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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2022
Boys who were tonsured by their bishop acquired clerical status. Bishops might confer the tonsure at or near a general ordination but also on their progress around their diocese or when resident at one of their manor houses. Candidates had to be ‘literate’, possessing a certain level of Latin, free (or manumitted), legitimate (or dispensed) and ‘suitable’. There is evidence of local selection and candidates were examined before being tonsured. Tonsuring could be the first stage in progress to the priesthood, but many did not proceed beyond the first tonsure and others progressed only to ordination as acolyte.
1 These numbers exclude those from other dioceses ordained with letters dimissory, and also beneficed clergy and religious, who did not necessarily originate from the diocese.
2 Acolyte was the highest of the four minor orders, the other three being doorkeeper, lector and exorcist, which were not administered separately in this period (but see n. 15 below). For a discussion of the duties of each order see Cullum, P. H., ‘Boy/man into clerk/priest: the making of the late medieval clergy’, in McDonald, N. F. and Ormrod, W. M. (eds), Rites of passage: cultures of transition in the fourteenth century, York 2004, 51–65Google Scholar. See also Swanson, R. N., Church and society in late medieval England, Oxford 1993, 40–3Google Scholar.
3 Smith, D. M., Guide to bishops’ registers of England and Wales: a survey from the Middle Ages to the abolition of episcopacy in 1646, London 1981Google Scholar.
4 Thompson, A. Hamilton, ‘The registers of John Gynewell, bishop of Lincoln, for the years 1347–1350’, Archaeological Journal lxviii (1911), 300–60 at p. 302 and n. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Smith, D. M., ‘Lost archiepiscopal registers of York: the evidence of five medieval inventories’, Borthwick Institute Bulletin xi (1975), 31–7Google Scholar.
6 Robinson, D., ‘The Black Death and clerical recruitment: the evidence of ordination lists’, Archives liv/2 (2019), 1–36 at pp. 4–5Google Scholar.
7 There is evidence, later in the Middle Ages, of ‘the first tonsure being subsumed in receipt of the higher order’: Swanson, Church and society, 41. See also Cullum, ‘Boy/man into clerk/priest’, 56. Lyndwood, in the fifteenth century, discussing whether the first tonsure might be conferred on a person together with the other minor orders on the same day, considered that they ought not to be conferred openly but might be conferred privately on the same day before the beginning of the mass of the celebration of orders: Provinciale, seu constitutiones Angliae, Oxford 1679, 310.
8 Winchester: Registrum Henrici Woodlock, diocesis Wintoniensis, A.D. 1305–1316, ed. A. W. Goodman (CYS xliii–xliv, 1940–1); The registers of John de Sandale and Rigaud de Asserio, bishops of Winchester (A.D. 1316–1323), ed. F. J. Baigent (Hampshire Record Society, 1897); The register of John de Stratford, bishop of Winchester, 1323–1333, ed. R. M. Haines (Surrey Record Society xlii–xliii, 2010–11); The register of William Edington, bishop of Winchester, 1346–1366, ed. S. F. Hockey (Hampshire Record Series vii–viii, 1986–7). Exeter: The register of Walter de Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1307–1326), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, London–Exeter 1892. Rochester: Registrum Hamonis Hethe, diocesis Roffensis, A.D. 1319–1352, ed. C. Johnson (CYS xlviii–xlix, 1948). Durham: Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, ed. T. D. Hardy (Rolls Series, 1873–8). Worcester: Calendar of the register of Simon de Montacute, bishop of Worcester, 1333–1337 (WHS n.s. xv, 1996); Worcestershire Archives, b716.093–BA.2648/2(iv), register of Thomas Hempnall; A calendar of the register of Wolstan de Bransford, bishop of Worcester, 1339–49, ed. R. M. Haines (WHS n.s. iv; Historical Manuscripts Commission joint publication ix, 1966). Ely: Cambridge University Library, EDR, G/1/1, registers of Simon Montacute and Thomas de Lisle. Scattered entries can be found in other registers.
9 Bishop Pontoise of Winchester searched his ordination register for a boy who had been tonsured at Southampton in 1292 and issued him letters testimonial although, on another occasion, when a man accused of causing a death pleaded benefit of clergy and this was doubted by some who were enemies (‘a nonnullis emulis'), Pontoise relied on depositions of faithful witnesses that the man had received the tonsure from Bishop John Gervase (1262–8): Registrum Johannis de Pontissara, episcopi Wintoniensis, A.D. MCCLXXXII–MCCCIV, ed. C. Deedes (CYS xix, xxx, 1915–24; Surrey Record Society i, vi, 1916–24), i. 157–8, 297, cf. ii. 459–61.
10 If a bishop ordained to the higher orders a man without a title (secure income), he and his successors became liable to support him if he fell into poverty, but titles were not required for the first tonsure or ordination as acolyte.
11 The Exeter scribe noted of two small tonsurings in 1313, of six boys on one occasion and one on the other, ‘me absente’ and ‘similiter me absente’, and in 1314, when seven were tonsured, ‘et memorandum quod non interfui’: Reg. Stapeldon, 490, 494. It is easy to believe that on similar occasions in this and other dioceses tonsurings might not have been recorded. The scribe was also on one occasion absent from an ordination to acolyte and the higher orders: Reg. Stapeldon, 495.
12 ‘Ordained’ is frequently used in the registers, although ‘conferring the first tonsure’ is also used and Bishop Assier of Winchester, when commissioning Peter, episcopus Corbavensis (Krbava, now in Croatia), distinguished between ordaining to major and minor orders and ‘imposing or conferring [clerical] character’: Regs Sandale and Asserio, 420. There had been discussion among canonists as to whether the first tonsure constituted an order, but it became accepted as such: Lyndwood, Provinciale, 117.
13 In Bishop Woodlock's lists of ordinands at general ordinations the first tonsures usually precede the acolytes but occasionally follow the priests. This may indicate that tonsuring took place either earlier in the day or following the ordination, although it may simply reflect the scribes’ arrangement of their draft lists. On 22 February 1309 twenty-nine first tonsures precede the acolytes, and following the list of priests there is a memorandum that the bishops ordained to the first tonsure ‘the clerks written below’, followed by nineteen further names.
14 Bishop Pontoise referred to ‘primam tonsuram que vulgariter apud nos corona benedicta nuncupatur’: Reg. Pontissara, i. 157–8, and the list for 21 August 1308 in the register of his successor, Henry Woodlock, is headed ‘benedicti’: Reg. Woodlock, ii. 811. Two letters in Latin to Bishop Montacute of Worcester permitting the tonsuring of bondmen refer to the first tonsure; a third, in French, refers to ‘le ordre benoyte’: Reg. Montacute (Worcester), 559–61. ‘Psalmistatus’ is also used on occasion: Lyndwood, Provinciale, 117; Registrum Johannis Trillek, episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MCCCXLIV–MCCCLXI, ed. J. H. Parry (Cantilupe Society, 1910; CYS viii, 1912), 56. In a list of 158 boys tonsured at Balsham in 1340 ‘psalt'’ is noted against the name of John Blessed of Bottisham, which may suggest that ‘psalmistatus’ was occasionally used in a specific sense: Reg. Montacute (Ely), fo. 122.
15 Reg. Hethe, i 178; The register of William Melton, archbishop of York, 1317–40, i, ed. R. M. T. Hill (CYS lxxx, 1977), 27, 87. Although it was uncommon for boys to enter a religious house or order before receiving the first tonsure, the fact that the ‘exorciste’ preceded acolytes and those seeking the higher orders indicates that the letters dimissory were for tonsuring. The location of the abbey, at the westernmost part of the diocese, rarely visited by the archbishop and probably rarely by a suffragan, may explain why boys old enough to be accepted as novices might not have received the tonsure while still in secular life. The St David's episcopal registers in the later fifteeenth century and the sixteenth century also refer to what are clearly tonsurings as ‘exorcist’: The episcopal registers of the diocese of St David's, 1397 to 1518, ed. R. F. Isaacson and A. Roberts (Cymmrodorion Record Series vi, 1917–20). Cullum suggests that ‘exorcist’ may have been used with reference to tonsured boys serving as holy water clerks in parishes: ‘Boy/man into clerk/priest’, 61.
16 These are the number of names listed for each order. The heading to the list states that ‘about 400’ were tonsured and 300 ordained as acolyte. It is possible that preparatory lists were misidentified although it would be understandable if the distances which candidates needed to travel deterred many potential candidates for tonsuring from attending.
17 Reg. Stapeldon, 446–61.
18 Ibid. 509–11. Ordination at or about the time of a general ordination no doubt often facilitated supervision of the boys on their journeys and while they were at the place of ordination. In Figure 1, the number of asterisks denotes the number of such ordinations. It also provides a summary of the number of tonsurings and boys tonsured as recorded in the registers but it must be stressed that we cannot know how complete a record of these events survives in the registers; the numbers must be received with caution.
19 RPD iii. 168–72.
20 Hempnall's tonsurings are not associated with episcopal visitation: Haines, R. M., The administration of the diocese of Worcester in the first half of the fourteenth century, London 1965Google Scholar, 157; Reg. Hempnall, 42, 59–60. Some of Bransford's tonsurings appear to have taken place during his 1340 and 1343 visitations: Reg. Bransford, 1074–83.
21 Parents were expected to bring their children for confirmation when ‘they hear the bishop to be near [prope adesse audierint]’, ‘prope’ being within seven miles, ‘as common use has it’: Lyndwood, Provinciale, 34.
22 RPD iii. 165–6. Bishop Edington of Winchester conferred tonsures on thirteen occasions between 15 August and 18 September 1348.
23 Hethe was charged at an archiepiscopal visitation in 1329 with not travelling around his diocese and, in particular, not confirming children in the Wealden parishes, but remaining in Halling and Trottiscliffe. He was acquitted: Reg. Hethe, i. 424–8.
24 Reg. Montacute (Ely), fos 122v, 124r.
25 Bearing the name of a diocese under Orthodox or Islamic rule.
26 Except for ordaining, these were all included in the bishop of Chichester's commission in 1333, when Hethe tonsured forty-four boys in Battle Abbey: Reg. Hethe, i. 530–1. In 1332 Hethe held an ordination in Canterbury cathedral, including tonsuring 178 boys of Canterbury diocese, by commission of the archbishop: Reg. Hethe, i. 520. Such commissions provide evidence of actions which medieval bishops must regularly have undertaken when travelling around their diocese but which, apart from ordaining, leave little trace in their registers.
27 Ibid. i. 501–2.
28 Stapledon also received commissions from the archbishop of Canterbury to perform episcopal acts, including tonsuring, at East Horsley, in the archbishop's immediate jurisdiction: Reg. Stapeldon, 467–9, 475–7, 482–3, 488–9, 499, 502–3, 507–8 (this commission explicitly excludes conferring the first tonsure on boys of Winchester diocese), 515, 522, 531.
29 Reg. Melton, i. 366.
30 The appearance of systematic and complete registration might nevertheless sometimes conceal error and omission: see n. 6 above.
31 The employment of bishops other than the diocesan may also have led to names not being entered although, when Bishop Kirkby of Carlisle ordained in Corbridge parish church on behalf of the bishop of Durham in 1334, he omitted the names of those tonsured from his own register but they appear with the other ordinands’ names in the Durham register: The register of John Kirkby, bishop of Carlisle, 1332–52, and the register of John Ross, bishop of Carlisle, 1324–32, ed. R. L. Storey (CYS lxxix, lxxxi, 1993–5), i. 231; RPD iii. 156.
32 In these dioceses systematic recording over an extended period seems probable. The dates have been selected to minimise the likelihood of acolytes having been tonsured prior to the earliest surviving records.
33 Although some apparent absences may be explained by the ordinand's name being differently expressed on the two occasions.
34 In some cases a tonsured boy and an acolyte might bear the same name. The December 1308 lists include four examples, additional to the twenty-two of first tonsures and acolytes bearing the same name but being listed under different archdeaconries.
35 There is little evidence of numbers during and immediately following the Black Death. Edington and Hethe performed tonsurings in 1349, Edington on eight recorded occasions with thirty-five candidates, and Hethe on four occasions with ten candidates. Numbers recorded are very low in the following years in the few dioceses for which there are records: between 1351 and 1355, 1352 is the highest year in Canterbury (fifty-seven on three occasions) and Ely (forty-two on five occasions) and 1353 in Rochester (eleven on four occasions). In each of these dioceses there is more than one year without recorded tonsurings.
36 The number of boys tonsured in Rochester was none the less extremely high compared with the number ordained to higher orders, the diocese, like others in the south-east of England, producing remarkably few priests. Winchester probably follows the same pattern. Although we have no evidence for the largest dioceses, we might reasonably assume that in these dioceses, where the bishop, even if resident and active, would be remote from a high proportion of his flock for long periods, the proportion of boys tonsured would be lower than in small and medium-sized ones.
37 One example is the grant in 1318 of letters dimissory by Bishop Sandale of Winchester to Simon ‘called my sone’ of Winchester: Regs Sandale and Asserio, 194.
38 Reg. Trillek, 56. See also RPD iii. 300 (a dispensation granted in 1340 for tonsuring which must have taken place between 1318 and 1320); Regs Sandale and Asserio, 407–8. Nicholas Orme, referring in particular to choristers and ‘almonry boys’ in cathedrals, colleges and monasteries, comments that the passage from home to school was sometimes accompanied by tonsuring: Medieval schools, New Haven–London 2006, 135. One unusual instance of failure to obtain letters dimissory occurred in the diocese of York. In 1320 Archbishop Melton dispensed forty boys in Cleveland for having been tonsured by a bishop not their own. Their toponyms suggest that there may have been three or four tonsurings, at places approximately ten to twenty miles apart, including one where twenty or more came from within a five-mile radius of Rudby. It seems unlikely that all forty had gone to another diocese and persuaded the bishop to tonsure them. More probably a suffragan bishop or the bishop of another diocese, perhaps Durham, had exceeded his commission: The register of William Melton, archbishop of York, 1317–40, ii, ed. D. Robinson (CYS lxxi, 1978), 114; Borthwick Institute for Archives, York, Reg. 9, register of William Melton, fo. 730r–v.
39 Excluding those tonsured by Stapledon outside his diocese.
40 Rochester, not only small but peppered with parishes in the immediate jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury, is a partial exception, but even in that diocese the proportion of boys with letters dimissory who were tonsured – 8% – is much less than the 82% of those ordained to higher orders with such letters.
41 Places with more than one parish, such as Cambridge and Ely, and places with a modifier, such as Papworth Everard and Papworth St Agnes, which are not necessarily distinguished by the scribes, are treated as a single parish for this purpose.
42 Those ordained as acolytes and to the higher orders were more likely to have both surname and place-name recorded. It is probably for this reason that the numbers of candidates for tonsuring recorded as coming from Winchester, Southampton and Portsmouth in the Winchester registers, and from Newcastle upon Tyne in the Durham registers, are lower than the numbers of acolytes recorded as being ordained from the same places.
43 This commission may have been specifically intended for the tonsuring of the two boys. The archdeacon of Cleveland in the diocese of York was Stephen de Maulay, who was also Kellaw's vicar-general, and he may have arranged the tonsuring primarily on behalf of his relative: The register of William Greenfield, lord archbishop of York, 1306–1315, ed. W. Brown and A. Hamilton Thompson (Surtees Society cxxxxv, cxxxxix, cli–cliii, 1931–40), v. 2556, 2587; RPD i. 49; ii. 682–3, 809–10.
44 RPD ii. 774–5.
45 RPD ii. 770; Reg. Melton, i. 278, 312.
46 Reg. Hethe, ii. 1083, 1118; RPD iii. 129–30, 166; Reg. Greenfield, iii. 1384, for John de Malton, who was already a tonsured clerk when he was granted a dispensation for illegitimacy in 1310.
47 Robinson, D., ‘Priesthood and community: the social and economic background of the parochial clergy in the diocese of Worcester to 1348’, Midland History xlii (2017), 18–35 at pp. 31–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Manumissions granted for the purpose of tonsuring sometimes included provision that if the man did not continue in the clerical life but reverted to manual pursuits he would revert to servile status.
48 See Reg. Stapeldon, 489, for a dispensation ‘regarding this tonsure’. Dispensations for illegitimacy were often granted at the same time as the boy was tonsured but they may well be under-recorded and there are many examples of the granting of such licences for those who were already tonsured clerks, for example, John de Malton (n. 46 above) and others cited in Reg. Greenfield, iii. 1384.
49 Reg. Woodlock, i. 174–5, 187–8.
50 Cullum, ‘Boy/man into clerk/priest’, 54. This was the age when infancy ended and ‘pueritia’ began: Lyndwood, Provinciale, 34. References to first tonsures in the registers sometimes refer to ‘pueri’.
51 N. Orme, Medieval children, New Haven–London 2001, 213–19.
52 The requirement for candidates to be ‘literate’ also suggests that they were likely to be more than seven years old.
53 Lambeth Palace Library, register of Archbishop Walter Reynolds, fo. 159. The bishop was to examine them to ensure their literacy and suitability. One example of an older man who was tonsured is Ralph Oter of Alton, a widower, whose circumstances were examined by the dean of Alton in September 1307, and who was tonsured by Bishop Woodlock in December and ordained acolyte in the following June: Reg. Woodlock, i. 202; ii. 802, 806.
54 Cf. n. 23 above.
55 In Ely there is a similar tendency for candidates from a parish to come forward at intervals of a few years, in this case mainly when the bishop was in the vicinity.
56 ‘[I]n vigesimo quinto aetatis suae anno’: Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. Friedberg, Leipzig 1879–81, ii. 1140, Clem. 1.6.3.
57 The register of John de Grandisson, bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1327–1369), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, London–Exeter 1894–9, ii. 1192–3. For a wide–ranging discussion of the relationship between ‘clericus’ and ‘literatus’ see Clanchy, M. T., From memory to written record: England, 1066–1307, London 1979Google Scholar.
58 Reg. Stapeldon, 489–90, 503.
59 Reg. Kirkby, i. 539. Archbishop Melton refers to ‘literate persons’ and ‘suitable persons’: Reg. Melton, i. 278, 312, 366; iii. 295.
60 Reg. Hethe, i. 84, 111–2.
61 They may also have provided an escort although, when the distance was not great, perhaps the older candidates undertook supervision.
62 Reg. Pontissara, i. 157–8.
63 Reg. Stapeldon, 494, 534. These are not found in other dioceses and may reflect Stapledon's commitment to clerical education. For synodical injunctions relating to the education of potential priests see Councils and synods, ii. ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, Oxford 1964, i. 174, 211, 309, 407, 514, 616, 713; ii. 1026–7. See also Orme, Medieval schools, 205–7.
64 By contrast, eight Freckenham and Isleham candidates were ordained to higher orders in Ely at this time.
65 Perhaps the boys from across Exeter diocese who attended the large tonsurings associated with the Embertide ordinations were particularly highly committed.
66 A certain parallel might be drawn with the need for ordinands to the higher orders to possess a ‘title’, which originated in the eastern Mediterranean in the fourth century but was still required in very different contexts in the later Middle Ages and thereafter: D. Robinson, ‘Titles for orders in England, 1268–1348’, this Journal lxv/3 (2014), 522–50.
67 Clanchy, From memory to written record, 195.
68 Councils and synods, i. 56; ii. 914. The miniature described in n. 70 below shows the bishop cutting a lock of hair with scissors, but cannot show whether he made more than a single clip. It is difficult to believe that, when large numbers of boys were tonsured on a single occasion, it would have been possible to achieve a thorough tonsure, at least in the course of the service. During the fourteenth century benefit of clergy was increasingly linked to literacy itself and not to having been tonsured: L. C. Gabel, Benefit of clergy in England in the later Middle Ages, Northampton, Ma 1928–9, 68; Swanson, Church and society, 150–1.
69 A very few, perhaps already marked out by birth or patronage, might in time acquire an ecclesiastical benefice while having remained only a tonsured clerk, although most of these would then need to proceed to the priesthood.
70 A miniature from a French pontifical of c.1390 shows a bishop, in cope and mitre, accompanied by his cross-bearer and two assistants, one holding the service book open, tonsuring a boy, with others, kneeling, lined up behind: British Library, ms Yates Thompson 24, fo. 2r., reproduced in Orme, Medieval schools, 207. If this was typical, rather than representing an ideal, the occasion might be expected to make an impression on the boys.