that this distribution should be made in proportion to the time during which he had held each benefice, adds: “For the goods of the Church are the property of the poor and therefore the conscience is heavily burdened in the spending of the goods of the Church. For badly spending them Jesus have mercy.”

In the record of the visitation of churches in the diocese of Exeter, in 1440, there are many references to the “hospitality” kept by the clergy. In one instance the rector is praised for having rebuilt his chancel and added two good rooms to the rectory, one for himself and one for the purposes of hospitality. In another there is a note “that, from time immemorial to the day of the present rector, great hospitality had been maintained, and the goods of the church had been made the property of the sick and the poor,” but that this had ceased. It seems to us, indeed, almost strange in these days to see what was the teaching of the mediæval Church about the claims of the poor, and to remember that this was not the doctrine of some rhetorical and irresponsible preacher, but of such a man of law and order as was the great Canonist Lyndwood. There can be no doubt that the proceeds of ecclesiastical benefices were recognised in the Constitutions of legates and archbishops as being in fact, as well as in theory, the eleemosynæ, the spes pauperum—the alms and the hope of the poor. Those ecclesiastics who consumed the revenues of their cures on other than necessary and fitting purposes were declared to be “defrauders of the rights of God’s poor,” and “thieves of Christian alms intended for them;” whilst the English canonists and legal professors, who glossed these provisions of the Church law, gravely discussed the ways in which the poor of a parish could vindicate their right—right, they call it—to a share in the ecclesiastical revenues of their Church.

This “jus pauperum,” which is set forth in such a textbook of English law as Lyndwood’s Provinciale, is naturally put forth more clearly and forcibly in a work intended for popular instruction, such as Dives et Pauper. “To them that have the benefices and goods of Holy Church,” writes the author, “it belonged principally to give alms and to have the cure of poor people.” To him who squanders the alms of the altar on luxury and useless show the poor man may justly point and say, “It is ours that you so spend in pomp and vanity!... That thou keepest for thyself of the altar passing the honest needful living, it is raveny, it is theft, it is sacrilege.” From the earliest days of English Christianity the care of the helpless poor was regarded as an obligation incumbent on all; and in 1342 Archbishop Stratford, dealing with appropriations, or the assignment of ecclesiastical revenue to the support of some religious house or college, ordered that a portion of the tithe should always be set apart for the relief of the poor, because, as Bishop Stubbs has pointed out, in England, from the days of King Ethelred, “a third part of the tithe” which belonged to the Church was the acknowledged birthright of the poorer members of Christ’s flock. All the old diocesan registers of English sees afford like instances of specific injunctions as to bestowing part of the income of the benefice on the poor when appropriations were granted.

Besides the regular revenues from parochial tithes, the rector had other sources of income. Such, for instance, were the offerings made for various services rendered to individuals, as baptisms, marriages, churching of women, and funerals. An offering, also, for a special Mass said or sung for a particular person or intention, was made to the rector if he officiated, which by the Constitution of Lambeth he could only do when the special service did not interfere with the regular duties of his cure. In 1259-60 Bishop Bronescombe settled the Mass fee at “one penny;” and in the churchwardens’ accounts of Dover there is an entry, in 1536, of a payment “for ten Masses with their offeryng pens, which was for Grace’s obit,” 4s. 4d. In law these offerings were known as “memorial pence” (denarii memoriales), or “earnest pence” (denarii perquisiti), because, on account of this “retaining fee,” the priest engaged to offer Mass on a special day.

Various “oblations,” moreover, were apparently made to the parson regularly. At Folkestone, for example, according to the Valor Ecclesiasticus, an oblation of 5d. was made to the priest each Sunday. Lyndwood lays down, as the law regarding regular oblations “made on Sundays and Festivals, etc.,” that they belong to the priest who had the cure of souls, “whose duty it was to pray for the sins of the people.” Other priests, who might be attached to the church, had no claims upon them except by agreement, as those who make the offering are not their parishioners. Oblations of this kind were not always voluntary, and they could be recovered for the clergyman by the bishop, as, for instance, when they were made according to a previous agreement, or promise, or in any special need of the Church, as when the minister had not sufficient to support himself properly; or when such offering was made according to established custom.

Bishop Quevil, in the Synod of Exeter, states what were the long-established customs in the English Church as to regular oblations. Every adult parishioner above the age of fourteen years had to make an offering four times a year, at Christmas and Easter, on the patronal feast, and on the dedication feast of his parish church, or, according to custom, on All Saints’ day. The bishop also desired that the people of his diocese should be persuaded to bring Pentecost offerings also to their parish churches, or at least to send them to their parsons. To induce them so to do, special indulgences granted to all benefactors of churches were to be published on each of the three Sundays before the feast, and all such offerings were to be taken to the place where the Whit-Sunday processions assemble. Bishop Rigaud de Asserio, of Winchester, in 1321, makes the same claim as to the regular four payments, but puts the age at eighteen, and even then only claims the oblation as a right in the case of those possessing some movables of their own. In some instances, apparently, a portion of the offerings made for any special object was by custom given to the priest for his own use, as a well-understood tax. This, for example, was the case at St. Augustine’s church at Hedon, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where in the fifteenth century “a third of the oblations to the Holy Cross was given to the Vicar.”

The rectory house, which was situated near to the church, would no doubt in these days be considered very poor. A living-room and a bedroom, with perhaps a room in which to exercise “hospitality,” with some necessary offices and a kitchen, were all that, as far as can be ascertained, constituted the dwelling-place of the parochial priest. “Religious feelings,” says Dr. Rock, “sweetened the homeliness of everyday life.” Over the parlour chimneypiece in the vicarage house at Besthorpe, Norfolk, built by Sir Thomas Downyng, priest, are these lines—

“All you that sitt by thys fire warmyng

Pray for the sowle of Sir Jhon Downyng.”

Probably, in some place attached to the rectory there would have been some kind of enclosure, or priest’s garden. Occasionally, mention is made of the existence of one, as, for instance, in the visitation of churches of the archdeaconry of Norwich, in 1363, where in one case the rector is said to have in his use a house and garden “next to the rectory on the north side.” But this seems to have been really parish property, as it is recorded that it “was sufficient to find all the candles in the church.” Sometimes, no doubt, the priests’ houses would have been larger than they usually appear to have been from the examples that survive or the records which are available. Thus in the early fifteenth century the Bishop of Lincoln granted a priest in his diocese permission to have a private oratory in his rectory house, on condition that the oratory was fittingly adorned, and that no other rite but Mass was celebrated in it. The Holy Sacrifice might be offered there either by him or any other priest in his presence.