Fig. 47. Church House, or St Mary’s Guild Hall, popularly known as John of Gaunt’s Stables, Lincoln. 12th century. Principal front, showing the Transitional Norman entrance doorway, with tooth ornament in a shallow moulding. Above is a rich cornice of sculptured foliage. The buttresses are flat, and there is a Norman loop in the lower story. Within is an ancient fireplace. The roof is modern.
or as Philip Stubbs (or Stubbes), the Puritan, asserts, in the sacred building itself[415]. The church-house was doubtless a familiar institution in Elizabethan England. Examples are on record where the leases of such houses expressly stipulate that they should be available for making “Quarter ales” or Church-ales. Such buildings contained all the spits, crocks, and utensils necessary for preparing the banquet[416]. In the tower of Frensham church, Surrey, there is preserved a large cauldron of beaten copper, locally known as “Mother Ludlam’s Kettle.” This vessel has doubtless played its part in many a parish feast.
Though the church-house, or, alternatively, the tithe-barn, was, after the Reformation, generally the scene of the revels, custom was not uniform, as frequent injunctions against the holding of drinking-parties and banquets within the church sufficiently testify. The transition from church to church-house was made, it would appear, in deference to Puritan opinion, but the populace was somewhat tenacious of the old habit. One great objection to the Church-ales lay in the rude and boisterous sports with which they were associated. However slight might be the murmur against quoits, bowls, or shooting at the butts, it is plain that the baiting of bulls, bears, or badgers, the loud, and possibly lewd folk-songs, the noisy dancing parties, would pass the bounds of decency and decorum, and cry out for suppression. The feast lasted a day or two, and occasionally longer. The profits of the merrymaking formed a kind of voluntary church-rate, and were devoted to church-restoration, or the purchase of service books and vessels. It has been pertinently suggested that some of the grotesque corbel heads, so frequently found in churches, may mark the restorations which were made out of the profits of Church-ales. Nothing but a village feast, it is supposed, could have furnished the sculptor with models to enable him to represent so well gluttony and drunkenness. The theory is rather harsh, but it may contain a measure of truth.
There were other Ales besides the one just described. The Bid-ale was a co-operative banquet, devised to aid some unfortunate or impoverished parishioner. The Clerk-ale was intended to provide, or to increase, the salary of the parish clerk. There were also Lamb-ales, Bride-ales, Scot-ales, and others. In fact, occasions seem actually to have been sought for holding these holy-ales, which were of a nature at once social and benevolent[417]. Needless to say, there were two sides to this, as to every question. Regrettable, even disgraceful, though the proceedings might oftentimes become, we are yet compelled to consider the original and normal conditions. The relief of the poor has been mentioned. Tyack states that, in the year 1651, so many as seventy-two parish priests of Somersetshire certified that not only were the congregations larger during a Church-ale—not a surprising fact—but that “the service of God was more solemnly performed[418].” If such opinions were held generally—and, so far as they were held at all by the clergy, they would be reciprocated by laymen—one cannot marvel at the action of the villagers of Clungunford, Shropshire, who in 1637 complained to Archbishop Laud about the discontinuance of the Easter feast. For centuries the poor and aged folk had been regaled with bread, cheese, and beer, after evensong on Easter Sunday. Fifty years previous to the presentation of the petition, in accordance with the wishes of the ruling Archbishop, the feast had been transferred from the church to the parsonage; but now it was abandoned altogether. Laud’s decision ran thus: “I shall not go about to break this custom so it be done in the parsonage house, in a neighbourly and decent way.” Similar cases might be brought forward to show that the tradition of feasting in church died hard[419].
We leave the tempting subject of church-ales, and, still considering the motives which led to the provision of such ample space within the sacred walls, we must take a glimpse of church-plays. The connection between the church and the drama has been partially dealt with by numerous writers, and exhaustively by Mr E. K. Chambers, in his Mediaeval Stage. On the character of the church plays we cannot dwell at length, nor is this necessary, for the subject has interested most antiquaries, and descriptions are to be found in many treatises. A brief enumeration, however, is desirable. There was the Passion Play at Easter, when a solemn representation of the burial and Resurrection of the Saviour was enacted at the altar, or beneath a specially constructed “sepulchre.” There was the Nativity play at Christmas, when clergy, choristers, and other folk, represented the scenes connected with the manger-birth[420]. But the best known performances were the Miracle Plays. At first, these were acted within the church walls, but, at a later date, the players were driven into the church-yard. The popularity of these plays became so great that the church could not accommodate the audience, and this consideration, rather than clerical disfavour, probably turned the scale. Indeed, when the drama had passed out of the hands of the clergy and choir, and had become appropriated by trade guilds or strolling players, when, too—it must be said—the plays had become tinged with ribaldry and profanity, the authorities seemed to have regretted the expulsion. Within the church, a certain degree of oversight was always exercised; on the village green, the censorship was lax and intermittent. Occasionally, as Dr J. C. Cox asserts, the wandering troops were still allowed to use the churches[421]. An attempt was made to recover lost ground, and miracle plays were declared sinful if played on the roads or greens[422]. We must shortly return to this phase of the question, but meanwhile let us recapitulate Mr Chambers’s theory of the development of the religious drama.
Mr Chambers, after tracing the steady evolution of religious plays, concludes that the Church gradually came to make the appeal to the mimetic instinct in mankind by means of the introduction of dramatic elements into its liturgy[423]. From the fourth century, at least, the Mass was the central object of ritual, and it was from this service, little by little, that the dramatic dialogues and representations were derived and elaborated. Originally a mere symbol of a commemorative kind, the Mass became a repetition of the initial sacrifice, invested with a dramatic character[424]. Thus the ritual play proper was evolved, and out of this, in later times, sprang the familiar miracle play[425].
We may infer, then, that there was a valid reason why the religious plays should be performed in hallowed buildings. The question arises, whether this was the usual practice, or an exceptional liberty. No less an authority than Canon Jessopp, that tireless and conscientious elucidator of ancient documents, is of opinion that the use of churches for setting forth miracle plays was rare. He cites an instance where twenty-seven parishes contributed to the expenses of one of these spectacles. From this circumstance, he concludes that there must have been a “monster performance,” and that the onlookers could not well have been sheltered within the church[426]. Perhaps the case brought forward itself represents the exception, or, at any rate, belongs to the era when plays had been driven out into the churchyard. And it is extremely probable, I think, that some of the old tithe-barns (Figs. [43], [44], pp. [171-2] supra), when almost, or quite empty, would be very serviceable as theatres. Against the verdict of Canon Jessopp—a verdict which cannot be airily dismissed—we have to set undeniable facts. Mr Chambers affirms that for a long time the church proved sufficient for the accommodation of the folk who came to watch the plays. The performances spread, perhaps by degrees, from the choir to the nave. “The domus, loca, or sedes [were] set at intervals against the pillars while the people crowded to watch in the side aisles.” It was during the twelfth century that the players first sought ampler room outside the church[427]. The ousting of the performance was a gradual process. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the liturgical play was slow in severing its intimate connection with the church. From the churchyard it passed to the church gate, and thence to the market-place, or to some croft or field. While all these changes were being made, the village fair, as a popular institution, was becoming well established, and the outdoor play was heartily welcomed by the holiday-makers[428].
The evidence produced by Mr Chambers shows, therefore, that convenience, and not clerical censure, was the prime cause at work in removing the players from the churches. The demand for ejection was afterwards reinforced by the Reformers, but by that time the result was being otherwise brought about. It now becomes still more intelligible why plays on the green were, at one period, actually denounced. The natural home of the play was the church, and in the church it lingered. “Quite apart from the survival of ritual plays proper, the miracle play, even at the moment of its extinction, had not always and everywhere been excluded from the church itself[429].” Mr Chambers gives numerous examples, and avers that the last of all the village plays—he is evidently referring to annual institutions—that of Hascombe, Surrey, in 1539, “was at, but perhaps not in, the church[430].” A few years later, Bonner forbade the presentation of plays either in the church or churchyard[431]. This edict does not seem to have been fully obeyed, for Dr J. C. Cox declares that both in pre-Reformation and post-Reformation times the authorities occasionally suffered secular country dramas and rude historic scenes to be represented in the nave of the church[432]. Nor is this all; in the sixteenth century Bishop John Bale endeavoured to counteract the miracle plays by Protestant dramas, conceived in much the same style as the genuine works (A.D. 1538, etc.). The unintentional hardihood of some of Bale’s impersonations is said to have bordered on blasphemy. This is one view of the matter; allowance must be made for an important fact, noted by Mr A. W. Pollard, namely, that Bale wrote as an antiquary, not as a controversialist[433].