Another set of proclamations which had to be made on the Sunday from the parish pulpit were the excommunications pronounced by the bishop or by some other authority. In the Register of Bishop Bronescombe is a document, dated November 24, 1277, pronouncing two people of good family excommunicated for living together without being rightly married. The fact is notorious, and “the keys of the Church are vilely despised,” and this contempt may be hurtful to ecclesiastical authority if allowed to continue. For this reason the bishop’s sentence of excommunication is ordered to be published in every church and chapel. A second instance may be taken from Bishop Grandisson’s Register for 1335. It appears that one John Hayward, the bailiff of Plympton Priory, for some reason not apparent, took sanctuary in the church of Sutton. Despising the sanctity of the place, some people unknown broke down the doors of the church, and, dragging the unfortunate man from his place of safety, wounded him, and even broke both his thighs. The bishop consequently orders the sentence of greater excommunication to be pronounced upon the unknown criminals, “with bell and candle,” in all churches.
Other instances of excommunications published from the church pulpit are: (1) For detaining “charters, rolls, indentures, bills, evidences, and other muniments,” which had to do with the right of a man’s succession to the estate of his father. The persons holding the documents are unknown, and so all who have them, or are assisting in concealing them, are excommunicated after fifteen days. (2) For stealing a trap to catch eels, set in a pool called in English “a leap,” and throwing it into a pool in the town of C, belonging to the Prior of O. (3) For laying violent hands on a priest, who was known to be one by his dress and tonsure. (4) For breaking into the room of Thomas, rector of a London parish. The room was, by the way, in the Campanile, and the thieves took clothes, gold, and silver to the value of 40s., etc.
As a final instance of this kind of denunciation, an incident recorded in Bishop Grandisson’s Register for 1348 may be given. There had been, the bishop says, much talk, and many complaints had reached his ears about a woman named Margery Kytel, who exercised magic arts, and was regarded as a witch. He (the bishop) had cited her to appear to answer the charge; but she had not done so. The major excommunication is ordered to be pronounced against her, and all people in every church and chapel are to be warned, under the same penalty, not to have anything to do with her, still less to consult this “phitonessa demonica.”
A further class of parish notices were the citations of principles and witnesses to ecclesiastical courts. For instance, on February 19, 1426, an order was given to the chaplain who served the chapel of Baddesley to cite those who had acted as executors of the wills of John Barkeby and Juliana Power, for having done so without the leave of the Bishop of Coventry. In answer to this, John West, Vicar of Pollesworth, certifies that he has published the citation, and that Nicholas Power, the son of the above-named Juliana, had acted as her executor and that of John Barkeby. As a second example may be given the case of a rector of a parish church in Staffordshire, who was ordered to cite two of his parishioners, Thomas Grenegore and his wife, for keeping a bad house in the parish, to appear at the prebendal church of Eccleshall on August 10, 1426, “to receive correction for the good of their souls.” Of much the same kind is the letter of William, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in 1441, which recites that Thomas, son of Richard Tomlynson, of Marchington, in the county of Stafford, on September 6, 1420, broke into Sudbury church and stole three chalices, two vestments worth £10, one breviary, a surplice, and two curtains, the property of the churchwardens. The said Thomas, having been captured by the secular power, had been handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and this letter was to be published in the church of Sudbury, to summon witnesses to appear at the bishop’s court.
Connected with this phase of parochial life were the public penances which had to be performed in the parish churches. In the comparatively rare instances of people convicted as heretics, the punishment was so severe that, in these days, it must cause astonishment that they were submitted to so quietly. For such a cause the penitent had to walk barefooted and dressed only in underclothing, bearing a bundle of faggots, in the Sunday procession for three successive Sundays. During the course of the passage of the clergy and people through the churchyard, the priest was to give certain disciplines (fustigaciones), and the penitent was then to kneel at the entrance of the chancel during Mass, with the faggot in front, and holding a candle in one hand. Other public ecclesiastical punishments were hardly less severe. I. de B., for example, in the fourteenth century, was condemned to undergo six public whippings (fustigaciones) on six Sundays before the procession in his parish church, for having violently beaten a cleric. In the fifteenth century, for a grave offence a person was enjoined to go round the market-place of Marlborough on two market days nudus usque ad camisiam et braccas, and to be whipped by a priest at each corner. This kind of penance, however, was not confined to the laity. There are instances of clergy being made to do public penances even in their own parish churches. For instance, the rector of the church of O., being convicted before the bishop of a crime, was sentenced to stand bareheaded at the font for three Sundays during High Mass. He was to be vested in surplice and stole, and to read his Psalter. He was then to go as a penitential pilgrim to Lincoln, Canterbury, and Beverley, and at each to offer a candle, and to bring back a testimonial letter that this had been faithfully done.
To take one or two further examples of these public penances in church, (1) A man convicted of the sin of incontinence, which has been a scandal, is condemned to walk with bare feet and bareheaded before his parish priest in the procession on two solemn feast days. (2) A woman convicted of unchastity, publicly known, is sentenced to three fustigacions round the parish church in the usual penitential way, sola camisia duntaxat induta. She is to hold a wax candle of half a pound in weight from the beginning of Mass till the Offertory, when it is to be offered to the image in the chancel. This is to be done on three Sundays, and if the condemned refuse to undergo the punishment, she is then to be excommunicated, and is to be publicly proclaimed as such on each feast day till she repent and undergo her penance.
CHAPTER XI
PARISH AMUSEMENTS
Notwithstanding that the parish was instituted primarily for ecclesiastical objects, the people quickly came to understand the utility of the organization for common and social purposes. Although it was not till well into the sixteenth century that any successful attempt was made to impose by law upon the parishioners, as such, any purely secular duty, such as the care of local roads and bridges, or the repair of ditches, dykes, and sluices, the people’s wardens had long before this assumed the superintendence of all the common parochial amusements, and in some instances of works, such as brewing and baking, etc., undertaken for the common benefit or profit. These probably mostly sprang out of their necessary management of parochial property, which had a natural tendency to grow in extent, and in particular of the “Church House,” which in one form or other most parishes possessed.
The Church House.—Mr. J. M. Cowper, in his preface to the Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, gives a useful description of the purposes for which the Church, or, as it was sometimes called, the Parish, House existed. In the fifteenth century, and indeed before that, the church was the real centre of all parochial life, social as well as religious. “From the font to the grave the greater number of people lived within the sound of its bells. It provided them with all the consolations of religion, and linked itself with such amusements as it did not directly supply.”