CHAPTER X

PARISH LIFE IN CATHOLIC ENGLAND

To understand the attitude of men’s minds to the ecclesiastical system on the eve of the great religious changes of the sixteenth century, some knowledge of the parochial life of Catholic England is necessary. Under present conditions, when unity has given place to diversity, and three centuries of continuous wrangling “over secret truths which most profoundly affect the heart and mind” have done much to coarsen and deaden our spiritual sense; when the religious mind of England manifests every shade of belief and unbelief without conscious reflection on the logical absurdity of the position, it is by no means easy to realise the influence of a state of affairs when all men, from the highest to the lowest, in every village and hamlet throughout the length and breadth of the land, had but one creed, worshipped their Maker in but one way, and were bound together with what most certainly were to them the real and practical ties of the Christian brotherhood. It is hardly possible to overestimate the effect of surroundings upon individual opinion, or the influence of a congenial atmosphere both on the growth and development of a spirit of religion and on the preservation of Christian morals and religious practices generally. When all, so far as religious faith is concerned, thought the same, and when all, so far as religious observance is concerned, did the same, the very atmosphere of unity was productive of that spirit of common brotherhood, which appears so plainly in the records of the period preceding the religious revolt of the sixteenth century. Those who will read below the surface and will examine for themselves into the social life of that time must admit, however much they feel bound to condemn the existing religious system, that it certainly maintained up to the very time of its overthrow a hold over the minds and hearts of the people at large, which nothing since has gained. Religion overflowed, as it were, into popular life, and helped to sanctify human interests, whilst the affection of the people was manifested in a thousand ways in regard to what we might now be inclined to consider the ecclesiastical domain. Whether for good or evil, religion in its highest and truest sense, at least as it was then understood, was to the English people as the bloom upon the choicest fruit. Whatever view may be taken as to advantage or disadvantage which came to the body politic, or to individuals, by the Reformation, it must be admitted that at least part of the price paid for the change was the destruction of the sense of corporate unity and common brotherhood, which was fostered by the religious unanimity of belief and practice in every village in the country, and which, as in the main-spring of its life, and the very central point of its being, centred in the Church with its rites and ceremonies.

A Venetian traveller at the beginning of the sixteenth century bears witness to the influence of religion upon the English people of that time. His opinion is all the more valuable, inasmuch as he appeals to the experience of his master, who was also the companion of his travels, to confirm his own impressions, and as he was fully alive to the weak points in the English character, of which he thus records his opinion: “The English are great lovers of themselves and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men but themselves and no other world but England. Whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say that ‘he looks like an Englishman,’ or that ‘it is a great pity that he should not be an Englishman,’ and when they partake of any delicacy with a foreigner they ask him whether such a thing is made in his country.”[314] In regard to the religious practices of the people, this intelligent foreigner says, “They all attend mass every day, and say many _Paternosters_ in public. The women carry long rosaries in their hands, and any who can read take the Office of Our Lady with them, and with some companion recite it in Church verse by verse, in a low voice, after the manner of churchmen. On Sundays they always hear Mass in their parish church and give liberal alms, because they may not offer less than a piece of money of which fourteen are equivalent to a golden ducat. Neither do they omit any form incumbent on good Christians.”[315]

In these days perhaps the suggestion that the English people commonly in the early sixteenth century were present daily at morning Mass is likely to be received with caution, and classed among the strange tales proverbially told by travellers, then as now. It is, however, confirmed by another Venetian who visited England some few years later, and who asserts that every morning “at daybreak he went to Mass arm-in-arm with some English nobleman or other.”[316] And, indeed, the same desire of the people to be present daily at the Sacrifice of the Mass is attested by Archbishop Cranmer when, after the change had come, he holds up to ridicule the traditional observances previously in vogue. What he specially objected to was the common practice of those who run, as he says, “from altar to altar, and from sacring, as they call it, to sacring, peeping, tooting, and gazing at that thing which the priest held up in his hands … and saying, ‘this day have I seen my Maker,’ and ‘I cannot be quiet except I see my Maker once a day.’”[317]

If there were no other evidence of the affection of the English people on the eve of the Reformation for their religion, that of the stone walls of the churches would be sufficient to prove the sincerity of their love. In the whole history of English architecture nothing is more remarkable than the activity in church building manifested during the later half of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth centuries. From one end of England to the other in the church walls are to be seen the evidences of thought and skill, labour and wealth, spent freely upon the sacred buildings during a period when it might not unnaturally have been thought that the civil dissensions of the Wars of the Roses, and the consequent destruction of life and property, would have been fatal to enterprise in the field of church building and church decoration and enrichment. It is not in any way an exaggeration to say that well-nigh every village church in England can show signs of this marvellous activity, whilst in many cases there is unmistakable evidence of personal care and thought in the smallest details.

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.

Beyond this, the parish, as a corporate body generally, if not invariably, possessed property in land and houses, which was administered by the people’s wardens for the public good. The annual proceeds lightened the common burdens, as indeed it was intended that they should. A further source of occasional income was found in the parish plays which were managed for the common profit. Very frequently the production was entrusted to some local guild, and the expenses of mounting were advanced by the parochial authorities, who not infrequently had amongst the church treasures the dress and other stage properties necessary for the proper productions. At Tintinhull, in Somerset, for instance, in 1451, five parishioners got up a Christmas play for the benefit of the fund required for the erection of the new rood loft. At Morebath there was an Easter play representing the Resurrection of our Lord, to defray the expenses incurred by the parish on some extensive repairs.[324]

With this general notion of the working of pre-Reformation parochial accounts, we are now in a position to turn by way of a particular example to those of Leverton. The village is situated about six miles from Boston. The church, until the neglect of the past three hundred years had disfigured it, must have been very beautiful when decked with the furniture and ornaments which the loving care of the people of the neighbourhood had collected within its walls. When first the accounts open in 1492, the parish was beginning to be interested, as indeed, by the way, so many parishes were at this period, in the setting up of a new peal of bells. The people had evidently made a great effort to get these, and they contributed most generously. The rector promised ten shillings and sixpence--which sum, by the way, some one paid for him--but the whole arrangement for the purchase and hanging of the bells was in the hands of the churchwardens. The bell chamber was mended and timber was bought to strengthen the framework. When this was ready, the great bell was brought over from the neighbouring town, and money is disbursed for the carriage and the team of horses, not forgetting a penny for the toll in crossing a bridge. One William Wright of Benington came over professionally to superintend the hanging and “trossyng” of this great service bell. We may judge, however, that it was not altogether satisfactory, for in 1498 the two wardens made a “move” to “the gathering of the township of Leverton in the kirk,” in which they collected £4, 13s. 0d., and they forthwith commenced again the building of a steeple for another set of bells. The stone was given to them, but they had to see to the work of quarrying it, and to all the business of collecting material and of building. Trees in a neighbouring wood were bought, were cut and carried, and sawn into beams and boards, and poles were selected for scaffolding. Lime was burnt and sand was dug for the mortar, and tubs were purchased to mix it in, whilst Wreth, the carpenter, was retained to look after the building in general, and the timberwork of the new belfry in particular.

This seems to have exhausted the parish exchequer for a year or two, but in 1503 the two wardens attended at Boston to see their bell “shot,” and to provide for its transport to Leverton. Here Richard Messur, the local blacksmith, had prepared the necessary bolts and locks to fasten it to the swinging beam, and he was in attendance professionally to see the bell hung, with John Red, the bellmaker of Boston, who, moreover, remained for a time to teach the parish men how to ring a peal upon their new bells.

As the sixteenth century progressed, a great deal of building and repairs was undertaken by the parish authorities. In 1503, a new font was ordered, and a deputation went to Frieston, about three miles from Leverton, to inspect and pass the work. The lead for the lining was procured, and it was cast on the spot. In 1517, repairs on the north side of the church were undertaken, and these must have been extensive, judging from the cost of the timber employed to shore up the walls during the progress of the work. Two years later, on the completion of these extensive building operations, which had been going on for some time, the church and churchyard were consecrated at a cost to the public purse of £3. In 1526, the rood loft was decorated, and the niches intended for images of the saints, but which had hitherto been vacant, were filled. One of the parishioners, William Frankish, in that year left a legacy of 46s. 8d. for the purpose. The wardens hired a man, called sometimes “the alabaster man,” and sometimes “Robert Brook the carver,” and in earnest for the seventeen images of alabaster of the rood loft they gave him a shilling. At the same time a collection was made for the support of the artist during his stay; some of the parishioners gave money, but most of them apparently contributed “cheese” for his use.

So much with regard to the serious building operations which were continued up to the very eve of the Reformation. They by no means occupied all the energies of the parish officials. If the books required binding, a travelling workman was engaged on the job, and leather, thread, wax, and other necessary materials were purchased for the work; the binder’s wife was paid extra for stitching, and he was apparently lodged by one of the townspeople as a contribution to the common work. Then there were vestments to be procured, and surplices and other church linen to be made, washed, and marked; the very marks, by the way, being given in the accounts. So entirely was the whole regarded as the work of the people, that just as we have seen how the parish paid for the consecration of their parish church and graveyard, so did they pay a fee to their own vicar for blessing the altar linen and the new vestments, and entering the names of benefactors on the parish bede-roll.[325]

Details such as these, which might be multiplied to any extent, make it abundantly clear that the church was the centre and soul of village life in pre-Reformation times, and that up to the very eve of the religious revolution it had not lost its place in the hearts of the people. In this connection it is useful to bear in mind, though somewhat difficult to realise, inasmuch as it is now too foreign to our modern experience, that in the period about which we are concerned the “parish” meant the whole community of a well-defined area “organised for church purposes and subject to church authority.” In such a district, writes Bishop Hobhouse, “every resident was a parishioner, and, as such, owed his duty of confession and submission to the official guidance of a stated pastor. There was no choice allowed. The community was completely organised with a constitution which recognised the rights of the whole and of every adult member to a voice of self-government when assembled for consultation under” their parish priest.[326] In this way the church was the centre of all parish life, in a way now almost inconceivable. “From the font to the grave,” says an authority on village life at this time, “the greater number of the people lived within the sound of its bells. It provided them with all the consolations of religion, and linked itself with such amusements as it did not directly supply.”[327]

The writer of the above words was specially interested in the accounts of the parish of St. Dunstan in the city of Canterbury, and some few notes on those accounts founded upon his preface may usefully be added to what has already been said. The parochial authorities evidently were possessed of considerable power either by custom or consent over the inhabitants. In St. Dunstan’s, for example, somewhere about 1485, there was some disagreement between a man named Baker and the parish, and an item of 2½d. appears in the accounts as spent on the arbitration that settled it. Later on, two families fell out, and the vicar and a jury of four parishioners met in council to put an end to what was considered a scandal. A parish so managed had necessarily some place in which the inhabitants of the district could meet, and this in St. Dunstan’s is called the _church house_, and sometimes the _parish house_. It is frequently mentioned in the matters of repairs, &c., and two dozen trenchers and spoons, the property of the parish, were placed there for use at the common feasts, and for preparation of food distributed to the poor. The annual dinner is named in the accounts, and there is no doubt the young people too had dancing, bowling, and other games, while “the ancients sat gravely by.”

The money needed for the repairs of the fabric and for parish work generally was here collected by the various brotherhoods connected with the church. Some wore “scutchons” or badges to show that they were authorised to beg. These brotherhoods were possessed of more than money; malt, wheat, barley, besides parish sheep and parish cows let out to the highest bidder, are mentioned in the accounts as belonging to them. One Nicholas Reugge, for example, left four cows to the people of the parish to free them for ever from the cost of supplying the “paschal,” or great Easter candle. These four cows were valued by the churchwardens at 10s. apiece, and were each let at a rent of 2s. a year. In 1521, one John Richardson rented five-and-twenty of the parish sheep, and the wardens received rent of lambs, wool, &c. The chief of the brotherhoods connected with St. Dunstan’s was that named the “Schaft,” and it had the principal voice in the ultimate management of parochial affairs. Besides this, however, there were many other associations, such as that of St. Anne for women and that of St. John for youths, and various wardens were appointed to collect the money necessary to keep the various lights, such as St. Anne’s light, St. John’s light, St. Katherine’s light, and the light of the Holy Rood. “These things,” writes the editor of these interesting accounts, “all go to show what life and activity there was in this little parish, which never wanted willing men to devote their time and influence to the management of their own affairs.”

The parish was small, numbering perhaps hardly more than 400 souls. “But if small,” says the same authority, “it was thoroughly efficient, and the religious and intellectual work was as actively carried on as the social.” At the close of the reign of Henry VIII. the church possessed a library of some fifty volumes. Of these about a dozen were religious plays, part, no doubt, of the Corpus Christi mystery plays, which were carried out at St. Dunstan’s with undiminished splendour till the advent of the new ideas in the reign of Edward VI.

These parish accounts prove that many cases of disagreement and misunderstanding, which in modern times would most likely lead to long and protracted cases in the Law Courts, were not infrequently settled by arbitration, or by means of a parish meeting or a jury of neighbours. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the law had to be invoked in defence of parochial rights. A case in point is afforded in the accounts of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury. Nicholas Reugge, as we have said above, had left money to purchase four cows as an endowment for the Paschal candle and the Font taper. Things went well, apparently, till 1486, when William Belser, who rented the stock, died, and his executors either could not or would not, or, at any rate, did not pay. To recover the common property, the churchwardens, as trustees for the parish, had to commence a suit at law. Chief-Justice Fineux and Mr. Attorney-General John Roper were two of the parishioners, and the parish had their advice, it may be presumed gratuitously. The case, however, seems to have dragged on for five years, as it was finally settled only in 1491, when the parish scored a pyrrhic victory, for although they recovered 30s., the value of three of the cows, their costs had mounted up to 35s. 2d., and as they never could get more than a third of that amount from the defendants, on the whole they were out of pocket by their adventure with the law.

For the most part, however, the parish settled its own difficulties in its own way. Documents preserved almost by chance clearly show that a vast number of small cases--police cases we should call them--were in pre-Reformation days arranged by the ecclesiastical authority. Disputes, brawls, libels, minor immoralities, and the like, which nowadays would have to be dealt with by the local justices of the peace or by the magistrates at quarter sessions, or even by the judges at assizes, were disposed of by the parson and the parish. It may not have been an ideal system, but it was patriarchal and expeditious. The Sunday pulpit was used not only for religious instruction, properly so called, and for the “bedes-bidding,” but for the publication of an endless variety of notices of common interest. The church was, as we have said, the centre of popular life, and it was under these circumstances the natural place for the proclamation of the commencement of some inquiry into a local suit, or one in which local people were concerned. It was here, in the house of God, and at the Sunday service at which all were bound to be present, that witnesses were cited and accused persons warned of proceedings against them. Here was made the declaration of the probate of wills of deceased persons, and warning given to claimants against the estate to come forward and substantiate their demands. Here, too, were issued proclamations against such as did not pay their just debts or detained the goods of others; here those who had been guilty of defamation of character were ordered to restore the good name of those they had calumniated; and those who, having been joined in wedlock, had separated without just and approved cause, were warned of the obligations of Christian marriage. The transactions of business of this kind in the parish church by the parish officials made God’s house a practical reality and God’s law a practical code in the ordinary affairs of life, and gave religion a living importance in the daily lives of every member of every parish throughout the country.