What better place than this, in the whole township, could be found for the hearing of disputes and the settling of cases; here, where the bishop sat with the sheriff, where the clerics were lawyers, where oaths could be taken on everything that was holy, and round which all a man’s sacred associations clustered. The churchyard was a court of justice; but in later times, the ecclesiastical authorities discouraged the holding of secular pleas in churches and churchyards. In 1287 a synod held at Exeter, said “Let not secular pleas be held in churchyards,” but as late as 1472, a presentment from the parish of “Helemsay et Staunforthbrig” (Helmsley and Stamfordbrig) shews “that all the parishioners there hold pleas and other temporal meetings in the church and churchyard.”[10]
The great church festivals were much abused by traders. At these great gatherings, dealers in all kinds of goods appeared on the scene, spread their wares on the tombstones, and could with difficulty be kept out of the sacred edifice itself. Their noisy shoutings, the assemblage of pleasure seekers, and the tumult attending such gatherings interfered seriously with the Divine service proceeding inside the church. A presentment, in 1416, from St. Michael-le-Belfry, in the city of York, states “the parishioners say that a common market of vendibles is held in the churchyard on Sundays and holidays, and divers things, and goods, and rushes, are exposed there for sale, and horses stand over the bodies of the dead there buried, and defile the graves, to the great dishonour and manifest hindrance of divine worship, on account of the clamour of those who stand about.” (Ibid., p. 248.) While so late as 1519, the churchwardens of Riccall, in Yorkshire, complain that “pedlars come on festival days into the porch of the church and there sell their merchandise.” (Ibid., p. 271.)
Annual fairs were sometimes held in churchyards, especially where there was some saintly shrine or relic, which attracted crowds for the period of some anniversary. Perhaps Thomas-a-Beckett’s shrine at Canterbury was the most celebrated, but the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham almost surpassed it. The common people held the idea that the Milky Way pointed towards Walsingham, and they called it Walsingham Way accordingly; while Glastonbury was called a second Rome for the number and sacredness of its relics. When the pilgrims had paid their devotion to the relics, they needed to eat and drink, and they were not averse to spend the rest of the day in amusement. Accordingly, minstrels, players, jugglers, and the like, supplied that demand, and the pilgrimage became a fair.
On Sundays and holidays, the churchyard became a public playground. In pre-Reformation days, a holiday was a holy-day, when man went not forth to his labour. Then there were no eight hours day, no Early Closing Associations, but work, work, work, from early morn till late night, the only cessation of toil being on Sundays and Saints’ days, hence termed a holy-day. On that day, people went to matins and mass in the morning, and spent the rest of the day in amusements, not always elevating or refined. The Synod of Exeter, already quoted, says, “We strictly enjoin on parish priests that they publicly proclaim in their churches, that no one presume to carry on combats, dances, or other improper sports in the churchyards, especially on the eves of the feasts of saints; or stage plays or farces, by which the honour of the churches is defiled and sacred ordinances despised.” Again, at Salton, Yorkshire, in 1472, “it is ordered, by the consent of the parishioners, that no one use improper and prohibited sports within the churchyard, as, for example, wrestling, football, and handball, under penalty of twopence forfeit.”[11] The ordinance seems to have been disregarded, or to have had only a temporary effect, for in 1519, a second complaint is made (Ibid., p. 270), when the ecclesiastical authorities commanded, “Let them desist on pain of excommunication.”
In days when men went about armed with sword and dagger, it was sure to happen that a hasty quarrel would lead to stroke of sword or stab of dagger, without heed to the sacred character of the place, or to the fact that the assault constituted sacrilege, and desecrated “God’s Acre” by bloodshed.
Whitsuntide used to have a special feast of its own, known as Whitsun Ales or Church Ales, an institution by which money was obtained for repairing the church, helping the poor, and various charitable purposes. The churchwardens brewed the ale, and on the appointed day half the country-side assembled to join in the festivities;—music and song, baiting of bulls, bears, and badgers, bowls and ball, dice and card-playing, dancing and merry-making. The Church Ales were very popular in the North of England, where it was the practice to hold them in tents and booths erected in the churchyards. In 1651, in Somerset, seventy-two clergymen of the county certified that during these Church Ales, which generally fell on a Sunday, “the service of God was more solemnly performed, and the service better attended, than on other days.”
As an instance of what could be accomplished at one of these Church Ales, we may mention that “in 1532, the little village of Chaddesden spent 34s. 10d. on an ‘Aell’ for the benefit of the great tower of All Saints’, Derby, which was then being built, and earned by it £25 8s. 6d.,—near £400 of our money.” (Lichfield, Diocesan Hist., S.P.C.K.)
Doles are often distributed in the churchyard. William Robinson, at one time Sheriff of Hull, when he died in 1708, left money to purchase a dozen loaves of bread, costing a shilling each, to be given to twelve poor widows at his grave every Christmas Day. Leonard Dare, in 1611, directed that on Christmas Day, Lady Day, and Michaelmas Day, the churchwardens were “to buy, bring and lay on his tombstone, threescore penny loaves of good wholesome bread,” which were to be distributed to the poor of the parish. A quaint custom is still enacted annually in London on Good Friday. The vicar of St. Bartholomew’s the Great, Smithfield, drops twenty-one sixpences in a row on a certain lady’s grave. The money is picked up by the same number of widows kneeling, who have previously attended service at the church, where a sermon is preached.[12]
A quaint old custom, once not infrequently practised, was that of scrambling bread and cheese and other edibles in the churchyard. A story is told of two poor sisters walking to London to claim an estate. Arriving at Paddington, weary, hungry, and footsore, their miserable condition aroused sympathy, and the good folk of Paddington gave them relief. In course of time, their claim was established, and as a token of gratitude they left a bequest of bread and cheese, to be thrown from the top of the church of St. Mary’s, Paddington, among the people assembled in the churchyard below. This custom was continued into this present century, for in 1821, it is noticed in the newspapers as an annual practice to throw bread and cheese from the belfry of the church at eight o’clock on the Sunday before Christmas Day. At Barford, Oxfordshire, is a piece of land, known as White-bread Close, the rent of which was formerly spent in buying bread to be scrambled for at the church door. A correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1824, says that the “distribution occasioned such scenes of indecent riot and outrage, even fighting in the church itself, that a late curate very properly effected the suppression of a practice productive of this gross abuse.” Mr. Tuke, of Wath, near Rotherham, who died in 1810, left a bequest whereby forty dozen penny loaves were to be thrown from the church leads at twelve o’clock on Christmas Day for ever. This is the latest instance of a scrambling custom with which we are acquainted.[13]
Bells were frequently cast in churchyards, and from the editor of this volume we have received some interesting notes on this subject. “In the days of the early bell founders,” says Mr. William Andrews, “the country roads were little better than miry lanes, full of ruts and holes, and where the moisture of the winter was often not evaporated during the summer. For this reason bells were mostly cast in the immediate vicinity of the churches, or monastic establishments, they were intended to grace. The monks, too, were not unwilling to retain the usage as an opportunity for a religious service; they stood round the casting pit, and, as the metal was poured into the mould, would chant psalms and offer prayers. Southey, in ‘The Doctor,’ says:—‘The brethren stood round the furnace, ranged in processional order, sang the 150th Psalm, and then, after certain prayers, blessed the molten metal, and called upon the Lord to infuse into it His grace, and overshadow it with His power, for the honour of the saint to whom the bell was to be dedicated, and whose name it was to bear.’