EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND RECEIVING MASS
Harl. MS. 1319.
The memory of one of these love days has been preserved ever since the year 1484, when a dispute between two Companies of the City of London was finally adjusted. It was on the 10th of April 1484 that the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen decided a long-standing dispute between the Company of Merchant Taylors and the Company of Skinners as follows:—“The said Mayor and Aldermen, the day and year above said taking upon them the rule, direction, and charge of arbitrament of, and in the premises, ‘for norishing of peas and love between the Masters Wardeyns and Fellashipps aforesaid’ adjudged and awarded that the Masters and Wardens should dine each year together at their respective Halls; the Taylors with the Skinners on the Vigil of Corpus Christi; and the Skinners with the Taylors on the Feast of Nativity of St. John Baptist; and as to precedency each Company was to take that on each alternate year save that a Mayor of either should give that Company precedence in his year of office.”
So the Decree has been observed 414 years, while “peas and love” have reigned between the two Fellowships.
In the twelfth century we find the London clergy married, and married into families of the highest position. Their marriage, therefore, was not looked upon by the people, although forbidden by the Church, as in any way blameworthy. In the Synod of 1108, and in that of 1125, both held in London, the most stringent rules were laid down against the marriage of priests. The title of wife was denied their wives, who were called concubines; yet the priests continued to marry. Even in the sixteenth century, when Skelton took Sanctuary against the wrath of Wolsey, he brought his wife and children with him.
In the thirteenth century a renewed effort was made to enforce celibacy as rigidly as could be done. The clergy of the towns, of London at least, were compelled to keep celibate, but not those of the country where the arm of the Bishop was weak. Holinshed, for instance, speaks of the methods adopted in the year 1225 (ii. 358):—
“This yeare also, there came foorth a decree from the archbishop of Canterburie, and his suffragans, that the concubines of preests and clearkes within orders (for so were their wives then called in contempt of their wedlocke) should be denied of Christian buriall, except they repented whilest they were alive in perfect health, or else showed manifest tokens of repentance at the time of their deaths. The same decree also prohibited them from the receiving of the pax at masse time, and also of holie bread after masse, so long as the preests kept them in their houses, or used their companie publikelie out of their houses. Moreover, that they should not be purified when they should be delivered of child, as other good women were, unless they found sufficient suertie to the archdeacon, or his officiall, to make satisfaction at the next chapter or court to be holden after they should be purified. And the preests should be suspended, which did not present all such their concubines as were residant within their parishes. Also, all such women as were convict to have dealt carnallie with a preest were appointed by the same decree to doo open penance. Where the question may be asked, whether this decree was extended to preests’ wives or no? Whereunto answer may be made, that as a quadrangle in geometrie compriseth in it a triangle, and a quaternion in arithmetic conteineth a ternion; so in logike a universall proposition comprehendeth a particular. But it is said here, that all such women as had carnal knowledge with a preest, were to be punished, therefore some, and consequentlie all preests’ wives. But yet this seemeth not to be the meaning of that decree, for preests were allowed no wives, naie Sericius the pope judged that all such of the cleargie as had wives could not please God, bicause they were in carne, which words he and the residue of that litter restreined to marriage, admitting that in no case churchmen should injoy the rights of matrimonie. Wherein they offer God great injurie, in seeking to limit that large institution of wedlocke, wherein all estates are interressed.”
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find the natural harvest and fruit of this enforced celibacy.
It is not my desire to bring railing accusations against the morals of the clergy. It is, however, quite certain that if a large body of men without much learning or love of learning, to whom is assigned work which occupies them for a very small portion of the day, are forbidden to marry, and if they live for the most part among the lower classes in the City, drinking freely, and as much as they can afford, the result will be, must be, the prevalence of immorality among them. There are plenty of examples and proofs of this condition of things. There is the case in 1385 of Elizabeth Moring, who received girls nominally as apprentices, but really to live a lewd life, and “to consort with friars, chaplains, and other such men.” In 1406 we read of one William Langford, chaplain, taken in adultery with Margaret, wife of Richard Dod. In 1255 a certain Chaplain and Parish Priest took Sanctuary in St. Paul’s and confessed to having stolen sixteen silver dishes. In 1320 a Chaplain is taken up for being a Night Walker and carrying arms against the peace. In 1416 William Cratford, a priest, is reported as a common and notorious thief and hawker on the roads. In 1408 Riley reports that the Letter Book about this time (Henry IV.-Henry VI.) contains “some dozens of similar charges,” viz. of fornication and adultery. The way they tried to check the vice and punish the offender was by forbidding any one to pay or engage the incriminated clerk. This was done in 1413, when two priests of St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, were taken in adultery at the same time with two women in the Church. How far can William of Langland be trusted in setting forth the truth without exaggeration? One knows not. In Piers Plowman, however, the figure of Sloth is a priest. He confesses (Skeat’s Edition, B. Passus v. p. 168):—
“I have be prest and parsoun passynge thretti wynter,
Gete can I neither solfe [Sol-Fa] ne synge ne seyntes lyues rede,