Such chapels were built at the cost of the people of the parish, and under careful restrictions and conditions laid down by the bishop of the diocese. An excellent instance of this is to be found in the register of Bishop Brantyngham, of Exeter, where it is recorded that in 1372 he dedicated a chapel of ease at Dartmouth. Up to this time Dartmouth was in the parish of Townstall, which was a vicarage, the benefice being appropriated to the Premonstratensian Abbey of Torre. The people living at Dartmouth, failing to obtain permission to have a chapel, proceeded to build one without leave of the abbey or of their vicar. After considerable difficulty, and upon the intervention of the bishop, it was allowed that the people on the seashore, many of them old and infirm and women, frequently were unable to get to their parish church, especially in stormy winter weather. For this reason the erection of the chapel with a baptistery and cemetery was finally allowed, and they were permitted to find a chaplain to serve it, who was to be licensed from year to year, and admitted by the Vicar of Townstall. In the same way Bishop Stafford allowed the establishment of a chapel at Kingsbridge, in Devon, in 1414. The people who used the chapel had to maintain it, and even the chancel, as well as all the necessary books and ornaments. They were not charged, however, with the payment of their own chaplain, or with the provision of bread and wine for the Blessed Eucharist, which fell upon the rector of the parish of Churston. Burials of the dead had up to this time taken place at the mother church; but this, in view of circumstances adduced, the bishop thought unreasonable. On the Feast of the Dedication of the parish church, however, every adult was bound to attend there at the service and to make an offering. Certain other dues also were ordered to be paid in acknowledgment of the ties of the chapel to the mother church.
At one place, a chaplain was employed by the rector to say Mass for the convenience of the people in a chapel attached to a house some distance from the parish church. In another chapel of ease, a parishioner left money for a foundation of three Masses weekly for the people; and at Tatton, near Bristol, the churchwardens, in 1506, were paying “Sir Richard York, chapel priest,” 27s. 4d. a quarter for his services.
Besides the above-named priests, all more or less connected with the working of a mediæval parish, it was ordered that, wherever the means of the place would allow it, there should be always a deacon and subdeacon to assist in the due celebration of the Divine service. Chance references in accounts and other documents seem to show that they were often so employed. In one set of churchwardens’ accounts there is a curious entry of receipt from a deacon, who pays for damage done to certain vestments at the time of his ordination. In another, a collection was made from the parishioners for the support of the deacon; and in a book of directions for clerics, it is laid down as part of the deacon’s office to bring the pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament from behind the altar, where it had been hanging, and to place it on the table of the altar for the priest to communicate the faithful.
CHAPTER V
THE PARISH OFFICIALS
If the parish priest, rector, or vicar was undoubtedly the admitted centre of life in the district, the father of his people and the pastor of his flock, neither on his part nor on that of the parishioners was there any mistake about the rights and duties of the people to the parish church and towards parish matters generally. Within well-defined limits, the parish, which included both parson and people, managed its own affairs. Every adult of both sexes had a voice in this self-government, and, as Bishop Hobhouse has pointed out, in pre-Reformation days a wise freedom in the management of the fabric of the church and its accessories seemed to have been left to the parish by the diocesan authorities. They—the people—encouraged by every means in their power, and indeed frequently initiated, those manifestations of zeal for beautifying God’s house which form so remarkable a feature in the architectural history of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Moreover, it is impossible to turn over the church accounts of that period which have come down to us, without acknowledging that the love of the people for their parish churches was supported and intensified by the feeling that it was their work, and that upon each of them in conscience lay the duty of assisting to maintain the sanctuary, where, according to their strong and simple faith, God dwelt in their midst, and of helping to keep up within this holy place the round of prayers and praise and sacrifice.
This common purpose of all within a parish was in those days not left to be carried out by chance or by mere individual effort; it was highly and intelligently organised to secure the co-operation and the continual contributions necessary for successfully carrying out the work. For this end certain officials were chosen by popular election as the people’s representatives, others were appointed in various ways and others, again, were employed as their services were required.
The Churchwardens.—The representatives of the people in all parochial work were their wardens, or the churchwardens, as they are generally called. Pollock and Maitland, in their History of English Law, do not think that there were real churchwardens before the thirteenth century. Previously, however, it is admitted that certain burdens as to the support of the church had been placed upon the parishioners as a body. “In the thirteenth century,” for example, “the general custom of the Church of England, swerving in this from the jus commune of the Catholic Church, cast the burden of repairing the nave of the parish church, and providing the main part of the ecclesiastical apparatus, not upon the parson, but upon the parishioners.” Whether this burden implied any corporate organisation of the parishioners or any parish meeting seems doubtful. But “no doubt the occasional nature of the charge almost compels the rector or the archdeacon to deal with the parishioners as a body, to call them together, and endeavour to persuade them that a wall is crumbling or a new missal is wanting.”
Still, whatever their origin, the churchwardens are already in existence in the thirteenth century; they are then dealt with as the legal representatives of the parishioners, and they “present themselves as claimants for property and possession.” To the authors of the History of English Law their existence is due to the natural outcome of the responsibility placed upon the people. “If the parishioners are compelled to provide precious books, robes, vessels, etc., they will naturally desire to have their say about the custody of these articles; parsons have been known to sell the church plate.”
In the fifteenth century the churchwardens were chosen annually in a parish meeting at which, no doubt, the rector or vicar would have presided; all adult members of the parish having a voice in the election. At this meeting the outgoing wardens would give an account of their stewardship, and hand over the custody of the common funds and common property to their successors. At the church of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, for instance, a special parish meeting was held in the church, “at the altar of the doom in the south aisle,” for the settlement of an account “between Thomas Curle, plumber, on the one part, and the parishioners.” But this was quite out of the ordinary, and as a rule, once the guardians or wardens were elected, all the parish business was transacted by them. In this same church the wardens were chosen, apparently, on Easter Monday, and the method of election was somewhat curious. The outgoing churchwardens first each nominated one parishioner, who conjointly chose eight persons to elect the officers of the coming year. In this case at Cambridge, besides the two churchwardens, there were at the same time elected for the parish two wardens of the lights at the Sepulchre and Crucifix; two guardians of the Jesus Mass; two parish auditors; and “two custodians of the keys of the chest, called the chantry hutch, in which are all the charters and deeds relating to the Chantry.”