Notes and Queries for Worcestershire

by John Noake

The Church and the People.

"Three strangers blaze amidst the bonfire's revel:
The Pope, and the Pretender, and the Devil.
Three strangers hate our faith and faith's defender:
The Devil, and the Pope, and the Pretender.
The strangers will be strangers long, we hope:
The Devil, and the Pretender, and the Pope.
Thus in three rhymes three strangers dance the hay,
And he that chooses to dance after them may."

We now come to a class of items chiefly connected with ecclesiastical control over matters both secular and religious—instances of the exercise of power by the Church for the punishment of offenders against her discipline. Every reader of history is acquainted with the force and effect of excommunication in the middle ages. By a sentence of excommunication, both greater and less, the victims were excluded from the right of Christian burial, from bringing or maintaining actions, from becoming attorneys or jurymen, and were rendered incapable of becoming witnesses in any cause. Long before the Reformation the frequency and abuse of this ecclesiastical weapon proved both a scandal and a disadvantage to the Church, by bringing the practice in some degree into contempt; and in the thirteenth century many applications were made to the king complaining of the resistance of excommunicated offenders who defied the utmost that the Church could do to reduce them to submission. In 1289, John, vicar of Feckenham, was excommunicated by Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester, who appealed in the same manner for secular aid. When the nation reformed its religion, the power of excommunication was still retained by the Church, and is in force even to the present day, although modified by the 53rd of George III, chap. 127, which restricts the maximum term of imprisonment in all such cases to six months. (See more on this subject under the head of St. Nicholas' parish.) Obstinately refusing to attend divine service in the parish church, incontinency, contumacy in not appearing when cited in the Consistory Court, brawling, and scolding—these were the principal offences for the punishment of which the Church most frequently put forth her power, as also on Quakers and Popish recusants.

I am sorry to be compelled to state that the first example occurring in these rolls is that of a female scold. In 1614, Margaret, wife of John Bache, of Chaddesley, was presented to the Sessions as "a comon skould and a sower of strife and disorder amongste her neyghboures, and hath bynn presented for a skoulde at the leete houlden for the manour of Chadsley, and for misbehavyng her tonge towards her mother-in-law at a vysytacon (visitation) at Bromsgrove, April 29, 1603, and was excommunicated therefore." In 1617, one Elinor Nichols was presented "as a great scold and mischief maker, who is said to have been excommunicated and had never applied to make her peace with the Church." The usual mode of punishing this class of offenders was, however, by the cucking-stool. A valued correspondent, in commenting upon the details of the gum-stool, or cucking-stool, and other punishments mentioned at pages 110 and 111 of "Worcester in Olden Times" (in which an engraving is given of a curious instrument of torture still hanging on the wall of Worcester Guildhall), says—

"The gum-stool is evidently the cucking-stool, though it never occurred to me that Cooking Street was really Cucking Street, and had had its name spelt Cucken in old maps, as you state. The term cuckold-stool is inaccurate, as this punishment is for scolding to the common nuisance of the neighbourhood, and has no reference to conjugal infidelity. The cucking-stool is the legal punishment of the criminal offence of scolding; and if a woman had been indicted and convicted of this offence at the last Assizes, the learned judge must have sentenced her to the cucking-stool. The common scold (Communis Rixatrix)—for the law confines it to the feminine gender—is a public nuisance to her neighbourhood, and may be indicted for the offence, and upon conviction punished by being placed on a certain engine of correction called the trebucket, or cucking-stool; and she may be convicted without setting forth the particulars in the indictment, though the offence must be set forth in technical words and with convenient certainty; and the indictment must conclude not only against the peace but to the common nuisance of her majesty's liege subjects. It is not necessary to give in evidence the particular expressions used: it is sufficient to prove generally that the defendant is always scolding. The skimmington is a mock procession got up in derision of a woman who has beaten her husband. You will find it in Hudibras. When a boy, I saw a skimmington, and in it a man dressed in woman's clothes, who rode on horseback behind a stuffed figure of a man, carrying a ladle, with which the supposed woman kept beating the stuffed figure about the head. This, too, has no reference to conjugal infidelity. But in Wilts and Berks there is a mock procession that does relate to conjugal infidelity; but this is called a 'Woosset,' which is pronounced 'Oosset'. It is a rough band followed by a person bearing a long pole, with a cross-bar across it, on which is placed a shirt, and at the top of the pole is a horse's skull with a pair of bull's horns attached to it. This I have also seen. I have omitted to mention that cucking-stools were of two kinds—the one fixed, the other moveable. That mentioned in 'Worcester in the Olden Times' (p. 110), must have been of the latter kind. A lithograph of each is in No. 1 of the Magazine of the Wilts Archæological Society. The bridle for scolds still exists in several places; there is one in the Ashmolœan Museum at Oxford; another was in the magistrates' room at Shrewsbury, but has been stolen within the last few years; one is figured in one of the volumes of the Penny Magazine, under the title 'Obsolete Punishments,' and another in Plott's 'Staffordshire;' but it is very remarkable that though so commonly seen, these bridles, called 'Branks,' are nowhere mentioned in our law books, though cucking-stools always are whenever the offence of scolding is treated of or referred to."

But to return to ecclesiastical matters. In the year 1620, Robert Lucy, of Droitwich, was ordered to appear before the Sessions Court "for killinge of fleshe this Lent." By the statutes 2nd and 3rd Edward VI, chap. 19, and 5th Elizabeth, chap. 5 (an act for maintenance of the navy), the eating of flesh in Lent is prohibited under penalties; but I know of no statute which inflicts any penalty on butchers for killing in Lent.

The Sessions rolls contain some sad pictures of clerical misbehaviour in the seventeenth century—a period when the clergy, as a body, had become a plebeian class, when (as Macaulay assures us) "for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants," many of the ejected ministers during the domination of the Puritans obtaining bread and shelter only by attaching themselves to the households of royalist gentlemen. The truth of the observation (see Blount's "Reformation"), that "an indigent church makes a corrupt and canting clergy," is apparent from the history of those times. In 1628, articles were exhibited against the Rev. Henry Hunt, of Defford, "that he is a malicious and contentious person and useth scandalous speeches without regard to time or place, but even in the church, sometimes before and sometimes after divine service, hath been known to break out into violent swearing before he came forth of the pulpit, taunting and reviling Rd. Damanne, and throwing stones at him in the field to provoke him to strike him, and threatening to make him so poor with suits that he should be glad to sell his mortuary for 2d.;" also that he swore falsely at Worcester Assizes. "His mortuary" here evidently means the amount of property that he would die worth. In some parishes a sum of 10s. is still payable to the rectors or vicars on the death of each householder in the parish who dies worth £40. This is called "a mortuary." The Rev. William Hollington, of Alvechurch, was in 1641 reported as "a frequenter of alehouses, where he spendeth much time both day and night, as well upon the Saboth as other week dayes in idle and riotous company, in excessive drinking, and is a causer of much drunkenness by procuring and persuading and enforcing others to the drinking of whole cupes. He hath often drawn idle company to his own house, where they have sent for much ale, and there abusefully have spent in drunkness, quarrelling, and fighting. He is greatly defamed of incontinensie with his neighbours' wives, and one of them hath confest he did attempt her chastity, affirminge him to be as bad as Bankes his predecessor, who to prevent punishment for his unchast and incestuous living run away. That he dayley frequenteth houses much suspected of lewdnes, often accompanied with a dangerous armed Papist of idle behaviour, and assisted by him hath in the open street given out rayling and threatning words against his neighbours, calling them knaves and partisans, and hath affirmed they were not Papists that rebelled in Ireland, and that Papists were noe rebbles but honester men than Protestants. He hath been a hindrance of the taking of the protestation, and doth omit the words in the reading of the remonstrance 'and have cutt all theire throates,' to the end to obscure from the people the greatness of the danger the House of Commons was in as it is conceived in favour of the other side. A constable coming to him in execution of his office to deliver the protestations of such as were then and there present to take it, he gave him many reproachful wordes, calling him knave, blockhead, loggerhead. He is a curser and swearer, a nefarious pintious lyer, and a contentious person. He stirred up and mayntained many shutes (suits) and much trouble in the neighbourhood, hath sided and counselled with the old churchwarden to the detayning of goods and money due to the church, and threatned aney that durst question it. He hath laboured to hinder justice and to countenance delinquents, is a quarreller and fighter. He advised and aided in stealing away a widdowes daughter, the only child of his neer neighbour, not above fourteen years old, and marying her to John Price, a rude boy of idle behaviour, and noe good cloths to his back, though the friends of the girl could have made her portion £200, and hath never been heard to put up one prayer either for the Parliament or for distressed Protestants in the kingdom of Irelande except on particular times, and then it was with the limitation 'if soe that they be of the same religion as wee are on.'"

It is difficult adequately to estimate the injurious effects to society of such examples set on the part of the clergy. The judicious Hooker observes that "the examples of clergy and great men are important, as being seen afar off, like cities set on the tops of hills; but mean men's actions are not greatly inquired into except by those who live at the next door."

During the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II, as may be expected, the religious disputes and ill-feeling existing between the Established Church and the various sects that snarled and whined and canted in the racy language of the time, are fully exhibited in these records, of which I shall give some instances. In 1654, Edward Sheldon and Nicholas Hill deposed "that upon the 20th day of August the deponents were objecting against one Mr. Spilsbury, who desired to be minister of Bromsgrove, that he had a low voyce; one Humphrey Potter then answered that if he had a low voice he had a true voice; unto which Mr. Joseph Amige, now minister of Bromsgrove (as these deponents conceiveth) answered and sayd, 'Soe have I;' unto whom the said Potter replied, 'Noe, for you have tould lies in the pulpit,' or words to that effect." Here is another curious specimen of the times: In 1656 the jury presented that Thomas Goslinge, late of Bredon, yeoman, on the 11th November, 1656, at Bredon, of purpose to defame, disgrace, and provoke one Richard Beeston, a pious and godly minister and preacher of the word of God, and to disturb the peace, certain false, seditious, scandalous, and provoking English words did put into meeter or verse, and the same as a libell did openly, maliciously, and of purpose to provoke and disgrace the said Richard Beeston, in the presence and hearing of divers honeste people of the commonwealth of Englande, with a loud voice did saye and singe—that is to saye: