The Eve of the Reformation

No less remarkable than the extent of this movement is the source from which the money necessary for all the work upon the cathedrals and parish churches of the country came. In previous centuries, to a great extent churches and monastic buildings owed their existence and embellishment mainly to the individual enterprise of the powerful nobles or rich ecclesiastics; but from the middle of the fifteenth century the numerous, and, in many cases, even vast operations, undertaken in regard to ecclesiastical buildings and ornamentation, were the work of the people at large, and were mainly directed by their chosen representatives. At the close of the fifteenth century, church work was in every sense of the word a popular work, and the wills, inventories, and churchwardens’ accounts prove beyond question that the people generally contributed generously according to their means, and that theirs was the initiative, and theirs the energetic administration by which the whole was accomplished.318 Gifts of money and valuables, bequests of all kinds, systematic collections by parish officials, or by directors of guilds, often extending over considerable periods, and the proceeds of parish plays and parish feasts, were the ordinary means by which the sums necessary to carry out these works of building and embellishment were provided. Those who had no money to give brought articles of jewellery, such as rings, brooches, buckles, and the like, or articles of dress or of domestic utility, to be converted into vestments, banners, and altar hangings to adorn the images and shrines, to make the sacred vessels of God’s house, or to be sold for like purposes. For the same end, and to secure the perpetuity of lamps before the Blessed Sacrament, or lights before the altars of saints, people gave houses and lands into the care of the parish officials, or made over to them cattle and sheep to be held in trust, which, when let out at a rent, formed a permanent endowment for the furtherance of these sacred purposes.

Undoubtedly the period with which we are concerned was not merely an age of building, but an age of decoration, and of decoration which may almost be described as “lavish.” The very architecture of the time is proof of the wealth of ornament with which men sought to give expression to their enthusiastic love of the Houses of God, which they had come to regard as the centre of their social no less than of their religious life. Flowing lines in tracery and arch moulding gave place to straight lines, groined roofs were enriched by extra ribs, and panels of elaborate work covered the plain surfaces of former times; the very key-stones of the vaulting became pendants, and the springers branched out like palm trees, forming that rich and entirely English variety of groin called “fan-tracery,” such as we see at Sherborne, Eton, King’s College, Cambridge, and Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster. “In other respects,” says a modern writer, “the architects of the fifteenth century were very successful. Few things can be seen more beautiful than the steeples of Gloucester Cathedral and St. Mary’s, Taunton. The open roofs, as for example that of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, are superb, and finally they have left us a large number of enormous parish churches all over the country, full of interesting furniture and decoration.”

The fact is, that this was the last expression of Gothic as a living art. The builders and beautifiers of the English churches on the eve of the religious changes spoke still a living language, and their works still tell us of the fulness of the hearts which planned and executed such works. It is somewhat difficult for us to understand this, when living in an age of imitation, and at a time when architecture has no longer a language of its own. “Imitation,” writes Mr. Ferguson, “is in fact all we aim at in the architectural art of the present day. We entrust its exercise to a specially educated class, most learned in the details of the style they are called upon to work in, and they produce buildings which delight the scholars and archæologists of the day, but which the less educated classes neither understand nor appreciate, and which will lose their significance the moment the fashion which produced them has passed away.

“The difference between this artificial state of things and the practice of a true style will not be difficult to understand. When, for instance, Gothic was a living art in England, men expressed themselves in it as in any other part of the vernacular. Whatever was done was a part of the usual, ordinary every-day life, and men had no more difficulty in understanding what others were doing than in comprehending what they were saying. A mason did not require to be a learned man to chisel what he had carved ever since he was a boy, and what alone he had seen being done during his lifetime, and he adapted new forms just in the same manner and as naturally as men adapt new modes of expression in language as they happen to be introduced, without even remarking it. At that time any educated man could design in Gothic Art, just as any man who can read and write can now compose and give utterance to any poetry or prose that may be in him.

“Where art is a true art, it is naturally practised and as easily understood, as a vernacular literature of which, indeed, it is an essential and most expressive part, and so it was in Greece and Rome, and so, too, in the Middle Ages. But with us it is little more than a dead corpse, galvanised into spasmodic life by a few selected practitioners for the amusement and delight of a small section of the specially educated classes. It expresses truthfully neither our wants nor our feelings, and we ought not to be surprised how very unsatisfactory every modern building really is, even when executed by the most talented architects as compared with the productions of our village mason or parish priest at an age when men sought only to express clearly what they felt strongly, and sought to do it only in their natural mother tongue, untrammelled by the fetters of a dead or familiar foreign form of speech.”319

To any one who will examine the churchwardens’ accounts of the period previous to the religious changes, the truth of the above quotation will clearly appear. Then, if ever, ecclesiastical art and architecture was the living expression of popular feeling and popular love of religion, and the wholesale destruction of ancient architectural monuments throughout the land, the pulling down of rood and screen and image, the casting down of monuments sacred to the memory of the best and holiest and most venerated names in the long roll of English men of honour, the breaking up of stone-work and metal-work upon which the marks of the chisel of the mason and graver were yet fresh, the whitewash daubed over paintings which had helped to make the parish churches objects of beauty and interest to the people, the ruthless smashing of the pictured window lights, and the pillage of the sacred vessels and vestments and hangings, which the people and their fathers had loved to provide for God’s service – all this and much more of the same kind, the perhaps inevitable accompaniments of the religious change, was nothing less to the people than proscription by authority of the national language of art and architecture, such as they had hitherto understood it. And never probably had the language been more truly the language of the people at large. For reasons just assigned, the work of church building and church decoration, and the provision of vestments and plate, the care of the fabric and the very details of things necessary for the church services, were in the hands of the people. The period in question had given rise to the great middle class, and here, as in Germany, the burgher folk, the merchants and traders, began literally to lavish their gifts in adornment of their parish churches, and to vie one with another in the profusion of their generosity.

It is somewhat difficult for us, as we look upon the generally bare and unfurnished churches that have been left to us as monuments of the past about which we are concerned, to realise what they must have been before what a modern writer has fitly called “the great pillage” commenced. All, from the great minsters and cathedral churches down to the poorest little village sanctuary, were in those days simply overflowing with wealth and objects of beauty which loving hands had gathered together to adorn God’s house, and to make it the best and brightest spot in their little world, and so far as their means would allow the very pride of their hearts. This is no fancy picture. The inventories of English churches in this period when compared, say, with those of Italy, reveal the fact that the former were in every way incomparably better furnished than the latter. The Venetian traveller in England in 1500 was impressed by this very thing during his journeyings throughout the country. He notes and comments upon the great sums of money regularly given to the church as a matter of course by Englishmen of all sorts. Then after speaking of the important wealth of the country as evidenced by the silver plate possessed by all but the poorest in the land, he continues: “But above all are their riches displayed in the church treasures, for there is not a parish church in the kingdom so mean as not to possess crucifixes, candlesticks, censers, patens and cups of silver, nor is there a convent of mendicant friars so poor as not to have all these same articles in silver, besides many other ornaments worthy of a cathedral church in the same metal. Your magnificence may therefore imagine what the decorations of those enormously rich Benedictine, Carthusian, and Cistercian monasteries must be… I have been informed that amongst other things many of these monasteries possess unicorns’ horns of an extraordinary size. I have also been told that they have some splendid tombs of English saints, such as St. Oswald, St. Edmund, and St. Edward, all kings and martyrs. I saw, one day being with your magnificence, at Westminster, a place out of London, the tomb of that saint, King Edward the Confessor, in the church of the foresaid place, Westminster; and indeed, neither St. Martin of Tours, a church in France, which I have heard is one of the richest in existence, nor anything else that I have ever seen, can be put into comparison with it. The magnificence of the tomb of St. Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury, surpasses all belief.”

Our present concern, however, is not with the greater churches of the kingdom, but with the parish churches which were scattered in such profusion all over the country. An examination of such parochial accounts as are still preserved affords an insight into the working of the parish, and evidences the care taken by the people to maintain and increase the treasures of their churches. What is most remarkable about the accounts that remain, which are, of course, but the scanty survivals from the wreck, is their consistent tenor. They one and all tell the same story of general and intelligent interest taken by the people as a whole in the beautifying and supporting of their parish churches. In a very real sense, that seems strange to us now, it was their church; their life centred in it, and they were intimately concerned in its working and management. The articles of furniture and plate, the vestments and hangings had a well-known history, and were regarded as – what in truth they were – the common property of every soul in the particular village or district. Such accounts as we are referring to prove that specific gifts and contributions continued to flow in an ample stream to the churches from men and women of every sort and condition up to the very eve of the great religious changes.

From these and similar records we may learn a good deal about parochial life and interests in the closing period of the old ecclesiastical system. The church was the common care and business. Its welfare was the concern of the people at large, and took its natural place in their daily lives. Was there any building to be done, a new peal of bells to be procured, the organs to be mended, new plate to be bought, or the like, it was the parish as a corporate body that decided the matter, arranged the details, and provided for the payment. At times, say for example when a new vestment was in question, the whole parish would be called to sit in council in the church house upon this matter of common interest, and discuss the cost, and stuff, and make.

To take some examples: the inventory of Cranbrook parish church for 1509 shows that all benefactors were regularly noted down on a roll of honour, that their gifts might be known and remembered. The presents, of course, vary greatly in value: thus, there was a monstrance of silver and gilt of the “value of £20, of Sir Robert Egelonby’s gift; which Sir Robert was John Roberts’ priest thirty years, and he never had other service nor benefice; and the said John Roberts was father to Walter Roberts, Esquire.” And the foresaid Sir Robert gave also to the common treasury of the parish “two candlesticks of silver and twenty marks of old nobles.” Again John Hendely “gave three copes of purple velvet, whereof one was of velvet upon velvet with images broidered,” and, adds the inventory, “for a perpetual memory of this deed of goodness to the common purposes of the parish church, his name is to be read out to the people on festival days.” “He is grandfather of Gervase Hendely of Cushorn, and of Thomas of Cranbrook Street.” Or once more, it is recorded that “old mother Hopper” gave the “two long candlesticks before Our Lady’s altar, fronted with lions, and a towel on the rood of Our Lady’s chancel.”

So, too, the inventory of the church goods of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, includes a wonderful list of furniture, plate, and vestments to which the names of the donors are attached. Thus, the best chalice was the gift of one “Harry Bole”; the two great candlesticks of laten of John Philpot; and “a kercher for Our Lady and a chapplet and a powdryd cap for her Son,” the gift of Margery Roper.

The memory of these gifts was kept alive among the people by the “bede-roll” or list of those for whom the parish was bound to pray in return for their benefactions to the public good. Thus to take an example: at Leverton, in the county of Lincoln, the parson, Sir John Wright, presented the church with a suit of red purple vestments, “for the which,” says the note in the churchwardens’ accounts, “you shall all specially pray for the souls of William Wright and Elizabeth his wife (father and mother of the donor), and for the soul of Sir William Wright, their son, and for the soul of Sir John, sometime parson of this place, and for the souls of Richard Wright and Isabel his wife, John Trowting and Helen his wife, and for all benefactors, as well them that be alive as them that be departed to the mercy of God, for whose lives and souls are given here (these vestments) to the honour of God, His most blessed Mother, Our Lady Saint Mary, and all His Saints in Heaven, and the blessed matron St. Helen his patron, to be used at such principal feasts and times as it shall please the curates as long as they shall last. For all these souls and all Christian souls you shall say one Paternoster.”320

In this way the memory of benefactors and their good deeds was ever kept alive in the minds of those who benefited by their gifts. The parish treasury was not to them so much stock, the accumulation of years, without definite history or purpose; but every article, vestment, banner, hanging, and chalice, and the rest called for the affectionate memories of both the living and the dead. On high day and festival, when the church was decked with all that was best and richest in the parochial treasury, the display of the parish ornaments recalled to the mind of the people assembled within its walls the memory of good deeds done by neighbours for the common good. “The immense treasures in the churches,” writes Dr. Jessop, “were the joy and boast of every man and woman and child in England, who day by day and week by week assembled to worship in the old houses of God which they and their fathers had built, and whose every vestment and chalice and candlestick and banner, organs and bells and picture and image and altar and shrine, they looked upon as their own and part of their birthright.”321

What seems so strange about the facts revealed to us in these church accounts of bygone times is that, where now we might naturally be inclined to look for poverty and meanness, there is evidence of the contrary, so far as the parish church is concerned. Even when the lives of the parishioners were spent in daily labours to secure the bare necessities of life, and the village was situated in the most out-of-the-way part of the country, the sordid surroundings of a hard life find no counterpart in the parish accounts so far as the church is concerned, but even under such unfavourable circumstances there is evidence of a taste for things of art and beauty, and of both the will and power to procure them. To take some examples: Morebath was a small uplandish parish of no importance lying within the borders of Devon, among the hills near the sources of the river Exe. The population was scanty, and worldly riches evidently not abundant. Morebath may, consequently, be taken as a fair sample of an obscure and poor village community. For this hamlet we possess fairly full accounts for the close of the period under consideration, namely, from the year 1530. At this time, in this poor place, there were no less than eight separate accounts kept of money intended for the support of different altars, or for carrying out definite decorations, such as, for example, the chapels of St. George and Our Lady, and the guilds of the young men and maidens of the parish. To the credit of these various accounts, or “stores,” as they are called, are entered numerous gifts of money, or articles of value, and even of kind, like cows and swarms of bees. Most of them are possessed of cattle and sheep, the proceeds from the rent of which form a considerable portion of their endowment. The accounts as a whole furnish abundant evidence of active and intelligent interest in the support and adornment of the parish church on the part of the people at large. Voluntary rates to clear off obligations contracted for the benefit of the community, such as the purchase of bells, the repair of the fabric, or even the making of roads and bridges, were raised. Collections for Peter’s pence, for the support of the parish clerk, and for various other church purposes, are recorded, and the spirit of self-help is evidenced in every line of these records. In 1528 the vicar gave up his rights to certain wool tithes in order to purchase a complete set of black vestments, which were only finished and paid for, at the cost of £6, 5s. 0d., in 1547. In the year 1538, the parish made a voluntary rate to purchase a new cope, and the collection for the purpose secured £3, 6s. 8d. When in 1534 the silver chalice was stolen, “ye yong men and maydens of ye parysshe dru themselffe together, and at ther gyfts and provysyon they bought in another chalice without any charge of the parysshe.” Sums of money big and small, specific gifts in kind, the stuff or ornaments needed for vestments, were apparently always forthcoming when occasion required. Thus at one time a new cope is suggested, and Anne Tymwell of Hayne gave the churchwardens her “gown and ring,” Joan Tymwell a cloak and girdle, and Richard Norman “seven sheep and three shillings and four pence in money,” towards the expenses. At another time it is a set of black vestments; at another a chalice; at another a censer; but whatever it was, the people were evidently ready and desirous of taking their share in the common work of the parish. In 1529 the wardens state that Elinor Nicoll gave to the store of St. Sydwell her wedding-ring – “the which ring,” they add, “did help to make Saint Sydwell’s shoes.” Then she gave to “the store of Jesus” a little silver cross, parcel gilt, of the value of 4d. In 1537 there is one item which deserves to be noted, as it records the arrival of a piece of spoil from Barlinch Abbey Church, which was dissolved by the king’s orders the previous year. “Memorandum,” runs the entry, “Hugh Poulett gave to the church one of the glass windows of the Barlinch, with the iron and stone and all the price” for setting it up.322

To understand the working of the pre-Reformation parish, it is necessary to enter in detail into some one of the accounts that are still preserved to us. We may conveniently take those of Leverton in Lincolnshire, printed in the Archæologia, which commence in the year 1492. It is well to note, however, that the same story of self-help and the same evidence of a spirit of affection for the parish church and its services, is manifested in every account of this kind we possess. It must be remembered that it was popular government in a true sense that then regulated all parochial matters. Every adult of both sexes had a voice in this system of self-government, and what cannot fail to strike the student of these records is that, in the management of the fabric, in the arrangements for the services, and all things necessary for the due performance of these, diocesan authorities evidently left to the parish itself a wise discretion. No doubt the higher ecclesiastical officials could interfere in theory, but in practice such interference was rare. If the means necessary to carry out repairs and keep the church in an efficient state, both as to fabric and ornaments, were apparently never wanting, it must be borne in mind that it was then regarded as a solemn duty binding on the conscience of each parishioner to maintain the House of God and the parochial services. Bishop Hobhouse, from an examination of the churchwardens’ accounts for some parishes in Somerset, is able to describe the various ways in which the parochial exchequer was replenished. First, there were the voluntary rates, called “setts,” and these, though voluntary in the sense that their imposition depended on the will of the people at large, when once the parish had declared for the rate, all were bound to pay. Then the mediæval church authorities cultivated various methods of eliciting the goodwill of the people, and after prohibiting work on Sundays and certain festivals, busied themselves with the finding of amusements. Amongst these were the parish feasts and church ales, at which collections for various public purposes were made, which, together with the profits made from such entertainments by those who managed them for the benefit of the public purse, formed one of the chief sources of parochial income. Beyond this, the principle of association was thoroughly understood and carried out in practice in the village and town communities. People banded themselves together in religious guilds and societies, the raison d’être of which was the maintenance of special decorations at special altars, the support of lamps and lights, or the keeping of obits and festivals. These societies, moreover, became the centres of organisation of any needed special collections, and from their funds, or “stores” as they were called, they contributed to the general expenses of maintaining the fabric and the services. Popular bounty was, moreover, elicited by means of the “bede-roll,” or list of public benefactors, for whom the prayers of the parishioners were asked in the church on great festivals. On this list of honour, all – even the poorest – were anxious that their names should appear, and that their memory be kept and their souls prayed for in the House of God which they had loved in life. Even more than money, which in those days, especially in out-of-the-way places, was not over plentiful, the churchwardens’ accounts show that specific gifts of all kinds, either to be sold for the profit of the purpose for which they were bestowed, or to form a permanent part of the church treasury, were common in pre-Reformation times.

Added to these sources of income were the profits of trade carried on in the “church house.” Besides the church itself, the wardens’ accounts testify to the existence of a church house, if not as a universal feature in mediæval parish life, at least as a very common one. It was the parish club-house – the centre of parochial life and local self-government; the place where the community would assemble for business and pleasure. It was thus the focus of all the social life of the parish, and the system was extending in influence and utility up to the eve of the great religious changes which put an end to the popular side of parochial life. At Tintinhull, a small village in Somerset, for example, the accounts help us to trace the growth of this parish club-house. Beginning as a place for making the altar bread, it developed into a bakery for the supply of the community. It then took up the brewing of beer to supply the people and the church ales and similar parish festivals. This soon grew into the brewing of beer to supply those who required a supply, and at the same time the oven and brewing utensils were let out to hire to private persons. In the reign of Henry VII. a house was bought by the wardens for parish purposes, and one Agnes Cook was placed in it to manage it for the common benefit. In 1533 it was in full swing as a parish club-house, used for business and pleasure.323 The “ale” – the forerunner of the wardens’ “charity dinner” – was the ordinary way of raising money to meet extraordinary expenses; and as an incidental accompaniment came invitations to other parishes in the neighbourhood, and we find items charged for the expenses of churchwardens attending at other parochial feasts, and the sums they there put into the collection plate.