Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

Incidentally, again, the rood-loft would have been resorted to as a convenient place from which to reach the rood for its veiling and unveiling. And it must have been hither, also, that those whose office it was to tend and light the beam-lights would have had frequent occasion of coming.

But these are points which open up the subject of the rood itself, and of the various devotions and customs that grew up around it in pre-Reformation days.

The great crucifix, with the flanking statues which usually accompanied it, would either rise from the rood-loft direct, being attached to the top of the parapet, or, in the case of churches which were lofty enough to admit of it and not to cramp the heads of the figures by the roof descending too closely upon them, would be carried above the level of the rood-loft upon a separate beam crossing the eastern extremity of the nave—always provided that the essential condition was to impart the utmost dignity to the rood itself, and to insure its becoming the most conspicuous object in the whole building. Specific mention of a rood having existed in mediæval days is forthcoming in the case of the three monastic churches of Dale, Darley, and Repton, already named; in the collegiate church of All Hallows, Derby; as also in the parochial churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Breadsall, Chesterfield, Morley, and Repton.

The figures, to wit, the Christ upon the Cross and the Mary and John beside it, were usually sculptured and coloured, or, less commonly, gilded; and sometimes even clothed also. The existence of the last-named practice is attested in respect of images in general by a long list of jewels and garments belonging to the statue of the Madonna and Child in the Bridge Chapel at Derby, and by an item of “2 cootes of ymagys of lynen cloth and 1 of sylke” at Kirk Ireton; and in respect of roods in particular, by another item which occurs in the inventory of the church goods at Ashbourne, drawn up by order in the first year of Edward VI. The entry in point runs thus: “1 holde cote,” i.e., one old coat, “for the roode.” This garment, being described as “old,” would imply, not so much that the custom of employing such things had declined, as that the particular coat in question had become worn through long using. It is more than likely, indeed, that the rood’s wardrobe had been replenished through the generosity of some devout donor with fresh and costlier clothing when required, to take the place of that which had become worn out—for it was very far from being in accord with the spirit of our mediæval ancestors to offer to the Lord and His service that which cost them nothing—but that it had been forfeit already ere this time. It must be borne in mind that the best of everything worth looting had been seized by Edward’s predecessor, and that the catalogues of ecclesiastical ornaments and utensils, drawn up officially in the boy-King’s reign, represent but the pitiful remnants, of little value, left over because they had failed to tempt the rapacity of Henry VIII. And yet, poor and insignificant as they might be, they were not to be allowed to escape further diminution at the hands of Edward VI.’s counsellors and ministers, men whose conduct exhibits a peculiarly revolting blend of avarice and puritanism. That these foregoing remarks are well-founded is illustrated by the language of the inventories themselves, wherein frequently occur such qualifying descriptions as “old,” “outworn,” “torn,” or “broken,” whereas those items are rare to which the adjective “whole” is appended for differentiating the good and complete state of such few articles as happen to be above the average mediocrity of the greater number.

The great rood, as well as all images and pictures in churches, was veiled throughout Passiontide until the latter end of Holy Week, as is exemplified by the mention, in 1466, in a list of the ornaments then belonging to All Hallows’, Derby, of a “grete clothe that coverethe the Rode.” But an item in the inventory taken of the goods of Morley church at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign, viz., “a shete y^t hanged afor y^e Rode,” would appear to have been rather a hanging for the front of the rood-loft, in the presence of or at the foot of the rood itself. Rood-lofts, as is known from other sources, were often covered with “stayned” or painted hangings to enhance their ornamental qualities; or, on the other hand, veiled in white shrouds, like the rood, in Lent, in churches where the imagery and decoration upon the woodwork of the loft itself was too gay and garnished in appearance to be consistent with the solemnity of the penitential season. The past tense in the case of the hanging at Morley church is evidence that the ancient use, whichsoever alternative is referred to, had, by the date of the taking of the inventory, been already discontinued.

In the parish church at Bakewell was an altar of the Holy Cross, “built by the said cross,” situated, that is, near to the great rood, at the eastern end of the south aisle of the building. And in connection with this altar, in the reign of Edward III., a chantry was founded and endowed by Sir Godfrey Foljambe, ratification of the same being granted by royal letters patent in 1345. Further, the deed of confirmation by the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield is extant, wherein are set forth in detail the duties of the office of chaplain of the Holy Cross. From this document it appears that the chantry priest, though celebrating at the same altar, was to say a different votive mass on every day of the week in specified rotation, the mass on Friday being always that of the Holy Cross. Moreover, at every mass, after the Confiteor, he was to turn to the people and say, in his mother tongue: “Pray ye for the soul of Sir Godfrey Foljambe, and Anne, his wife, and his children, and brothers of the guild of the Holy Cross, and all the faithful deceased.” Again, a grant of the date 1405 exists, by which one Dom John Chepe, chaplain of the chantry of the Holy Cross in Bakewell, makes over in reversion certain landed property to the service of the said chantry for ever. Another document, of the year 1535, incidentally makes mention of “the burgage of the Holy Cross,” by which is to be understood a piece of land, probably with house property upon it, lying within the bounds of the town, and forming part of the endowments either of the chantry or the guild of that title. The last incumbent of this chantry was William Oldeffeld. On its dissolution, as the pension roll of 30th October, 1552, shows, he was allowed an annuity of £6 in lieu of his former stipend; while William Hole, chantry priest of the holy rood at Wirksworth, is known, from Cardinal Pole’s pension roll, to have been granted £5 per annum. The “rode chauntrye” at Wirksworth was founded, in his lifetime, by Sir Henry Vernon, the same whose will, as already recorded, contained a bequest for the rood-loft at Bakewell.

In Ashbourne church, until the middle of the sixteenth century (as scheduled in the chantry roll drawn up for the purposes of confiscation shortly after the accession of Edward VI.), there stood near the nave, at the foot of the rood-screen, or as near unto as might be, in the south aisle, an altar dedicated to the Holy Cross; to which was attached a chantry, founded in 1392 by the feofees of Nicholas Kniveton, for the daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in perpetuity. The deed of confirmation of the same by the Bishop, Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, dated 1404, is extant; as well as an indenture, dated 15th January in the seventh year of Henry VIII. on the occasion of the appointment of a new chaplain. By this document the incoming “rood-priest” covenants to take due care of, and not to waste nor alienate, the chantry goods committed to his custody; the list of which, set forth at length, comprises all the requisite ornaments for the performance of divine service (including “two chests in ye Roodequere” for the safekeeping of the aforesaid ornaments), and the domestic furniture and utensils of the chaplain’s residence as well. At the Reformation, the property and endowments were forfeited to the Crown; but it is of interest to recall how long and in what wise the memory of the institution has been kept alive by the people, for in the ancient garden of the chaplain’s house is a well, which, down to within the eighteenth century, used, by time-honoured custom, to be “dressed” or garlanded with flowers every Ascension Day after a special service in the church, and which, as lately as the last decade of the nineteenth century, was known among the oldest inhabitants of the place by the traditional name of “the rood-well.” For similar reasons a certain parcel of meadow-land in Ashbourne, being another piece of chantry property secularised, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was named “Lampholme”; while certain tenements, as appears from the negotiations which preceded the endowing of the grammar school in 1585, were termed “candle-rents.” Again, a curious illustration of analogous tradition in another part of Derbyshire is furnished by a manuscript commonplace-book which belonged to one Roger Columbell, of Darley Hall. As he died in 1565, it cannot have been written later than in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The entry is to the effect that in former days the custom prevailed of paying, at Easter, on every house in a parish a duty of “1 fartheynge called a wax farthinge ... for lyght of the alter.”

I have met with no earlier recorded example of a rood-light endowment in Derbyshire than of that at Breadsall. Its charter is dated 1330, on the Sunday after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By this instrument one Geoffrey, “the Reve” (or steward), son of Ranulph de Breydishale, gives and concedes half an acre of land in Breadsall to the light of the Holy Cross in the church there, “in pure and perpetual alms for ever, freely, quietly, well and in peace.” The charter concludes with, “Warranty to the said light against all people,” above the signatures of the witnesses.

Again, in a list of “serges” (wax candles; in French, cierges) “holden up” (maintained) by the bounty of individuals or by the several craft guilds connected with the church and parish of All Hallows, Derby, it is recorded that, in 1484, five such lights had been provided to burn before the rood. For it was not unusual for lay folk to band themselves into a confraternity under the style of the Holy Cross, among the chief duties undertaken by them being that of keeping up the requisite light or lights to burn before the rood in their parish church. Among their privileges, as in the above case of the chantry in Bakewell church, would be that of being specially remembered whenever the chaplain offered the Holy Sacrifice. Chesterfield had its guild of the Holy Cross, for whose sodality meetings and offices was set apart, with the same dedication, the east chapel of the north transept—the very chapel now enclosed by the ancient rood-screen. There was a guild of the rood at Repton also, towards whose funds, in the year 1520, one William Bothe, of Barrow, bequeathed 10s. in his will.

The mediæval custom of burning lights before the rood, and other images, too, was—if one may so express it—a definite and perfectly natural reflex of the life and conditions of the time. Previously to the closing decade of the fifteenth century, the vast continent of America still remained the dreamland Atlantis it had been to Brendan and Meldune; the Queens Consort of Spain decked themselves in the gorgeous bravery of their jewels, and the questing dove fretted unavailingly against restraining bars, until at length one devoted woman, King Ferdinand’s wife, Isabella (the same were parents of our Catherine of Aragon, and grandparents of our own Mary Tudor), offering up her jewels in pawn, found the wherewithal to equip and send forth the great navigator on his momentous voyage. Nor even then could it be otherwise than that several generations must pass away before any practical result of Columbus’s discovery could affect the great mass of the European population, and before cane-sugar could supersede the old-fashioned use of honey for sweetening purposes. Meanwhile, in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, the ancient traditions lingered long; and year by year, when the warm weather came on, the bee-keeper of the Peak would carry his skeps, or wheel them in a hand-barrow (choosing, if he were a prudent man, the night hours for the transit), out on to the moors. And there, amid the wild thyme and heather, he would set the bees down, and leave them all the summer through to gather in their store as long as the flowers were in bloom, bringing them back again into shelter at the first approach of winter. The honey, then an indispensable commodity in every household, would be carefully strained and separated from the comb; helping to pay landlord’s rent in kind, while the wax would go in tithes and free-will offerings to the service of the church. Such, then, since the devotional practices of our pre-Reformation forefathers were not aloof from their social and domestic life, but intimately interwoven and bound up with it, not out of joint nor harmony, but dovetailing and accordant the one with the other; such is the economic connection between votive candle-burning and the industry of bee-culture.