Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

The number of churchwardens was, apparently by the fifteenth century, fixed to two, although for special purposes, as in the above instance, other wardens were appointed. In the accounts of St. Edmund and St. Thomas at Salisbury, there were at first three supervisores fabricæ; in 1486 two “gardiani ecclesiæ” were charged with beginning the reparation of the church at Easter, “and not to wait till winter.” With these were two junior wardens, “custodians of the goods and ornaments of the church.” Apparently, in times when considerable work was going on, one or more additional wardens were appointed to give advice and share responsibility; and once, at least, in the time of some great repairs to the fabric, the parish meeting stood adjourned from Friday to Friday until the works were finished. In 1510 two wardens were appointed, and it is curious to note that one held the purse, and the other, who did not, became his surety. At St. Mary-at-Hill, in London, the name for the official churchwardens was, apparently, the “Wardeyns of the godes, rents, and werks;” or, the “Wardens of the godes, ornaments, werkes, livelihood, and rents, etc.”

Although the wardens were usually chosen from the men of a parish, there are examples to show that this need not necessarily be the case. Thus the accounts of St. Petrock’s, Exeter, show that in 1428 a woman, named Beatrice Braye, was people’s warden; and in the same way, in 1496-7, “Dame Isabel Norton” held the office at Yatton, in Somerset.

HOUSELING CLOTH FOR HOLY COMMUNION

Bishop Hobhouse, in his interesting volume of Churchwardens’ Accounts, has well summed up the duties and functions of these parish wardens, which were very varied. They might have both farming and trading to do in fulfilment of their office, as well as disposing of various gifts which were made by the parishioners in kind. They also might have the unpleasant duty of presenting parishioners to the archdeacon’s court for moral delinquencies. Besides this, if there was building or decorating to be done in the church or on buildings belonging to the parish, such as their common house, the wardens had to find the ways and means, and to supervise the work. They had to attend at Visitations, and if the church or the cemetery or a new chalice, etc., had to be consecrated, they had to arrange with the bishop and find the necessary fees. They had to see that the money due to the common purse from all the various sources was paid, and that, in the event of some extra work or engagement being undertaken by the parish, some method of raising the necessary funds was projected and carried out. At the same time, the wardens had no civil functions to perform until late in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1349, indeed, the Statute of Labourers names them, and tries to place upon them the duty of helping labourers to return to their homes; but the attempt came to nothing, and in the accounts printed by Bishop Hobhouse, the earliest entry for anything not strictly concerned with their parochial office is in 1512-13, when the wardens of Yatton “were charged with repairing the sluices and scouring the Yeo.”

It was frequently no light task that the churchwardens undertook for their fellow-parishioners, for the parish possessions were considerable, and comprised all kinds of property—lands, houses, flocks and herds, cows, and even hives of bees. These were, what may be termed, the capital of the parish, which was constantly being added to by the generosity of generations of pious benefactors. Then, over and besides the chancel, which was the freehold of the parson, the body of the church and other buildings, together with the churchyard and its enclosure, and generally, if not always, the common church house, were then under the special and absolute control of the people’s wardens. If the law forced the people of a parish to find fitting and suitable ornaments and vestments, it equally gave them the control of the ecclesiastical furniture, etc., of their church. Their chosen representatives were the guardians of the jewels and plate, of the ornaments and hangings, of the vestments and tapestries, which were regarded, as in very truth they were, as the property of every soul in the particular village or district in which the church was situated. It is no exaggeration to say that the parish church was in Catholic times the care and business of all. Its welfare was the concern of the people at large, and it took its natural place in their daily lives. Was there, say, building to be done, repairs to be effected, a new peal of bells to be procured, organs to be mended, new plate to be bought, and the like, it was the parish as a corporate body that decided the matter, arranged the details, and provided for the payment. At times, let us say when a new vestment was in question, the whole parish might be called to sit in council at the church house on this matter of common interest, and discuss the cost, the stuff, and the make.

The parish wardens had their duties, also, towards their poorer brethren in the district. In more than one instance they were guardians of a common chest, out of which temporary loans could be obtained by needy parishioners to enable them to tide over pressing difficulties. These loans were secured by pledges and the additional surety of other parishioners. No interest, however, was charged for the use of the money, and in cases where the pledge had to be sold to recover the original sum, anything over and above was returned to the borrower. In other ways, too, the poorer parishioners were assisted by the corporate property of the parish. The stock managed by the wardens “were,” says one of the early English reformers, “in some towns (i.e. townships and villages) six, some eight, and some a dozen kine, given unto the stock for the relief of the poor, and used in some such wise that the poor ‘cottingers,’ which could make any provision for fodder, had the milk for a very small hire; and then the number of the stock reserved (that is, of course, the original number being maintained), all manner of vailes (or profits), besides both the hire of the milk and the prices of the young veals and old fat wares, was disposed to the relief of the poor.”[A]

To take one or two specific instances. The churchwardens’ accounts for St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, show how the funds required for the repair of the parish church and other parish work were obtained. The people of the district were banded together in brotherhoods; those that were authorised to beg wore “scutchons,” or badges, and the special fraternity was called the “schaft.” They received anything that was given to them, in kind as well as in money; and the record speaks of malt, barley, wheat, cows, and sheep belonging to the parish. One Nicholas Reugge left, by will, four cows to be let at a rent, the proceeds to pay for the “paschal light,” which the parishioners had to find, and for which they were to be freed from all further obligation. These cows, valued at 10s. each, were leased out at 2s. apiece. In 1521 a farmer, John Richardson, hired from the wardens twenty-five sheep, and at the same time the people’s representatives accounted for receipts from lambs, wool, etc. Everything goes to show, says Mr. Cowper, the sympathetic editor of these accounts, “what life and activity there was in the little parish, which never wanted willing men to devote their time and influence to the management of their own affairs.” The churchwardens’ accounts generally, it may be added, tell the same story, and show, as one writer has well said, “the simple-mindedness of the population, their cheerful contentment, the general absence of fraud, their religious feelings, and general goodwill towards each other.”

According to early legislation, the churchwardens had to present their settlement in writing to a committee of the parishioners, who were to be appointed by the parsons for the purpose, and these accounts were to be handed to the archdeacons at the time of their visitations. Thus Bishop Quevil, in the Synod of Exeter, in 1287, declares that the inventories of all that belonged to the church should be made yearly by the wardens and produced before the rectors, vicars, or, at any rate, the parish chaplains, and that such property should on no account be used for other purposes. Also, that whatever was given for a definite purpose, such as a light in the church, etc., must not be used for anything else.

Property, in greater or lesser amounts, houses, lands, cattle, and rich hangings, etc., were constantly being left by will, or otherwise given to the churchwardens as trustees for the parish. The Yarmouth wills of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain bequests to particular altars and lights in St. Nicholas’s Church. Jeffery Wyth, for example, in 1302 gave 5s. “for maintaining a lamp continually burning before the great crucifix.” Richard Fastalfe, by his will made in 1356, gave a tenement to St. Mary’s light in the same church. In 1490 Thomas Pound directed his executors “to supply a lamp with oil burning day and night,” and five wax candles standing “about the lamp before the Most Holy, or High Altar, to the honour of the Sacrament in the time of Divine Service, as the said Thomas in his lifetime had used to do, to continue for ever.” In the same way, in 1486, Rose Wrytell, a parishioner of St. Mary-at-Hill, left to the churchwardens, as trustees, certain houses to find the stipend for a chantry priest, who was to be appointed by the parishioners, and who was to assist at all the services.