Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-04T19:27:58.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘For the Increase of Divine Service’: Chantries in the Parish in Late Medieval Bristol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Clive Burgess
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

While it is incontrovertible that the Catholic faith exercised a profound influence on the lives of the common people of fifteenth-century England, it is equally apparent that many aspects of contemporary belief and practice will never be wholly clear. This is not simply for want of evidence but more the result of the limitations of the sources. It may, for instance, be assumed that contemporaries' religious priorities would be illuminated by close examination of their wills since these documents almost invariably deal with pious provisions intended to benefit testators' souls. But tolerably represented by surviving wills as the wealthy and town-dwelling classes of late medieval England are, analysis of these documents is treacherous. Just as the scribes who registered them certainly standardised the presentation of different testators' wishes, so probate procedures militated against even faintly unorthodox expression. Moreover, the proportion of a testator's movable or immovable estate represented in any given will is impossible to gauge, as a result of which no measure may be taken of any testator's devotion by comparison of his religious bequests with those made for other purposes. It must also be remembered that wills reveal nothing of the pious provision that testators undoubtedly made during their lifetimes for their own benefit. Neither do they convey any impression of what family or friends may have agreed to discharge for the benefit of a testator's soul. Late medieval wills are undeniably disappointing and frequently misleading.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 46 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1968, ii. 338–9Google Scholar; Sheehan, M., The Will in Medieval England, Toronto 1963, 194, 258–65Google Scholar. And see McFarlane, K. B., The Nobility of later Medieval England, Oxford 1973Google Scholar, Introduction (by J. P. Cooper), p. xxxvii.

2 Pollock and Maidand, History of English Law, ii. 332–4, 341–3; The Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. Jacob, E. F. and Johnson, H. C., Oxford 1938, ii. ixffGoogle Scholar.

3 My forthcoming paper, ‘By quick and by dead: wills, chantries and pious provision in fifteenth-century Bristol', deals more fully with wills' shortcomings and the role that the family played in making pious provision for testators.

4 Over 300 fifteenth-century wills survive for Bristol. More than 100 are recorded in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Registers, now kept in the Public Record Office (hereafter cited as P.R.O.) in London. The great majority of the remainder are to be found in The Great Orphan Book (hereafter cited as G.O.B.) (Bristol Record Office, 04421(1)); and a further nineteen survive in another of Bristol's municipal compilations, The Great Red Book of Bristol, ed. E. Veale (Bristol Record. Soc., 11, iv, viii, xvi, xviii, 1931–53) (hereafter cited as G.R.B.). Although it may be assumed that the testators whose wishes have survived were, for the most part, from the wealthier elements of Bristol's society, certainty about the status of a testator is all too often an impossibility.

5 On the fortunes of fifteenth-century Bristol see Lobel, M. D. and Carus-Wilson, E. M., ‘Bristol’ in The Atlas of Historic Towns, ii, ed. Lobel, M. D. and Johns, W. H., London 1975, 11–14Google Scholar; the maps incorporated in this work are particularly useful, especially maps 7 and 8, which show medieval street names and parish boundaries. See also Hoskins, W. G., ‘English provincial towns in the early sixteenth century’, Trans. Royal Historical Soc, 5th ser., vi (1956), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Dobson, R. B., ‘Urban decline in late medieval England’, Trans. Royal Historical Soc, 5th ser., xxvii (1977), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phythian-Adams, C. V., ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’, Towns in Societies, ed. Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. A., Cambridge 1978, 159–85Google Scholar. On York, see Bartlett, J., ‘The expansion and decline of York in the later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xii (1959), 17–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Lobel and Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’, 14.

8 The Church Book of St Ewen's, Bristol, 1454–1584, ed. B. R. Masters and E. Ralph (Publications of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Soc, Records Section, vi, 1967) (hereafter cited as S.E.C.B.). The All Saints' Church Book (Bristol Record Office: P/AS/ChW/3) (hereafter cited as A.S.C.B.); this book is in manuscript only but is paginated. There are other compilations, like the St John's Church Book (Bristol Record Office: P/St JB/ChW/a) (hereafter cited as S.J.C.B.) and the St Stephen's Inventory Book (Bristol Record Office: P/St S/V/2) (hereafter cited as S.S.I.B.); valuable as these are, the information they afford about their respective parishes is slight when compared to the matter contained in both the S.E.C.B. and the A.S.C.B. Consequently, apart from information on the size of the houseling populations of Bristol's parishes in the mid-sixteenth century (see below, n. 15), we have hardly any impression of the majority of Bristol's parishes and their churches in the fifteenth century. For the visual remains, however, see Smith, M. Q., The Medieval Churches of Bristol (Bristol Historical Association Pamphlet, 1970)Google Scholar.

9 S.E.C.B., pp. xix–xx, i—11.

10 Ibid., pp. xxix–xxxii, 52–63.

11 The General Mind was the annual commemoration of benefactors, see ibid., pp. xxiv, 26, 31, 34, 36 etc.

12 A.S.C.B., 68–86, 133–67.

13 Ibid, 4–6.

14 Ibid, 375–82.

15 To judge from the information in the mid-sixteenth century Chantry Certificates – ‘Chantry Certificates, Gloucestershire', ed. J. Maclean, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Soc. (hereafter cited as T.B.G.A.S.), viii (1883–4), 232–51 – All Saints' had a houseling population of 180 souls, whereas St Nicholas's parish was the largest with 800 souls, followed by St Mary Redcliffe with 600 and St James's with 520. As well as having the most informative Church Book, All Saints' has probably the best collection of late medieval property deeds in Bristol. These have been edited by P. L. Strong as part of his Diploma in Archive Administration and a copy of his work is available in the Bristol Record Office.

16 It may be assumed that the Kalendars Guild in All Saints' rendered the clerical presence in the parish unusually strong; nevertheless, All Saints' relatively small houseling population would presumably have meant that the parish could support fewer clergy and stipendiaries than other, larger parishes. On the Kalendars, see Orme, N., ‘The Guild of Kalendars, Bristol', T.B.G.A.S., xevi (1978), 32–52Google Scholar.

17 Even though wills are unreliable as a guide to the number of chantries established in Bristol, the financial provision that founders were obliged to make means that there are nevertheless many references to chantries in the town's fifteenth-century wills: the frequency of reference remains relatively steady throughout the century. See my' Chantries in fifteenth-century Bristol', unpublished Oxford Univ. D.Phil, thesis 1981, 7–8.

18 On the intensity of contemporary belief in the doctrine of purgatory, see Kreider, A., English Chantries: the road to dissolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1979, 40–2, 91–2Google Scholar. Masses were thought to be superior to every other good work in eliciting God's grace for the forgiveness of sins: see Wood-Legh, K. L., Perpetual Chantries in Britain, Cambridge 1965, 306–14Google Scholar; Manning, B. L., The People's Faith in the time of Wyclif, 2nd edn, Hassocks 1975, 4–16, 79Google Scholar; Dugmore, C. W., The Mass and the English Reformers, London 1958, 59–80Google Scholar.

19 A few testators provided themselves with substantial numbers of masses at a fraction of the cost of establishing a chantry, see Richard Paans, d. 1407, G.O.B., fos. 103–104V and Agnes Gorges, d. 1419, P.R.O., 47 Marche (fos. 369–70).

20 Councils and Synods, ed. Powicke, F. M. and Cheney, C. R., Oxford 1964, 11. i. 126–7, 143–4, 606Google Scholar; Lyndwood, W., Provinciate, Oxford 1679Google Scholar, Lib. m, tit. 23, cap. i.

21 Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries, 186–8.

22 Heal, F., ‘The economic problems of the clergy’, Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I, ed. Heal, F. and O'Day, R., London 1977, 102 and n. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Statutes of the Realm, 2 Henry v, 2. c. ii.

24 The Register of Nicholas Buburith, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1407–24, ed. T. S. Holmes (Somerset Record Soc, xxix-xxx, 1913–14), i. 191 (and ii. 384 gives further information). The Register of Edmund Lacey, Bishop of Exeter, 1420–1455, ed. O.J. Reichel (Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of Exeter, x, 1915), ii. 545–8.

25 Heath, P., The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation, London 1969, 4–8Google Scholar and passim; Bowker, M., The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, Cambridge 1968, 110–54Google Scholar.

26 Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries, passim. (It is to be noted, however, that Wood-Legh was not disposed to regard either chantries or their priests at all sympathetically, see ibid., 312–14.) Kreider, English Chantries, 38–9, provides a very succinct review of earlier work on the subject; ibid., 43–50 describes the circumstances in which the Chantry Certificates were compiled and vindicates their reliability.

27 Ibid., 50–4, 57–9.

28 Ibid., 54–7. See also C. H. Thompson, ‘Chantry priests at Plymouth’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, xviii (1934–5), 352–5.

29 Kreider, English Chantries, 59–66.

30 Orme, N., Education in the West of England, 1066–1548, Exeter 1976, 35–42Google Scholar, summarises the evidence for schools and teaching in late medieval Bristol. Bristol's chantry priests probably took an active part in education in the town, but surviving evidence is too slight to sustain profitable discussion.

31 On the size of the parishes, see above n. 15. References in contemporary wills to priests and clergy who were to receive payments for burial, prayers and ‘tithes and offerings forgotten’ certainly suggest that Bristol's parish churches were adequately staffed.

32 Some perpetual chantry founders established their suffrages before they died. William Canynges, for instance, who died in 1474, established his two chantries in 1467 and 1468: see Williams, E. E., The Chantries of William Canynges in St Maty Reddiffe, Bristol, Bristol 1950, 62–72Google Scholar. More significantly, wills occasionally reveal that some testators established temporary chantries during their lifetimes: see Richard Vener, d. 1413, G.O.B., fo. 120v.

33 There are many indications of this. One, to be treated below, pp. 62–3, is that widow and executrices would frequently extend and renew a dead husband's chantry. Other testators, who may not have mentioned a chantry in their own will, entrusted their widow with their estate on the understanding that a chantry would be established after her death, see William and Alice Warmynstre, d. 1414 and 1423 respectively, G.O.B., fos. 124–5 and P.R.O., 53 Marche (fo. 423).

34 My reasons for believing this are explained in full in my forthcoming article, ‘By quick and by dead'.

35 It is impossible to be more precise about the number of perpetual chantry priests celebrating at any one time in the fifteenth century since we are, in all likelihood, unaware of the number of perpetual chantries established in the fourteenth century and functioning in the fifteenth century, but which, for one reason or another, are not mentioned in the mid-sixteenth-century Chantry Certificates. For some of the perpetual chantries established in the fourteenth century, see The Little Red Book of Bristol, ed. F. B. Bickley, Bristol 1900 (hereafter cited as L.R.B.), i. 186–202, 221–6.

36 Lyndwood, Provinciate, Lib. 1, tit. 14; and see Wood-Legh, Perpetual Chantries, 94, 239, 266, 276–7, where she mentions stipendiary priests' canonical duties, but only in a very cursory manner.

37 L.R.B., ii. 199–206.

38 G.O.B., fos. 242–3.

39 Ibid., fos. 169–70.

40 P.R.O., 26 Luffenham (fos. 205V-6).

41 Pfaff, R. W., ‘The English Devotion of St Gregory's Trental’, Speculum, xlix (1974), 75–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 For example William Cropenel, d. 1417, G.O.B., fos. 129v-30.

43 Ibid., fos. 83V-4.

44 Virtually the only material describing liturgical practice in late medieval Bristol's churches pertains to the celebration of vespers in All Saints ‘on a Sunday evening in 1457 (Bristol Record Office, All Saints’ Deeds, ed. P. L. Strong, N.A. 46). A group called ‘chaplains’, who may well have been chantry priests, seem to have made up the bulk of the choir; the vicar was also there but, notably, there was also a layman, habited, present in the choir and singing the psalm with the chaplains.

45 Wordsworth, C. and Littlehales, H., The Old Service-Books of the English Church, London 1904, 15–26Google Scholar; Swete, H. B., Church Services and Service-Books before the Reformation, London 1930, chap. 2Google Scholar. As well as taking considerably longer than the mass, the hours would have obliged chantry priests to remain in or near the parish church for the better part of the day.

46 Harrison, F. L., Music in Medieval Britain, London 1958Google Scholar, passim; Temperley, N., The Music of the English Parish Church, Cambridge 1980, i. 7–13Google Scholar; Wilkins, N., Music in the Age of Chaucer, Cambridge 1979, passimGoogle Scholar; Hoppin, R. H., Medieval Music, New York 1978, 502–24Google Scholar.

47 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 156ff; Hoppin, Medieval Music, 187ff.

48 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 104, 197ff.

49 Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, i. 8.

50 Ibid., i. 9; and see Baillie, H., ‘A London church in early Tudor times’, Music and Letters, xxxvi (1955), 55–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘London Churches, their music and musicians, 1 485–1560', unpublished Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis 1957, 206–20.

51 Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, i. 9–10.

52 Ibid., i. 8.

53 See, for instance, Maclean, ‘Glos. Chantry Certificates' T.B.G.A.S., 286 (Cirencester); The Certificates of the Commissioners etc. in the County of York, ed. W. Page (Surtees Soc., xci, 1893), 402–3, 496 (Selby); Owen, D., Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire (History of Lincolnshire, ed. Thirsk, J., v, Lincoln 1971), 97Google Scholar.

54 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 197–8.

55 S.E.C.B., 7, 117, 124. 126, 130, 145; A.S.C.B., 380.

56 St Nicholas: E. G. C. Atchley, ‘On the medieval parish records of the church of St. Nicholas, Bristol', Trans, of the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Soc. (hereafter cited as T.S.P.E.S.), vi (1906–10), 47. St Werburgh's: Edmund Dawes, d. 1493, G.O.B., fo. 247V.

57 Bond, F., Screens and Galleries in English Parish Churches, London 1908, 107–24Google Scholar.

58 A.S.C.B., 557; see also ibid., 140 and 321.

59 S.E.C.B., 39, 41, 102, 117; and for St Stephen's: Peter Drewz, d. 1487, G.O.B., fo. 238v.

60 S.E.C.B., 1–4.

61 The inventory follows the Accounts for Halleway's chantry, 1523–4 (Bristol Record Office, P/AS/C1). And see Harrison, F. L., ‘The repertory of an English parish church in the early sixteenth century’, Renaissance Muziek, 1400–1600, ed. J. Robijns, Leuven 1969, 143–7Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., 144.

63 Ibid., 147.

64 P.R.O., 24 Marche (fos. 192V-3).

65 A.S.C.B., 554 and 560. Osey was a sweet white wine, probably of French or Alsatian origin.

66 Cf. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 198 – hired singers were, apparently, generously paid.

67 A.S.C.B., 85. Warens would also have lived in close proximity to the church, as the Halleways had built a house for their celebrant in the churchyard (Bristol Record Office, All Saints' Deeds, ed. P. L. Strong, C.S.A. 21 and 22).

68 There is good reason to believe that perpetual chantry priests were required to be musically proficient by the late fifteenth century: Canynges certainly stipulated that his priest should be well instructed in music, see G.R.B., xviii. 39.

69 See, for instance, Young, P. M., A History of British Music, London 1967, 45–50, 66–72Google Scholar; Wilkins, Music in the Age of Chaucer, chaps. 4–6; Orme, N., ‘Education and learning at a medieval English cathedral: Exeter, 1380–1548’, this Journal, xxxii (1981), 268–75Google Scholar.

70 Amundesham, Annales Monasterii S. Albani (ed. Riley, Rolls Series, 1870), i. 106; quoted in Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 218–19. For organistae, s.v. organist, 3.

71 See above, p. 50; it may be emphasised that, to judge from founders' wills, temporary chantry priests were well paid.

72 On Canynges' priests and their duties, see G.R.B., xviii. 35–42; on Spencer's, see Maclean, ‘Glos. Chantry Certificates', T.B.G.A.S., 238, and Atchley, ‘Parish records of St. Nicholas, Bristol', T.S.P.E.S., 47.

73 Some even established chantries in parishes other than their own and apparently encountered no difficulty at all; see Edward Tanner, d. 1404, G.O.B., fo. 89v.

74 Heath, English Clergy, 142; Heal, ‘Economic problems of the clergy', 101.

75 Halleway's Chantry Accounts: Bristol Record Office, P/AS/C1; Canynges' Chantry Accounts are to be found in print in Williams, Chantries of William Canynges, 86ff; Spicer's Chantry Accounts: Bristol Record Office, P/StJ/Ca/1.

76 Spicer's Chantry Accounts survive for the years 1468 to 1477 and reveal that debt caused the chantry's suspension in 1471. The money that would ordinarily have paid the priest's salary was invested in the repair of property designated for the support of the suffrage, substantial renovation being undertaken in the early and mid-1470s. The chantry's fortunes restored, a priest was again installed in 1477.

77 Chantries involving celebrations on more than one day in the week were meant to have their own equipment: Councils and Synods, 11, i. 174. On what was required, see ibid., n, ii. 1006 and 1388. In the discussion that follows, reference is repeatedly made to vestments, their materials and emblems and also to a variety of liturgical accoutrements – for descriptions and definitions, see Inventory of Church Goods temp. Edward III, ed. Dom A. Watkins (Norfolk Record Soc, xix (1947–8), ii. xxv–xcix). On the distinction between a pair, a set and a suit of vestments, see Hope, W. and Atchley, E. G. C., English Liturgical Colours, London 1918, 5–6, 189–94Google Scholar.

78 The wills of William Canynges and John Shipward, respectively registered in G.O.B., fos. 199V-201 and 205v-8, mention equipment that each provided for his priests.

79 Bristol Record Office, Fox MSS., no. 71.

80 A.S.C.B., 137. Halleway's chaplain was to pray for Hatter.

81 P.R.O., 10 Stockton (fos. 74–74V).

82 S.J.C.B., fo. 6; and L.R.B., i. 198–202.

83 S.S.I.B., fos. 48 and 46, and 32V and 34V respectively; and L.R.B., i. 186–9 and 221–6.

84 Wilteshire, d. 1492, G.O.B., fos. 244–54 and A.S.C.B., 150 and 166.

85 Snygge, d. 1495, P.R.O., 26 Vox (no page number) and A.S.C.B., 151 and 167.

86 Laynell, d. 1473, P.R.O., 14 Wattys (fo. 104) and A.S.C.B., 143–4.

87 G.O.B., fos. 245V-7, The surname used in the A.S.C.B., however, is Spicer; this is clearly a reference to his occupation as a grocer, see S. Thrupp, , ‘The grocers of London, a study in distributive trade', Studies in English Trade in the fifteenth century, ed. Power, E. and Postan, M. M., London 1933, 248–50Google Scholar.

88 P.R.O., 4 Holgrave (fos. 27v–29v). Alone among the widows recently mentioned, Maud Baker is survived by a will.

89 A.S.C.B., 146–8, 154–6.

90 Cf. Pfaff, R. W., New Liturgical Feasts in Medieval England, Oxford 1970, 84–91Google Scholar.

91 For a stipendiary to have a choice of three vestments need not be considered excessive: Thomas Balk's chantry priest in Holy Trinity Bristol, had a pair each for ‘high days', ‘festival days', ‘Sundays', and ‘everyday'; see Bristol Record Office, Fox MSS. no. 76.

92 A.S.C.B., 134–8, 164–5.

93 Comparison between S.S.I.B. and wills surviving for members of St Stephen's reveals that similar bequests were made in that parish, too. See the wills of John and Elizabeth Baylly and William de la Founte, respectively G.R.B., xvi. 63–4 and G.O.B., fo. 249v, and their provisions described in S.S.I.B., fo. 49.

94 The best vestment was generally worn at the most important occasions of the liturgical year regardless of its colour: see Hope and Atchley, English Liturgical Colours, 160–1.

95 S.E.C.B., 92–3.

96 Ibid, 86–7, 92.

97 A.S.C.B., 139.

98 Heath, English Clergy, chap. 8; Heal, ‘Economic problems of the clergy', 99–108; Bovvker, The Secular Clergy, 133–54.

99 A.S.C.B., 68.

100 Cf. Manning, The People's Faith, 15–16.