PARISH PRIESTS AND THEIR PEOPLE.

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FROM THE XV. CENT. MS., EGERTON 2019, f. 142.

PARISH PRIESTS
AND THEIR PEOPLE
IN THE
MIDDLE AGES IN ENGLAND.

BY THE
REV. EDWARD L. CUTTS, D.D.,
AUTHOR OF “TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY,”
“A DICTIONARY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,”
“A HANDY BOOK OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,” ETC.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OE THE TRACT COMMITTEE.

LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET.
New York: E & J. B. YOUNG AND CO.
1898.

PREFACE.

great mass of material has of late years been brought within reach of the student, bearing upon the history of the religious life and customs of the English people during the period from their conversion, in the sixth and seventh centuries, down to the Reformation of the Church of England in the sixteenth century; but this material is still to be found only in great libraries, and is therefore hardly within reach of the general reader.

The following chapters contain the results of some study of the subject among the treasures of the library of the British Museum; much of those results, it is believed, will be new, and all, it is hoped, useful, to the large number of general readers who happily, in these days, take an intelligent interest in English Church history.

The book might have been made shorter and lighter by giving fewer extracts from the original documents; but much of the history is new, and it seemed desirable to support it by sufficient evidence. The extracts have been, as far as possible, so chosen that each shall give some additional incidental touch to the filling up of the general picture.

The photographic reproductions of illuminations from MSS. of various dates, illustrating ecclesiastical ceremonies and clerical costumes, are enough in themselves to give a certain value to the book which contains and describes them.

The writer is bound to make grateful acknowledgment of his obligations to the Bishop of Oxford, who, amidst his incessant occupations, was so kind to an old friend as to read through the rough proof of the book, pointing out some corrigenda, making some suggestions, and indicating some additional sources of information; all which, while it leaves the book the better for what the bishop has done for it, does not make him responsible for its remaining imperfections.

The writer has also to express his thanks to the Rev. Professor Skeat, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, and to the Rev. Dr. Cunningham, formerly Professor of Economic Science, K.C.L., for their kind replies to inquiries on matters on which they are authorities; and to some others who kindly looked over portions of the book dealing with matters of which they have special knowledge.

CONTENTS.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.

The illustration taken from a French MS. of the middle of the fifteenth century [Egerton 2019, f. 142, British Museum] will reward a careful study. Begin with the two pictures introduced into the broad ornamental border at the bottom of the page. On the left are a pope, an emperor, a king, and queen; on the right Death, on a black horse, hurling his dart at them.

Go on to the initial D of the Psalm Dilexi quoniam exaudiet Dominus vocem: “I am well pleased that the Lord hath heard the voice of my complaint.” It represents a canon in surplice and canon’s fur hood, giving absolution to a penitent who has been confessing to him (note the pattern of the hanging at the back of the canon’s seat). Next consider the picture in the middle of the border on the right. It represents the priest in surplice and stole, with his clerk in albe kneeling behind him and making the responses, administering the last Sacrament to the dying person lying on the bed. Next turn to the picture in the left-hand top corner of a woman in mourning, with an apron tied about her, arranging the grave-clothes about the corpse, and about to envelope it in its shroud. In the opposite corner, three clerks in surplice and cope stand at a lectern singing the Psalms for the departed; the pall which covers the coffin may be indistinctly made out, and the great candlesticks with lighted candles on each side of it. All these scenes lead us up to the principal subject, which is the burial. The scene is a graveyard (note the grave crosses) surrounded by a cloister, entered by a gate tower; the gables, chimneys, and towers of a town are seen over the cloister roof; note the skulls over the cloister arches, as though the space between the groining and the timber roof were used as a charnel house. The priest is asperging the corpse with holy water as the rude sextons lower the body into the grave. Note that it is not enclosed in a coffin—that was not used until comparatively recent times. He is assisted by two other priests, all three vested in surplices and black copes with a red-and-gold border; the clerk holds the holy-water vessel. Three mourners in black cloak and hood stand behind. The story is not yet finished. Above is seen our Lord in an opening through a radiant cloud which sheds its beams of light over the scene; the departed soul [de—parted = separated from the body] is mounting towards its Lord with an attitude and look of rapture; Michael the Archangel is driving back with the spear of the cross the evil angel disappointed of his prey. Lastly, study the beautiful border. Is it fanciful to think that the artist intended the vase of flowers standing upon the green earth as a symbol of resurrection, and the exquisite scrolls and twining foliage and many-coloured blossoms which surround the sad scenes of death, to symbolize the beauty and glory which surround those whom angels shall wait upon in death, and carry them to Paradise?

Gives the Eucharistic vestments of bishop and priest, a priest in cope and others in albes, the altar and its coverings, and two forms of chalice.

Gives the vestments of that period. The man in the group behind the bishop, who is in surplice and hood and “biretta,” is probably the archdeacon. Note the one candle on the altar, the bishop’s chair, the piscina with its cruet, and the triptych.

He is habited in a red tunic and cap, the clergy in blue tunic and red hose and red tunic and blue hose.

The illustration is taken from a French Pontifical of the 14th century in the British Museum [Tiberius, B. viii.], and represents part of the ceremonial of the anointing and crowning of a king of France. We choose it because it gives in one view several varieties of clerical costume. There was very little difference between French and English vestments, e.g. the only French characteristic here is that the bishop’s cope is embroidered with fleur-de-lys. On the left of the picture is the king, and behind him officers of state and courtiers. An ecclesiastical procession has met him at the door of the Cathedral of Rheims, and the archbishop, in albe, cope, and mitre, is sprinkling him with holy water; the clerk bearing the holy-water pot, and the cross-bearer, and the thurifer swinging his censer, are immediately behind him. Then come a group of canons. One is clearly shown, and easily recognized by the peculiar horned hood with its fringe of “clocks.” Lastly are a group of bishops, the most conspicuous bearing in his hands the ampulla, which contains the holy oil for the anointing.

The photograph fails here as in other cases to give the colours which define the costumes clearly and give brilliancy to the picture. The king’s tunic is crimson, and that of the nobleman behind him blue. The archbishop has a cope of blue semée with gold fleur-de-lys; the water-bearer, a surplice so transparent that the red tunic beneath gives it a pink tinge; the cross-bearer, a blue dalmatic lined with red over a surplice; the canon a pink cope over a white surplice, and black hood. The first bishop wears a cope of blue, the second of red, the third of pink. The background is diapered blue and red with a gold pattern. The wall of the building is blue with a gold pattern; the altar-cloth, red and blue with gold embroidery.

The bishop in blue chasuble and white mitre, people in red and blue tunics, two knights in chain armour, late 13th century.

The male sponsor holds the child over the font, while the priest pours water over its head from a shallow vessel. He wears a long full surplice, his stole is yellow semée with small crosses and fringed. The parish clerk stands behind him, 15th century.

Here the priest wears an albe apparelled and girded, and an amice, but no stole; the sitting posture of the child occurs in other representations, 14th century.

The bishop wears albe, dalmatic, cope, and mitre, the other clergy surplice and “biretta.”

The ciborium, partly covered with a cloth, as in the illustration, which the priest carries, is silvered in the original illustration, and consequently comes out very imperfectly in the photograph.

Two clerics in surplice hold the housel cloth to catch any of the sacred elements which might accidentally fall.

The priest in furred cope, the rood veiled; the altar has a red frontal. The two men are in blue habit. The woman on the right is all in black; the other, kneeling at a bench on the left, is in red gown and blue hood.

It represents the marriage of the Count Waleran de St. Pol with the sister of Richard, King of England. The count is in a blue robe, the princess in cloth of gold embroidered with green; the groomsman in red, the man behind him in blue, the prince in the background in an ermine cape. The ladies attending the princess wear cloth of gold, blue, green, etc.; the bishop is vested in a light green cope over an apparelled rochet, and a white mitre. The bishop (and in other representations of marriage) takes hold of the wrists of the parties in joining their hands.

The mourners in black cloaks are at the east end of the stalls; the pall over the coffin is red with a gold cross; the hearse has about eighteen lighted tapers; the ecclesiastics seem to be friars in dark brown habit (Franciscans).

The abbot is vested in a gorgeous cope and mitre; one of the monks behind him also wears a cope over his monk’s habit.

References to other pictorial illustrations in MSS. in the British Museum are given in Appendix III., p. [567].

PARISH PRIESTS AND THEIR PEOPLE.

CHAPTER I.

OUR HEATHEN FOREFATHERS.

hen we have the pleasure of taking our Colonial visitors on railway journeys across the length and breadth of England, and they see cornfields, meadows, pastures, copses, succeed one another for mile after mile, with frequent villages and country houses, what seems especially to strike and delight them is the thoroughness and finish of the cultivation; England seems to them, they say, like a succession of gardens, or, rather, like one great garden. This is the result, we tell them, of two thousand years of cultivation by an ever-increasing population.

On the other hand, we are helped to understand what the land was like at the time of the settlement in it of our Saxon forefathers, by the descriptions which our Colonial friends give us of their surroundings in Australia or Africa, where the general face of the country is still in its primeval state, the settlements of men are dotted sparsely here and there, the flocks and herds roam over “bush” or “veldt,” and only just so much of the land about the settlements is roughly cultivated as suffices the wants of the settlers.

For in England, in those remote times of which we have first to speak, the land was, for the most part, unreclaimed. If we call to mind that the English population about the end of the sixth century could only have been about a million souls—200,000 families—we shall realize how small a portion of the land they could possibly have occupied. A large proportion of the country was still primeval forest, there were extensive tracts of moorland, the low-lying districts were mere and marsh, the mountainous districts wild and desolate. The country harboured wolf and bear, wild cattle and swine, beaver and badger, wild cat, fox, and marten, eagle, hawk, and heron, and other creatures, most of which have entirely disappeared, though some linger on, interesting survivals, in remote corners of the land.

Their possession of the country by the English was the result of recent, slow and desultory conquest. Independent parties of adventurers from the country round about the mouth of the Elbe had crossed the German Ocean in their keels, landed on the coast, or rowed up the rivers, and pushed their way slowly against a tenacious resistance. Then, when a party of the invaders had made good their conquest, came its division among the conquerors.

Our own history tells us so little of the details of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, that we have to call in what we know of the manners of their Teutonic neighbours and Scandinavian relatives to help us to understand it. The late Sir W. Dasent, in his “Burnt Njal,” says that the Norse Viking, making an invasion with a view not to a mere raid, but to a permanent settlement, would lay claim to the whole valley drained by the river up which he had rowed his victorious keels; or, landing on the coast, would climb some neighbouring height, point out the headlands which he arbitrarily assigned as his boundaries on the coast, and claim all the hinterland which he should be able to subdue. The chief would allot extensive tracts to the subordinate leaders; and the freemen would be settled, after their native custom of village communities, upon the most fertile portions of the soil which their swords had helped to win. In the broad alluvial lands of the river valleys there would be ample space for several neighbouring townships; in forest clearings or fertile dales the townships would be scattered at more or less wide intervals. The unallotted lands belonged to the general community; it was Folk land, and its allotment from time to time, probably, in theory needed confirmation by a Folk-mote, but was practically made by the supreme chief.

Every township possessed a tract of arable land, which was divided by lot yearly among the families of the freemen; a tract of meadow, which was reserved for hay, cultivated and harvested by the common labour; a wide expanse of pasture, into which each family had the right to turn a fixed number of cattle and sheep; and into the forest, a fixed number of swine to feed on the acorns, mast, and roots.[1] The people were rude agriculturists, not manufacturers, not traders, not civilized enough to profit by the civilization which the Romans had established in the country; they stormed and sacked the towns, and left them deserted, and selected only the most fertile spots for occupation.

It is a subject of dispute among our most learned historians to what extent the native Britons were slain or retired before the invaders, or to what extent they were taken as captives, or reappeared from their fastnesses after the slaughter was over, to be the slaves of the conquerors. When we first get glimpses of the situation of things after the conquest, we find that the British language and religion have disappeared from the Saxon half of the country; and this implies the disappearance of the great body of the people. The fact of the continuance of some ancient place-names, chiefly of great natural features, as hills and rivers, and of a few British words for things for which the Teutons had no names, would be sufficiently accounted for by the survival of a very small remnant.

In their native seats the social condition of these Angle and Saxon freemen was patriarchal and primitive; they venerated their chiefs as Woden-born; they elected one of them as their leader in battle; but they did not obey them as their subjects. On questions of general importance the chiefs and wise men advised the Folk-mote, and the people said “Aye” or “No.” But their circumstances in their new conquests led to changes. It was necessary to maintain some sort of permanent military organization not only for the defence of their new possessions, and the extension of their conquests against the old inhabitants of the island, but also against the encroachments of rival tribes of their own countrymen. And a supreme chief, to whom all paid a kind of religious veneration, who exercised permanent military authority over lesser chiefs and people, soon became a king; limited, however, in power by the ancient institutions of the Council of the wise men, and the assent or dissent of the Folk-mote.

The several parties of invaders gradually extended their conquests until they met, and then made treaties or fought battles with one another, until, finally, by the end of the sixth century, they had organized themselves into seven independent kingdoms.

The freemen of each Township managed their own affairs in a town meeting; a number of neighbouring townships were grouped into what was called by the Saxons south of the Humber a Hundred, by the Angles north of the Humber a Wapentake; and each township sent four or five of its freemen to represent it in the Hundred-mote every three months. Three times a year, in summer, autumn, and midwinter, a general meeting of the freemen was held—a Folk-mote—at some central place; to which every township was required to send so many footmen armed with sword, spear, and shield, and so many horsemen properly equipped. At these Folk-motes affairs of general interest were determined, justice was administered by the chief and priests,[2] and probably it was at these meetings that the great acts of national worship were celebrated. Except for these periodical meetings, the scattered townships existed in great isolation. A striking illustration of this isolation is afforded by laws of Wihtred of Kent and of Ine of the West Saxons, which enact—or perhaps merely record an ancient unwritten law—that if any stranger approached a township off the highway without shouting or sounding a horn to announce his coming, he might be slain as a thief, and his relatives have no redress. A subsequent law of Edgar[3] enacts that if he have with him an ox or a dog, with a bell hanging to his neck, and sounding at every step, that should be taken as sufficient warning, otherwise he must sound his horn. The local exclusiveness produced by this isolation, the suspicion and dislike of strangers, survive to this day in secluded villages in the wilder parts of the country.

These Teutonic tribes were heathen at the time of their coming into the land. Of their religion and its observances our own historians have given no detailed account, and few incidental notices. Our names for the days of the week, Sun-day, Moon-day, Tuisco’s-day, Woden’s-day, Thor’s-day, Frya’s-day, Saeter’s-day, make it certain that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors worshipped the same gods as their Scandinavian neighbours, and probable that their religion as a whole was similar. Their supreme god was Odin or Woden, with whom were associated the twelve Æsir and their goddess-wives, and a multitude of other supernatural beings. In their belief in an All-father, superior to all the gods and goddesses—we recognize a relic of an earlier monotheism. They had structural temples, and in connection with their temples they had idols, priests, altars, and sacrifices. They believed in the immortality of the soul, in an intermediate state, and a final heaven and hell. The souls of the brave and good, they believed, went to Asgard, the abode of the Æsir; there the warriors all day enjoyed the fierce delight of combat, and in the evening all their wounds healed, and they spent the night in feasting in Valhalla, the hall of the gods; the wicked went to Niflheim, a place of pain and terror. But the time would come when the earth, and sun, and stars, and Valhalla, and the gods, and giants, and elves, should be consumed in a great and general conflagration, and then Gimli and Nastrond, the eternal heaven and hell, should be revealed. Gimli—a new earth adorned with green meadows, where the fields bring forth without culture, and calamities are unknown; where there is a palace more shining than the sun, and where religious and well-minded men shall abide for ever; Nastrond—a place full of serpents who vomit forth venom, in which shall wade evil men and women, and murderers and adulterers.

A knowledge of their religious customs would help us to judge what hindrance they opposed to the reception of the system of the Christian Church; or, on the other hand, what facilities they offered for the substitution of one for the other; but it is only from the assumption that the religious customs of our English ancestors were similar to those of the Norsemen that we are able to form to ourselves any conception on the subject.

In Iceland, conformably to the constitution of its government, each several district (the island was divided into four districts) had its priest who not only presided over the religious rites of the people, but also directed the deliberations of the people when their laws were made, and presided over the administration of justice (Neander, “Church Hist.,” v. 418).

Sir W. Dasent says that after the Norse conqueror had marked out his boundaries and settled his people on their holdings, and chosen a site for his own rude timber hall, he erected in its neighbourhood a temple in which his followers might worship the gods of their forefathers, and that this was one means of maintaining their habitual attachment to his leadership.[4] The evidence leads to the conclusion that both Scandinavians and Teutons had very few structural temples, perhaps only one to each tribe or nation; and perhaps only three great annual occasions of tribal or national worship. We get a glimpse of one of these structural temples in the story of the conversion of Norway.[5] The great temple at Mære, in the Drontheim district, contained wooden images of the gods; the people assembled there thrice a year at midwinter, spring, and harvest; the people feasted on horseflesh slain in sacrifice, and wine blessed in the name and in honour of the gods; and human victims were sometimes offered.

The English townships, generally, it is probable, had no structural temples, but sacred places of resort, as an open space in the forest, or a hilltop, or a striking mass of rock, or a notable tree or well. The religious observances at such places would probably not be a regular worship of the gods, but such superstitions as the passing of children through clefts in rocks and trees, dropping pins into wells, and others; these superstitions survived for centuries, for they are forbidden by a law of Canute,[6] and one of them, the consultation of wells, so late as by a canon of Archbishop Anselm;[7] and, in spite of laws, and canons, and civilization, and a thousand years of Christianity, some of them survive among the peasantry of remote districts to this very day.

In the “Ecclesiastical History” of Bede, we find notices of only three structural heathen temples in England. The first is that at Godmundingham, which Coifi, the chief of the king’s priests, with the assent of King Edwin and his counsellors and thanes, defiled and destroyed on the acceptance of Christianity at the preaching of Paulinus. Of this we read that it had a fanum, enclosed with septis, which contained idola and aras;[8] and since the temple was set on fire and thus destroyed, it seems likely that the fanum was of timber. The second temple named is the building east of Canterbury, in which King Ethelbert was accustomed to worship while yet a heathen, which, on the king’s conversion, was consecrated as a church and dedicated to St. Pancras, and was soon afterwards incorporated into the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul built on the site. This was probably a stone building, and recent researches have brought to light what are possibly remains of it. The third temple is that in which Redwald, King of the East Anglians, after his conversion at the Court of Ethelbert, worshipped Christ at one altar, while his queen continued the old heathen worship at another altar in the same building. It will be observed that all these were the temples of kings, and this accords with the supposition that such structural temples existed only in the chief places for worship of tribes and nations; just as the twelve tribes of Israel had only one great national temple, while they had numerous altars on the “high places” all over the country.[9]

Again, there is a remarkable absence all through the history of any mention of, or allusion to, the existence of a priesthood ministering among the people. The only priest clearly mentioned is the worldly-minded Coifi spoken of above, but as he is mentioned as “the chief of the king’s priests,” we assume that there was a staff of them, probably attached to the king’s temple at Godmundingham. We suppose that Ethelbert of Kent, and Redwald of East Anglia, would also have a priest or priests attached to their temples; but we find no trace or indication of any others.

This all tends to confirm our belief that there were few structural temples, one for each kingdom, or perhaps one for each of the great tribes which had coalesced into a kingdom; and that the priests were only a small staff attached to each of these temples; while all the rest of the temples were open-air places to which the neighbouring inhabitants resorted for minor observances, without the assistance of any formal priesthood.

Another possible source of information on the subject is the ancient place-names. Godmundingham naturally invites consideration, and looks promising at first sight; but analyzed and interpreted it means the home of the sons of Godmund, and Godmund merely means “protection of God” as a name.[10]

The Saxon word Hearh[11] means either a temple or an idol.[12] Hearga is the word by which the fanum at Godmundingham and Redwald’s fanum is translated in Alfred’s version of Bede. It seems possible that this word may be the root of such place-names as Harrow-on-the-Hill, Harrowgate, Yorks, and Harrowden, Northants. Such place-names as Wednesbury, Wedensfield, Satterthwaite, Satterleigh, Baldersby, Balderstone, Bulderton, and those of which Thor or Thur is the first syllable, may possibly indicate places where a temple or an idol or well has existed of Woden, or Saeter, or Baldur, or Thor; as Thrus Kell (Thor’s Well) in Craven.[13]

CHAPTER II.

THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH.

he history of the conversion of our heathen forefathers has happily been told so often in recent times that it is not necessary to repeat it here. It is sufficient for our purpose to recall to mind how when Augustine and his Italian company came to Kent, they addressed themselves to King Ethelbert, who had married a Christian princess of the House of Clovis, and were permitted by him to settle and preach in his kingdom; how King Oswald, on his recovery of his ancestral kingdom of Northumbria, sent to the Fathers of Iona, among whom he had learnt Christianity during his exile, for missionaries to convert his people; how Sigebert, King of the East Saxons, and Peada, sub-King of the Middle Angles in Mercia, obtained missionaries from Northumbria; how Sigebert, King of the East Angles, invited Bishop Felix to give to his people the religion and civilization which he had learnt in exile in Burgundy; how the Italian Bishop Birinus came to the Court of King Cynegils, and converted him, and taught among the men of Wessex; and, finally, how Wilfrid of York began the conversion of the South Saxons.

The Ruined Cathedral, Iona.

In the Apostolic Age, the conversion of people in a condition of ancient civilization began among the lower classes of the people, and ascended slowly man by man through the higher classes, and it was three hundred years before the conversion of the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire. In the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the work began in every case with the kings and the higher classes of the people; and the people under their leadership abandoned their old religion and accepted Christianity as the national religion, and put themselves under the teaching of the missionaries, as a general measure of national policy.

The explanation of this probably is that their Teutonic kinsmen, Goths, Burgundians, and Franks, who had carved for themselves kingdoms out of the body of the Roman empire, having accepted the religion and the civilization of the people they had conquered, were growing rapidly in prosperity and the arts of civilized life. Christianity was the religion of the new Teutonic civilization, and heathenism was a part of the old state of barbarism. The Angles and Saxons, when they fastened upon this derelict province of the empire, were too barbarous to appreciate civilization, and destroyed it; but by the time that they had been settled for some generations in their new seats they had outgrown their old wild heathenism; and their kings had become sufficiently politic to desire to learn how to raise the new kingdoms which they governed to an equality with those of the kindred Continental nations. Hence, some of the heptarchic kings sought for Christian teachers to help them, and others were willing to receive them when they offered themselves.

Our previous study of the organization, religion, and customs of the people will help us to understand the process of the revolution. The kings, when converted, put the matter before the constitutional council of chiefs and wise men, and with their assent, and perhaps after a reference of the question to a folk-mote, formally adopted the new religion. The history which Bede gives of the first acceptance of Christianity in Northumbria, under the teaching of Paulinus, affords a profoundly interesting example of the process—the long hesitation of the king, the discussion in the witan, the general acceptance of the new faith, the zeal of the chief priest in destroying the national temple, the flocking of the people to the preaching of Paulinus, and their baptism in multitudes in the neighbouring rivers.

In no instance were the missionaries persecuted; in no instance did the kings coerce their people into the acceptance of the new religion.[14] In such a wholesale transition from one religion to another, it is not surprising that there occurred partial and temporary relapses, as in Kent and Essex, on the death of King Ethelbert, 616, in Wessex on the death of Cynegils, 643, and again in Essex, after the plague of 664; still less surprising that old superstitions retained their hold of the minds of a rude and ignorant people for centuries.[15]

If we are right in our conjectures that every kingdom had a national temple at the principal residence of the king with a small staff of priests, and a few smaller temples with their priests under the patronage of some of the subordinate chiefs, and that these temples were resorted to by the people for special acts of common worship at the great festivals three or four times in the course of the year, then it would not be difficult for the new religion to supply to the people all that they had been accustomed to of religious observances. Churches on the sites of the old temples, with their clergy, and services on the great festivals of the Christian year, would satisfy the customs of the people; and, in fact, the circumstances of the Christian missionaries led in the first instance to arrangements of this nature.

In every kingdom the king, who had been the patron of the old religion, took the new teachers under his protection, and made provision for their maintenance by the donation of an estate in land with farmers and slaves upon it; thus Ethelbert gave to Augustine a church and house in Canterbury, and land outside the city for a site for his monastery, and estates at Reculver and elsewhere for maintenance; Oswald gave to Aidan the isle of Lindisfarne, under the shadow of his principal residence at Bamborough; Ethelwalch gave Wilfred eighty-seven hides at Selsey, and Wilfrid began his work, as probably the other missionary bishops did, by emancipating his slaves and baptizing them; Cynegils, on his baptism, gave Birinus lands round Winchester, and his son Coinwalch endowed the church there with three manors; a little later, Wulfhere of Mercia gave Chad a wild tract of a hundred thousand acres between Lichfield and Ecclesfield. This was the “establishment” and beginning of the “endowment” of the Church in England.

The bishop in every kingdom first built a church and set up Divine service, then simultaneously set up a school, and invited the king and chiefs to send their sons to be educated. Aidan took twelve youths of noble birth as his pupils, and added slaves whom he purchased. The young men of noble families showed themselves eager to avail themselves of the teaching and training of the missionaries, and readily offered themselves to training for Holy Orders. The ladies at first, before there were monasteries for women in England, went to the monasteries at Brie and Chelles near Paris, and at Andelys near Rouen, which were under the government of members of the Frankish royal families. From his central station the bishop went out and sent his priests on missionary journeys to the neighbouring townships, to teach and baptize.

We know that all the first missionary bishops, except Felix and Birinus, and perhaps they also, and most of their clergy, had been trained in the monastic life of that time, so that it was natural to them to live in community, under the rule of a superior, a very simple and regular life, with frequent offices of prayer, and duties carefully defined, and scrupulously fulfilled; a beautiful object-lesson on the Christian life for the study of the king and his household, and the people round about the bishop’s town.

Bede gives some interesting stories which illustrate this early phase of the English conversion. He tells us how Paulinus preached all day long to the people at Yeverin and Catterick[16] in Northumbria, and at Southwell[17] in Lindsey, and baptized the people by hundreds in the neighbouring rivers. He tells us how Aidan preached to Oswald’s Court and people, and the King interpreted for him;[18] how Aidan travelled through the country on foot, accompanied by a group of monks and laymen, meditating on the scriptures, or singing psalms as they went;[19] not that he needed to travel on foot, for King Oswin had given him a fine horse which he might use in crossing rivers, or upon any urgent necessity; but a short time after, a poor man meeting him, and asking alms, the good bishop bestowed upon him the horse with its royal trappings.[20] We learn from the same authority that the company which attended a missionary bishop in his progress through the country were not always singing psalms as they went. Herebald, a pupil of St. John of Beverley, relates how one day as that bishop and his clergy and pupils were journeying, they came to a piece of open ground well adapted for galloping their horses, and the young men importuned the bishop for permission to try their speed, which he reluctantly granted; and so they ran races till Herebald was thrown, and, striking his head against a stone, lay insensible; whereupon they pitched a tent over him.[21]

An “interior” picture is afforded by a sentence in the life of Boniface,[22] who was afterwards to be the Apostle of Germany. When the itinerant teachers used to come to the township in which Winfrid’s father was the principal proprietor, they were hospitably entertained at his father’s house; and the child would presently talk with them as well as he could, at such an early age (six or seven years), about heavenly things, and inquire what might hereafter profit himself and his weakness (A.D. 680).

Finally Bede sums up the work of this period. “The religious habit was at that period in great veneration; so that wheresoever any clergyman or monk happened to come, he was joyfully received by all persons as God’s servant; and if they chanced to meet him on the way, they ran to him, and, bowing, were glad to be signed with his hand, or blessed with his mouth. On Sundays they flocked eagerly to the Church or the monasteries, not to feed their bodies, but to hear the Word of God; and if any priest happened to come into a village, the inhabitants flocked together to hear the word of life; for the priests and clergymen went into the village on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and, in short, to take care of souls.”[23]

So Cuthbert, a little later, not only afforded counsels and an example of regular life to his monastery, “but often went out of the monastery, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, and repaired to the neighbouring towns, where he preached the way to such as were gone astray; which had been also done by his predecessor Boisil in his time. He was wont chiefly to visit the villages seated high among the rocky uncouth mountains, whose poverty and barbarity made them inaccessible to other teachers. He would sometimes stay away from the monastery one, two, three weeks, and even a whole month among the mountains, to allure the rustic people by his eloquent preaching to heavenly employments.”[24]

It seems likely that the itinerating missionaries, on arriving at a township, would seek out the chief man, first to ask hospitality from him, and next to engage his interest with the people to assemble together at some convenient place to hear his preaching. When the people were converted, he would make arrangements for periodical visits to them for Divine service, and the “convenient place” would become their outdoor church; and there is good reason to believe that in many cases a cross of stone or wood, whichever was the most accessible material, was erected to mark and hallow the place.[25]

Even after a priest was permanently settled, and a church built at the ville of the lord of the land, the scattered hamlets on the estate would still, perhaps for centuries, have only open-air stations for prayer. It is very possible that some of these were the places where the people, while unconverted, had been used to assemble for their ancient religious ceremonies.

Saxon Cross at Ruthwell, c. 680 A.D.
(For its history and description, see “Theodore
and Wilfrid,” by the Bishop of Bristol.)

Some of the Saxon churchyard crosses which still remain, as at Whalley, Bakewell, Eyam, etc., possibly were station crosses. Possibly the well which exists in some churches and churchyards, and the yew tree of vast antiquity found in many churchyards, would carry us back, if we knew their story, to pre-Christian times and heathen ceremonials.

Churchyard Cross, Eyam, Derbyshire.

In time a church or chapel was built in this accustomed place of assembly, as we shall find in a later chapter. But here we have to throw out a conjecture as to an intermediate state of things between the open-air station and the structural church. We have before us the curious fact that usually the rector of a church is liable for the repair of the chancel, and the people for the repair of the nave. This seems to point to the fact that the forerunner of the rector built the first chancel, and left the people to build the nave; and we suggest the following explanation; at first in the worship of these stations, a temporary table was placed on trestles, and a “portable altar” upon that, and so the holy mysteries were celebrated. But in rainy weather this was inconvenient and unseemly; and the rector of the parish provided a kind of little chapel for the protection of the altar and ministrant; indeed, there is an ancient foreign canon which requires rectors to do so. Then the parishioners, for their own shelter from the weather, built a nave on to the chancel, communicating with it by an arch through which the congregation could conveniently see and hear the service.

Base of Acca’s Cross, c. 740 A.D., from
“Theodore and Wilfrid,” by the Bishop of Bristol. S.P.C.K.

CHAPTER III.

THE MONASTIC PHASE OF THE CHURCH.

e have seen how the bishops who introduced the Christian Faith into the heptarchic kingdoms established themselves and their clergy as religious communities, on the lands, and with the means which the kings gave them, built their churches and schools, and made them the centres of their evangelizing work. The next stage in the work was the multiplication of similar centres. The princes and ealdormen who were in subordinate authority over subdivisions of a kingdom would have two motives for desiring to have such establishments beside them. First they had very likely in some cases been the patrons of a temple or an idol, and a priest, near their principal residence, and would desire to maintain their influence over their dependents and neighbours by keeping up a similar place of religious worship for them. Secondly, as enlightened men and zealous converts, they would be glad to have near them some of these new teachers of religion and civilization, and to establish one of these centres of light and leading to the neighbouring country. The bishops also obtained grants of land from the king in suitable places, in order to found on them new centres of evangelization.

Thus in Kent, Ethelbert founded the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, which is better known to us as St. Augustine’s (A.D. 603), and his son Eadbald founded an offshoot from it at Dover (630). In 633 the latter king founded a nunnery at Folkestone as a provision for his daughter Eanswitha, who became its first abbess. And when, in the same year, his sister Ethelburga arrived as a refugee from Northumbria, he made provision for her by the gift of an estate at Lyminge, where the widowed queen founded a monastery. On the death of Earconbert, 664, Sexburga, his widow, built for herself a nunnery in the Isle of Sheppy. Sexburga was succeeded at Sheppy by her daughter Eormenhilda, and she by her daughter Werburga. Eormenburga, granddaughter of King Eadbald, built a nunnery, of which she was the first abbess, in the Isle of Thanet; and was succeeded by her daughter St. Mildred. Lastly, King Egbert, in 669, gave Reculver to his mass-priest, Bass, that he might build a minster thereon.

In Northumbria, King Edwin built a church at York. Oswald gave Aidan the Isle of Lindisfarne as the site of a religious house to be a centre of missionary work in Northumbria. Aidan encouraged Hieu, the first nun of the Northumbrian race, to organize a small nunnery on the north bank of the Wear, and to remove thence to Hartlepool; there she was succeeded by Hilda, the grand-niece of King Edwin, who subsequently removed to Whitby. Besides organizing that famous double house, Hilda founded Hackness and several other cells on estates of the abbey. The nunnery at Coldingham was founded by Ebba, sister of King Oswald, who was herself the first abbess. King Oswy, on the eve of battle with Penda (655), vowed, in case of victory, to dedicate his infant daughter Elfleda to God, and to give twelve estates to build monasteries. In fulfilment of his vow, he gave Elfleda into the charge of Hilda, at Hartlepool (655), and gave six estates in Bernicia and six in Deira, each of ten families (= hides of land), of which probably Whitby was one, and perhaps Ripon and Hexham were others. Benedict Biscop, a man of noble if not royal descent, received grants of land from King Egfrid to found his famous monastery at Wearmouth in 674, and eleven years later (685) at Jarrow. King Oswy built a monastery at Gilling to atone for the crime of the slaughter of his brother there (642), that prayer might be daily offered up for the souls of both the slain and the slayer. King Ethelwald, son of Oswald and sub-king of Deira, gave Bishop Cedd of the East Saxons a site for a monastery at Lastingham, Yorkshire, that he might himself sometimes resort to it for prayer, and might be buried there. Cedd left the monastery, on his death, to his brother Chadd, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. Wulfhere, King of Mercia, gave Chadd fifty hides of land for the endowment of his abbey at Barton-on-Humber.

In the fen country of the Girvii, between Mercia and East Anglia, the two kings, Peada of Mercia, and Oswy of the East Angles, concurred in the foundation of a monastery at Medeshamsted (Peterborough, 655), and this was followed by the foundation of Croyland (716) and Thorney (682). When Etheldreda, the daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles, and virgin wife of Egfrid of Northumbria, at length obtained her husband’s leave to enter upon the religious life, she built herself a double monastery on her own estate in the Isle of Ely (673). On her death, she was succeeded as abbess by her sisters Sexburga, Eormenhilda and Werburga, each of whom had previously been abbesses at Sheppy.

Among the West Saxons, a small community of Irish monks, at Malmesbury (675), was enlarged by Aldhelm, a man of royal extraction, into a great centre of religion and learning; and he and Bishop Daniel founded a number of small monasteries, as Nutcelle (700) and Bradfield, up and down that kingdom.[26]

Saxon Church at Bradford-on-Avon.
(Probably one of Bishop Aldhelm’s churches.)

The four priests whom Peada, the son of Penda, on his conversion, took back with him from Northumbria to his Princedom of the Middle Angles, lived together in community for some years, till, by the death of Penda, his son attained the Kingship of Mercia, and then Diuma was consecrated Bishop of the Mercians, and established his see at Lichfield. Earconwald (who was afterwards Bishop of London, 674), a man of noble birth, built a monastery for himself at Chertsey in Surrey, and a nunnery at Barking in Essex, for his sister Ethelberga. “The vales of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire were famous for the multitude and grandeur of their monastic institutions.” A monastic cell is said to have been founded at Tewkesbury in 675, and one at Deerhurst, by Ethelmund the ealdorman, at a still earlier date. Osric, the Prince of Wiccii, was probably the founder of St. Peter’s Nunnery, Gloucester, and of Bath Abbey. Apparently his brother Oswald founded Pershore Abbey; and their sister Cyneburga was the first Abbess of Gloucester. Saxulph, Bishop of Lichfield, founded a little religious house of St. Peter, at Worcester, which became the see of the first Bishop of Worcester, when that diocese was founded by Archbishop Theodore (680). Egwine, Bishop of Worcester, founded a monastery at Evesham (702), and laying down his bishopric, retired thither to spend the remainder of his life as its abbot.[27]

The following names will nearly complete the list of religious houses up to the end of the eighth century: Abingdon, 675; Acle, seventh century; Amesbury, 600; Bardney, seventh century; Bedrichsworth (St. Edmunds), 630; Bosham, 681; Bredon, 761; Caistor, 650; Carlisle, 686; Clive, 790; Cnobheresbury (Burgh Castle), 637; Congresbury, 474; Dacor, seventh century; Derauuda, 714; Dereham, 650; Finchale, seventh century; Fladbury, 691; Gateshead, seventh century; Glastonbury, fifth century; Ikanho (Boston), 654; Ithanacester, 630; Kempsey, 799; Kidderminster, 736; Leominster, 660; Oundle, 711; Oxford St. Frideswide, 735; Partney, seventh century; Petrocstow, sixth century; Peykirk, eighth century; Redbridge, Hants. (Hreutford), 680; Repton, 660; Rochester, 600; St. Albans, 793; York St. Mary’s, 732; Selsey, 681; Sherborne, 671; Stamford, 658; Stone, Staff., 670; Stratford-on-Avon, 703; Tetbury, 680; Tilbury, 630; Tinmouth, 633; Walton, Yorks., 686; Wedon, 680; Wenloch, 680; Westminster, 604; Wilton, 773; Wimborne, 713; Winchcombe, 787; Winchester, 646; Withington, seventh century.[28]

The fashion of founding religious houses spread among the smaller landowners, and some begged land of the king on which to found them.

Some of these religious houses were great and solemn monasteries, like those of Italy and France, with noble churches and frequent services; and their inmates lived a secluded life, devoted to learning, meditation, and prayer. St. Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury was the earliest of them. Benedict Biscop’s monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow, and Wilfrid’s at Ripon and Hexham, and others, were of this type.

The life of these greater monasteries was led according to a strict and ascetic rule. St. Augustine would certainly adopt at Canterbury the rule which his master, Gregory, had drawn up for his own house of St. Andrew on the Cœlian Hill. Benedict Biscop built his houses and framed his rule after repeated visits to Italy and France and a careful study of the most famous of their religious communities; Wilfrid would certainly introduce a similar rule into the monasteries over which he presided; these would follow the main lines of the Benedictine rule; though that, in its entirety, was not introduced till the reformation of the monasteries in the time of King Egbert and Archbishop Dunstan. The monastery at Lindisfarne would naturally follow the customs of Iona and the less rigid life of the Scottish religious houses; and is to be regarded rather as a citadel of Christian learning, and a centre of evangelization, than as a place devoted to seclusion and contemplation. The other religious houses which owed their existence to the missionaries from Lindisfarne would be likely to follow its customs.

Some of the smaller religious houses were conducted on the same lines of strict ascetic discipline as the greater monasteries; but in many of them the life was little more “regular” or ascetic than that of an ordinary household—say that of a church dignitary—scrupulous in the attendance of all its members at the daily services in the oratory, and in the strict decorum of their daily life. This opened an easy door to abuse, and in a short time the discipline of many of the monasteries had become very lax.

One remarkable feature of these early monasteries is that many of them were hereditary properties, and the rule over them often descended from father to son and from mother to daughter. We have seen the successions in the Kentish monasteries and at Ely from sister to sister and from mother to daughter. Cedd bequeathed his monastery of Lastingham to his brother Chad. Benedict Biscop saw the danger of the custom, and declared that he would not transfer his monasteries to his own brother unless he was a fit person to be abbot. Whitgils built a small church and monastery at Spurnhead in Holderness, and left them to his heirs; they came at last, by legitimate succession, to no less distinguished a person than Alcuin; who was, therefore, not only Abbot of Tours, with its vast territory on which there were 200,000 serfs, but also of this little monastery in his native country. Hedda, who styles himself mass-priest, in 790 bequeathed his patrimonial inheritance, consisting of two large parcels of land, with a minster on one of them, limiting the succession of the latter to clergymen of his family considered capable of ruling a minster according to ecclesiastical law, and in default of such heir, it was to go to Worcester Cathedral, where he had been bred and schooled (“Cod. Dipl.,” i. 206).[29]

It is easy to understand how it was that in process of time many of these semi-secular religious houses passed easily into the status of parochial rectories; and, on the other hand, how a rectory, which often had a number of chaplains and clerks to assist the rector in ministering to the mother church and its outlying chapels, came to be called a “minster.”

In the Danish invasions and occupations, most of these religious houses were plundered and ruined, the greater houses were not at once reoccupied on the restoration of order, and most of the smaller houses disappeared.

In the course of the revival of religion in the reign of Edgar under the influence of Dunstan, it was the boast of the king and his ecclesiastical advisers that they had restored not less than forty of the old monasteries, and brought them to the discipline of the Benedictine rule. A few monasteries were restored or founded after that time, notably by Canute at Bury St. Edmunds, and at Hulme in Norfolk, and by Edward the Confessor at Westminster; but at the time of the Conquest there were probably not more than about fifty monasteries in the country of any account; and in the latter part of the period the monastic zeal of Dunstan’s revival had cooled down to a level of average religiousness.

CHAPTER IV.

DIOCESAN AND PAROCHIAL ORGANIZATION.

he English Conversion forms a remarkable chapter in the general history of Christian missions; the piety, simplicity, zeal, and unselfishness of the missionaries are beyond praise; not less remarkable is the earnestness with which the English embraced the new faith and the civilization which came together with it. The fact bears witness to the intellectual and moral qualities of the people that in the very first generation of converts there were men of learning and character like Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop, like the pupils of Hilda of Whitby, like Ithamar and Deusdedit in Kent, worthy of taking place among the bishops and abbots of their time.

The royal and noble ladies who played so important a part, in the influence they exercised in affairs, or in the foundation and rule of religious houses which trained bishops and priests, present a spectacle, almost unparalleled in history, of which their descendants may well be proud.

The English kings and nobles put themselves frankly under the guidance of their teachers not only in religion and literature, but in the arts of civilization. The three codes of law which have remained to us—the first written laws of the English race—carry proof on the face of them that they were compiled under the influence of the Christian teachers. The princes sought their counsel in the Witenagemot, and put them beside the secular judges in the administration of justice at the hundred and folk motes. “In a single century England became known to Christendom as a fountain of light, as a land of learned men, of devout and unwearied missions, of strong, rich, and pious kings.”[30]

By the third quarter of the seventh century the first fervour of the English conversion had cooled down, and circumstances produced a kind of crisis. One of those plagues which at intervals ravaged mediæval Europe—it was called the Yellow Pest—during the summer of 664 swept over England from south to north. Earconbert, King of Kent, and Deusdedit, the first native bishop of the Kentish men, died on the same day; Damian, Bishop of Rochester, probably died a little before his brother of Canterbury. In the north, Tuda, recently appointed Bishop of Northumbria, died, and Cedd, Bishop of the East Saxons, then staying at his monastery of Lastingham. The half of the East Saxons who were under the rule of the sub-king Sighere, thinking the pest a result of the anger of the ancient gods, apostatized from the faith. The differences between the two “schools of thought,” the Continental in the south of the country, and the Scotic in the north, were causing friction and inconvenience, so much so that the bishops elect of the Continental school hesitated to receive consecration from the bishops of the Celtic school; Wilfrid of York had at this very time gone to seek consecration from the Frankish bishops. In this crisis, Oswy, King of Northumbria, agreed with Egbert, who succeeded Earconbert in Kent, to send a priest acceptable to both schools to Rome, to study things in that centre of Western Christendom, to get consecration from the Bishop of Rome, and then to return and reduce the ecclesiastical affairs of England to a common order. Wighard, a Kentish priest, sent in pursuance of this wise plan, died in Rome; and, to save time, at the request of the English Churches, Vitalian, the Bishop of Rome, selected Theodore of Tarsus, a learned priest of the Greek Church, consecrated him, and sent him to be archbishop of the English.

With Theodore (668-690) begins a new chapter in our history. His antecedents, as a member of the Eastern Church, eminently qualified him to look impartially upon the two schools, the Italian and the Scotic, into which the religious world of England was divided, and to address himself with broad views of ecclesiastical polity to the task of organizing the Heptarchic Churches into a harmonious province of the Catholic Church.

In 673, at the instance of Theodore, and under the presidency of Hlothere, King of Kent, a synod was held at Hertford, attended by all the English bishops but one, and by the kings and many of the principal nobles and clergy, at which the independent national Churches agreed to unite in an Ecclesiastical Province, with the Bishop of Canterbury as its metropolitan; it was further agreed that the bishops and clergy should meet in synod twice a year, once always in August at Clovesho, the other was probably left to the convenience of the moment as to time and place, but was usually held at Cealchyth. Augustine and his successors at Canterbury had never been practically more than bishops of the Kentish men, with the titular distinction of archbishop which Gregory gave them. Theodore, says Bede, was the first archbishop whom the Churches of the English obeyed. This gave Theodore the authority necessary for the carrying out of his plans for the peace and progress of the Church.

One feature of Theodore’s policy was the breaking up of some of the larger sees. This was not done without opposition. There was much to be said in favour of the idea of “one king one bishop;” it fell in with the political organization and it had the prestige of ancient use. But Theodore, looking at the subject from his point of view, as the ruler of an ecclesiastical province, saw the desirableness of breaking it up into dioceses of more manageable size. He was opposed by Wilfrid of York, who resented the diminution of his great position as Bishop of the Northumbrian kingdom, by the division of the diocese into four, York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and Whithern; but his opposition was overborne by the firmness of the King of Northumbria and the archbishop. Wilfrid carried his complaint to Rome, which is the first example of an appeal from the English to the Roman Court, and raises the question of the relations of the English Church to the Bishop of Rome. It is sufficient to say here in reference to the Roman decision in Wilfrid’s favour on this and subsequent occasions, that neither Archbishop Theodore, nor the clergy, nor the king and thanes of the Witan, showed any disposition to accept the intervention of the Bishop of Rome, or to defer to his judgment in the matter; and that Wilfrid was punished by the king with imprisonment and exile for his contumacy.

The Bishop of Mercia, backed by the king, resisted the subdivision of that vast diocese; and it was not until after Theodore’s death that his plan was carried into effect of dividing it into four, Lichfield, Hereford, Worcester, Leicester, with Sidnacester for Lindsey, recently reconquered from Northumbria. It was not till 705 that the great diocese of Wessex was divided into two, Winchester and Sherburn, and further subdivided in the time of Alfred the Great by the erection of sees for Somerset, Wilts, and Devon. A new English see in Cornwall, on its conquest by Athelstan, completed the list of Saxon bishoprics.

The annual meeting of the Churches in synods was a very important consequence of their organization into a province. Kings and their councillors and great thanes came to the synods, as well as bishops and clergy. It is probable that the laymen had no formal voice in the ecclesiastical legislation, but their attestation and assent would add to the authority of the acts of the councils in the estimation of the people. The general synods would promote the regular holding of diocesan synods.[31] One direct result of these frequent assemblies would be to give a stimulus to the work of the Church all over the land. Another incidental result would be to afford a stable centre of affairs, and to promote the growth of a sentiment of nationality. Political affairs were in a state of great disturbance. In some of the kingdoms rival pretenders waged civil war, and now one, now another won the throne, while the bishop maintained his position undisturbed. Nations warred against one another, now Mercia reduced other kingdoms to dependence, and again Wessex asserted a supremacy over others; but the synods continued to unite the bishops and clergy of the kingdoms south of the Thames in frequent consultation for the common good.

Theodore’s idea in setting himself to divide the national bishoprics was to multiply episcopal centres of orderly Church life, adequate to the needs of the Christian flock. The settling of priests among the scattered people to take pastoral charge of them was a natural sequel to the former movement. The practical way of effecting it was to induce the landowners to accept and make provision for a resident priest who should have the pastoral care of their households and people.

It is not historically true that Theodore invented this idea of parochial organization, because it already existed in countries where the church had been longer established. Rome was virtually divided into forty parishes before the end of the third century. The system of appointing a priest to take charge of all the souls within a definite district existed in the city of Alexandria in the time of Athanasius, and in some country districts of Asia Minor at a very early period; it was a natural outcome of the Christian idea of the pastoral office of the ministry. The Emperor Justinian[32] had encouraged the system, by a law of 541, which decreed that a man who should build an oratory and furnish a competent livelihood for a priest, might present a clerk thereto, by himself and his heirs, and the bishop finding him worthy should ordain him. To come nearer home, a Synod of Orleans, in A.D. 541, ordained that, if any one desired to have a “diocese” on his estate, he should first allot sufficient lands for the maintenance of the church and of the clerks who should fulfil their offices there.[33] In Italy parishes were beginning to be founded in the time of Gregory the Great. From one of his letters it appears that Anio “Comes Castri Aprutiensis,” having built a church in his castellum, wished to have it consecrated;[34] and the Bishop of Fermo had referred to Gregory on the question. He allows it to be done on condition that the count shall provide a proper endowment for a resident priest. His business-like statement of what the endowment is to consist of, gives a kind of standard of what, in the circumstances of that time and in the judgment of a wise and practical bishop, was a proper endowment of a country parish. It was to consist of a farm with its homestead and a bed, a yoke of oxen, two cows, and fifteen head of sheep, and the proper implements of a farm, and four pounds of silver as the working capital. In another letter Gregory bids Felix, Bishop of Messina, to consecrate a church built by Subdeacon Januarus in the city, on the condition that it be properly endowed; and in this case he expressly denies the founder any rights (e.g. of patronage), except admission to Divine service.

The canons of the Council of Toledo, a little earlier than this, and a capitulary in 823 of Charlemagne,[35] a little later, show that it was about this period that country parishes, with their separate endowments and legal rights, were being founded throughout Europe.[36] Theodore knew what had been done in the East, and he is said to have encouraged the great landowners to adopt the system here. We may accept it as highly probable that we owe to Theodore the diocesan and parochial organization of the Church of England, which provides a pastor to look after every soul in his own home, as against the previous system of monastic centres from which missionaries went forth for occasional ministrations, and to which the people resorted in their spiritual needs.

The kings would be likely to set the example. They were accustomed to divide their time among their principal estates. Aidan’s head-quarters were at Lindisfarne, but he had also a church and chamber at Bamborough, the chief residence of the Northumbrian kings; and, if we rightly understand Bede’s words,[37] he had a church and chamber at other of the principal houses, where the king and his court used to live for months together. It would be natural that the king should provide for the permanent residence of a priest to serve each of these royal chapels, for the well-being of the people on the several royal estates; and the subsequent history of royal free chapels confirms the conjecture that he did so. The great landowners would be among the first to follow the king’s example; and we find some evidence of it in an incidental notice by Bede[38] of the consecration by St. John of Beverley (705-718), then Bishop of Hexham, of a church at South Burton, in Yorkshire, for the Ealdorman Puch, and another at North Burton, in the same county, for Addi the Ealdorman. What Puch and Addi were doing on their estates, probably others of the great Thanes were also doing, though no marvel occurred at the consecration of these other churches to lead the historian to mention them.

House of a Saxon nobleman. The hall in the middle, the church on the right hand.
The nobleman and his wife are distributing alms to the poor. From Harl. MS. 603.

Not only kings and nobles, but the bishops themselves, and the great monasteries with outlying estates, would naturally make provision for the religious interests of the people dependent upon them. In the south we gather from the canons of Clovesho, in 747, that the collegiate and conventual bodies had erected churches on their outlying estates, and that the lands of the lay proprietors had been divided into districts by the bishops, and committed to the care of resident priests.

A letter written by Bede, the most learned and most revered Churchman of the time, to Egbert, on his consecration to the See of York, is a very valuable piece of evidence as to the condition of the Church in the north at that point of time (734). We learn first that the discipline of the monasteries had become lax. Many reeves had obtained land under pretext of founding a monastery, and under that pretext claimed freedom for their land from state burdens, and called themselves abbots, but were living with their wives and families, and servants, very much like other lay folk, and handing down their abbeys as hereditary fees. He says that there are towns and hamlets in the most inaccessible places which are taxed for the support of a bishop—an early notice of the general payment of tithe—but never see one, and are moreover without any resident teacher or minister—which implies that towns and hamlets in more accessible places have a resident minister, and are visited by a bishop for confirmation. The venerable old man gives advice to the youthful prelate for the mitigation of the evils which he points out. He advises him to obtain the fulfilment of the original plan of Gregory the Great, viz. the formation of the churches north of the Humber into a northern province, with York as the metropolitan see, and to obtain the king’s leave to subdivide the northern dioceses to the number of twelve in all, using some of the monasteries of whose decadence he complains for the new episcopal sees; he exhorts him to ordain more priests to preach and administer the sacraments in every village; and, lastly, he suggests the translation of the Creed and Our Father out of Latin into English for the instruction of the people.

Egbert followed Bede’s advice so far as to obtain his recognition as archbishop of the second province which embraced the country north of the Humber, with York as its metropolitan see; but he did not procure the subdivision of the existing dioceses. He did, however, accomplish a great work by raising the schools of York to such an eminence in learning and religion that they were famous throughout Europe. The schools of Wessex, under Aldhelm, rivalled those of Northumbria; the clergy generally could hardly fail to be influenced by the spirit of these great centres.

Meantime churches were being built, and rectors of them settled upon the estates of the landowners. The seventh canon of Graetley, 928, in the reign of Athelstan, dealing with the question of penance for perjury, directs that the parish priest, sacerdos loci illius, is to certify the bishop as to the penitent’s behaviour; which implies that local priests were sufficiently widely scattered to keep in view every member of the small population.

The Parish Priest was not merely one who ministered in spiritual things to those who chose to accept his ministrations, he had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over a definite territory and over all who dwelt within it. Just as the jurisdiction of the heptarchic bishops extended over the kingdoms, so in the parish the jurisdiction of the priest was conterminous with the estate of the lord or thane who invited the priest to minister to himself and his people.

Some of these estates were very extensive, comprising vast tracts of forest and waste around the cultivated land, and therefore some of the parishes were of great extent. Probably the parish priest, in addition to his work in the principal village, would also partially adopt the old system of itinerant mission work by visiting remote hamlets within his jurisdiction at certain times for the preaching of the Word and celebration of Divine worship. It is certain that at a very early period in the history of parishes the rector was assisted by chaplains in the maintenance of the frequent services of the mother church and in the visitation of the people.

Thus there gradually arose another class of Churches. As population increased and forest was assarted and waste brought into cultivation, new centres of population grew up at a distance from the original village. The Saxon laws encouraged the enterprise of the people by assigning to them a higher rank in proportion to their possessions,[39] which involved not only social dignity but also legal privileges; a law of Athelstan enacted that “if a ‘ceorl’ throve so that he had fully four hides of his own land, church and kitchen, ‘bur geat settl,’ and special service in the king’s hall (‘sunder note’ or ‘sundor note’) then was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy.”[40]

It is in the nature of things that many of these successful ceorls would be energetic and enterprising men who had looked out a tract of good soil in some neighbouring dale or amidst the surrounding waste, and brought it under cultivation, and created what was virtually a new township. The occasional visits of the parish priest or his chaplain would hardly satisfy the inhabitants of the new settlement for long. The new proprietor, in imitation of his betters, would be ambitious of having a church on his ground, and the law of Athelstan encouraged his laudable ambition. But the customary jurisdiction and revenues of the mother Church extending over the whole district were jealously guarded against encroachment on the part of these new foundations. A “canon of Edgar” enacts (1) that tithe be paid to the Old Minster to which the district belongs; (2) if a thane has on his boc-land a church at which there is not a burial-place, then of the nine parts let him give to his priest what he will; and let every church scot and plough-alms go to the Old Minster. A later law of King Canute enacts that if a thane has erected on his own boc-land (freehold or charter land) a church having a legerstowe—a burial-place—he may subtract one-third part of his tithes from the mother Church, and bestow them upon his own clerk.[41]

Saxon Church of timber, at Greenstead, Essex.

A law of Canute incidentally describes four different classes of churches which, “though divinely they have like consecration,” hold a different rank and have a different penalty attached to the violation of their right of sanctuary. The classes are called: (1) the heafod mynster, chief minster; (2) the medemra mynster, translated ecclesia mediocris; (3) the læssa mynster, translated ecclesia minor; (4) the feld-cirice, literally field-church, where there was no burial-place. These are probably (1) cathedral or mother churches; (2) churches of ancient date with wide jurisdiction; (3) smaller parish churches; (4) district or mission chapels.

West end of Greenstead Church, Essex.

The continual increase of the population and the consequent bringing of more land into cultivation, and the gathering of this population upon the newly cultivated lands, caused the constant growth of new lordships or townships, or, in later times, manors, and the constant building of new churches to supply their spiritual wants. The jurisdiction and rights of the mother Church had to be dealt with in all these cases; but in many cases, by agreement with the mother Church, or by the assumption of a lord of the land too powerful for its priest to withstand, or by long usage, many of these new churches acquired the status of independent parishes; and at length, in the time of Edward the Confessor, the legal status of parish churches was given to all which by ancient custom had the right of administration of baptism, marriage, and burial.

The Domesday Survey gives, so far as it deals with the matter, a view of the condition of the Church and clergy at the close of the Saxon period—tempore regis Edwardi. It is to be borne in mind that its object was not to make a complete terrier and census of the kingdom, but to ascertain the rights and revenues due to the Crown. The commissioners who made the survey in the different counties took somewhat different lines in making their returns, particularly in those details which are of special interest in the present inquiry. In most of the counties churches and clergy seem to be named only where they were liable to some payment to the Crown. In some counties all the churches seem to be named; in others all the presbyters; in others there is no mention of one or the other. Thus, in Lincolnshire 222 churches are named, in Norfolk 243, in Suffolk, 364; in Leicestershire 41 presbyters, in Rochester diocese about 65,[42] in Sussex 42, of which seven are described as ecclesiolæ chapels. In the returns for the counties of Cambridge, Middlesex, Lancaster, and Cornwall, neither church nor presbyter occurs. In the whole there are only 1700 churches named. But there seems no reason why Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk should have had a larger proportion of churches to population at that time than the other counties; and if the other counties were proportionately subdivided into parishes and equipped with churches, we arrive at the conclusion that there were nearly as many churches (including chapels) and clergy before the Norman Conquest, when the population was about two millions, as there were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the population had increased to nearly nine millions.

Saxon tower, Sompting Church, Sussex.

From the same source we learn that the usual quantity of land assigned to a church was from five to fifty acres; in some cases the glebe was larger. Bosham, in Sussex, was one of the largest; in the time of Edward the Confessor it had 112 hides. Barsham, in Norfolk, had 100 acres; Berchingas, in Suffolk, 83; Wellingrove, in Lincolnshire, 129 acres of meadow and 14 of other land.

The private origin of ecclesiastical benefices, together with the feudal ideas of the tenure of property, produced in the minds of the owners of advowsons a certain sense of property in the benefices which shows itself in various ways: in the bargaining with the presentee for some advantage to the lord, as a present, or a pension, or the tenancy of part of the land.

The advowson descended with the manor, and was often subdivided among the heirs.[43] In later times we not infrequently find a rectory held in medieties, but in Domesday Book we find a benefice divided into any number of fractions up to one-twelfth.[44]

CHAPTER V.

THE SAXON CLERGY.

he sources from which we obtain the fullest details of the religious life of the Saxon priests and people are the laws of their kings and the canons of their synods; and perhaps the most convenient way of presenting the information which these contain will be partly to give a series of quotations from them in chronological order, with such explanations as may seem necessary; partly to group them according to their subject; using one method or the other as may seem best to serve our purpose.

Of the earlier part of the period three codes of law have come down to us—that of Ethelbert of Kent, between 597 and 604; of Ine King of the West Saxons, probably 690; and of Wihtred of Kent, 696. We must bear in mind that the bishops and chief clergy of the kingdom were present at the Witan of the Saxon kings, as well as the chiefs and wise men; and that the kings and chief laymen were often present at the ecclesiastical synods; so that both laws and canons express the mind of the whole people.

The laws of Ethelbert are the earliest written code of the English race. They begin with the enactment, “If the property of God (i.e. of the Church) be stolen, twelve-fold compensation shall be made; for a bishop’s property, eleven-fold; a priest’s, nine-fold; a deacon’s, six-fold; a clerk’s, three-fold; church frith, two-fold; minster frith, two-fold.” A law of Earconbert of Kent (640) commanded the destruction of the temples and idols in that kingdom.

The laws of Ine, King of the West Saxons (688-725), are said in the preamble to be made “by the consent and advice of Ceadwalla, his father, and of Heddi, his bishop, and of Earconwald, his bishop, and with all his ealdormen, and the distinguished Witan of his people, and also with a large assembly of God’s servants (the clergy).” The first of his laws is (1) that God’s servants rightly hold their lawful rule. Then it goes on to enact (2) that children be baptized within thirty days, under a penalty of 30s., and if one die unbaptized the father shall make bôt[45] for it with all that he has. Then come enactments (3, 4, 5), against doing any work on the Sunday, on the payments to be made to the clergy, and on the privilege of sanctuary, which will be more conveniently grouped with similar enactments later on; (6) if a man fight in a king’s house he shall forfeit all his property; if in a minster, he shall make bôt of 120s.; (7) if a man before a bishop belie his testimony he shall forfeit 120s.; (61) church scot shall be paid according to where a man’s roof and hearth are at midwinter; (76) inflicts a special fine for slaying a godson or godfather—if it be a bishop’s son,[46] it is to be half the amount.

The preamble to the laws of Wihtred of Kent, in 696, states that they were made at “a deliberative convention of the great men,” the Archbishop Birhtwald and Bishop Gebmund of Rochester being present, “and every degree of the Church of that province spoke in unison with the obedient people.” The first law (1) gives the Church freedom in jurisdiction and revenue; (6) a priest guilty of misconduct or negligence to be suspended till the doom of the bishop; (9, 10, 11) on the observance of Sunday, are the same as in the laws of King Ine, quoted p. 79; (12, 13) seek to suppress the old heathenism by imposing on a man forfeiture of all his substance for making offerings to devils, and the same on his wife if she shared in his offence; a theowe for the same offence is to forfeit 6s. or “pay with his skin;”[47] (14, 15) impose penalties for not abstaining from flesh on fasting days; (16, 17) relate to the value of the oaths of various classes of people, and are dealt with at p. 77. One of the most important laws of Wihtred is that which is called “the privilege of Wihtred,” given at a Witan held at Bapchild, attended by the king and nobles, as well as by the two bishops and clergy, which released the lands of monasteries from gabel or land-tax, and obliged the tenants only to attend the king in war and to pay burgh bôt and brig bôt, i.e. payments levied for the repair of town-walls and bridges. This privilege was confirmed in the first year of King Ethelbald of Mercia at the Council of Clovesho (716). It was granted by other Saxon kings also in their charters.

The decrees of a council at Clovesho, in 747, require a few words of preface. In 745 Boniface, “the Apostle of Germany,” had presided at a synod of Frank bishops, at Augsburg,[48] which had made canons for the reform of abuses, and had formally accepted the supremacy of Rome. Boniface sent a copy of these canons to his friend Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, clearly wishing him to take like measures.

The first canon of this Synod enacted that metropolitans should be obliged to apply to Rome for their pall, and obey the orders of St. Peter in everything according to the canons. Another canon to the same end decreed that if the people refuse to submit to the discipline of the Church, the bishops shall appeal to the archbishop of the province, and the archbishop to the Pope.

Two years afterwards Zacharias, Bishop of Rome, sent letters by the hands of two legates “to the English inhabitants of Britain,” in which he admonishes them to reform their lives, and holds out threats of excommunication against those who neglect to do so.[49]

The Pope’s action was clearly intended to induce the English Church to imitate the submission of the Frankish Church. A synod was assembled at Clovesho, A.D. 747, attended by twelve English bishops of the dioceses south of the Humber and a number of their clergy, and by Ethelbald, King of the Mercians, who was over lord of all the English kingdoms south of the Humber. The Pope’s letter was read in Latin and English, and then the synod proceeded to draw up a number of canons.

A Saxon bishop and priest.
(From Cotton MS., Claudius, B. iv.)

The omissions, compared with the canons of the German Council, are the most important part of the document. The first canon decreed that every bishop should be careful to support his character (i.e. his status as a bishop), execute every part of his office, and maintain the canons and constitutions of the Church against encroachment; and the second that the bishops and clergy should be careful to keep a good correspondence with each other, without any flattering applications to any person, considering that they are the servants of one master, and entrusted with the same commission; and, therefore, though they are divided by distance of place and country, they ought to be united by affection and pray for each other that every one may discharge his office with integrity and conscience. Then there follow disciplinary canons: (3) that the clergy should call together the people of all ranks and degrees in each place, preach to them the word of God, and forbid them to follow the heathen customs; (2) that the bishops should visit their dioceses every year; (4, 5, and 7) relate to monasteries; (6) bishops not to ordain priests without examination as to learning and morals; (8) priests to abstract themselves from worldly affairs and give themselves to reading, prayer, etc.; (9) to preach, baptize, and inspect the morals of the people in those precincts and districts assigned to them by their bishops—which implies the existence of subdivisions of dioceses into various jurisdictions, and the existence of parishes; (10) priests to be thoroughly acquainted with the doctrines and services of the church, to teach the Creed and Lord’s Prayer, and explain the sacraments; (11) to be uniform in their preaching and ministration; (12) regulates church music and ceremonies, canons not to intrude upon things which belong to the bishop; (13, 14, 15, 16, 18) on the observance of Sundays, holy days, the seven hours of prayer, rogations, and ember days; (17) appoints that the days on which St. Gregory and St. Augustine died shall be kept as holy days, and their names be included in the litanies.

Canons (21) and (22) enjoin on the clergy sobriety and propriety of conduct, and ever-fitness for celebration and reception of Holy Communion. (26) enjoins the bishops to convene their clergy and abbots, and communicate to them the decisions of the council, and command their observance; and if there is any disorder too strong for the bishop’s correction, he is to report it to the archbishop at the next meeting of the synod—but not a word of a reference beyond him to the Pope. (27) is on the singing of the psalms with recollection and pious dispositions and posture of respect, and of prayers—and among them of prayers for the departed;[50] and those who do not understand Latin are to pray in the vulgar tongue.

(26) and (27) are specially notable as directed against what seem to have been growing errors; they explain that alms are not to be given to commute penance and dispense with the discipline of the Church, and so procure a liberty of sinning; that those who think that God can be bribed thus, make their alms useless to them, and add to their guilt. Also that it is folly and presumption to think that a man condemned to penance may procure others to fast, say psalms, and distribute charity on his behalf; that if a man may thus buy his punishment and get others to repent for him, a rich man would be sure of salvation, and only the poor be in danger. The last canon enjoins that kings and princes and the whole body of the people be publicly prayed for in church.[51]

It is to be observed that the Northumbrian king was not present with his nobles and bishops at this synod; for eleven years previously (in 736) the Bishop of York had obtained the dignity of an archbishop with the Northumbrian churches as his province. The Papal legates visited the north, but we have no account of their doings there.

The laws of King Alfred are prefaced by a recapitulation of the early history of the Church, and recite the decree of the apostles at the Synod of Jerusalem. Then the king goes on to say that many synods were assembled in the old times, among the English race, after they had received the Faith of Christ, and ordained a “tort” for many misdeeds. Out of those laws which he had met with, either of the days of Ine his kinsman, of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Ethelbryht who first among the English race received baptism, the things which seemed to him most right he had gathered together and rejected others. He had then showed them to the witan, and they declared that it seemed good to them all that they should be observed. We conclude that the codes of Ethelbert, Ine, and Offa (which last has not come down to us) were the principal codes then known. We select several of the laws of Alfred which deal with new matter.

1. If a man pledge himself and break his pledge, he is to surrender his weapons and goods to the keeping of his friends, and be in prison forty days in a bishop’s town, and suffer there whatever the bishop may prescribe; his friends to find him food; if he have none, then the king’s reeve to do it; if he escape, to be excommunicated of all Christ’s churches. If a man seek a church and confess an offence not before known, let it be half forgiven—i.e. let him pay half the penalty.

One of the laws agreed upon between King Alfred and Guthrum was, if any man wrong an ecclesiastic or a foreigner as to money or life, the king or earl and the bishop shall be to the injured in the place of kinsman and protector.

Among the laws of Athelstan (925-940), (3) directs that there be sung, every Friday at every monastery, a fifty (of psalms) for the king, and for all who will what he wills, and for others as they may merit; (7) describes the ordeal by fire and by water.[52]

Among the laws of King Edmund (940-946) made at the Synod of London, “Odda, archbishop, and Wulfstan, archbishop, and many other bishops being present,” it was ordered (1) that those in holy orders who have to teach God’s people by their life’s example keep their chastity according to their degree; (5) that every bishop repair the houses of God in his [district (?)], and also remind the king that all God’s churches be well conditioned.

The “Canons of Edgar” (A.D. 959-975)[53] were made under the reforming influence of Archbishop Dunstan, and were intended as a standard of life and duty for the clergy. They begin with the recognition, which is amplified and emphasized in the laws of subsequent reigns, that the great duty which the order of the clergy perform in the service of the nation is to celebrate the worship of Almighty God, and offer up prayers on behalf of the king and people. We give the substance of the canons as briefly as possible, but without any material omission, so that the reader may feel assured that he has the whole body of the legislation before him.

They decree that the ministers of God devoutly serve and minister to God, and intercede for all Christian folk; be faithful and obedient to their seniors (bishops, abbots, etc.); ready to help others, both Godward and manward; and be to their earthly lords true and faithful; that they honour one another, the juniors diligently hearing and loving their seniors, and the seniors diligently teaching the juniors.

That every one come to the synod yearly, attended by his clerk, and an orderly man as his servant; that he bring his books and vestments,[54] and ink and parchment for the constitutions;[55] and food for three days. That the priest report to the synod if any one has done him any serious injury, and that all should regard it as done to themselves, and obtain compensation according as the bishop shall determine. He shall also report if any one in his parish lives openly against God, or has done mortal sin, whom he cannot move to amendment, or dare not for fear.

That no dispute between priests shall be brought before secular judges, but reconciled by their fellows or referred to the bishop; no priest shall desert the church to which he was ordained, but hold to it as his lawful spouse. That he do not deprive another of anything which belongs to him either in his church or parish or gildship; he shall not take another’s scholar without his leave; that in addition to lore, he diligently learn a handicraft; that the learned priest do not throw scorn on the half learned, but correct him; that the well-born priest do not despise the low-born, for if he will consider all men are of one birth; that he administer baptism as soon as asked, and bid every one to bring his children to be baptized within thirty-seven days[56] of their birth and not defer too long to have them confirmed by the bishop.

That he diligently promote Christianity, and banish heathenism, and forbid well-worship, necromancy, augury, man-worship, incantations, and many things which they practise with various spells, and “frithsplottum,”[57] and wich-elms and various trees and stones, and other phantasms by which many are deceived, and that devil’s craft whereby children are drawn through the earth, and the merriment that men make on the night of the year (New Year’s Eve).

That every Christian diligently train his child and teach him the Paternoster and Credo;[58] that on festivals men abstain from profane songs and devil’s games, and on Sundays from trading and folk motes; that men cease from lies and foolish talking and blasphemy; and from concubinage, and have lawful wives; that every man learn the Paternoster and Credo if he desire to lie in holy ground [at his burial], and be considered housel-worthy [fit to receive Holy Communion], because he is not a good Christian who is not willing to learn these, nor may rightly be a sponsor at baptism nor at confirmation; that there be no contentions on festival or fasting days, nor oaths, nor ordeals.

That the priests keep the churches with all reverence for the Divine ministry and pure worship, and for nothing else; nor do anything unbecoming there nor in the vicinity; nor allow idle talking, idle deeds, unbecoming drinkings, nor any other idle practices; nor allow dogs in the churchyard, nor more swine than a man is able to manage [or no dog nor swine so far as a man can prevent it], that nothing unbecoming be placed in the church; that at the church-wake men keep sober and pray diligently, nor practise drinking, nor anything else unbecoming; that no one be buried in church unless he was known when living to be so well pleasing to God as to be worthy of it.

That the priest do not celebrate the Eucharist in any house, but only in the church, except in case of extreme sickness, and do not consecrate except upon a consecrated altar,[59] and not without book and the canon of the mass before his eyes, that he make no mistakes, and that he have a corporal when he celebrates, and a subuculum[60] under his albe, and all necessary things rightly appointed, and have a good and correct book, and not without some one to make the responses; that every one receive fasting except in case of extreme sickness; that the priest reserve the host ready for any that need; that he celebrate with pure wine and pure water; that no priest celebrate mass without partaking, or hallow it unless he is holy. That the chalice be of molten material, never of wood; that all things which approach the altar or belong to the church be purely and worthily appointed, and that there be always lights in the church at mass; that there be no negligence about anything consecrated, holy water, salt, incense, bread, nor anything holy; that no woman come near the altar while the priest celebrates.

That at the right times the bell be rung, and the priest say his hours in church, or there pray and intercede for all men.[61] That no priest come into the church or into his stall without his upper garment, or minister without his vestment. That no man in orders conceal his tonsure, or leave it badly shaven, or wear his beard long; that priests be not ignorant of fasts or festivals, lest they lead the people wrong.[62]

That every one accompany his fasts with almsgiving; that “priests in ecclesiastical ministries be all on one equality, and in a year’s space, be like-worthy in all ecclesiastical ministries;”[63] that they diligently teach the young handicrafts, that the Church may be helped thereby.

That priests preach every Sunday, and well explain. That no Christian eat blood of any kind. That they teach the people to pay their dues to God, plough-alms fifteen days after Easter, the tithe of young at Pentecost, fruits of the earth at All Saints, Peter’s penny on St. Peter’s day, and church scot at Martinmas. That priests so distribute people’s alms as to please God, and dispose the people to almsgiving; they shall sing psalms when they distribute alms, and bid the poor pray for the people. That priests avoid drunkenness, and warn the people against it; that they eschew unbecoming occupations, as ale-scop or glee man, but behave discreetly and worthily; abstain from oaths and forbid them; not consort too much with women, but love their own spouse, that is, their church; not bear false witness, or be the confidant of thieves; that the priest have not to do with ordeals or oaths, or be compurgator with a thane, unless the thane take the first oath; be not a hunter, or hawker, or dicer, but occupy himself with his books, as becomes his order.

That every priest hear confession and give penance, and carry the Eucharist to the sick, and anoint him if he desire it, and after death not allow any idle customs about the body, but bury it decently in the fear of God. That every priest have oil for baptism, and also for anointing the sick. Let him promote Christianity in every way, as well by preaching as by good example, and he shall be rewarded by God Almighty; and let him remember when he fetches the chrism [at the yearly synod] to say the prayers for the king and the bishop.

The laws of King Ethelred (979-1016), made with the counsel of both the ecclesiastical and lay witan, are conceived in a very Christian spirit, and expressed with considerable eloquence. We think it worth while to give in full some of them which relate to the general desire of the authorities in Church and State to promote religion. (1) This, then, is first, that we all love and worship one God, and zealously hold one Christianity, and every heathenship totally cast out, that every man be regarded as entitled to right, and peace and friendship be lawfully observed. (2) That Christian men and uncondemned be not sold out of the country, and especially into a heathen nation, that those souls perish not that Christ bought with His own life. (3) That Christian men be not condemned to death for all too little, and in general let light punishments be decreed, and let not for a little God’s handiwork and His own purchase which He dearly bought be destroyed. (4) That every man of every order readily submit to the law which belongs to him; above all, let the servants of God, bishops and abbots, monks and mynchens, priests and nuns,[64] live according to their rule, and fervently intercede for all Christian people. (5, 6) Monks are not to live out of minster, but to observe specially three things: their chastity and monkish customs, and the service of the Lord. (7) Canons, where their benefice is, so that they have a refectory and dormitory, are to keep their minster rightly; and mass-priests to keep themselves from the anger of God. (9) Full well they know that they have not rightly, through concubinage, intercourse with women; he who will abstain from this and serve God rightly, shall be worthy of thane-wēr, and thane-right both in life and in the grave; he who will not, let his honour wane before God and before the world. (10) Let every church be in grith (protection) of God and the king, and of all Christian people; let no man henceforth reduce a church to servitude, nor unlawfully make church-mongering, nor turn out a church minister without the bishop’s counsel. (11) God’s dues are to be willingly paid, plough-alms, tithe of young, earth fruits, Rome fee, and light scot thrice a year,[65] and soul scot at the open grave, or, if buried elsewhere, to be paid to the minster to which it belongs. (13-19) Sundays and holy days are defined as in previous laws, and at those holy tides let there be to all men peace and concord, and be every strife appeased. (22) Let every Christian man strictly keep his Christianity, and go frequently to shrift and housel. (23) Let every injustice and wrong-doing be carefully cast out of the country, and (26) God’s laws be zealously loved by word and deed, then will God soon be merciful to this nation.[66] Lastly (34), it is the duty of us all to love and worship one God and strictly hold one Christianity, and totally cast out every kind of heathenism; and (35) let us faithfully support one royal lord, and all defend life and land together as best we may, and to God Almighty pray with inward heart.

The canons which go under the name of Elfric, and are of the end of the tenth century, add a little to the knowledge we have already gleaned. The 10th canon gives a list of the seven orders of the clergy under the degree of bishop, viz. ostiarius, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, and priest, and defines their several offices. (17) reckons a priest and a bishop to be of the same order. (19) requires the priests and inferior clergy to be at church at the seven canonical hours: Uhtsang (Prime) about 4 a.m., Primsang (Matins) 6 a.m., Undersang (Terce) at 9, Middaysang (Sext) at noon, Nonsang (Nones) at 3 p.m., Æfensang (Vespers), and Nightsang (Nocturns). (21) Every priest before ordination to be furnished with correct copies of the Psalter, Book of Epistles and Gospels, Missal, Hymnary, Penitential, and Lectionary. (23) The parish priest, every Sunday and holy day, is to explain to the people in English the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Gospel for the day. (25) Not to celebrate in a house except one be sick. (27) No priest is to take money for baptism or other office. (28) Priests are not to remove from one parish to another for the sake of advantage, but to remain in the cure to which they were ordained. (29) Not to turn merchant, soldier, or lawyer. (30) To have always two oils, one for children, the other for the sick. (33) Orders the canons of the first four councils to be regarded like the four Gospels; “there have been many councils held in later ages, but these four are of the greatest authority.” (36) “The housel is Christ’s body, not bodily but spiritually, not the body in which He suffered, but the body about which He spake, when He blessed bread and wine for housel.... Understand now that the Lord who could before His passion change the bread to His body and the wine to His blood spiritually, that the same daily blesses, by the hands of His priests, the bread and wine to His spiritual body and blood.”

An important feature in the administration of criminal law was the recognition of the right of Sanctuary to the house of the king and the churches, which had probably been introduced from the imperial law by the influence of the missionaries. The laws of Ine recognize the right of sanctuary to a church; a murderer taking sanctuary is to have his life but to make bôt, according to law, a theowe who has incurred scourging shall be excused the penalty.

The laws of Alfred allow three days’ sanctuary in the “mynsterham,” which is free from the king’s farm, or any other free community, with a bôt of 120s. for its violation, to be paid to the brotherhood; and seven days in every church hallowed by the bishop, with the penalty of the king’s “mund and byrd” and the church’s “frith” for its violation. The Church ealdor is to take care that no one give food to the refugee. If he be willing to give up his weapons to his foes, then let them keep him thirty days, and give notice to his kinsmen (that they may arrange the legal bôt[67]). King Athelstan’s laws further modify the right of sanctuary; a thief or robber fleeing to the king or to any church, or to the bishop, is to have a term of nine days; if he flee to an ealdorman, or an abbot, or a thane, three days; and he who harbours him longer is to be worthy of the same penalty as the thief. The king’s grith (protection) is to extend from his burhgate where he is dwelling, on its four sides three miles three furlongs and three acres breadth, and nine feet nine palms and nine barley-corns. A law of Canute already quoted (p. 53) assigns different values of grith (protection) to the different kinds of churches, the grith bryce (penalty for violation of grith) of a chief minster is £5; of a minster of the middle class, 120s., and of one yet less where there is a small parish (lytel þeoþðom, in the laws of Henry I.), provided there be a burial-place, 60s., and of a field-church, where there is no burial-place, 30s.

Akin to this privilege of sanctuary is the penalty for acts of violence in certain places and before certain persons. By the laws of King Ine, if any man fight in a king’s house he shall forfeit all his property; if in a minster, make bôt of 120s. By the laws of King Alfred, if a man fight or draw his weapon before an archbishop he shall make bôt of 150s.; if before a bishop or an ealdorman, 100s. The laws of Alfred enact that if any man steal from a church he shall restore it and lose his hand, or redeem his hand at the amount of his “wergild;” it is to be remembered that churches were used as places of deposit for valuables, and the law probably is intended to protect these as well as the movables belonging to the church itself.

The laws of Wihtred of Kent make the word of a king or a bishop incontrovertible without an oath; a priest, like a king’s thane, is to clear himself with his own oath at the altar; he is to stand before the altar in his vestments, and laying his hand upon the altar, to say, “Veritatem dico in Christo, non mentior;”[68] the superior of a monastery is to make oath like a priest; a clerk, like a “ceorlish man,” to make like oath at the altar, but to have four compurgators. The rank of a priest as equal to that of a thane is frequently recognized.[69] The laws of Ine (15 and 19), make the oath of a man who is a communicant worth twice as much as that of a man who is not.

It is convenient to gather into one view what the laws say about the Tithe and other Payments which the people made to the church. The laws did not then for the first time enact these payments. The first missionaries had no doubt taught the people that it was the duty of Christian men to maintain the church and the clergy by tithes and offerings. If the assertion be true that the people had been accustomed to pay tithe to their heathen priests, and there is evidence in favour of the probability, then it came the easier to them.[70] The kings and their witans, in this as in many other matters, recognized and gave the sanction of law to existing custom. The payment of tithe was recognized as obligatory in the Legatine Council of Cealchythe in 785, which being attended and confirmed by the Kings of Kent, Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria, and their ealdormen, had the authority of a Witenagemot, just at the time that similar measures were being taken in the Frank dominions. From that time the payment was frequently mentioned in the laws. The laws of King Alfred define the tithe as of “moving and growing things.” The laws of King Edmund enact that every man pay tithe, church scot, Rome fee, and plough-alms on pain of excommunication. The laws of Edgar define to whom the payment shall be made, viz. to the old minster to which the district belongs; a thane who has a church at which there is a burial-place, may pay a third of his tithe to his own priest; if the thane’s church is without a burial-place, he is to pay his tithe to the minster, and church scot and plough-alms are also to be paid to the minster, and the thane may pay to his priest what he will. They also recite the times at which these payments are to be made on penalty of the full “wite” (fine to the king) which the Doom-book specifies. They also prescribe a process for the recovery of tithe; the king’s reeve and the bishop’s reeve, with the priest of the minster to whom it is due, are to take the tithe by force, and the rest is to be forfeited half to the king and half to the bishop, whether the defaulter be a king’s man or a thane’s. The payment of the “hearth penny” (St. Peter’s penny) is to be enforced by a very curious process: the defaulter is to be taken to Rome—perhaps it means to the house of the pope’s agent, for the collection of Peter pence—and, in addition to what is due, is to pay 30d., and bring a certificate of the payment, and then is to forfeit 120s. to the king; if he refuse, he is to be taken again to Rome, and on his return to forfeit 200s.; and if he still refuse, he is to forfeit all that he has. The severity of the enactment suggests the question whether there was at that time on the part of some persons a special unwillingness to pay the “penny of St. Peter.”

The religious observance of Sunday was the subject of frequent enactments. The third of the laws of Ine enacts that if a theow work on Sunday by his lord’s command, the theow shall be exempt from penalty, but his lord shall pay 30s.; if the theow work of his own accord (since he has no money), he shall “pay with his skin,” i.e. shall be scourged. If a free man work on that day without his lord’s command, he shall forfeit his freedom or pay 60s.; a priest offending shall be liable to a double penalty. The laws of Wihtred of Kent contain enactments to the same effect. The laws of Alfred encourage the observance of other holy days by the enactment that “to all free men these days be given” (i.e. free men are not to be required by their lords to work on these days): twelve days at the Nativity, Good Friday—“the day on which Christ conquered the devil,” St. Gregory’s day, seven days before Easter and seven days after, St. Peter’s day and St. Paul’s day, in autumn a full week before the festival of St. Brice (Nov. 13), one day before All Saints, and the four Wednesdays in the four fasting (Ember) weeks. The law does not free theowes from work on these days, but suggests to their masters to give them, in God’s name, such relaxation from work on such of these days as they shall deserve. The laws of Edgar define that Sunday is to be kept from noontide of Saturday till dawn of Monday. At the Council of Eynsham (1009), it was further enjoined that there be no markets or folk motes (the laws of Canute also forbid hunting) on Sundays; that all St. Mary’s feast tides be honoured with those of every apostle, and Fridays be kept as a fast. Festivals of English saints were from time to time added to the Kalendar. We have seen that the Council of Clovesho (747), decreed the observance of days in honour of St. Gregory and St. Augustine. In the decrees of the Council of Enysham we find: “The witan have chosen that St. Edward’s mass day shall be celebrated all over England on the XV. Kal. Apr.” (March 18). The laws of Canute repeat the obligation of the previous holy days, and after mention of the witan’s appointment of a festival of St. Edward, add a festival of St. Dunstan on XIV. Kal. Junias (May 19).

Slavery was a recognized institution of the society of those times. The class of “theowmen” was probably made up partly of conquered Britons and their descendants, partly of captives taken in the mutual wars of the heptarchic kingdoms, partly of freemen who had been condemned to this penalty for their crimes or incurred it by poverty. A prominent feature of the influence of Christianity was the encouragement it gave to masters to treat their theowes with kindness, and its success in promoting their manumission as an action well-pleasing to God. Several of the codes of law deal with the subject. We have seen already how the legislation on the observance of Sundays and holy days did not go so far as to interfere with the right of the masters, but did invite them, for the love of God, to give their theowes some relaxation of labour on the great festivals of the Church. A law of Wihtred, King of Kent, defines that if any one give freedom to his man at the altar, he shall be folk-free, though it retains to the freedom-giver the heritage and wergild and mund of his family. A law of Ine enacts that he who sells over sea his own countryman, bond or free, though he be guilty, shall pay according to his wēr.

A law of Alfred enacts that if any man buy a Christian slave, he shall serve for six years, and on the seventh he shall go out as he came in, with the same clothes, etc.; if he came in with a wife he shall go out with her, but if the lord have given him a wife, she and her children shall still belong to the lord. A law of Ethelred (978-1016) enacts that a slave (uncondemned) shall not be sold out of the country.

The Church set the example of the manumission of its slaves.[71] At the Council of Cealchithe (816) it was unanimously agreed that each prelate at his death should bequeath one-tenth of his personal property to the poor, and set at liberty all bondsmen of English descent whom his Church had acquired during his administration, and that each bishop and abbot who survived him should manumit three of his slaves, and give 3s. to each. The laity followed the example. In the English wills published by Thorpe[72] a considerable number occur in which the testator gives freedom to serfs, e.g. Queen Æthelflæd sets free half of her men in every vill; Wynflæd gives a long list of serfs by name who are to be freed, and the freedom of penal serfs is given in nine other wills.

Still the institution continued. At the end of the Saxon period, a thriving trade in the export of English slaves was carried on at Bristol, till Bishop Wulstan put an end to it. The Twenty-ninth Canon of the Synod of Westminster, held under Anselm in 1102, enacted that there should be no buying and selling of men in England as heretofore, as if they were kine or oxen. But this did not put a stop to it. Slaves were bought and sold by Church dignitaries as late as the fourteenth century, as we shall see in a later chapter, and the status of serfdom continued to the sixteenth century.

Coronation of Harold by Archbishop Stigand. Bayeux tapestry.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

ne immediate result of the Norman conquest was that Archbishop Stigand and several other bishops and abbots were ejected, and foreign ecclesiastics put in their place. It is not necessary to suppose that William acted solely on the desire to put men devoted to his interests into these positions of power and influence, for Edward the Confessor had already appointed some foreign bishops with the object of raising the tone of learning and religion in the English Church; and all William’s nominees were men of character, learning and practical ability. The removal of some of the sees from unimportant villages to the principal town of the diocese was a wise measure. It is said that some of the Norman bishops desired to make the further improvement of replacing the monks, where they existed, in their cathedrals, by canons, but were thwarted by Lanfranc.[73]

The parochial clergy seem to have been left undisturbed in their benefices; only, as the benefices fell vacant in the usual course of things, the new Norman lords of the manor, who had in so many cases supplanted the old Saxon thanes, not unnaturally appointed relatives or countrymen of their own to at least the more valuable of the parochial benefices in their gift.

The Norman conquest of England opened up this country more fully to the influence of the political and religious life of the Continent. The patriarchal authority of the Roman see had long since been acknowledged by the Saxon Church, but hitherto had very rarely intervened and as seldom been appealed to; henceforward it was to become a much more important factor both in the political and ecclesiastical life of this country. The foreign bishops appointed by Edward the Confessor and William, and the foreign parsons introduced by the new lords into their parishes, brought with them the Hildebrandine theories of the relations of the Pope to the Church and to the State. William sought to limit the exercise of the Papal authority in his new kingdom by a decree that the Pope should send no legates and no bulls without the consent of the Crown, and that his own subjects should make no appeal to Rome without the Crown’s permission. But, in fact, a considerable change gradually took place in the practical relations of the English Church to the Roman see. The Saxon Church had been isolated, the bishops and clergy had been eminently a national clergy, with practically no one above them and no one between them and their flocks. The appearance of two legates at the synod of Winchester (1070), which deprived Stigand the archbishop, and, by consequence, several bishops of his consecration, was the beginning of a series of very important interventions of the Pope for good and for evil, which, together with the multiplication of appeals to Rome, modified very much the previous practically autonomous condition of the English Church. Another important change was made by the separation of the civil and ecclesiastical Courts determined upon by William “in the common council, and by the advice of all the bishops and abbots, and all the princes of his kingdom.” It abrogated the old Saxon custom set forth in the laws of Canute (1016-1035),[74] that the bishop should sit with the sheriff in the shire mote, and assist in the administration of justice and the determination of causes; and enacted that, for the future, civil causes should be determined by the secular judge; while, on the other hand, no lay judge should interfere in the laws which belong to the bishop, or in any causes which belong to the cure of souls. The results went further than perhaps William had foreseen. One result was the setting up of independent courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all clerical persons, down to the lowest of the men in minor orders, and in all religious cases, including matrimonial and testamentary causes and questions of oaths. This made the whole body of the clergy a privileged class under a law and judges of their own, and this privilege the Church maintained successfully against the endeavour of Henry II. to bring the clergy under the jurisdiction of the King’s Courts, and continued down to the “submission of the clergy” in the reign of Henry VIII. With this brief general review of the constitutional changes effected at the time of the Norman Conquest we proceed to our more humble task of noting the history of the parochial clergy and of their flocks.

Durham Cathedral.

The new men, military adventurers though they were, among whom the Norman conqueror had divided the lands of England, did not, like the Anglo-Saxon conquerors, trample out Christianity under their feet; nor, like the Danes in their turn, plunder the monasteries and churches; on the contrary, the Normans behaved like Christian men who, having come into power in a country which was in a backward religious condition, set themselves to effect religious improvements in their newly acquired possessions. Every bishop set to work to rebuild his cathedral church, or to build a new one in the place to which his see had been removed. This leads to the inference that the old Saxon cathedrals were comparatively small, in an inferior style of architecture, and perhaps out of repair. Many of the lords of manors seem to have rebuilt the parish churches, and to have built new churches in remote parts of their estates.[75] The bishops also made provision for the spiritual wants of the people more especially dependent upon them; Lanfranc, for example, built two churches and two hospitals in Canterbury, and erected several churches in the manors belonging to the archbishopric.

If we consider the way in which the landed property of the kingdom was resettled after the Conquest, each great tenant of the Crown subdividing his vast estates among the lesser lords who had fought under his banner, we shall see the likelihood that each of these new lords of manors, as soon as the country had settled down in tranquillity, would set himself to make the best of his new acquisitions; to add to their value by breaking up new waste land; to consult his dignity and comfort by improving upon the rude old hall of his Saxon predecessor, or building himself a new manor house. If his manor had only a chapel with imperfect privileges, he would not be content without obtaining for it the status of an independent parish; and the Norman taste for building would lead him to replace the rude timber chapel by a stone church in the improved style of architecture which had lately been introduced. In some cases the new lord built himself a manor house on a new site at a distance from the old one, and a church near to it, and adopted the new church as the parish church, leaving the old one to serve as a chapel to those who lived near it.[76] A great number of village churches in nearly all parts of England still remain, in whole or in part, whose architectural characteristics show that they are of about this period. Ordericus Vitalis, the historian of the conqueror’s sons, says[77] that especially in the reign of Henry I.,[78] by the fervent devotion of the faithful, the houses and temples built by Edgar and Edward, and other Christian kings, were taken down to be replaced with others of greater magnitude and more elegant workmanship, to the glory of the Creator.

Old Shoreham Church, Sussex.

The life of Orderic himself supplies an example. His father was a priest, a man of some learning, who had come over at the Norman Conquest in the train of Roger of Montgomery, afterwards created Earl of Shrewsbury, and received from his lord lands on the Meole, three miles east of Shrewsbury. He found on this estate of Atcham, a chapel built of timber dedicated to S. Eata, and replaced it by one of stone. He had his son Orderic baptized by the Saxon priest of the parish, who also stood as his sponsor, and gave his own name (sometimes spelt Ulricus) to the child. At the age of five years, he entrusted the child to the care of a priest named Siward, to be taught the first rudiments of learning; and five years afterwards, on the death of his noble patron, he devoted both himself and his son to the monastic life in the monastery at Shrewsbury, which the earl had lately founded.[79]

The greatest ecclesiastical work of the Normans was, however, the revival of the monastic system, and the filling of the country with noble and wealthy monasteries. The ascetic spirit had been revived in Italy and France by Odo of Clugny, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and others, who had founded new orders of the Benedictine and Augustinian rules. The Norman nobles brought this new enthusiasm with them; and just as in the early Saxon period every thane thought it incumbent upon him to build a parish church on his estate, so now it became almost a fashion for every great noble to found a monastery upon his lordship. The nobles, while thinking first of the glory of God, and the spiritual advantages of the prayers of a holy community for the founder, his family and descendants, were conscious also of the dignity which a monastery reflected upon the family which founded and patronized it, and not insensible to the temporal advantages of the establishment of a centre of civilization and religion in the midst of their dependents.

Norman bishops and abbots. (From the twelfth century MS.)

William led the way by his foundation of a great Benedictine abbey on the field of his victory at Hastings, to which was given the name of Battle Abbey. William of Warrenne built a priory at Lewes (1077), into which he introduced the new Cluniac Order. The canons regular of St. Augustine were introduced into England at Colchester c. 1100; the Cistercians at Waverley in Surrey, in 1128; the Carthusians at Witham in Somerset in 1180; and by the end of the twelfth century religious houses of various orders had been founded in every part of the country. We have seen that at the end of the Saxon period there were only about fifty religious houses in England; under William and his two successors upwards of 300 new ones were founded.

The religious fervour of the monks, who abandoned the world and practised self-denial as a means to spiritual perfection and closer communion with God, naturally excited awed admiration; the picturesque surroundings of their profession, the frock and hood, the shaven head and mortified countenance, the hard life of the cloister and the manifold services in the church, impressed the imagination; and consequently the popularity of the monks threw the secular clergy into the shade. The great churches of the monasteries rivalled the cathedrals in magnitude and splendour; the great abbots—relieved by the pope from the jurisdiction of their bishops, exercising themselves jurisdiction over their own estates, summoned to parliament, wealthy and learned—were the rivals of the bishops; and the “lord monks” held a higher rank in public estimation than the parish rectors. The importance of the political part they played in the life of the Middle Ages was hardly, perhaps, commensurate with the space they occupied in it. The Benedictines cultivated learning, and the Cistercians were enterprising agriculturists; the Augustinian orders were useful as preachers in the towns, and managers of hospitals; the nunneries of various orders were schools for the daughters of the gentry; they were all citadels of religion and learning over the length and breadth of the land; but from the point of view of public utility, abbots and monks seldom took any important part in the political events which made history, or were employed in the administration of the government, or made their mark as men of learning, as the bishops and secular clergy did in every generation.

The principal relation between the monasteries and the parish priests is a sinister one; when the popularity of the monks waned, and the secular clergy in the thirteenth century regained the confidence of the people, the mischief was already done which has never been undone. Nearly half the parishes of England had been stripped of the best part of their endowments, in order to found and enrich the monasteries; but a small portion was rescued from their hands by the bishops on the reaction of the thirteenth century; the rest the monks retained till the Reformation of the sixteenth century; and then it was swallowed up by the king and his new nobility. But the history of the impropriation of benefices, and the subsequent foundation of perpetual vicarages, requires a chapter to itself.

ORDINATION OF A PRIEST. FROM THE LATE XII. CENT.
DRAWING, HARL. ROLL, Y 6.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FOUNDATION OF VICARAGES.

he Norman founders of monasteries not only gave to them lands and moneys, but also the parish churches, of which they had the advowson. It can hardly be said that in so doing they gave what was not theirs to give, for the idea was still prominent in men’s minds that the church which a landlord or his antecessor had built for himself and his people was, in a sense, his church, and that he was at liberty (as he is to this day) to give his rights in it to some one else; moreover, the ancient custom of assigning the tithe of his lands to various religious uses, at the owner’s discretion, was still not obsolete,[80] so that the assignment of part of the tithe away from the parish in which it was raised to a religious community at a distance shocked no one’s conscience. Already before the Conquest, in France, the admirers of the new monastic orders had largely adopted the practice of endowing the new religious houses which they founded with the parochial benefices in their patronage; and the practice had found some imitators in England.[81] The Norman lords, between their thank offerings of English benefices to their monasteries at home, in Normandy and elsewhere, and their zeal in founding monasteries on their new English estates and endowing them with their parish churches, in a very short time bestowed a great number of parochial benefices upon the religious houses.

Sometimes a manor was given to a monastery with the appendant advowson of the rectory, which merely put the religious house in the position of any other patron; but in such cases the community usually, either at once or before very long, obtained some share of the income of the benefice, and ultimately, in most cases, its absolute appropriation.[82]

But in the more usual case the benefice was given to the religious house in such a way that the community became the “rector” of the parish, with, on one hand, all the responsibility of the cure of souls and the maintenance of the charities and hospitalities of the parish, and, on the other hand, with possession of all the endowments, fees, rights, and privileges of the rector. It is only charitable to suppose that the lords of manors, who thus gave over their advowsons, thought that they were doing two good things: first, putting the spiritual interests of the parishioners into the hands of men of superior unworldliness and spirituality, who would do better for them than the old squire-rectors and their hired chaplains; and secondly, devoting the surplus revenues of the benefices to the maintenance of religious organizations, which would use them to the glory of God and the spiritual profit of the people in many ways. These benefices were called appropriate benefices, from the customary phrase used in their conveyance, ad proprios usus of the abbot and the community.

The spiritual duties of the parish were sometimes served by one of the community in holy orders, or by a cleric attached to the house; sometimes by a stipendiary priest who was paid according to private agreement, and dismissed at pleasure.

A short experience showed that the monks told off to take charge of these appropriate parishes did not generally make very efficient parish priests—how, indeed, should they? The pastoral work of a parish requires other qualities, ideas, sympathies, than those which are proper to the cloister. And, on the other hand, it was soon found that where clerks were employed to fulfil the parochial duties, the parishes were under the disadvantages—with which some of us are well acquainted in these days—of one supplied during a vacancy by temporary help; the clerk had no status in the parish, and no permanent interest in it. In both cases it was found that the duties were often perfunctorily performed, and that the spiritual life of the parish languished.

Abbot presenting clerk for ordination. (Harl. MS., 1527.)

At the great national synod of Westminster, held by Anselm in 1102, which was attended by some of the lay nobles, an attempt was made to mitigate the evil. It was decreed (canon 21) that monks should not possess themselves of parish churches without the sanction of the bishop, and that they should not take so much of the profits of appropriate parishes as to impoverish the priests officiating therein. But the evil continued and increased until the Court of Rome took up the question and lent its authority to the movement. A decree of the Lateran Council in 1179 forbade the religious to receive tithes from the laity without the consent of the bishops, and empowered the bishops to make proper provision for the spiritual work of the appropriate parishes. The English bishops, strengthened by the Papal authority, set themselves to provide a remedy. This took the form of the foundation of Perpetual Vicarages in the appropriated parishes. The bishop required that the convent, instead of serving the parochial cure by one of the brethren, or by a clerk living in the monastery, or by a chaplain resident in the parish on such a stipend as the convent chose to give, and removable at pleasure, should nominate a competent parish priest, to the satisfaction of the bishop, who was to institute him as perpetual vicar. His title of “Vicarius” implied that he was the representative of the rector; his tenure was permanent and independent; he was answerable to the bishop, and to him only, for the proper fulfilment of his duties; and the bishop required that out of the revenues of the parish a house and such a portion should be assigned for a perpetual endowment as would enable the vicar of the parish to maintain his position in decent comfort.[83]

The pecuniary arrangement usually made was that the small tithes—“i.e. the tithes of every kind except of corn—and the customary offerings and fees, were assigned to the vicar; while the religious house took the ‘great tithes,’ i.e. the tithe of corn.” Sometimes the vicar took the whole revenue of the parish of all kinds, and paid a fixed yearly sum of money to the appropriators. Sometimes the community took the revenue, and gave the vicar a fixed sum.[84] There was an appeal open to both sides if it turned out that the original agreement seemed, on experience of its working, to be inequitable; and there are many cases in which vicars did appeal, and obtained an augmentation of their incomes.

A canon of Otho, 1237, required that a man instituted into a vicarage should be a deacon at least, and proceed to take priest’s orders in the course of his first year.

The details of a few special cases will illustrate these general statements, and will help to admit us into the inner life of the mediæval parishes from a new point of view, and so increase the knowledge we are seeking of the day-by-day religious life of the parish priests and their people.

Thurstan, son of Wini, in the time of King Edward the Confessor, gave the Manor of Harlow to the great monastery of St. Edmund, recently restored by Canute; with the manor the church appendant to it; the convent nominated to the rectory as any other patron would do, until Pope Boniface IX.—for the monastery claimed exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, and regarded no one but the Pope himself as its superior—gave the abbot licence to appropriate the church, and to provide for the cure of the parish either by one of the monks or by a secular priest as the abbot should think fit.

In 1398 the abbot, in obedience to the canons, was willing to have a vicarage appointed for the well-being of the parishioners; the vicar was to have the mansum of the rectory for his residence, and the tithe of all sorts of things, except the tithe of corn. It is worth while to give the list of the tithes allotted to the vicar, as an example once for all of what was included under the comprehensive name of small tithes, viz. of wool, lambs, calves, pigs, and geese; pears, apples, and other fruits of trees and orchards; flax, hemp, fallen wood, wax, honey and cheese; besides the tithes of a mill and a pigeon-house, and a money payment of 4s. 8¼d. a year, which probably was an existing composition for payment in kind or some small endowment for lights or what not. Then come some further stipulations. Seeing that the substitution of a poor vicar for a wealthy rector might affect the customary charities, the abbot was to pay 10s. a year to the parishioners to be distributed to the poor,[85] in compensation for any damage to them by means of the appropriation. Also the vicar was to pay a marc (13s. 4d.) to the Bishop of London in lieu of certain profits which the see would lose by the new arrangement.[86]