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THE ELIZABETHAN PARISH IN ITS
ECCLESIASTICAL AND FINAN-
CIAL ASPECTS
SERIES XXVI
NOS. 7-8
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES
IN
Historical and Political Science
Under the Direction of the
Departments of History, Political Economy, and
Political Science
THE ELIZABETHAN PARISH IN ITS
ECCLESIASTICAL AND FINAN-
CIAL ASPECTS
BY
SEDLEY LYNCH WARE, A.B., LLB.
Fellow in History.
BALTIMORE
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS
PUBLISHED MONTHLY
July— August, 1908
Copyright 1908 by
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS
Press of
The New Ena printinc company
Lancaster. Pa.
PREFACE.
These chapters are but part of a larger work on the
Elizabethan parish designed to cover all the aspects of
parish government. There is need of a comprehensive
study of the parish institutions of this period, owing to the
fact that no modern work exists that in any thorough way
pretends to discuss the subject. The work of Toulmin
Smith was written to defend a theory, while the recent his-
tory of Mr. and Mrs, Webb deals in the main with the
parish subsequent to the year 1688. The material already
in print for such a study is very voluminous, the accumula-
tion of texts having progressed more rapidly than the use
of them by scholars.
My subject was suggested to me by Professor Vincent,
to whom as well as to Professor Andrews I am indebted
for advice and assistance throughout this work. In Eng-
land I have to thank Messrs. Sidney Webb, Hubert Hall
and George Unwin, of the London School of Economics,
for reading manuscript and suggesting improvements. For
similar help and for reference to new material my acknowl-
edgments are due to Mr. C. H. Firth, Regius Professor of
Modern History, Oxford, and to Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher,
of Magdalen College. At the British Museum I found the
officials most courteous, while the librarians of the Pea-
body Institute, Baltimore, have given me every aid in their
power.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish.
PAGE
Its Importance in Local Government 9
Archdeacons' Courts 11
Illustrations from Act Books of Judicial Administration... 17
Churchwardens' Duties 23
Ministers' Duties 30
Obligations Exacted from All Alike 34
Control of Church over Education and Opinion . *. 43
How Courts Christian Enforced their Decrees ^. . . . 46
Effectiveness of Excommunication 47
Evils and Abuses of the System 52
Jurisdiction of Queen's Judges in Ecclesiastical Matters ... 57
CHAPTER II.
Parish Finance.
Endowed Parishes 59
Expedients for Raising Money.
Church-ales, Plays, Games, Etc 70
Offerings and Gatherings TJ
Communion Dues 78
Sale of Seats, Pew Rents 80
Parish Tariffs for Burials, Marriages, Etc 81
Income from Fines and Miscellaneous Receipts 83
Rates and Assessments 88
Independence of Parish as a Financial Unit 90
Significance of this in County Government 91
THE ELIZABETHAN PARISH IN ITS ECCLE-
SIASTICAL AND FINANCIAL ASPECTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish.
The ecclesiastical administration of the English parish
from the period of the Reformation down to the outbreak
of the great Civil War is a subject which has been much
neglected by historians of local institutions. Yet during
the reign of Elizabeth, at least, the church courts took as
large a share in parish government as did the justices of
the peace. Not only were there many obligations enforced
by the ordinaries which today would be purely civil in char-
acter, but to contemporaries the maintenance of the church
fabric and furniture appeared every whit as important as
the repairing of roads and bridges; while the obligation to
attend church and receive communion was on a par with
that to attend musters, but with this difference, that the
former requirement affected all alike, while the latter ap-
plied to comparatively few of the parishioners.
In the theory of the times, indeed, every member of the
commonwealth was also a member of the Church of Eng-
land, and conversely. Allegiance to both was, according
to the simile of the Elizabethan divine, in its nature as in-
distinguishable as are the sides of a triangle, of which any
line indifferently may form a side or a base according to
the angle of approach of the observer.^ The Queen was
head of the commonwealth ecclesiastical as well as of the
commonwealth civil, and(^as well apprized of her spiritual
as of her temporal judges.^ For both sets of judges equally
^Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. viii, 448-9 (ed. 1666).
'Coke, 4 Inst., 320 (ed. 1797).
lo TJie Elizabethan Parish. [312
Parliament legislated, or sanctioned legislation. Some-
times,'in fact, it became a mere matter of expediency
whether a court Christian or a common law tribunal should
be charged with the enforcement of legislation on parochial
matters. Thus the provisions of the Rubric of the Book
of Common Prayer were enforced by the justices as well as
by the ordinaries. Again, secular and ecclesiastical judges
had concurrent jurisdiction over church attendance, and —
at any rate between 1572 and 1597^ — over the care of the
parish poor. Finally, it must not be supposed that the men
who actually sat as judges in the archdeacon's or the
bishop's court were necessarily in orders. In point of fact
a large proportion, perhaps a large majority of them, were
laymen, since the act of Henry VIII in 1545 permitted mar-
ried civilians to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction.*^
In the treatment of our subject the plan we shall follow
is, first, to make some preliminary observations as to the
times, places and modes of holding the church courts ; sec-
ond, with the aid of illustrations drawn from the act-books
of these courts, to show how their judicial administration
was exercised over the parish, either through the medium
of the parish officers or directly upon the parishioners them-
selves; third, to analyze the means at the command of the
ecclesiastical judges to enforce their decrees; and, finally,
' See 14 Eliz. c. 5, sec. 16, and 39 Eliz. c. 3.
*2>7 Hen. VIII, c. 17, re-enacted i Eliz. c. i. "The real effect
of the statute was this — that lay lawyers were substituted for the
clerical canonists of pre-Reformation times." Lewis T. Dibden,
An Historical Inquiry into the Status of the Ecclesiastical Courts
(1882), 59. By canon cxxvii of the Canons of 1604 in order to be
a chancellor, a commissary, or an official in the courts Christian, a
man must be " ad minimum magister artium, aut in jure bacalareus,
ac in praxi et causis forensibus laudabiliter exercitatus." E. Card-
well, Synodalia (etc.), i, 236. Cf. Blomefield, Hist, of Norfolk, iii,
655-6 (Parker's report, 1563. Officials of the archdeacons not re-
quired to be in orders). E. Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the
Reformed Church of England, i, 426 (Complaint in a document of
circa 1584 [or later] that excommunication is executed by laymen.
In the answer by the bishops it is stated [ibid., 428] inter alia, " that
in later times, divines have wholly employed themselves to divinity
and not to the proceedings and study of the law"). To the same
effect, but for a later period, see White Kennett, Parochial An-
tiquities (Oxon. ed. 1695), 642.
313] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 1 1
to point out that from its very nature the exercise of spirit-
ual jurisdiction was liable to abuses, and must at all times
have proved unpopular.
Speaking generally (for the jurisdictions called "pecu-
liars" formed exceptions ),CEngland was divided for the
purposes of local ecclesiastical administration and discipline
into archdeaconries, each comprising a varying number of
parishes. Twice a year as a rule the archdeacon, or his
official in his place, held a visitation or kept a general court
(the two terms being synonymous) in the church of some
market town — not always the same — of the archdeaconry.
The usual times for these visitations were Easter and
Michaelmas. The bishops also commonly held visitations
in person, or by vicars-general or chancellors, once every
third year throughout their dioceses. Yet at the semi-
annual visitations of the archdeacon as well as at the tri-
ennial visitations of the bishop, the mode of procedure, the
class of offences, the parish officers summoned, the disci-
pline exercised — ^all were the same, the bishop's court being
simply substituted for the time being for that of the arch-
deacon. J
There were other visitations: those of (the Queen's High
Commissioners, and those of the Metropolitan. There were
a very great number of other courts, but for the purposes
of the every-day ecclesiastical governance of the parish the
two classes of courts or visitations above mentioned are all
that need concern us. It is, however, important to state,
that while churchwardens and sidemen were compelled to
attend the two general courts of the archdeacon (and of
course the bishop's court) and to write out on each occa-
sion formal lists of offenders and offenCes (" presentments "
or " detections ") these parish officers might also at any
time make voluntary presentments to the archdeacons.
Those functionaries, in fact, seem to have held sittings for
the transaction of current business, or of matters which
could not be terminated at the visitation, every month, or
even every three weeks. Others may have sat (as we
12 The Elizabethan Parish. [314
should say of a common-law judge) in chambers.' Before
each general visitation an apparitor or summoner of the
court went about and gave warning to the churchwardens
of some half-dozen parishes, more or less, to be in attend-
ance with other parish officers on a day fixed in some church
centrally located in respect of the parishes selected for that
day's visitation. ^
^he church of each parish was, indeed, not only its place
for worship, but also the seat and centre for the transaction
of all business concerning the parish. In it, according to
law, the minister had to read aloud from time to time ar-
ticles of inquiry founded on the Queen's or the diocesan's
injunctions, and to admonish wardens and sidemen to pre-
sent offences under these articles at the next visitation.® In
it also he gave monition for the annual choice of collectors
for the poor;^ warning for the yearly perambulation of the
parish bounds f and public announcement of the six certain
days on which each year every parishioner had to attend in
'Harrison, writing in 1577, says that archdeacons keep, beside two
visitations or synods yearly, " their ordinarie courts which are holden
within so manie or more of their several deaneries by themselues
or their officials once in a moneth at the least." Harrison, Descrip-
tion of England, Bk. ii, New Shakespeare Soc. for 1877 (ed. Dr.
Furnivall), p. 17. Between 27th Nov., 1639, and 28th. Nov., 1640,
there were thirty sittings in the court of the Archdeacon of London.
Hale, Crim. Prec, introd. p. liii. Any casual inspection of the visi-
tation act-books reveals the fact that the judge sits either in court
or in chambers between visitations, for offenders are constantly
ordered to appear again in a few days or in a few weeks. Com-
pulsory presentments were, however, limited by law and custom to
two courts a year. See canons 116 and 117 of the Canons of 1604.
Also Gibson, Codex, ii, looi.
"See p. 18 and p. 20 infra. For the duty to read the injunctions
or the articles based on them see p. 32 infra.
\See 5 Eliz. c. 3. Stats, of the Realm, iv, Pt. i, 411. Also Visi-
tation of '\|''arrington Deanery in 1592 by the Bishop of Chester in
Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Soc. Trans., n. s., x (1895), 186
et passim. Hereinafter cited as Warrington Deanery Visit. Cf. also
Grindal's Injunc. for the Province of York (1571), art. 17, Remains
of Grindal, Parker Soc, 132 ff.
* See Visitations of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, Archaeologia
Cantiana, xxvi (1904), 24 (1602). Mr. Arthur Hussey has pub-
lished copious extracts from the act-books of these visitations ex-
tendmg over a considerable period in vols, xxv-xxvii of the Arch.
Cant. Hereinafter cited as Canterbury Visit., xxv (etc.).
For perambulations see p. 27 infra.
315] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish, 13
person or send wain and men for the repair of highways.®
In the parish church also proclamation had to be made of
estrays before the beasts could be legally seized and im-
pounded.^** Here, too, school-masters often taught their
pupils^^ — unless, indeed, the parish possessed a separate
school-house. Here, in the vestry, the parish armor was
frequently kept, and sometimes the parish powder barrels
were deposited ;^^ here too, occasionally, country parsons
stored their wool or grain.^^
(finally, in the parish church assembled vestries for the
holding of accounts, the making of rates and the election
of officers. Overseers of the poor held their monthly meet-
ings here. Occasionally the neighboring justices of the
peace met here to take the overseers' accounts or to trans-
act other business;^* and in the church also might be held
coroners' inquests over dead bodies.^^ Last, but not least
in importance/in the churches of the market towns the arch-
deacon made his visitations and held his court ; and on these
occasions the sacred edifice rang with the unseemly squab-
bles of the proctors, the accusations of the wardens and
*J. Cordy Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, i, loo-i (Indict-
ment reciting that John Johnson had had due notice in his parish
church, yet had not sent his wain, etc., 1576). Cf. provisions of the
statutes 5 Eliz. c. 13, and 18 Eliz. c. 10, Stats, of Realm, iv, Pt. i,
441-3, and 620-1 respectively.
" Brownlow v, Lambert, C B., 41 Eliz., i Croke Eliz. Rep.,
Leache's ed. (1790), Pt. ii, 716.
^^ Canterbury Visit., xxvi, 23 (1599); ibid., 20 (1591). W. H.
Hale, A Series of Precedents in Criminal Causes from the Act
Books of the Ecclesiastical Courts of London, 1475-1640 (pub. in
1847), 190 (Schoolmaster of Stock presented in court for defacing
the church "in makinge a fire for his schollers," 1587). This work
hereinafter cited as Hale, Crim. Prec.
" Constables Acc'ts of Melton in Leicester Architec. and ArchcBol.
Soc. Trans., iii (1874), 72-3. Chelmsford Churchwardens Acc'ts
in Essex Archceol. Soc. Trans., ii (1863), 225 ff.
" Stratton (Cornwall) Churchwardens Acc'ts, Archceologia, xlvi,
200 ff. s. a. 1565 and editor's note.
" " Sir W. . A. . and I with divers other justices, being met together
at Sondon church" (1582). Strype, Annals of the Reformation,
iii, Pt. ii, 214. This meeting here may have been in the churchyard.
"See in the Antiquary, xxxii (1896), 147-8, the inquest held at
St. Botolph Extra Aldgate (1590), and the coroner's judgment de-
livered in the church that a suicide should be buried at cross-roads
with a stake through her breast.
14 The Elizabethan Parish. [316
sidemen or of the apparitor, and the recriminations of the
accused — in short, the church was turned for the time being
into a moral poHce court, where all the parish scandal was
carefully gone over and ventilated.^®
The ecclesiastical courts carried on their judicial admin-
istration of the parish largely, of course, through the me-
dium of the officers of the parish. These were the church-
wardens, the sidemen and the incumbent, whether rector,
vicar or curate.^^
First in importance were the churchwardens. Though
legislation throughout the time of Elizabeth was ever add-
ing to their functions duties purely civil in their nature, and
though they themselves were more and more subjected to
the control of the justices of the peace, nevertheless it is
true to say that to the end of the reign the office of church-
warden is one mainly appertaining to the jurisdiction and
supervision of the courts Christian.
The doctrine of the courts that churchwardens were
merely civil officers belongs to a later period.^®
" For the noisy proceedings in Bow Church and in St. Paul's,
London, see The Spiritual Courts epitomised [etc.], a satire printed
in 1641 at London. For this and similar satires see Mr. Stephen's
Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in Brit. Mus. (1870).
Cf. Strype, Life of Grindal (Oxon. ed. 1821), 83 ff. (Proclamation
of 1561 for reverent use of churches). Also Augustus Jessop,
One Generation of a Norfolk House, 15. Sir J. F. Stephen, Hist,
of Criminal Law, ii. 404.
"In the Canons of 1571 the churchwardens are called " ceditui,"
in those of 1604 " oeconomi." In the older churchwardens accounts
their Latin designations are " gardiani" and " custodes," some-
times " prepositi" (or 'reeves'). English equivalents are church-
men, highwardens, stockwardens (alewardens even), kirkmasters,
church masters, proctors, etc. Sidemen are called also questmen,
assistants and (apparently) sworn men or jurates. They do not
always appear in small country parishes, neither are they generally
found before the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. Their Latin ap-
pelation was "fide digni" and they were chosen from among the
parishioners to the number of two, four, six or more to present
offences along with the churchwardens, or offences which the ward-
ens would not present (Gibson, Codex, ii, 1000). The sidemen
went about the parish during service time with the wardens and
warned persons to come to church (See p. 23 infra). For rector,
etc., see p. 30 infra.
"Toulmin Smith, The Parish (2d ed., 1857), 69 ff., strongly in-
sists that churchwardens "never were ecclesiastical officers." But
the authorities he cites are post-Elizabethan. The courts in Eliza-
317] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 15
After a churchwarden had been chosen or elected, he
took the oath of office before the archdeacon. In this he
swore to observe the Queen's and the bishop's injunctions,
and to cause others to observe them; to present violators
of the same to the sworn men (or sidemen), or to the ordi-
nary's chancellor or official, or to the Queen's high commis-
sioners; finally, he swore to yield up a faithful accounting
to the parish of all sums that had passed through his hands
during his term of office.^®
Before each visitation day, as has been said, the arch-
deacon's or the bishop's summoner went to each parish and
gave warning that a court would be held in such and such
a church on such and such a day. Pending that day war-
dens and sidemen drew up their bills of presentment.
These bills were definite answers to a series of articles of
inquiry founded on the diocesan's injunctions, themselves
based on the Queen's Injunctions of 1559 and on the Can-
ons.^^ Failure to present offences was promptly punished
by the judge.^^ Failure to attend court when duly warned
beth's time held that the execution of the office " doth belong to
the Spirituall jurisdiction" (See Brown v, Ld^her, 40 Eliz., in /.
Gouldshorough's Rep., ed. 1653, p. 113). Lambard {The Duties of
Constables, etc., ed. 1619, p. 70) says that wardens are taken in
favor of the church to be a corporation at common law for some
purposes, viz., to be trustees for the church goods and chattels.
^*See "The Othe which the Parsons . . . shall minister to the
Churche Wardens," of which the text is given in Bishop Barnes' In-
junctions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings, Surtees Soc., xxii
(1850), 26 (Hereinafter cited as Barnes' Eccles. Proc.). The
wording of this oath is evidently very similar to, if not identical
with, that of the oath administered to the wardens by the arch-
deacon.
^For a number of examples clearly illustrating this point see
Visitations of the Dean of York's Peculiar, Yorkshire Archceolog-
ical Journal, xviii (1905), 202, 221, 222, 224, et passim. Hereinafter
cited as Dean of York's Visit. We have a number of these articles
of inquiry formulated by archbishops or bishops. E. g., see in T.
Nash, Hist, and Antiq. of Worcestershire, i, 472 (Wardens of
Grimley make answer to the Sth and 6th articles inquired of by
the bishop in 1585). Cf. Cardwell, Doc. Ann., ii, 13-16 (Whitgift's
Articles of 15^).
^JB. g., Canterbury Visit., xxv, 12 (Birchington wardens arraigned
in court " for that they have not presented divers faults Committed
within the parish." 1591). Act-Books in Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 118
(A warden of Long Newton detected to the official because "he
refused to present faltes with his fellowe churchwardone, et
1 6 The Elizabethan Parish. [318
was no less promptly followed by excommunication, and
then it was an expensive matter for the wardens to get out
of the official's book again.'^^ But of fees and fines more
hereafter.
Among the churchwardens' principal obligations, as laid
down in the injunctions and articles they were sworn to
observe, was the keeping in repair of the church fabric and
its appurtenances, as well as the procuring and the main-
taining in good condition of the church " furniture," a term
which in the language of the time included all the neces-
saries for worship and the celebration of the sacraments:
church linen, surplices, the communion cup, the elements
themselves, bibles, prayer books, the writings of authorized
commentators on the Scriptures, or the works of apologists
for the Anglican Church ; tables of consanguinity and other
official documents enjoined to be kept in every parish by
the diocesan.-^
The visitation act-books of the period abundantly show
fatebatur delationem, viz., that he wolde not present his owne wief."
1579)- Ibid., 129 (1580). See also Warrington Deanery Visit.,
188 ("Departing and not exhibitinge there presentments"). W.
H. Hale, Precedents in Causes of Office against Churchwardens
and Others (1841), 81 (Wardens of Sarratt [Herts] excommuni-
cated for not exhibiting their " billas detectionum." 1577). The last
named work hereinafter cited as Hale, Churchwardens' Prec.
^For numerous examples of excommunication for non-appear-
ance, see Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 29 ff. Under the heading of each
parish we see "aegrotat," or " excusatur," or " nullo modo'^ {sc.
comparuit) placed after the name of each person cited to attend
from that parish. Incumbents, wardens and sidemen were almost
always in attendance. Schoolmasters usually so when there were
such. Delinquent parishioners were of course cited in person, or
remanded to appear at the next court day holden elsewhere. Upon
non-appearance the formula usually entered by the registrar or
scribe in the act-book was " et omnes et singulos hujusmodi non
comparentes [judex] pronuntiavit contumaces et eos excommunicavit
in scriptis." At Alnwick in 1578 fifteen persons were excommuni-
cated for non-attendance. Betrnes' Eccles. Proc, 41. Cf. Hale,
Crim. Prec, passim.
^ Lists of " furniture," implements and books will be found in
the metropolitan or diocesan injunctions of the time. A typical one
is given in Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 25, entitled " The furnitures, imple-
ments and bookes requisite to be had in every church e, and so
commaunded by publique aucthoritie " (1577). Cf. Cardwell, Doc.
Ann., i, 287 ff. (" Advertisements partly for due order in the
publique administration of common prayers [etc.] ..." Jan.,
1564)-
319] Ecclesiastkal Government of the Parish. 17
the processes employed by the ecclesiastical authorities in
enforcing these and other duties (which will be detailed
in their turn), and^prove that the courts Christian were
emphatically administrative as well as judicial bodie^ To
show these courts at work it will be necessary to give a
number of illustrative examples taken from the visitation
entries. Thus the wardens of Childwall, having been pre-
sented at the visitation of the bishop of Chester, 9th Octo-
ber, 1592, because their church " wanteth reparac[i]on," are
excommunicated for not appearing. On a subsequent day
John Whittle, who represents the wardens, informs the
court that the repairs have -been executed. Thereupon the
wardens are absolved and the registrar erases the word
" excommunicated " from the act-book.^* At the same visi-
tation the wardens of Aughton are presented because
** there bible is not sufficient, they want the first tome of the
homilies, Mr. Juells Replie and Apologie^^ [etc.] . . . ."
The two wardens are enjoined by the judge to buy a suffi-
cient bible and to certify to him that they have done so.
But — so careful is the supervision over parish affairs —
mere certification by vicar or wardens that a certain article
has been procured in obedience to a court order will not
always suffice. If the thing can be produced in court the
judge often orders it to be brought before him for personal
inspection. Accordingly, when at the visitation of the
chancellor of the bishop of Durham, the 13th March, 157%,
the wardens of Coniscliffe are found to " lacke 2 Salter
bookes [and] one booke of the Homelies," they are admon-
ished to certify " that they have the books detected 4th
April and to bringe their boks hither."2« Thus, too, the
wardens of St. Michael's, Bishop Stortford, record in 1585
that they have paid 8d. " when we brought in to the court
the byble and comunion booke to shewe before the comy-
^ Warrington Deanery Visit., 184.
"That is, Bishop John Jewel's Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,
published in 1560, and his Defence of the Apology, published in 1567,
sometimes called in the act-books and wardens accounts (where
both works are frequently mentioned) The Reply to Mr. Harding.
^^ Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 116.
1 8 The Elizabethan Parish. [320
sary."-^ There is a curious entry in the same accounts some
years earHer, viz.: " pd for showing [shoeing] of an horse
when mr Jardfield went to london to se wether it was our
byble that was lost or no and for his charges . . . ."^^
At the visitation held at Romford Chapel, Essex Arch-
deaconry, 5th September, 1578, the wardens of Dengie
" broughte in theire surplice, which surplice is torne & verie
indecent & uncomly, as appereth ; whereupon the judge, for
that theie neglected their othes, [ordered them to confess
their fault and prepare] a newe surplice of holland cloth of
V s. thele [the ell], conteyninge viii elles, citra festum ani-
marum prox" Remembering that money was then worth
ten to twelve times what it is today, this was probably con-
sidered too great a burden by the parishioners of Dengie.
A petition must have been presented to be allowed to pro-
cure a cheaper surplice, for on the 6th October following the
wardens were permitted to prepare a surplice containing
six ells only at the reduced price of 2s. 8d. per ell.^**
It seems to have been the practice in the Dean of York's
Peculiar for the judge to threaten the churchwardens occa-
sionally with a fine for failure to repair their church or
supply missing requisites for service by a fixed day. Thus
at Dean Matthew Hutton's visitation, July, 1568, the church-
yards of Hay ton and of Belby were found to be insuffi-
ciently fenced. The order of the court was: " Hahent ad
reparanda premissa citra festum sancti Michaelis proximum
sub pena XX s/''^
So, too, the Thornton wardens at the same visitation are
warned to repair the body of their church "betwixt this
and Michlmes next upon paine of X s."^^ But as spiritual
" J. L. Glasscock, The Records of St. Michael's, Bishop Stortford
(1882), 63. See also Minchinhampton (Gloucester) Acc'ts,
Archwologia, xxxv, 422 ff. ("Allowynge the regester booke."
1575)- Shrop. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc. Tr., 2d Ser., i, Ludlow
Acc'ts, s. a. 1585-6 (Record of the new bible and other books).
^Glasscock, op. cit., 59 (1578).
^Hale, Crim. Prec, 170-1.
** Visitations of the Dean of York's Peculiar, Yorkshire Archao-
logical Journal, xviii (1905), 209.
" Ibid., 210.
32 1 J Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 19
tribunals had no legal power to fine^^ q^ ^q imprison, ap-
parently the usual penalty prescribed by the judges in case
of disobedience to, or neglect of, their orders to repair or
replace by a certain day, was, in the words of Bishop Barnes
addressed to the churchwardens in Durham diocese, the
" paynes of interdiction and suspencion [i. e., temporary
excommunication] to be pronounced against themselves. "^^
Yet here, too, the wardens did not escape indirect amerce-
ment, for absolution from interdiction or excommunication
often meant a payment of various court fees, which in many
cases were by no means light. These fines the wardens
put to their credit in the expense items of their accounts if
they could possibly do so, and it is probable that the parish
always paid them except in cases of very gross individual
delinquency in office. Thus the wardens of St. Martin's,
Leicester, record: " Payd to Mr. Comyssarye whe[n] we
was suspendyd for Lackynge a Byble & to hys offycers
xxiij d."^* The wardens of Melton Mowbray register:
" Ffor our chargs & marsements at Lecest[e]r ... for yt
^ With the exception of the High Commission by the terms of its
commission. See the writ of 1559 in Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy
and the Settlement of Religion, 150. Also Cardwell, Doc. Ann.,
i, 220, for the Commission for York in 1559. As a matter of fact,
as will appear from the illustrations cited, fines were virtually in-
flicted by way of court or absolution fees. Again, while the canons
or injunctions forbade the commutation of penance for money,
an exception was made for money taken in pios usus, such as church
repair or the relief of the poor. Examples of the practice will be
found in Hale, Crim. Prec., 232 (Repair of St. Paul's, London) ;
Warrington Deanery Visit., 189 (Poor) ; Chelmsford Acc'ts, Essex
Arch. Sac, ii, 212 (Paving of church). For fines inflicted for the
benefit of the poor see Barnes' EccTes. Proc, 122 ("For that he
gave evill words" an offender was enjoined by the judge to pay
2s. to the poor and to certify) ; Hale, op. cit., 198 (An offender
to pay a rate of 46.., and I2d. more "pro negligentia." iSlD-
Cf. Canons of 1585 in Cardwell, Synodalia, i, 142.
^^ Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 24 (1577). In the case of individuals
interdiction or suspension (i. e., from service and sacraments) does
not differ in effect from excommunication, except that the former
are temporary penalties and to terminate upon compliance with
the judge's order. See Burn, Eccles. Law (ed. 1763), i, 616 (Inter-
diction) and ii, 362-3 (Suspension).
^Thomas North, A Chronicle of the Church of St. Martin's in
Leicester (1866), 116 (1568-9).
20 The Elizabethan Parish. [322
ye Rood loft whas not takyn down & deafasyed iiij s.
iiij d."3»
In the same accounts we find some years later : " Payde
to ... at the vicitacion houlden at Melton for dismissinge
us oute of there bookes for not reparinge the churche iij s.
ij d."^® So, also, we read in the St. Ethelburga-within-
Bishopsgate Accounts: "Paid in D[octor] Stanhope's
courte beinge p[re]sented by p[ar]son Bull aboute the
glasse windowes xvj d." And nine years later : " Paid for
Mr Gannett and myselfe [* Humfery Jeames '] for absolu-
tion iiij s. viij d." Also : " Paid for our discharge at the
courte for [from] our excomm[uni]cacon xvj d."^'^
Cjhe act-books abundantly show that ecclesiastical courts
were very far from being limited to mere moral suasion
or to spiritual censures. They could never have accom-
plished their work so thoroughly if they had been. This
point will be brought out much more clearly, it is hoped,
when we come to consider excommunication as a weapon
of coercion.^® The courts fined parishioners individually^'
and they fined them collectively) What matters it that these
fines were called court fees, absolution fees, commutation
of penance, or by any other name? What signifies it that
the proceeds could be applied only in pios ususf The mulct-
ing was none the less real. On the score of bringing stub-
born or careless wardens to terms through their purses, the
following extract from a letter written in 1572 to the official
of the archdeacon of the bishop of London is in point. The
letter informs the judge that Jasper Anderkyn, a church-
warden, " hathe done nothing of that which he was
apoinnted by your worshipp at Mydsomer to do, for the
churche yarde lyeth to commons and all other thynkes in
the churche is ondonne. ... I praye you dele w[i]t[h]
"Leicester Archit. and Archceol Soc. Tr., iii (1874), 192 (1567).
"/Wrf., 197 (1594-5).
W. F. Cobb, Churchwardens Accounts of St. Ethelhurga-within-
Bishopsgate (1905), p. 10 (1595) and p. 12 (1604), respectively.
Stanhope was chancellor to the bishop of London.
** See p. 46 ff. infra.
'•See infra p. 40, p. 48 (note 169), p. 131, etc. Also Ch. ii, infra.
Cf. note 2>^ supra (p. 19).
323] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 21
hym so yt he maye be a presydent for them that shall have
the offyce ; for they wyll but jess att itt, and saye it is butt
a mony matter : therefore lett them paye well for the penal-
tie whiche was sett on theire heads." Continuing, the
writer states that his reason for writing is "that you be
not abewseid in youre office by there muche intreatyng for
themselffes, for Jesper Anderkyn stands excommunicated."***
(^ometimes for failure to perform the ordinary's*^ injunc-
tions a whole parish was excommunicated or a church inter-
dicted.'*^ Thus in the Abbey Parish Church*^ Accounts we
read under the year 1592 how troublesome and how costly
it was " when the church was interdicted " to ride to Lich-
field and there tarry several days seeking absolution) For
this 20 shillings was paid, a very large sum for the time, not
to mention a fee to the summoner, travelling expenses and
the writing of letters on the parish's behalf.** The war-
dens of Stratton, Cornwall, had a similar experience " when
the churche wardyns & the hole p[ar]ysch was exco[mu]ny-
*" Hale, Crifn. Prec, 155.
*^ Ordinary is that ecclesiastical magistrate who has regular juris-
diction over a district, in opposition to judges extraordinarily ap-
pointed. At common law a bishop was taken to be the ordinary
in his diocese, and so he was designated in some acts of Parliament.
But as a matter of fact 'ordinary' signifies any judge 'authorized
to take cognizance of causes by virtue of his office or by custom.
Such were pre-eminently the archdeacons. These officers, at first
merely attendant on the bishops at public services, were gradually
entrusted by the latter with their own jurisdictional powers, owing
to the vast extent of dioceses, so that "the holding of General
Synods or Visitations when the Bishop did not visit, came by de-
grees to be known and established Branches of the Archidiaconal
Office, as such, which by this means attained to the dignity of
Ordinary instead of delegated jurisdiction." Edmund Gibson,
Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, or the Statutes, Constitutions
(etc.) of the Church of England, ii (1713), 998. Cf. Richard Burn,
Eccles. Law, ii, 101-2. As the ordinary in practice entrusted his
office of judge to an official, I have used the two terms interchange-
ably. In some places exempted from the archdeacon's jurisdiction
commissaries acted as judges, Burn, i, 391.
*^That is, services and sacraments (except baptism) were sus-
pended in it. The words of Burn {Eccles. Law, i, 616, quoting
Gibson, 1047) are misleading. He says : " But this censure hath
been long disused; and nothing of it appeareth in the laws of
church or state since the reformation." Of course interdiction
temp. Elizabeth was no longer the terrible punishment it used to be.
"At Shrewsbury.
**Shrop. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc. Tr., i (1878), 62.
22 The Elizabethan Parish. [324
catt" in 1565. Among the expense items relating to that
occasion is a significant one : " flfor wyne & goodchere ffor
the buschuppe ys s[er]vantt[s] ij s. viij d."*^
So close is the supervision of the ordinary over the
churchwardens, (so effective the discipline of the church
courts, that we s^m to hear occasionally a sort of dialogue
going on between judges and wardens, the former directing
certain things to be executed, the latter replying and report-
ing from time to time that progress is being made on the
work to be performed, or that the missing objects will be
soon supplied.^ Accordingly, at the archdeacon of Canter-
bury's visitation in 1595, we find the wardens of St. John
in Thanet (Margate) reporting: "The chancel*® is out of
repairs, for the repairing whereof some things are pro-
vided."*'^ Two years later they state to the court : " For
repairing of the churchyard we desire a day."*® At the
same visitation the wardens of St. Lawrence in Thanet
(Ramsgate) present: " Our Church is repaired, saving that
some glass by reason of the last wind be broken, the which
are [sic] shortly to be amended."*®
As a final illustration on this score may be adduced the
report of the conscientious wardens of Kilham, Yorkshire,
who certify to the judge of that peculiar, August, 1602,
" that there churche walles ar in suche repaire as heretofore
they have beyne. But not in suche sufficient repaire as is re-
"R. W. Goulding, Records of the Charity known as Blanch-
minster^ s Charity (1898), Stockwardens Acc'ts, 68. For other
examples of interdiction of churches or excommunication see Hale,
Churchwardens' Free, 111-12 (Shoreham Vetera interdicted. HH)»
et passim.
"Except in the city of London and some few other places, the
chancel was at the charge of the rector or other recipient of the
great tithes. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Govern-
ment (1906), 20, note. Also W. G. Clark- Maxwell in Wilts Arch.
etc. Mag., xxxiii (1904), 358. H. B. Wilson, History of St.
Laurence Pountney (London, 1831), 73.
*^ Canterbury Visit., xxvi, 21.
ybid.
*' Ibid., 32. In 1599 the wardens of this parish inform the arch-
deacon that both church and churchyard need repairs "which we
mean shortly to do." The next year, too, they make a report in
almost identical words. Ibid., ^3.
325] Ecclesiasticd Government of the Parish. 23
quired by the Article'^^ for that effect ministred vnto us.""
(_ But the upkeep of the church and its requisites" was only
one of the churchwardens' many tasks. They had to look
to it that the people attended church regularly; that the
victuallers and ale-houses received no one while service was
being held or a sermon was preached ; that each person was
seated in his or her proper place, that each conducted him-
self with decorum and remained throughout the service J
(Accordingly the act-books tell their interesting story of
ministers on beginning service sending wardens and side-
men abroad to command men to come to church. The
churchwardens and their allies have all sorts of experiences :
they break in upon " exercises " or conventicles f^ they
peep in at victuallers' houses or at inns where irate hosts
slam doors in their faces and give them bad words on being
caught offending;^* they come across merrymakers dancing
the morris-dance on the village green during Sunday after-
noon service,^'' or they surprise men at a quiet game of cards
at a neighbor's house during evening prayer.^® J
When admonished by the wardens to enter church, some
merely gave contemptuous replies, such as " what prates
thou ? " f^ others, when the wardens approached, took to
*° See p. 15 supra.
^Dean of York's Visit., 341.
"^ Numerous other presentments at visitations for failure to supply
the requisites for worship besides those adduced in the text will be
found in Hale, Crim. Prec, 173 (A warden failing to supply the
elements for communion. isH). Ibid., 154 ("The rode lofte
beame, the staieres of the rode loft standinge, the churche lacketh
whittinge to deface the monuments." 1572), etc. Barnes' Eccles.
Proc, 115 ("The Degrees of Manage" and "the Postils " lacking.
I57f)- Warrington Deanery Visit., 189 ("Cloth for the communion
table." 1592). Visitation of Manchester Deanery in 1592 by the
Bishop of Chester in Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Soc. Tr.,
xiii, 58 (Communion cup lacking). Ibid., 62 (" Noe fonte," and
christenings in "a bason or dish"). This source hereinafter cited
as Manchester Deanery Visit.
■"Hale, Crim. Prec, s. a. 1587 (21st June).
'* Manchester Deanery Visit., 66 (1592). Cf. Canterbury Visit.,
XXV, 23 (1600).
"Hall, Crim. Prec, 13 (1598).
" Warrington Deanery Visit., 189.
" Manchester Deanery Visit., 69.
24 The Elizabethan Parish. [326
their heels and ran away.*^® Once inside the church the
wardens' task was by no means ended. They had the care
of placing each one in his or her seat according to degree ;"
according to sex ;®^ and, in case of women, according as they
were old or young, married or unmarried.®^ Finally, as
has been said, the wardens were expected to keep watch
lest some one slip out before the service was over or the
sermon ended.®-
But while they have one eye on the congregation lest they
offend, wardens and sidemen must keep another on the
minister while service proceeds or the sacraments are ad-
ministered, in order that the rites be duly observed and the
Rubric followed. The curate of They don Gernon (Essex)
is presented by wardens and sidemen " quia non fecit suam
diligentiam in die end 0 preces, viz. the communion and Lit-
any " f^ while the rector of East Hanningfield in the same
archdeaconry is not only complained of to the ordinary for
not maintaining the book of articles, and not using the cross
^ Ibid. Then as now the ale-house was the strongest rival of
the House of God. A very common class of offenders were those
who would not leave their ale cups to go to service (see authorities
cited, passim). Men were also great gossipers ("common talkers")
in the churchyard, as a number of presentments show.
"Order of the archdeacon, Essex Archdeaconry, to the wardens
of St. Peter's and of All Saints, Maldon, in 1577, Hale, Crim. Prec,
158. For refusing to keep her seat in church according to this
order Elizabeth Harris was presented the next year, Hale, loc. cit., 171.
•"The vestry of St. Alphage's (G. B. Hall, Records of St. Alphage,
London Wall, 31) grew highly indignant in Aug., 1620, when the
business of seating the parishioners came up for discussion, that a
Mr. Loveday and his wife should presume to sit "togeather in one
pewe and that in the He where men vsually doe & ere did sitt; we
hould it most ynconvenyent and most vnseemely, And doe thinke
it fitt that Mr Chancellor of London be made acquainted w[i]th it
[etc].."
"^Hale, Crim. Prec, 241-2: "Contra Hayward, puellam. Presen-
tatur, for that she beinge but a yonge mayde, sat in the pewe with
her mother, to the greate offence of many reverend women. . " The
child (as the vicar who made the presentment continues should
have sat at her mother's "pewe dore." 1617). Cf. Barnes' Eccles.
Proc, 122-3 (Janet Foggard cited for that "she beinge a yonge
woman, unmarried, will not sit in the stall wher she is appointed . . .").
Cf. Hale, op. cit., 210 (One Clay and his wife " will not be ordered
in church by us the church wardens [etc.]..". 1595).
" Examples will be found in the act-books cited supra.
"Hale, Crim. Prec, 149 (1566). Cf. ibid., 163 (The divine ser-
vice not "reverently, plainelye and distinctlye saide ..." 1576).
327] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 25
in baptism, but he is also indicted on the same occasion for
not praying for the Queen " accordinge to hir injunctions,
viz. he leaveth out of hir stile the kingdome of Fraunce."®*
The court's order was that the rector should acknowledge
his error on the following Sunday ''coram gardianis."
The wardens of Wilton, Yorkshire, report to the commis-
sary of the Dean of York that their curate recites divine
service " very orderlie," but not at a fit time, for he holds
service at eight in the morning and two in the afternoon.®''
Finally, the rector of Pitsea is complained against to the
archdeacon of Essex for " that he is unsufficient to serve
the cure ine that theie are not edified by him . . . ."*®
If the parson neglected his duties it was incumbent upon
the wardens to exhort him to perform them.®^ When at
the visitation of the bishop of Chester in 1592 it was found
that there was no surplice at Bolton Church, Manchester
Deanery, not only did the judge admonish one of the Bol-
ton wardens to buy the surplice, but he was instructed " to
offer hit to thee Vicar at the time of ministering the sacra-
ments, and to certify of his wearing or refusing of hit
before the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord next."®^
By virtue of searching articles of inquiry administered to
them,®® such as. Is your vicar a double-beneficed man, and,
if so, is he lawfully dispensated? Does he keep hospitality?
"Hale, op. cit., 182 (1584). Cf. Whitgift's Articles for Sarum
diocese in 1588, art. viii: "Whether your ministers used to pray for
the quenes majestie ... by the title and style due to her majestie.'*
Cardwell, Doc. Ann., ii, 14.
"^Dean of York's Visit., 320 (1596).
*"Hale, op. cit., 159 (1575).
"3 Rep. Hist. MSS. Com., 275 (A vicar presented by church-
wardens in the commissary's court at Poddington-apud-Ampthill
for not catechising the youth, etc., though required to do so by one
of the wardens. 1616). For not presenting their minister when he
neglected to catechise on the Sabbath, the wardens of St. Mary
Woolchurch Haw, London, had to pay divers fees to the chancellor.
Brooke and Hallen, Registers of St. Mary Woolchurch Haw (1886),
Wardens Acc'ts, s. a. 1593.
** Accordingly, by a later entry in the book we see that the warden
brought in court a certificate that the surplice had been bought and
worn by the vicar. Manchester Deanery Visit., 59. For a precisely
similar injunction see ibid., 62 (Wardens of Eccles).
*" See p. 15 supra.
26 The Elizabethan Parish. [328
If non-resident does he give the fortieth part to the poor?
Does your minister wear a surplice at the appointed times,
yea or no? Does he use the cross in baptism and the ring
in marriage?'^ Does your schoolmaster teach without li-
cence of his ordinary under seal, or no? Do you know any
person excommunicate in your parish who repairs to church ?
Do you know anyone ordered by law to do penance, or
excommunicate for not doing the same, who still continues
unreformed? — ^by virtue of this strict questioning by the
ordinary put to them in written articles before each visita-
tion, church wardens, and their coadjutors, the sworn men or
sidemen, were compelled to exercise a continual supervision
over their minister's conduct as well as over that of the
parishioners generally. This fact, coupled with the circum-
stance that they were themselves liable to be reported to
the court and punished if they failed to indict, accounts for
the cautious presentments made by these Elizabethan war-
dens.
Those of Great Witchingham, Norfolk, for instance, in-
form the chancellor that their parson " holdeth two benefi-
ces, but whether lawfully dispensated they know not," and
they add that a schoolmaster in their parish " teacheth pub-
licly, but whether licenced or not they know not."^^ The
wardens of Ellerburn, Yorkshire, present Jane Gryme for
fornication, and add " but whether the curate did churche
hir or no they cannot say."^^ And the following year they
bring to the court's knowledge " that their vicar ... is not
resident upon his vicaredg, but what he bestoweth upon the
poore they know not."^^ Lastly, the very prudent wardens
of Pickering in the same peculiar bring in their presentment
in this fashion : " Qui dicunt et presentant there vicar for
that he for the moste parte, but not alwaies dothe weare a
surplesse in tyme of dyvyne service. They present there
vicar for that they ar vncerteyne whether his wif[e] was
"For presentments of vicar's (etc.) offences see pp. 31 ff. infra.
"L. G. Bolingbroke; The Reformation in a Norfolk Parish, Norf.
and Norw. Arch. Soc, xiii, 207-8 (1593).
"Dean of York's Visit., 231 (1594).
"Ibid., 315. See also ibid., 225 and 229.
329] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 27
commended vnto him by justices of peace, nor whether he
was licenced to marrye hir according to hir Maiestie's in-
iuncions/'^* The almost unseemly interest here displayed
by the wardens in their vicar's matrimonial relations is ex-
plained by the provisions of article xxix of the Queen's
Injunctions of 1559, which ordain that no priest or deacon
shall wed any woman without the bishop's licence and the
advice and allowance of two neighboring justices of the
peace first obtained.
Other parish obligations enforced by the courts Christian
through the churchwardens were the keeping of annual per-
ambulations (or, as we should say today, beating the bounds
of the parish) by parson, wardens and certain of the sub-
stantial men of the parish, in the second week before Whit-
Sunday (" Rogation Week ") ;" the exhibiting to the offi-
cial of the parish register, or the putting in of copies of
it once a year at Easter;^® the choosing in conjunction
with the parson of collectors for the poor up to 1597, in
most parishes at any rate;''^ the levying of the I2d. fine on
'^Ibid., 339 (1602).
" See Queen's Inj. of 1559, art. xviii. Also art. xviii of Archbp.
(of York) Grindal's Inj. of 1571, Parker Soc, Remains of Grindal,
132, Also Cardwell, Doc. Ann., \, 337, etc. For the enforcing of
the obligation by the ordinary, see numerous examples in Canter-
bury Visit., XXV, 22 (1585) ; 32 (Controversy in 1584 between two
parishes as to bounds); 37 (1594). Also ibid., xxvi, 24, 25, et
passim. Other examples in Hale, Crim. Prec, 162, where a parish-
ioner of Burstead Parva (Essex) is cited at a visitation for plough-
ing up a dole (a balk or unploughed ridge), which marked the
boundary line between Burstead and Dunton parishes. Cf. Canter-
bury Visit., XXV, 15, where three parishioners are presented for cover-
ing up a parish procession linch (1617).
"See, e. g., A. G. Legge, North Elmham (Norfolk) Acc'ts (1891),
76 (1562), 82 (1566 and 1567). Melton Acc'ts in Leicest. Archit.
and Arch. Soc, iii, 192 (1566). Ludlow Acc'ts in Shrop. Arch. Soc,
2nd ser., i, s. a. 1601-2, etc.
" In this year the 39 Eliz. c. 3 was enacted which instituted over-
seers of the poor nominated by the licence of the justices, and
placed wholly under their supervision. In spite of the provisions
of an earlier act (14 Eliz. c. s) giving the justices power to appoint,
or see collectors appointed, the ecclesiastical courts rather than the
justices, as the act-books show, seem to have looked after the matter.
See, e. g., Manchester Deanery Visit., -57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 68, etc.
Also Warrington Deanery Visit., 184, 186, 187, 191, etc. Cf. the
item in the Ludlow Acc'ts, Shrop. Arch. Soc, i, s. a. 1586-7, where
is recorded an expense item for a payment to " Mr. Chauncelor "
for entering a presentment for collections for the poor.
28 The Elizabethan Parish. [330
all those who absented themselves from service;^® the put-
ting down of all " superstitious " rites in the parish, such
as the carrying of banners in perambulation week or the
wearing of surplices on such occasions ;'* the ringing of the
church bells on Hallowe'en, or on the eve of All Souls;
excessive tolling of bells at funerals,^^ etc.
From the point of view of their fellow-parishioners, no
doubt, the most important function of the wardens was that
of administering the parish finances. This subject will be
considered at length in the chapter which follows, but the
fact that the spiritual courts enforced the levying of rates
for church repair, etc., through the wardens, as well as an
accounting to the parish of all monies received or disbursed,
concerns us here. When the Ealing wardens were " de-
tected " to the chancellor of the bishop of London because
they had no pulpit-cloth, no poor-box, nor the Paraphrases
of Erasmus, they appeared and declared in court that they
had not provided these things " nor can do it, for that there
is no churche stock wherewith to do it." Hereupon they
were admonished that the judge's pleasure was that they
should procure Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Knight (evidently
two prominent parishioners) to make an assessment on the
parish in order to purchase these articles, and further that
they (the wardens) should certify to the court at a later
day fixed that the rate had been laid and the missing requis-
ites bought, unless, indeed, some refused to pay, in which
"See act-books above cited. Also Hale, Crim. Prec, 165, et
passim. Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 118, et passim. Norf. and Norw.
Arch. Soc., xiii, 207-8 (Great Witchingham wardens).
"Stanford (Berks) Accounts, Antiquary, xvii (1888), 169 (Ex-
penses to Oxford " to speke with [the] . . . Archedyacon for caryeng
a strem[e]r in Rogacion weke." 1564). Hale, Crim. Prec, 150
(Wearing of surplice on same occasion. 1567) ; 152 {Do. 1572).
Cf. Grindal's Inj. at York, 1571, in Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 337.
'"Melton Acc'ts, uhi supra, 192 ("Beyng somonyd ffor Ryngng
off all Hallodaye att nyght." 1566). Halesowen Acc'ts in T. R.
Nash, History and Antiq. of Worcestershire, ii, App., p. xxx (1578).
Stanford Acc'ts, uhi supra, 169 (1566). Manchester Deanery Visit.,
64 (Wardens of Manchester " ringe more than is necessarie at
Burialls . . ."). Cf. Canons of 1571, Cardwell, Syn., i, 124 (Or-
dained that wardens must not suffer " campanas superstitiose pulsari,
vel in vigilia Animarum, vel postridie Omnium Sanctorum ... ").
33 1] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 29
case their names should be handed into court.^^ So, again,
when rector and wardens of Sutton were presented in the
same court for letting their church go to ruin, they protested
that the reason was that £40 " will skant repayre it, and
that so mutch cannot be levied of all the land in the
p[ar]ishe." But this excuse was not for a moment ad-
mitted, and they were warned to appear in the next con-
sistory court to take out a warrant for the assessment of
the lands.^-
Though the wardens did not themselves in practice al-
ways make the rate directed by the archdeacon, yet they
were held responsible for its making. So true was this
that if, after a duly called parish meeting for the purpose
of laying the rate in obedience to the archdeacon's orders,
no parishioners appear, then, in the words of the archdea-
con's official to the wardens of Ramsden Bellhouse (Essex) :
"if the inhabitants of the said p[ar]ish will not join with
the said church wardens &c., that then the said churchwar-
dens shall themselves make a rate for the leveinge of the
said charges [etc.] . . . ."®^
" Accordingly some seven weeks later the wardens (or rather
their successors) appeared again and reported that the rate had
been laid, but not gathered. The court granted them a further space
to buy the implements. Hale, Churchwardens' Prec, 2-3 (158I).
Similar examples abound in Archdeacon Hale's work, just cited,
which covers the period 1557 to 1736.
^^ Ibid., 4 (1584). For other cases see passim.
''Hale, Churchwardens' Prec, 98 (1601). Burn, Eccles. Law,
i, 268 (citing Gibson, Codex, 196, and i Bacon, Abridg., 373), says
that if no parishioners appear at a meeting duly called for the pur-
pose of assessment, " the churchwardens alone may make the rate,
because they and not the parishioners are to be cited and punished
in defect of repairs." To these words should be added the quali-
fication that the parishioners were sometimes collectively punished,
viz., by interdiction of their church. Thus in St. Alban's arch-
deaconry the parishioners of Redbourn were directed through the
wardens to make a rate to levy £60 "sub pena interdictionis
eccl[es]ie sue a divinoru[m] celebratione et sacramentaru[m] et
sacramentaliu[m] . . . [etc]." Hale, op. cit., 89 (1599). In
Jan., tIH> we find Shoreham Vetera in Lewes archdeaconry inter-
dicted, and one of its wardens appearing, " humil[ite]r petijt inter-
dicc[i]o[n]em . . . emissam pro defect[u] eccle[s]ie ruinos[e]
. . . revocari . . ." in order that time might be given him to
call together the tenants and owners of land in the parish and out-
lying districts as well as " strangers " wiio held lands in the parish.
Ibid., 111-12. In 1603 the wardens of Northawe are to see a levy
made "sub pena interdicti." Ibid., 90. Cf. pp. 36-7.
30 The Elizabethan Parish. [332
Finally, the archdeacons or their officials always stood
ready to enforce an accounting by the outgoing wardens
to the parishioners or their representatives. If the account-
ing was delayed too long, or if the surplus was not promptly
handed over to the incoming (or newly elected) wardens,
then the delinquent officers were cited before the court.
Numerous instances are found in the court records of the
enforcing of this duty.®*
A permanent parish officer and one over whose appoint-
ment the parishioners had usually no control®^ was the
parish minister, whether officiating rector, vicar or curate.^®
Elizabethan statutes and canons sought to increase the dig-
nity of the incumbents of cures,®^ but royal greed did yet
more to lower it.®®
The minister was usually addressed by his parishioners
as " Sir " John, or " Sir " George, etc., quite irrespective of
^Examples are: Hale, Crim. Prec, 189 (Mucking, Essex,
wardens. 158^). Ibid., 199 (East Horndon, Essex, wardens con-
fess they have not accounted " by reason the parishioners will not
come to recken with them." They are warned to make their
account and if the parishioners will not audit it, to exhibit it at the
next court. 1590). Ibid., 222 (Several parishioners presented
for "not receiving" a warden's account. They plead that he was
not chosen to be warden bv their parson. 1600). See also Canter-
bury Visit., xxvi, 20, 21, also ibid., xxvii, 220, et passim. Dean of
York's Visit., 335.
^ "The cases in which the advowson of the parish belonged to
the inhabitants, though more numerous than is often supposed,
were distinctly exceptional." Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Local
Government, the County and the Parish (1906), 34 note.
*'0n the distinction between rector, vicar, curate, etc., see Felix
Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the
Church of England (Engl, trans. 1895), 334-7. Also Rev. W. G.
Clark-Maxwell in Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., xxxiii (1904), 358-9.
^ E. g., the Canons of 1571, sec. De Episcopis, required that the
bishops ordain no one except such as had a good education and
were versed in Latin and the Holy Scriptures. Nor was a candi-
date to be admitted to orders "si in agricultura vel in vili aliquo et
sedcntario artificio fuerit educatus."
**0f some 8,800 parish churches in England in 1601 only 600, it
was computed, afforded a competent living for a minister. Dr.
James in debate in ParHament November i6th, 1601. Heywood
Townshend, Historical Collections or Proceedings in the last Four
Parliaments of Elisabeth (ed. 1680), 218-19. Sir S. D'Ewes, The
Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Elisabeth (ed.
1682), 640. How this came about see White Kennett, Parochial
Antiquities (ed. 1695), 433-45-
333] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish, 31
his actual rank,®® and this in an age of punctilious distinc-
tions in forms of address. In the small country parishes
the incumbent was often the only, or almost the only, edu-
cated man in the community. His advice had naturally
considerable weight in parish affairs, and his pen was often
required in the drawing up of official or legal documents,
certifications or testimonials, the casting up of parish ac-
counts and the like.®^
We find in the act-books officiating rectors or vicars pre-
sented for non-residence upon their cures ;®^ while rectors
and other recipients of great tithes are " detected " at visi-
tations for not repairing the chancels in their churches; or
not maintaining their vicarage buildings with barns and
dove-cotes ;^2 or for not providing quarter sermons where
the clergyman serving the cure was not himself licenced to
preach;®^ beneficed men not resident are arraigned for not
*' Examples will be found in the churchwardens' accounts of the
period, the Morebath, (Devon) Acc'ts for instance, which have been
transcribed in extenso up to 1573 by Rev. J. Erskine Binney (Exeter,
1904). The garrulous old vicar here, Christopher Trychay, who
wrote the parish accounts himself for more than a generation, and
always punctiliously styled himself " Sir," is a fascinating figure.
Thanks to his chatty explanations on all subjects, bits of the daily
life of this little Devonshire parish from Henry VIIFs, from
Edward VI's, from Mary's, and from Elizabeth's reigns are brought
down to us with great vividness. Cf. James Stockdale, Annals of
Cartmel (1872), 5^-9 (Custom of addressing minister as "Sir"
lingering down to nineteenth century in Lancashire).
Lambard, Duties of Constables, Borsholders, etc. (ed. 1619 fre-
quently made an appendix to his Eirenarcha), 67, says: "The . . . .
Lawes, hauing imployment of many to make, hath borrowed some
use in a few easie matters of spirituall Ministers, chiefly for the
helpe and readinesse of their pen, which in many Parishes few,
or none (besides they) can serue withall."
^^ Canterbury Visit., xxv, 22 (1590); 23 (1593). Dean of York's
Visit., 231 (1594); 315 (1595).
Warrington Deanery i^isit., 184 (Farmer of advowson not re-
pairing chancel) ; 186 (" Wm. Brereton of Hareford, Esquire,"
ditto) ; 188 (Executors of will of the late rector, ditto) ; 191
(Rector of Warrington) ; 192 (Rector of Wigan). Canterbury
Visit., xxv, 32 (Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. 1583) ; 26
("Mr. John Smyth, Esquire"). For not keeping in repair vicar-
ages, barns, dove-houses, etc., see ibid., xxvi, 20, 32. Also ibid.,
xxvii, 222, etc.
'^ Hale, Crim. Prec., 160 (" Dominus injunxit dicto Simpson [rec-
tor of Pitsea, Essex] that he shall procure iiij*"" sermons in the
ytare ..." 157I). Canterbury Visit., xxvi, 44 (Wardens pres-
ent "they have no quarter sermons"). Ibid., 213 (1569); 214
32 The Elizabethan Parish. [334
giving the fortieth part of their revenue to the parish poor ;**
resident ministers indicted for not keeping hospitality,®'^ or
for not visiting the sick.®®
Just as the wardens were to look after the conduct of
their minister, so the minister was required to fill the office
of a censor upon the behavior of the wardens and to report
to the ordinary their delinquencies — as, indeed, the tres-
passes of any among his congregation, though the latter
task was more particularly assigned to the wardens and
sidemen.®^ Furthermore the minister was the vehicle
through which the commands of the authorities, lay or
ecclesiastical, were conveyed to the parishioners. He was
compelled to read these commands or injunctions at stated
times and exhort his hearers to obey them. For failure to
comply with this duty, he might be cited before the official,®®
and punished by that officer.®®
The curate of East Hanningfield, Essex, is presented in
1587 for " that he ha the not geven warninge to the church-
wardens to looke to there dutie in service tyme, for such as
(1574) ; 222 (1600). Dean of York's Visit, 222 (Wardens present
"Mr. Deane for want of the quarter sermons." 1592). Canter-
bury Visit., XXV, 43 (" Sir Wm. Baldock our Vicar, himself un-
licenced to preach, doth not provide a preacher for the sermons
appointed by her Majesty's Injunctions." 1593). The Queen's
Injunctions of 1559, art. iv, provided that parsons should preach in
their own persons at least one sermon in every quarter of the year.
^Canterbury Visit., xxv, 22, 23 (two examples). Ibid., vol.
xxvi, 31, 44, 222, 319, etc. See Queen's Injunc. of 1559, art. xi.
*"* See authorities above cited. Whether the incumbent kept
hospitality was a standing article of inquiry in the visitations of
the period; e. g., Grindal's Metrop. Visit. Art. of 1576, Remains of
Grindal, Parker Soc, 157 ff.
^Manchester Deanery Visit., 62, ("They [ministers of Man-
chester] be nott dutifull in visitinge the sicke").
" " And if the churchwardens and swornmen be negligent, or shall
refuse to do their duty ... ye shall present to the ordinary both
them and all such others of your parish as shall offend ..." Archbp.
Grindal's Inj. at York, 1571, Remains of Grindal, Parker Soc, 129.
"^Or judge acting by delegation from the ordinary.
""Against the Reader [of Denton Chapel] ... doth not Reade
the Injunctions ..." Manchester Deanery Visit., 60. "Qui
[wardens of Belby] dicunt, the Articles being diligentlie redd unto
them [etc.] ..." Dean of York's Visit., 221 (i59i)- ibid.,
341. Cf. Queen's Inj. of 1559, Art. xiv.
335] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 33
are absent from service. "^"^^ The curate of Monkton, Kent,
is brought before the court in 1569 for that he "doth not
call upon fathers and mothers and masters of youths to
bring them up in the fear of God."^<^^ When the arch-
deacon sent down an excommunication against any one of
the parish, it was delivered to the minister to be solemnly
proclaimed by him from the pulpit,^^^ and thereafter he had
to see that the excommunicate person remained away from
service until absolution was granted^^^ by the ordinary,
which absolution was then publicly pronounced from the
pulpit.^^* When penance had to be done in church by an
offender, it was the duty of the parson to superintend the
performance; to say, if necessary, before the congregation
the formula of confession prescribed for the offence, in
order that the guilty person might repeat it after him;^*^^
to exhort the persons present to refrain from similar trans-
gressions; to read, on occasion, some homily bearing upon
the subject ;^^^ and finally to make out a certificate (together
'""Hale, Crim. Prec, 193. Cf. Grindal's Inj. at York, 1571 : "Ye
[the ministers] shall openly every Sunday . . . monish . . , the
churchwardens and sworn men of your parish to look to their oaths
[etc.] ..." Remains of Grindal, 129. Also Whitgift's Articles
of 1583, Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 406 (Ministers to warn parishioners
once a month to repair to church).
^'^^ Canterbury Visit., xxv, 36.
'"'Cf. Canons of 1597: " De recusantibus et aliis excommunicatis
publice denunciandis." Cardwell, Syn., i, 156. Also Croke's Ells.
Rep., Leache's ed. (1790), i, Pt. ii, 838, where a plaintiff sues for
damages because defendant, a curate, maliciously erased the orig-
inal name in an instrument of excommunication and inserted
plaintiff's name, " and read it in the church, whereupon he was
inforced to be absent from divine service, and to be at the expence
to procure a discharge for himself" (1599). Canterbury Visit.,
xxvii, 219 (Rector of Swalecliffe presented for keeping back and
not announcing excommunications " sent out of this court." 1596) .
"^ Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 219 (Rector suffering excommunicates
to come to his church during service). See also infra, p. 47.
"** Canons of 1585 and 1597, Cardwell, Syn., i, 144 and 155-6 re-
spectively.
""^ See in Hale, Crim. Prec, 206-7, the elaborate formula of con-
fession prescribed for Wm. Peacock of Leighton, Essex, in 1592.
He was to "publiquely after the minister . . . confesse [etc.] ..."
'"'Hale, op. cit., 160 (Margaret Orton's penance for adultery.
" And ther was redd the firste parte of the homilie againste
whoredome & adulterie, the people ther present exorted to refraine
from soche wickedness . . .").
34
The Elizabethan Parish. [336
with the wardens, if necessary) that the penance had been
carried out as enjoined by the judge.
Besides the celebration of the rites pertaining to his
priestly office, which need not detain us here, there were
many other duties which the ecclesiastical courts enjoined
on the parish incumbent. Some of these have already been
referred to.^^^ Others will appear as we view the disci-
pline of the courts Christian when exercised over the parish-
ioners at large, to which subject we shall now address our-
selves.
Foremost among the requirements exacted by the ordi-
naries from all alike was the duty of attending church.
Every one had to frequent service on Sundays and on feast-
days, and to be present at evening as well as at morning
prayer.^^® Nor might a man repair to a church in another
parish because it was nearer than his own.^^^ Should his
own minister be unlicenced to preach — and only about one
incumbent out of four or five was licenced^^® — he was not
permitted, except under special authorization,^^^ to hear a
sermon in another church while service was going on in his
^'" See pp. 12-13, and p. 27, supra.
^'^ Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 114 (Parishioner in a Durham parish
presented for absenting himself " twice at morning prayer, and
verrey often at eveninge prayer." 1579) . Houghton-le-Spring Acc'ts,
s. a., 1596, Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv (1888), 271 (Giving in a bill of
presentment for those absent from morning and from evening
prayer).
^'''Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 221 (Four persons cited "for that
they dwell so far from their own Church come now to the Parish
Church of Westbere." 1569). Ibid., xxv, 21 (Two men presented
for not attending their parish church " being two miles off, but go
to the next Parish Church." 1569). Ibid., 23 (1600). Op. cit.,
xxvi, 46 (Presentment of one who had often to be absent from
his parish on business. 1593). Dean of York's Visit., 227 (Attend-
ing another church for fear of arrest for debt in his own. 1594)-
"° See in Daniel Neal, History of the Puritans (J. Toulmin's
ed., Bath, 1793-7), i. 413-17, contemporary (1585-6) statistics for
the licenced preachers of nine counties. See also J. C. Cox, Three
Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, i, 245 (Only 82 clergymen licenced
to preach out of a total in the diocese of Lichfield of 433, according
to a document circa 1602).
^" For such a permit to hear preaching elsewhere, see Hale, Crim.
Prec, 189 (Six parishioners of Shopland (Essex) authorized by
the archdeacon to repair to a neighboring church for a sermon when
there is no preaching in their own, but only two permitted to leave
their own services at any one time. I58f).
337] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 35
own.^^2 If, however, a man were able to pay the statu-
tory"^ fine of 1 2d. for each absence on holy days he could,
it would seem, in practice resort to his parish church only
on occasions, say once a month, and yet not get himself
written down as a recusant. ^^*
Heads of families were made responsible for the attend-
ance of their children and servants; innkeepers or victual-
lers for their guests.^^'^
Qf it was not permissible to frequent service in another
place of worship, neither was it optional with a parishioner
to get married elsewhere than in his own church.^^^ There,
too, his marriage banns had to be published — and it was
a presentable offence to marry without banns ;^^^ there he
had to have his children christened"* and his wife
^^Hale, ibid., 187-8.
"* I Eliz., c. 2, sec. iii, ad finem.
"*See 23 Eliz. c. i, sec. iv (Forfeiture of i20 for every month's
forbearance from church attendance). Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 406
(Whitgift's Articles of 1583; minister and wardens to diligently
observe those absenting themselves for the space of a month, accord-
ing to 2'J Eliz. [supra] in order that they may be presented as
recusants to the justices at quarter sessions). See also in Rox-
burghe Ballads (1871), i, 118, a ballad written circa 1620 which
tells us : " There be diuers Papists, That to saue their Fine, Come
to Church once a moneth. To heare Seruice Diuine. The Pope giues
them power, As they say, to doe so; They saue money by't too.
But I know what I know." Cf. Canterbury Visit., xxv, 27 (Pre-
sentment " that he is a negligent comer to our Parish Church, being
not able to pay the forfeiture." IS97). Ibid., xxvii, 223 ("John
Wilkins be slothful in coming to the Church, and because he is
a poor man we cannot take the fine of twelve pence." 1578). Also
ibid., xxvi, 46 (Humphrey Watts coming sometimes but once a
month to church).
^^'^ Canterbury Visit., xxvi, 18 (One Deal presented for keeping a
schoolmaster, " and also being a victualler, suffereth him to remain
in his house and not frequent Divine Service on the Sabbath Day."
1580).
"'^Warrington Deanery Visit., 191 (One Motley "married not
known where"). See other visitations, passim.
"^ Warrington Deanery Visit., 192 (Four persons presented from
Wigan for marrying without banns) ; 189, et passim.
^" Ibid. 184 (A child not baptized at the parish church); 189
("A child christened, and not known where") ; 190 (Same). Hale,
Crim. Prec, 216 (" Keeping her child unbaptized a whole moneth."
1597)- Ibid., 183 (Curate of Blackmore, Essex, suspended from the
celebration of the rites because " there was tow children . . .
which died unchristened by his necligence." 1584).
36 The EUzahethan Parish. [338
churched ;"® there he was compelled to send sons, daughters
or apprentices to be catechized, ^-^ and there himself learn
the principles of religion (if he were ignorant of them),
for without a knowledge of the Catechism and the Ten Com-
mandments he could not receive communion.^-^
^ All persons over fourteen had to receive communion at
Easter, and at least on two other occasions during the
year.^-- In fact readiness to receive according to the
Anglican rites became the test of a loyal subject.^^^'
The strict requirement to report all non-communicants to
the official resulted in the keeping of books in which were
written the names of the parish communicants.^^*
Next in importance to church attendance and the observ-
ance of the sacraments came the duty of all parishioners
to contribute to the parish expenses. We have viewed
church courts at work, compelling wardens to levy church
^^"^ Warrington Deanery Visit., 189; 190 ("His wife churched not
known where"). Hale, uhi sup., 167.
^ Warrington Deanery Visit., 185 (Office of judge against James
Woswall: "His children come not to bee catechised"). See Canons
of 1 571 (Parents and masters to be presented for not regularly-
sending children or apprentices to learn the catechism), Cardwell,
Syn., i, 120.
^"^ See Queen's Visit. Art. of 1559 in Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 211.
Hale, Crim. Prec., 226 (One Robinson presented for not going to his
minister to be examined in the principles of religion of which he
was ignorant). Barnes' Eccles. Proc., 122-3 (An offender
" lackeinge the catechism dyde thrust in amongest others and
receyvid ..." Another was " repulsed from the Communion
because he coulde not saye the 10 commaundements, in whome we
can perceyve no towardnes to learne them "). Also Hale, ubi supra,
146, 159, etc.
'^ Presentments for not receiving are numerous in the act-books.
A few references are, Dean of York's Visit., 219 ff. E. g., at Goath-
land 20 persons are presented by name. See also Hale, Crim. Prec.,
163, 171, 176, etc., and the other act-books heretofore cited. Also
canons, injunctions and visitation articles of the time, c. g.. Canons
of 1571 (Vicars, etc., to present all over fourteen who have not
received) in Cardwell, Syn., i, 120. Grindal's Inj. for York, 1571
(All above fourteen to receive in their own churches at least three
times a year), Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 336.
'^ See Heywood Townshend, Proc. in the La^t Four Pari, of Eliz.,
Debates, passim.
'•* J. E. Foster: Ch'wd'ns Acc'ts of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge
(1905), 225 (Item for paper book to write in all names of the
parish at Easter. 1590-1). Ibid., 202 (Item to a scribe for writing
names of communicants). Thos. North, Chronicle of St. Martin,
Leicester, Ch'zvd'ns Acc'ts, 171 (Item same as above. 1568^).
339] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 37
rates; we have now to see how the judges forced recalci-
trant ratepayers to pay the sums assessed upon them to the
wardens or other collectors.
Among the earliest vestry minutes of the parish of
St. Christopher-le-Stocks, London, is one which, after order-
ing that an assessment be made for the clerk's wages and
for pews, decreed that any rebellious persons should be
summoned before themselves, the vestry, to be reformed.
But if the rebel would not appear, or, on appearance, remain
stubborn to reason, then the churchwardens should sue him
before the ordinary at the parish costs " vntill suche tyme
as he be reduced vnto a good order, and hath paid bothe the
costys of the sute and the chargs that he owith vnto the
church . . . ."^^^ Fifty years later we find this vestry
ordaining the same procedure to be followed against parish
debtors, and referring to its former order.^^^
It seems, in fact, to have been the well-understood thing
that just as parish rates to defray the costs of those matters
of parish administration, falling within the province of the
ecclesiastical courts, were to be assessed by the authority,
and under the direction, of those courts, so, too, the recovery
of these rates was to be had before the same tribunals. It
is not denied that recourse may occasionally have been made
in these matters to the courts of common law, but it is be-
lieved that the proper remedy was at ecclesiastical law.^^^
Furthermore, we believe that the means at the disposal of
the ecclesiastical courts for putting their judgments into
effect were quite sufficient and in practice effective.
Wjjjg|^thQ§e means were will be taken up and discussed
a litne further on. Returning to the matter of suing parish
debtors in courts Christian, it is interesting to find that in
^"E. Freshfield, Vestry Minutes of St. Christopher-le-Stocks,
Append., 71.
^'Ibid, 7. For similar vestry orders see Vestry Minutes of St.
Margaret, Lothbury, London (also edited by Dr. Freshfield), pp. i
(1571) and 15 (1583). Also G. W. Hill and W. F. Frere, Memorials
of Stepney Parish, 42 (1602), and 51 (i6o|).
"^Biirn, Eccles. Law, \ (ed. 1763), 274, suh voce Church, says:
"And if any of the parishioners refuse to pay their rates, being de-
manded by the churchwardens, they are to be sued for, and to be
recovered in, the ecclesiastical courts, and not elsewhere."
3$ The Elizabethan Parish. [340
the language of the period a suit " at law " did not always
mean at common law. An order of the vestry of Stepney,
London, in February, i6of, after determining the manner
in which £50 should be raised to pay off parish debts due
to the bell founder, adds that persons refusing to pay their
shares, or neglecting to do so, should not find themselves
aggrieved "if the same be recouered against them by
Lawe." And the meaning of this term is fully explained
by these subsequent words in the same order, that the
churchwardens shall "at the chardg of the p[ar]ish ap-
pointe and entertayne one doctor and a proctor to sue and
recouer the same by lawe of any p[er]son [etc.].""® Now
doctors and proctors practiced before ecclesiastical tribu-
nals only.^2®
That presentment to the ordinary was the common and
usual way, not only of recovering church rates, but any
thing of value that belonged to the parish and was unjustly
detained, the act-books and other documents of the time
plentifully show. Thus in Archbishop Parker's Visitation
Articles for the diocese of Canterbury in the year 1569, he
requires all churchwardens to report to their ordinaries
" whether there be any money or stoke, appertaininge to
any paryshe churche, in anye manne's handes, that refuse
or differeth to paye the same [etc.]."^^^ The wardens of
Melton Mowbray record under the year 1602 an item for
charges at the court at Leicester against a parishioner " for
not payinge his levi for the churche. "^^^ Those of Ash-
^^ Memorials of Stepney, 51. Cf. Acts of the Privy Council (ed.
Dasent), xxii, 482-3 (A tenant refusing a customary payment for
church repair, presented by " the generall consent " of the parish-
ioners of Lewesham to the commissary's court. He removes the
cause to Star Chamber "to the extreame chardgis, trouble and
hinderance" of one of the wardens, to the encouragement of like
offenders, and to the "utter ruin and decaie " of the church. 1592).
The source last quoted hereinafter cited as A. P. C, xxii (etc.).
^^ Besides the order just mentioned, the Stepney vestry had three
years before ordained concerning their wardens that these were "to
shew how they haue p[re]sented them [old dues in their books],
Otherwise the said churchwardens shalbe charged to pay those
Arrearages as shall remayne so vnpaid and not p[re]sented by
them." Op. cit., 43.
"" Art. xxi, Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 326.
^*^ Lcicest. Archit. (etc.) Soc, iii, 204.
34 1 ] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 39
burton, Devon, itemize in 1 568-1 569 two shillings " for a
zytation to those that wold nott pay to the power."^^^
As the wardens of East Tilbury were going about among
the parishioners demanding money of each one according
to the rating inscribed on an assessment roll which they
carried with them, one Garrett, a constable, discontented
that he himself should be rated as high as four shillings,
seized the roll and refused to produce it. This, of course,
put an end to further collections. For this he was pre-
sented by the vicar before the consistory court at Stratford
Bow Chapel. Here he alleged that the rating '' was very
unequally made." But the judge warned Garrett to appear
in court the following Tuesday to answer for his contempt.
Further he was to pay his four shillings to the wardens
and bring to the judge the wardens' certificate that he had
done so. On the day appointed Garrett was present in court
with the vicar and wardens. The decree of the court is
headed: " Negotiu[m] reparac[i]o[n]is eccl[esi]e de East
Tilburie," and is so characteristic of the thoroughgoing and
searching manner in which ordinaries supervised the ad-
ministration of parish affairs that we cannot forbear to
quote a large part of it in full. " Touchinge the same W"
Garrett," the registrar inscribes in the act-book, " the
churchwardens do here testifie that he hathe payd his iiij s.
w[hi]ch he was rated at ... & they saye they have re-
ceyved it. Towching the churchwardens & the repayre [of]
the church," the scribe continues, " the Judge doth order
that the minister, Mr Howdsworth, [and seven others
named, including wardens, sidemen and constables] . . .
p[ro]cure workmen of all trad[es], & then sett downe under
their hand in writing what chardg it will be to repayer the
church sufficiently in all thing [s] wharein it is decayd, as
namely, tyling, paving, masonns worke, carpenters worke &
glasing . . . and when they have under the workmens hand
founde what will repayer the churche in every p[ar]ticuler,
^"J. H. Butcher, The Parish of Ashburton in the 15th and i6th
Centuries (1870), 42. See also ibid., 40 and 49. Also H. J. F.
Swayne, Acc'ts of St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum (Wilts Rec.
Soc. 1896), introd., p. xxv, and p. 317.
40 The Elizabethan Parish. [342
then shall they all nyne assemple themselves in the church
[on a day named] . . . and make a rate to that proportion
w[hi]ch shall remayne above the rate already allowed of
. . . and they shall certify in Stratford bowe Chappell
bothe of the vew making by the workmen, of the gathering
of the rate already made, of their making a new rate . . .
and of the gathering thereof; and likewise how farr they
have p[ro]ceeded in the repayer of the church the ix^^ of
Aprill next: and for the punish [men] t of him, the said W™
Garrett, for his contemptuous taking away of the rate, as
is complayned of, it is respited untill this p [resent] order be
p[er] formed; & he is now monished to appeare in the Con-
sistorie the first court day [etc] . . . ."^^^ So, too, when
Richard Fynsett of Clayton, Sussex, was " detected " to the
official for not paying his rate for church repairs, November,
1595, he appeared and claimed that not only was his rating
excessive, but that the assessment had not been according
to custom, to wit, made by the majority of the parishioners.
He was summoned by the judge to prove his allegation at
the next court day, and to pay his court and other fees.
He was probably unable to prove his point, for under the
9th December following the record simply states '' Com-
paruit et solvit feoda debita."^^^
The wardens of Swalecliffe, Kent, complain to the arch-
deacon of Canterbury in 1565 that their church is near utter
decay, but the parish is so poor that they cannot repair it
unless an assessment be made on the lands within the parish,
for the making of which assessment they ask for an au-
thorization.^^*^ Two years later they appear and say in
"' Hale, Churchwardens' Prec, 4-10, 5th to 8th March, 160I. Cf.
ibid., 16.
^'*Hale, op. cit., 109-110.
^^'^ Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 218. Authorization to tax the land is
not asked for in express terms, but seems to be implied. In other
cases it is clear that a warrant was given for the assessment of
lands, e. g., Hale, Churchwardens' Prec, 4 (A warden of Chelms-
ford, Essex, to appear in court " for a warrant for seassment of the
landes." 1584). Sometimes the rates made were offered in court
to be confirmed, Hale, ibid., 8 (A rate "offered" to the judge at
Stratford at Bow. 1607). Canterbury Visit., xxv, 14 (A rate,
subscribed by the boards of the parishioners, " and certified under
Mr. Doctor Newman's own hand." 1613).
343] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish, 41
court that their church still lacks windows, " and the parish
is not able to mend the same, without it may please you that
the rest of the cess that was made may be levied, which we
cannot get unless we have your aid."^^®
In the same way the wardens of St. Alban's " implored
the aid of the judge," because they wished divers persons
who refused to pay their rates "co[m]pelled therunto by
aucthoritye of this court," otherwise the unpaid workmen
on their ruinous church would leave, and the half -finished
structure sustain damage by winter weather.^^^ The act-
books teem with such presentments as the following: one
Holaway refuses to give to the poor-box, " and is found able
by the parish,"^^^ Thomas Arter will give but a half-penny
to the poor. Arter appears and " saithe that he is not of
the wealthe that men takithe him to be." The judge com-
mands him to pay a half -penny every week, and dismisses
him.^^^ " John Wilson haithe not paide his clerke wages
by the report of the clerke. "^'^^^ " Here follow the names
of such, as being able, refuse notwithstanding to pay to the
poor man's box [eight names follow] ";^'*^ or " The present-
ment made by the churchwardens and sidemen ... of all
such as are behind for a cess made for the Church and
refuse to pay [five names] ."^^^ JqJ^^ Baldwin presented
for that " the fame and report goeth " that he keeps back
iio, a legacy given seven years previously for church
repairs and the poor-box, " and the Church and the poor
have wanted the same, having no benefit thereof, as we
"* Canterbury Visit., ubi supra.
"^ Hale, Churchwardens' Prec., 90-1 (1603).
^^ Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 223 (1569). Cf. ibid., 214. Also ibid.,
xxvi, 18 (Three persons presented who will not "pay to the poor
mens' box." 1574).
'"^Hale, Crim. Prec., 149 (1566). Cf. ibid., 176 ("Detected for
beinge an uncharitable person & for not gevenge to the poore &
impotent ..." 1583). Ibid., 208 (One Crisp detected for not pay-
ing his accustomed "offering" for himself and wife to the minister
at Easter. 1593).
^*° Dean of York's Visit., 229 (1595). Ibid., 214 (Similar present-
ment, 1570). Ibid., 335 (Same. 1600). Ibid., 223 (Bellman's
wages).
^*^ Canterbury Visit., xxvi, 22 (1598).
'*' Ibid., 20 (1592).
42 The Elizabethan Parish. [344
know/'^*^ One Consant received a cow belonging to the
parish " and hath not made an account to the parish for
her."*** Jeremy Robson is cited " for detaining our Clerk's
wages from the land which he occupieth in our parish after
6 s. 8 d. for a plough land of 140 acres."**'' Two lessees
of the parish are presented " for withholding the farm of
two acres and a half of church land one year and a half
unpaid."**® John Smithe presented for felling and selling
a great oak which stood upon church land, " whereas now
we stand in lack of the same to repair our Church."**^ A
parishioner is cited before the ordinary because he with-
holds church goods and refuses both to enter into bond for
them and to make an accounting.**^ So men are presented
for not paying the parish fees due for the burial of mem-
bers of their family, or for the ringing of knells ;*** for suf-
fering a church tenement or a part of the church fence,
which they are bound to repair, to fall into decay,*''^ and
so forth. In short, any one at all, whether in the capac-
ity of parish officer; rate payer; trustee; administrator or
executor; lessee of the parish cattle or its lands or tene-
ments— any one, in fact, standing in the relation of debtor
to the parish in a matter falling within the jurisdiction of
the spiritual courts, could be, and was, compelled by these
to pay or to account to the parishioners.
Not only did the(Church regulate many acts of a parish-
ioner's life, and preside over his moral conduct, making him
pay in great measure the costs of this disciplinary adminis-
tration, but it also was entrusted with his education, through
"'/6/rf., 21 (1596), 44. Op. cit., XXV, 32 ("We do suppose that
[name] . . . doth keep back from us a certain sum . , . given by
will to the use of the Church . . . and we know not how we may-
come by the same, unless your Worship's aid be ministered unto us
m^^hat behalf." 1581). Ibid., 22, 23, 26 etc.
'"0/>. cit., xxvii, 219 (1569). Op. cit., xxv, 14 (Keeping church
ewes and not paying rent for them. 1613).
"'0/'. n7., xxvi, 33 (1605).
'""Ibid., 39 (1600). Ibid., 31.
^" Op. cit., xxvii, 224 (1584).
^^Op. cit., xxv, 13 (1600).
'*"£. g., Hale, Crim. Prec, 221 (1599).
^^Dcan of York's Visit., 333 (Church house. 1601). Ibid., 214
(Churchyard fence. 1570).
345] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 43
which it sought to control his ideas and convictions, and to
direct and form public opinion^ ^he education and train-
ing of a nation depend, of course, in greatest measure on
its primary schools and its press.) As for its universities,
these are but the apex on the educational pyramid, for a
very select few only. Now the primary schools were rep-
resented in the times whereof we write by the parish school-
master, the familiar '' ludimagister " of the canons and act-
books, and by the incumbent himself. For the people at
large the press was represented almost entirely by the li-
cenced preacher, and, in the larger towns, the licenced
lecturer.
LThe Canons of 1571 ordain that no one shall teach the
humanities nor instruct boys, whether in school or in private
families,^^^ unless the diocesan licence him under his seal.
Nor are schoolmasters to use other grammars or catechisms
than those officially prescribed. Every year schoolmasters
are to commend to the bishop of the diocese the best read
among their pupils, and those that by their achievements
give promise that they may usefully serve the State or the
Church, so that their parents may be induced to educate
them further to that end.^'^^ Bishop Barnes in his Injunc-
tions of 1577 commands that all incumbents of cures in
Durham diocese not licenced to preach shall " duly, payne-
fuUy and frely " teach the children of their several parishes
to read and write. Furthermore, teachers shall exhort the
parents of those boys who have proved themselves apt at
learning and of " pregnant capacitie " to cause their sons
to continue their studies and to acquire the good and liberal
sciences. On the other hand they shall induce fathers of
sons of little wit or capacity to put them to husbandry, or
some other suitable craft, that they may grow to be useful
members of the commonwealth.^^^ In this diocese we find
schoolmasters by profession {" hidimagistri") summoned
at the visitations very regularly, and there seem to have
"^ The higher nobility excepted.
"' Cardwell, Syn., i, 128.
^^^ Barnes' Eccles. Proc, 19.
44 The Elizabethan Parish. [346
been a considerable number of them in the towns, though
not in the country parishes, where the curates doubtless
officiated as instructors of the youth according to the
bishop's monitions. ^^"^ Everywhere in the proceedings of
the ecclesiastical courts schoolmasters are " detected " to
the judges from time to time for having no licence to
teach.'" )
/As for the pulpit, that great instrument of political guid-
ance at a period when politics consisted chiefly of religious
contentions,'^^ it is well known that Elizabeth and her ad-
visors grasped at once its paramount importance, and that
she had been on the throne but little over a month when
she issued her proclamation inhibiting all preaching and
teaching for the time being. This command was followed
by her Injunctions of the next year, forbidding any to
preach unless licenced by herself, her two archbishops, the
diocesan, or her visitors.'^^ As is well known also, no com-
mand was more universally enforced. It is constantly men-
tioned in the metropolitan or diocesan injunctions or articles
of the period,''^ and the proceedings before the ordinaries
bear witness to its enforcement.'^® )
^" See, e. g., op. cit., 42-45 (5 schoolmasters mentioned by name at
Allhallows, Newcastle; 4 at St. Nicholas). In Durham city " suh-
pcdagogi" 2iVt also spoken of in the various wards.
^^ Op. cit., passim. Other examples will be found in Dean of
York's Visit., 225, 229 etc. Hale, Crim. Free, 154, 184-8 (John
Leache's case. 1584-6), 190, 198 (One Dawe's wife teaches with-
out a licence. Warned not to teach any "man child above the age
of X yeres, untyll she shall be lawfully licenced." I5f^). Canter-
bury Visit., xxvi, 20, 21, 25, 31, etc.
'^ See J. Cordy Jeaffreson, A Book about the Clergy, ii, 58.
"' Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 176 and 182.
^" See also Archbishop Parker's and other commissioners' precept
to churchwardens and others in June, 1571 ("And that in no wise
ye suffer any person publicly, or privately to teach, read or preach
. . . unless such be licenced [etc.] ... as you and every one of -,
you will answer to the contrary"). Corresp. of Archbp. Parker,
Parker Soc, 382-3. Cf. also Archbp. Whitgift's ' Commission ' to I
the ministers and churchwardens of London, Aug., 1587, forbidding
" that they ... do suffer any to preach in their churches or to
read any lectures [etc.] ..." Neal, History of the Puritans,
(Toulmin's ed. 1793), i, 428.
'*'£. g., Hale, Cnm. Prec, 188 ff. (Leach, a schoolmaster, was
cited for catechizing and preaching, being unlicenced. He was
strictly warned by the judge not to "use any private lecture or ex- \
34/] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 45
(parish opinion was further sought to be moulded by the
reading in church of various tracts, homihes, monitions,
forms of special prayers, etc., etc., which the wardens were
ordered to procure from time to time, and which are very
often met with in their accounts. These official mediums
of information or edification conveyed to the good people
of the parishes some knowledge of the events and politics
of the realm and of the world beyond it. Thus they heard
of the overthrow of the rebels in the North of England
(1569), the ravages of the great earthquake of 1579; the
progress of the plague; or, again, of the struggle of the
French Protestants led by Henry of Navarre, the defeat of
the Turks at Lepanto, and so forth. ^^*^ )
As food for the more advanced minds of the congrega-
tions, ordinaries saw to it that volumes dealing with the
interpretation of the Scriptures, the polity of Church and
State, and the defence of that polity were provided for
every parish church. CSuch works were Erasmus' Para-
phrases, Bullinger's Decades, Bishop Jewel's works, and
other writings of an apologetic nature. To a certain extent
news was also spread, and grievances were aired, in unoffi-
cial broadsides or ballads, y These treated of such subjects
as the untimely end of traitors great or small; the adven-
positions of Scripture or catechisinge of his schollers in the pres-
ence of anye . . . not ... of his owne howse-hold [etc.]." 1586-7).
Ibid., 202 (A curate detected for preaching without a licence. He
confessed " that he hathe expounded " a little on the text, " but
wold that Mr Archdeacon would appoint some time that he might
preache before his wor[ship], and yf he should accepte of him, he
would request his wor[ship] to be meanes unto my Lord of London
that he may be licenced to preache." 1591). W. H. Overall and A,
J. Waterlow, St. Michael's, Cornhill, (London) Acc'ts (1869), 176
(" Paide to Mr. Sadlor for avoidinge one excommunication for
suffering a Preacher to preache in o[u]r Churche, being unlycenced,
iij s. viij d." 1587-8).
^**In 1585 the wardens of Pittington (Durham) are "commanded
to bye for everie person in our parish a booke ..." Surtees Soc,
Ixxxiv, 19. Examples taken promiscuously from the wardens ac-
counts of the day are : " paid for three prayer books for the good
successe of the French Kinge ; " " paid for a prayer of thankes
gevinge for ye over throwe of the Rebelles in the North." In many
accounts occur items for books of prayers " for the Earthquake,"
or "against the Turke," or " Omelies against the rebells," or " in
plague tyme," etc.
46 The Elizabethan Parish. [348
tures of her Majesty's soldiers and sailors; the rapacity of
landlords and the evils of the enclosure movement.^®^
(But these publications and all other printed matter were
subject to the strict censorship of Church and State. Ex-
tremely few presses were permitted in England, and these
few under the jealous supervision of the high ecclesiastical
authorities, as is evidenced by the numerous orders or de-
crees issued by them to the Master and Wardens of the
London Stationers Company, which, with a very few spe-
cial patentees, enjoyed the monopoly of printing.^^
Having now reviewed the chief administrative functions
of the spiritual courts and their mode of exercise, the ques-
tion presents itself, What were the means at the disposal of
the ordinaries for enforcing their decrees? The principal
one of these has already been mentioned incidentally, viz.,
excommunication. Excommunication was the most usual,
as it was by far the most effective, weapon for compelling
obedience to the mandate of the judge in any matter what-
ever. Indeed without this instrument of coercion the eccle-
siastical judges would have been impotent.
Excommunication was of two kinds, the lesser and the
greater. The former was in constant use (to employ the
words of a contemporary document) " for manifest and wil-
ful contumacy or disobedience in not appearing when . . .
summoned for a cause ecclesiastical, or when any sentence or
decree of the bishop or his officer, being deliberately made,
was wilfully disobeyed . . . ."^^^ Even under the lesser
excommunication a man could not attend service, and he
^"A number of ballads dating from the reigns of Elizabeth and
James have been very recently (Oxon. 1907) published by Mr.
Andrew Clark under the title of Shirburn Ballads.
"^ One of the earliest orders of the High Commissioners preserved
dates from 1560 and directs the Wardens of the Stationers to stay
certain persons from the printing of primers and psalters in Eng-
lish and Latin, for which printing one Seres had obtained a mo-
nopoly. C. R. Rivington, The Records of the Worshipful Company
of Stationers in London and Middlesex Archceol. Soc. Tr., vi, 302.
^'^" A writing of the bishops in answer to the book of articles
offered the last session of parliament anno regince xxvii [etc.]." So
called by Strype, but assigned by Dr. Cardwell to a date later than
1584. Cardwell., Doc. Ann., i, 426. " Excommunication" in the act-
books and elsewhere almost invariably refers to the lesser excom-
munication.
349] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 47
was deprived of the use of the sacraments.^®* If an ex-
communicate sought to enter church with the congregation,
either he had to be forcibly expelled or the service could not
proceed. ^^'^ If he continued in his contempt of court he
made himself liable to the greater excommunication/^® and
then he was virtually an outcast from the society of his
fellow parishioners.^®^ That excommunication was feared
by the great majority of parish folk there is no reason to
doubt. Certainly the greater excommunication might seri-
ously injure a man in his business as well as his social in-
terests, not to mention the trouble and expense of getting
an absolution.^®® That excommunication reduced most of-
^"Thus he could not receive communion, be married, stand as
godfather, etc. Burn, Eccles. Law, i, 252-3. Compare Antiquary,
xxxii (1896), 143 (Penance and heavy costs for a man who "being
excominecated . . . ded preseume to marye before ... he was ab-
solved." 1583). Also Hale, Crim. Prec, 223 (Presentment of an
excommunicate for marrying. 1600).
"'^ See Hale., op. cit., 198 (Archdeacon's instructions to a curate
in 1589). Ibid., 200 (Minister stopping service as an excom-
municate would not leave. 1590). Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. Var.
Coll. (1901), 78 (Complaint by a vicar to Wilts quarter sessions
that an excommunicate tried to remain at service. 1606). Asso-
ciated Architectural Soc. Rep., (etc.), xxxiii, Pt. ii (1897), 373-4
(Device of procuring an excommunicate to enter church and inter-
rupt service so certain youths could continue their morris-dancing.
1617). Chelmsford Acc'ts, Essex Arch. Soc, ii, 213 (Item for
"carrying Roger Price out of the Church, he being exco[mmuni-
cated] ..." 1632).
^" See Canons of 1597, Cardwell, Syn., i, 156. Burn, op. cit., 457-
8. For such a sentence see E. H. Chadwyck Healey, Hist, of West
Somerset (1901), 184 (Archdeacon of Taunton requiring a min-
ister to denounce solemnly three obstinate excommunicates, and
to warn all good Christians not to eat or drink, buy or sell, or
otherwise communicate with them under the pains of being them-
selves excommunicated. 1628).
"'Thus those who talked with him, ate at the same table with
him, saluted him, or gave anything to him were themselves ipso
facto excommunicate. See Reeve, Hist, of English Law (Finlay-
son's ed.), iii, 68. Ii such an excommunicate brought an action at
law, the defendant could plead in bar the excommunication. The
testimony of such a man was not admissible in court. Finally, he
could not be buried in the parish churchyard nor could services be
performed over his body. Burn, loc. cit., supra.
^** See the case of Kenton v. Wallinger, 41 Eliz., Croke's Eliz.
Rep., Leache's ed., Pt. ii, 838. This has already been mentioned on
p. 33, note 102. In the Leverton, Lincoln, Overseers for the Poor
Acc'ts, there occurs, s. a. 1574 an item of 7s. given to John Tow-
tynge " for the discharge of ... his excomynacion," and the next
year a sum of 2s. 6d. given to a woman for a like discharge.
ArchcEologia, xli, 369-70.
48 The Elizabethan Parish. [350
fenders to order the church court proceedings demonstrate.
If, however, a man were obdurate and hardened he was
turned over to the Queen's High Commissioners, and these,
while making the fullest use of ecclesiastical procedure and
the oath ex officio,^^^ also freely employed the penalties of
the temporal courts, viz., fines and imprisonments. As no
ecclesiastical offence was too small for the Commissioners
to deal with, and as their jurisdiction was not limited (like
that of the ordinaries) to a district or a diocese, courts of
High Commission may be called universal ordinaries.^^**
Finally, if a person stood excommunicate over forty days,
an ecclesiastical judge, on application to the diocesan, might
procure against him out of Chancery the writ De excom-
municato capiendo. This writ was probably not very often
resorted to in practice, partly because of the great expense
involved, and partly perhaps, too, because of the slack exe-
cution of the wTit by certain undersheriffs or bailiffs, en-
couraged as they were by the rather hostile attitude some-
times assumed against the courts Christian by the Queen's
temporal judges. ^^^ The writ was, however, certainly no
dead letter, and served also in terrorem to reduce stubborn
offenders.^^^ Indeed Archbishop Bancroft in 1605 called
^"Whereby any but a perjured man would be forced to incrimi-
nate himself.
"" Cf. Maitland, Canon Law in the Church of England, chapter,
" The Pope the Universal Ordinary." For proceedings by High Com-
missioners see Stubbs in Eccles. Courts Com. Rep. to Parliament
(1883), i, Hist. Append., 50.
"^ As to the expense in suing out the writ, and also the slackness
of bailiffs, etc., in executing it, see [R. Cosen], An Apologie of and
for Sundrie proceedings by Jurisdiction Ecclesiasticall (ist ed.,
London, 1591), 64-5. Speaking of the great charges incurred in
suing out the writ Cosen writes : " So that I dare auowe in Sundrie
Diocesses in the Realme, the whole yeerly reuenue of the seuerall
Bishops there woulde not reach to the iustifying of all contem-
nours ... by the course of this writte." That temporal judges
sometimes set prisoners under the writ free at their own discretion
without notice to the spiritual judges, see Bancroft's Petition to
the Privy Council in 1605, Cardwell, Doc. Ann. ii, 100. For hostility
of temporal judges for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, see Bancroft, op.
cit., 85. He counts up 488 prohibitions during Elizabeth's reign,
many of them awarded without good cause and " upon frivolous
suggestions" of defendants (Op. cit., 89).
"^ Hale, Crim. Prec, 145 {" Dominus dccrevit scrihendum fore
regie ma j estate pro corporis capcione [etc.]." The threat subdued
35 1] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 49
it "the chiefest temporal strength of ecclesiastical juris-
diction."^"
In view of the fact that " standing excommunicate " was
in itself a presentable offence before the ordinary, and an
offence often presented/^* and in view of the further fact
that the excommunicate might, according to a contemporary
who writes with authority, " be punished for absence from
the excommunicate, for 15 days later " solutis xxxiiis. . . . pro ex-
pensis contumacie," absolution was given, and penance enjoined.
1562). Ibid., 172 (Similar threat, we do not hear of the out-
come). Cf. R. W. Merriam, Extracts from Wilts Quarter Sess.
in Wilts Arch, and Nat. Hist. Mag., xxii (1885), 20 (Affray be-
cause of an arrest under the writ. 1604). See also Whitgift's
note to his bishops in 1583, Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 404-6 (" If
the ordinarie shall perceave that, either by slackness of the justices
or waywardness of juries," recusants cannot be indicated at quarter
sessions, then the ordinary shall, after first trying persuasion, ex-
communicate the culprits, and after forty days procure the writ
against them). Bancroft writes, March, 1605, that he will use his
"uttermost endeavour" to aid his suffragans in procuring the writ,
and in having it faithfully and speedily served. Cardwell, Doc.
Ann., ii, 80. Cf. also the satirical single-sheet, published June,
1641, entitled The Pimpes Prerogative ... a Dialogue between
Pimp-Major Pig and Ancient Whiskin, in Brit. Mus. Coll. of Polit.
and Personal Satires. Pig : " Tush, their Excommunications fright
not us; but our Land-ladies (poore soules) lie in most danger;
for them they serve after with Excommunicato capiendo, and then
our Forts are beleaguer'd with Under-Sheriffs, Bum-Bayliffs,
Shoulder-clappers, etc., whom we sometimes beat back by violence."
"'Cardwell, loc. cit., 100. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction derived also
much temporal strength from the fact that practically every bishop
was also a justice of the peace. For proof of this see Strype,
Annals of the Reformation (Oxon. ed.), iii, Pt. ii, 451 (Bishop of
Peterboro' complaining that he alone was left out of the commis-
sion. 1587). Cardwell, Doc. Ann., ii, 80 (Bancroft's letter, 1605:
"We that are bishops, being all of us (as is supposed) justices of
the peace"). When commissioning justices Burghley referred to
the bishops for lists of orthodox men. See such lists in Strype,
op. cit., 453-6o- Also in Strype, Life of Whitgift, i, 187-8.
Victoria County History of Cumberland, ii, 73-4. Sussex Arch.
Soc. Coll., ii (1849), 58-62. Mary Bateson, Letters from the Bishops
to the Privy Council, 1564, with Returns of the Justices of the
Peace, etc., in Camden Miscellany, ix (1895). By i Eliz. c. 2,
bishops could at pleasure associate themselves to justices of oyer
and terminer or of assize. Cf. Strype, Whitgift, 329.
"* Presentments on this score are frequent. Take only a single
jurisdiction, that of the Dean of York's Peculiar, between the years
1592-1601, and a number will be found. See Dean of York's Visit.,
222 (5 persons) ; 226, 229, 315, 326, 329 (Remaining excommunicate
for a month) ; 334 (Over 40 days. Also a person presented for
harboring an excommunicate) ; 335 (Over a year) ; 341 (14 days).
4
50 The Elizabethan Parish. [352
diuine praier, neither shall his excommunication excuse him,
for it is in his owne default,"^" it is queried whether such
an involuntary absentee from church did not make himself
just as liable to presentment at quarter sessions for recu-
sancy^^® as any voluntary recusant. Perhaps it is for this
reason that grand juries are sometimes complained of for
discriminating among the names sent in to them on the
bishops' certificates for indictment at quarter sessions, and
for certifying some and throwing out others " at their
pleasure."^"
But be this as it may — and it is conjecture unsupported
by positive proof — enough has been said, it is hoped, to
show that ordinaries were quite capable of making their
decrees obeyed, and that excommunication (contrary to the
commonly received opinion) was a most effective means of
coercion. Many, indeed, were its uses. It might (or its
equivalent interdiction or suspension^^^), as has been
seen,"® be used to compel a parish officer to perform the
duties of his office. It might also be employed, when per-
suasion failed, to induce a parishioner to accept office when
chosen by his fellows.^®^ But, it would seem, one single
definition would comprise all cases: excommunication was
employed against all those who disobeyed some order of the
spiritual judge, express or implied — it was a summary proc-
ess for contempt of court, in fact, and was daily used as
such.
To recapitulate: a very large part of the parishioner's
"'Cosen, An Apologie, etc., 64. As has been above stated, an
excommunicate could not attend service. P. 47 supra.
"• According to 23 Eliz. c. i, sec. 4 and sec. 6.
"^See A. P. C, xiii, 271-2 (1581). Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 406
(Whitgift alludes to the " waywardnes " of juries).
^'*Not suspension from office (as might be supposed) but from
service and sacraments.
"' P. 19, note 33, supra.
'"Hale, Crim. Prec, 150 {''Contra . . . Because he will not
be churchwarden accordinge to the archdeacon's judgment." Ex-
communicated. 1566). Ibid., 162 {"Contra . . . Defectum that
he obstinately refuseth to be churchwarden, notwithstanding he
was chosen by the consent of the parson and parishioners." Ex-
communicated. 1576). Cf. ibid., 183 (Presentment for refusing
to be sideman), and ibid., 207 (Refusing churchwardenship).
353] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 51
life and activity fell under the surveillance and regulation
of the ecclesiastical courts. They compelled him to attend
on specified days his parish church, and no other; to be
married there; to have his children baptized and his wife
churched there; to receive a certain number of times com-
munion there; to contribute to the maintenance of church
and churchyard, as well as to the finding of the requisites
for service or the church ornaments or utensils. In his
parish church he and his children were catechized and in-
structed, and, if the latter were taught in a neighboring
school-house, it was under the strict supervision of the ordi-
nary and by his or the bishop's licence and allowance. So
true was this that the schoolmaster was, like the parson, a
church officer. For the parishioner his church was the
place of business where all local affairs, civil or ecclesias-
tical, were transacted, as well as the centre of social life in
the village. Here the mandates of the authorities in Church
and State were read to him; here he was admonished of
his duty to contribute to, or to perform, the burdens of
parish administration and warned of the penalties for ne-
glect; here he met with his fellows to settle parish affairs
and audit parish accounts, or to choose parish officers under
the auspices of the ordinary, being himself compelled, if
necessary, by that official to serve when his own turn for
office came round. As churchwarden it was his duty to
collect the rents from parish lands and tenements, and to
see that parish offerings were gathered and the parish rates
assessed and paid, or recovered by means of the ecclesias-
tical courts. If the church was ruinous; if bread and wine
were lacking for the communion ; if any of the books, fur-
niture, utensils or ornaments enjoined by the diocesan's
articles or by the canons were missing; if the curate did
not follow the Rubric, or retained " superstitious " rites ;
if the yearly perambulation was omitted; if faults of the
minister or of the parishioners were not presented : he and
his fellow-warden were held responsible by the official.
The machinery which the canon and the civil law placed
at the disposal of the ordinary for his judicial administra-
52 The Elizabethan Parish. [354
tion of the parish was extraordinarily flexible. Courts
Christian were unencumbered by the formalities of the com-
mon law or by the cooperation of juries. They could pro-
ceed ex officio, i. e,, without formal presentment and upon
hearsay only, and they were armed with the formidable
power of administering the oath ex officio by which a
parishioner was forced to disclose all he knew against him-
self. They could in all cases command the doing, as well
as the giznng'^^^ of a thing — powers far more extensive than
those possessed by any court of equity of today. Lastly, it
was their custom to require that a return be made in court,
or in other words, a certification, that their commands had
been duly performed — thus stamping them as true adminis-
trative bodies. It was inevitable from the nature of their
jurisdiction and procedure that abuses should be committed
both by ecclesiastical judges and by their officers, such as
registrars, proctors and apparitors. These judges wielded
an admirable instrument of administration and discipline,
one that could be bent to meet any emergency, but this
efficiency had been attained at the sacrifice of some indis-
pensable safeguards for the carrying out of impartial jus-
tice. First, no parishioner's acts, whether done in an offi-
cial or a private capacity, were ever quite safe from mis-
representation, or downright falsification by his enemies,
for secret denunciation to wardens or sidemen (or to the
ordinary himself) by any one^^^ might start a proceeding
"^ In equity specific performance is nothing more than the giving
of an instrument transferring title after all has previously been
done on both sides, but this, to complete the transaction.
^"^ Denunciation " in many poyntes resembleth a Presentment,"
Cosen, An Apologie (etc.), 70. See his book for the modes of
proceeding. Cf. also Hale, Crim. Prec, Introd., p. Iviii. In com-
rnenting on Archdeacon Hale's book, \/hich we have so often here
cited {A Series of Precedents in Criminal Causes from the Act
Books of Ecclesiastical Courts of London, 1475-1640 [pub. in 1847]),
Sir J. F. Stephen in his History of Crim. Law in England, ii, 413,
makes these observations : " It is difficult even to imagine a state
of society in which, on the bare suggestion of some miserable
domestic spy, any man or woman whatever might be convened
before an archdeacon or his surrogate and put upon his or her
oath as to all the most private affairs of life; as to relations between
husband and wife; as to relations between either and any woman
355] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 53
against the person denounced and force him upon oath to
disclose the most private, the most confidential, matters.
Again, proctors, apparitors, registrars, and other scribes
whose fees depended on citations and the drawing up of
court proceedings, documents, or certificates, had every
interest in haling persons before the official, because court
fees had to be paid whether a man were found innocent or
guilty. ^^^ Hence the system tended to create spies, of
or man with whom the name of either might be associated by
scandal; as to contracts to marry, as to idle words, as to personal
habits, and, in fact, as to anything whatever which happened to
strike the ecclesiastical lawyer as immoral or irreligious."
^^ The case of John Johnson in the official's court in Durham city
forms an excellent commentary on the whole system. He was
presented as suspected of incontinency. After repeated citations
and a threat of excommunication, he appeared, denying the charge
and alleging that a churchwarden with others had falsely concocted
it. At the petition of an apparitor, who acted as public prosecutor,
seven of Johnson's fellow-parishioners were cited to swear not to
the fact of his guilt, but to the general belief in it. Articles were
then drawn up upon which depositions were taken and published.
The case was adjourned repeatedly so that the many formalities
of procedure might drag out their weary length. The oath ex
officio was forced on Johnson, but he denied all guilt. Finally,
he was enjoined to procure three compurgators. These swore that
they believed " in animis suis " that Johnson had sworn to the truth.
Though pronounced innocent, Johnson was condemned to pay the
costs of all the formalities that the apparitor had set in motion
against him, and a last time was dragged into court in order to
be admonished under pain of excommunication to pay these fees,
amounting to £1. 3s. 4d., within a month ! The case had extended
from nth June, 1600, to 22nd May, 1601. Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv
(1888), 359-362. Cf. also the following: "payed for annswerynge
dyuerse faulse vntrothes suggested by [five names] to the sayd
Commyssyoneres vj s. viij d." Minchinhampton, Gloucester, Acc'ts,
s. a. 1576 (archbishop's visitation), Archceologia, xxxv. " pd. for
our charges to lycoln when we were p[re]sented by the apparytor
uniustly for that our church should by [be] mysvsed vs. vjd."
Leverton, Lincoln, Acc'ts, s. a. 1579, Archceologia, xli, 365. Under
1595 the Leverton wardens have the entries: " pd, to the apparitor
for fallts in the churche ijs. viijd.," and: " for playing in the churche
iijs. viijd." The last is explained by a third entry: "to the ap-
parator for suffering a plaie in the church." {Op. cit., z'^y.) This
looks like bribery, or blackmail, or both. For examples of bribery
see Wing Acc'ts, s. a. 1561, Archceologia, xxxvi ("to ye S[um]-
m[o]ner to kepe us ffrom Lincoln for slacknes of o[u]r auters").
Abbey Parish Acc'ts, s. a. 1600, Shrop. Arch. Soc, i. 65 ("paid to
Cleaton, the Chauncelor's man for keeping us from Lichfield").
Great Witchingham Acc'ts, Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc, xiii,
207 (" Simp the sumner for his fees for excusing us from Nor-
wich"). St. Mary Woolchurch Haiv, London, Acc'ts, s. a. 1594
54 The Elizabethan Parish. [356
whom the chief were the apparitors, or summoners, and
their underlings. There is a very interesting contemporary
ballad entitled ''A new Ballad of the Parrator and the
Divell," attributed by its modern editor to not later than
1 61 6, which throws much light on the proceedings of cer-
tain unscrupulous apparitors, and reflects also the strong
dislike entertained for the whole tribe of apparitors by
people of the time.^®* The devil going a hunting one Sun-
day and beating the bushes, up starts a proud apparitor.
During several stanzas the apparitor narrates to the devil,
as one consummately wicked man to another, all the tricks
of his trade to drum up cases for himself and his court.
He spies on lovers as they pass unsuspecting; he haunts
the ale-houses and overhears men's tales over their cups ;
if business be dull he even devises scandal among neighbors,
and sets them at enmity. Thus he concocts his accusations
of immorality, or drunkenness, or profanity, or uncharity
towards neighbors, and writes them busily down in his
quorum nomina, or formulas of citations to appear before
the official's court. " My corum nomine beares such
swaye," he boasts, " They'le sell their clothes my fees to
pay." But, remarks the devil after listening to all this,
surely the innocent pay no court fees, " But answere and
discharged bee." " My corum nomine sayth not so," re-
joins the apparitor, " For all pay fees before they goe. —
The lawier's fees must needs be payd, — And every clarke
("more unto the paratour and Doctor Stanhopes man for their
favours"). Hale, Crim. Prec, 202 C' Pci^sus est that he gave xs. to
. . . the apparitor to thend that he might not be called into this
corte." 1590). For examples of fees paid for absolution from an
unjust excommunication see Minchinhampton Acc'ts, s. a. 1606
("layd out [at] Gloucester when we wer excommunicated for our
not appearinge when wee were not warned to appeere, vj s. viij d")-
St. Clement's, Ipswich, Acc'ts, East Anglian, iii (1890), 304
(" Payed for owr Absolution to the Commissary, being reprimanded
for that we did not give in our Verdict, where as we nether had
warning nor notice given us of his Corte houlden, ij[s.] x[d.] : "
and: "Payed more fiFor the discharg of his boocke, viijd." 1610).
Churchwardens accounts are pretty reliable evidence, for they were
subject to the scrutiny of those who had to foot the bills.
"*See Mr. Andrew Clark's Sliirburn Ballads (Oxon. 1907), 306 ff.
Mr. Clark's notes and illustrations drawn from other contemporary
sources are most valuable.
357] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 55
in his degree — Or els the lawe cannot be stayd — But excom-
municate must they bee." The devil, amazed and disgusted
at laws which " excell the paines of hell," turns to go, where-
upon the apparitor seeks to arrest and fine him for traveling
on the Sabbath. Exclaiming " Thou art no constable ! " the
devil pounces upon the unworthy officer and carries him off
to hell.^®' Thirdly, even when at their best and conducted
by upright judges and officers, the modes of proof in force
in the courts Christian were sometimes utterly inadequate
as means for getting at the truth. The inquest, or trial by
jury, had never been introduced into these courts, where
the archaic system of compurgation^*^ still lingered.
^" A number of broadsides and pamphlets were published in 1641
upon the abolition of the spiritual courts. Consult Mr. Stephen's
Catalogue (1870) for those in the British Museum. One of them
is entitled The Praetor and Parator their Mourning . . . Beinge a
true Dialogue, Relating the fearfull abuses and exorbitances of
those spirituall Courts, under the names of Sponge the Proctor and
Hunter the Parator. In the spirited dialogue between the two
Hunter tells of his ways of extorting money from recusants, semi-
nary priests and neophytes, " whose starting holes I knew as well
as themselves " ; also, he adds, " I got no small trading by the Brown-
ists, Anabaptists and Familists who love a Barne better than a
Church." " Poor Curates, Lecturers and Schoolmasters . . . that
have been willing to officiate their places without licences " are also
his special prey. As for minor offenders " against our terrible
Caijons and Jurisdiction . . . had I but given them a severe
looke, I could . . . have made them draw their purses ..."
" I tell you," he concludes, " the name of Doctors Commons
was as terrible to these as Argier [Algiers] is to Gally-slaves."
Sponge admits that he has made many a fat fee by Hunter's pro-
curement. For more serious documents in corroboration see Whit-
gift's circular to his suffragans in May, 1601, and also his address to
his bishops a few months later in Strype, Whitgift, ii, 447 ff.
Among many other and grave abuses he refers to " the infinite
number " of apparitors and " petty Sumners " hanging upon every
court, "two or three of them at once most commonly seizing upon
the subject for every trifling offence to make work to their courts."
Cf. Canons of 1597, can. xi (Multitude of apparitors and their
excesses) in Cardwell, Syn., i, 159. Also Canons of i6of, ibid.
Most of the Elizabethan and Stuart metropolitan and diocesan
injunctions call for the presentment of the abuse of apparitors and
other court officials. See Cardwell, Doc. Ann., ii, passim. Also
Appendix to 2nd Rep. of the Com. on Ritual to Parliament (1870),
where a large number of injunctions from Parker to Juxon (1640)
are gathered together.
^^'By this system, if the accused could get together a certain num-
ber of his neighbors (3, 4, 6 or more) to act as oath-helpers, ». e.,
who would swear that they believed him on oath, he was ac-
56 The Elizabethan Parish. [358
If a man for want of friends, or for want of good repu-
tation, were unable to procure compurgators to attend him
at visitations or courts, held sometimes twenty miles and
more away,^^^ he might be condemned as guilty of specific
acts which he had never committed.^®* He might even fail
in his proof because he was poor. When the judge ar-
raigned Lewis Billings of Barking, Essex archdeaconry, for
'* that he hath failed in his purgacion," Billings pleaded
" that he is a very poore man and not able to procure his
neighbours to come to the cort, and beare their charges."^®*
But, as is well known, contemporaries attacked not only the
inferior officers, but the judges themselves. Complaints of
great abuses were loud and long,^^^ and when the ecclesias-
quitted. It seems to have been no concern of the judge to weigh
the evidence on the facts themselves.
^^'The churchwardens accounts are full of items for horse hire
and other expenses for long journeys, for ecclesiastical courts were
held at all kinds of places at the pleasure of the judges. See Mr.
Bruce's remarks on the Minchinhampton Acc'ts, Archceologia, xxxv,
419 if. Cf. the Ludlow Acc'ts, Shrop. Arch. Soc. 2nd. ser., i, 235
ff. — in fact any of the accounts of the period that have been printed
in detail.
^** Archdeacon Hale in Crim. Prec, introd., p. Ix.
"'Hale, Crim. Prec, 205 (1591). In Warrington deanery, at the
bishop's visitation in 1592, one Grimsford is cited for not living
with his wife. On a later occasion he appeared and affirmed that
his wife had run away with another man, "whereupon the Judge,
having regard to the poverty of the man," absolved him. Warring-
ton Deanery Visit., 190. An ecclesiastical judge in Durham city
made this decree in 1580 : " Dominus . . . decrevit scribendutn fore
Aldertnanno ... to whip and cart the said Rowle and Tuggell in
all open places within the city of Durham, for that they faled in
their purgacion, and therefore convicted of the crime detected."
Barnes' Eccles. Proc., 126.
^'* A most important piece of evidence — because coming from such
a source — is Whitgift's circular and (later) his address to his
bishops, already alluded to (note 185) given in Strype's life of
him. Whitgift mentions the frequent keeping of officials' or com-
missaries' courts and the multitude of apparitors serving under
them, so that "the subject was almost vexed weekly with attend-
ance on their several courts." He adds that " what with Church-
wardens' continual attendance in these courts, which in many places
came to more than was by a whole parish for any one cessment
made to her Majesty, the poor men who were chosen Church
wardens . . . were in their estates hindered greatly in leaving their
day labor for attendance there." These and like complaints, the
metropolitan continued, were daily brought to him "with a general
exclamation against Commissaries' and Officials' courts." In pro-
phetic language he warned his suffragans that if they were not
359] Ecclesiastical Government of the Parish. 57
tical courts were abolished by the Long Parliament in
1641/®^ the satirical literature of the day celebrated their
downfall with a verve, a gusto, and an exultation amazing
to one not familiar with the procedure of these courts.^®^
As was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the
secular judges were given statutory authority to take cog-
nizance of breaches of the order prescribed by the Book of
Common Prayer, of the offence of not attending church, and
other delinquencies against the legal settlement of religion.
Hence in these matters they exercised what might be called
a sort of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in aid of the ordinary
and concurrently with him, though their mode of procedure,
of course, was that of the common law, possessing nothing
in common with the practice adopted in courts Christian.
Men who were " hinderers " and " contemners " of religion ;
who refrained from going to church without lawful cause ;
more zealous for reform all their courts might be swept away.
We have further the unceasing complaints and the numberless peti-
tions that were presented in every Elizabethan parliament from 1572
onwards. Some of these are given in Strype, Annals, etc., some in
his Whitgift. Mr. Prothero has conveniently gathered some, with
references to others, in his Statutes and Constitutional Documents
(ist ed.), pp. 209, 210, 215 and 221. See also Heywood Townshend,
no, et passim; D'Ewes, 302, et passim, and the canons and injunc-
tions of the time. Peculiars were doubtless most subject to abuses,
as being often exempt from the oversight and corrective discipline
of the diocesan. Offenders sometimes fled to these for protec-
tion. See Strype, Ann., iii, Pt. ii, 211-12 (Bishop of Coventry and
Lichfield complaining in 1582 of peculiars, some of which belonged
to laymen, as holders of abbey lands, in the matter of recusants).
Cf. Blomefield, Hist, of Norfolk, iii, 557. Camden Miscellany, ix
(1895), 41 (Letters from bishops to Privy Council in 1564. Re-
cusants flying to exempt places). On the scandalous neglect of
duty of some holders of peculiars see Dean of York's Visit., 199,
201 ff., 324, et passim. See also Mr. W. E. B. Whittaker's article
" On Peculiars with special reference to the Peculiar of Hawarden,"
in Archit. Arch, and Hist. Soc. for Chester and N. Wales, n. s. xi
(1905)* 66 ff. and records there given. See also Eccles. Courts
Com. Rep., 1830-2, printed as appendix to Vol. i of Eccles. Courts
Com. Rep. of 1883, p. 198. Lists of peculiars will be found in the
above authorities.
"^ Though they were reestablished in 1660 they were forever shorn
of their ancient glory.
^"*The names of some of these broadsides, pamphlets, etc., have
already been given. To these may be added, The Spiritual Courts
epitomised in a Dialogue betwixt two Proctors, Busie Body and
Scrape-all, and their discourse of the zvant of their former imploy-
mcnt. Others will be found in Mr. Stephen's Catalogue.
58 The Elizabethan Parish. [360
who had mass-books or super-altars^®^ in their possession ;^"
who spoke in contempt of the Book of Common Prayer
and its rites ;^®'^ who caused their children to be baptized
with forms other than those prescribed;^®* ministers who
omitted the cross in baptism ;^®^ who left off the surplice ;^'®
who refused to church women ;^®® who called purification
" a Jewish ceremony," or who in their sermons preached
seditious doctrine-^^ — all these and other like offenders were
indicted at quarter sessions or at the assizes.
"' That is, a portable stone altar which had been consecrated and
could be set up anywhere for mass.
^** See order of the Wilts justices issued against such offenders,
Oct., 1577. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. on MSS. in Var. Coll., i (1901) , 68.
^"^ See indictment of an Essex jury at quarter sessions in 1585
against one Glasscock who spoke lightly of the ceremony of bap-
tism, and rent out of a prayer book certain leaves where the mini-
stration of baptism was set forth. Hist MSS. Com. Rep., x, Pt.
iv, 480.
'"Presentment to the Wilts justices, loc. cit. supra, 69 (1588).
For excessive zeal of the justices of assize in Suffolk see State
Papers Dom. Elis., 1591-4, p. 275 (Address of Suffolk gentry
to Privy Council in 1592. They complain of indictments against
ministers on very trivial pretexts). For the answer of the Council
to this petition see Strype, Ann., ii, Pt. i, 268-9 (Lords write
to judges to consult the spirit not the letter of law, and add their
own suspicions that informers are mainly to be blamed if justice
has miscarried).
'■" State Pap., loc. cit.
^"* Indictment of Essex jury, Hist. MSS. Rep., loc. cit. supra.
'"« Ibid.
^Information of the Wilts justices against one Dearling, parson
of Upton Lowell, loc. cit. supra, 68 (1585). Cf. Chelmsford Acc'ts,
Essex Arch. Soc, ii, 212 (An item paid the clerk of assizes for
framing the indictment of Chelmsford Hundred "against Puri-
tisme." 1592).
CHAPTER 11.
Parish Finance.
Speaking generally of the average parish, Elizabethan
churchwardens accounts and vestry minutes show that for
the purposes of raising money amongst themselves to meet
every-day parish expenditures/ the parishioners of the pe-
riod did not commonly resort to rates, if by " rate " be
understood a general assessment of all lands or all goods
alike at a fixed percentage of their revenue or value above
a minimum exempted.
It must not be supposed, however, that in the case of
offerings or gatherings, or of levies to raise a certain sum
where each man assessed himself, it was entirely optional
for each to give or to refuse. What a man customarily
gave, or what he had promised to give, or, again, what the
parish thought he ought to give, that the ordinary might
compel him to give.^ From an offering or a voluntary
assessment to a rate is often but a short step, and the two
former shade off into the latter almost imperceptibly. The
justices of the peace and the ecclesiastical authorities usu-
ally cast lump sums upon the parishes, leaving ways and
means to the parishioners themselves. But it was, of course,
optional with the justices to rate each individual separately
when it seemed good to them, and for this they had the
Queen's subsidy books to guide them. Here, however, we
^ These would be — to cite the principal — the ordinary upkeep of
the church with its services and all its appurtenances whatsoever
(see previous chapter); the finding of clerk and sexton; the care
of the poor; maintaining of the local roads and bridges; purchas-
ing and repair of parish armor, and mustering of parish contingents ;
contributions for prisoners and maimed soldiers; the keeping of
the parish butts and the stocks ; the destruction of f rugivorous birds
and animals (the statutory "vermin"), etc.
^ The act-books are full of " detections " for being an " unchari-
table person," for " not giving to the poor," etc. See pp. 41 ff.,
supra.
59
6o The Elizahethan Parish, [362
are chiefly concerned with the raising of money amongst
the parishioners themselves. How manifold, how ingeni-
ous were the parochial devices for creating resources, it is
the purpose of this chapter to set forth.
But before proceeding to the parish expedients, properly
so called, for raising money, it will be well to say some-
thing of parish endowments, whether in lands, houses or
funds. According as the revenue from these was available
for general, or at least for various purposes, or, on the
other hand, was impressed with a trust for some specific
object, these endowments may be divided into general and
special. Parishes well endowed might be able to dispense
with some of the devices for money-getting which we shall
have occasion to enumerate, but then, after all, endowments
might come and they might go;^ moreover, the financial
'Reference is here made to the occasional seizure of parish lands
or funds by the Queen's commissioners for concealed lands. See
Strype's strong language in his Ann. of the Ref. (Oxon. ed.), ii,
Pt. i, 310. He speaks of the unjust oppressions of courtiers and
other griping men, ' harpies ' and * hell-hounds,' who, under the
pretense of commissions, "did intermeddle and challenge land of
long times possessed by churchwardens, and such like, upon the
charitable gifts of predecessors . . . yea and certain stocks of money,
plate, cattle and the like. They made pretence to bells, lead [etc.]
..." Strype's words are none too strong, being amply confirmed by
much evidence aliunde. See, e. g., the determined attacks in 1567
and subsequently on the Melton Mowbray school lands in Leicest.
Archit. (etc.) Soc, iii (1874), 4o6 ff. Thanks to powerful neighbors
the Meltonians won their case. Less fortunate were the parish-
ioners of St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, the revenue from whose lands
supported church fabric, the poor, etc. For proceedings against
them, and the vain appeal by the parish to the lord chief justice
in 1572 ff., see Owen and Blakeway's Hist, of Shrewsbury, ii, 350-2.
For confiscation of parish gild property and parish lands on a
large scale, see examples given in Cambridge and Hunts Arch. Soc,
i (1904), 330 ff. We are here told that during Elizabeth's reign at
least twelve commissions for concealed lands were sent down into
Cambridgeshire (p. ZZ^)- See also ibid., 370 ff. for a sale of for-
feited lands to Jones and Grey in 1569. The list of lands is very
long and only a sample of many such. For attacks (1587) on
All Saints, Derby, lands, whose revenues went to church repairs, etc.,
see J. C. Cox and W. H. St. J. Hope, Chronicles of All Saints,
Derby (1881). For informers involving Lapworth, Warwick, in
a suit about its parish lands see Robt. Hudson, Memorials of a
Warwickshire Parish (1904), 104. The churchwardens acc'ts occa-
sionally allude to the Queen's commissioners, e. g., the Great Witch-
ingham Acc'ts, where they are dubbed by the right name : " for my
expenses when I was before the queues inquisitors for lands- and
goods" (1559). Norf. and Norw. Arch. Soc, xiii, 207.
363] Parish Finance. 61
policy of any one parish would, of course, differ according
to the disposition or the ability of those who shaped it.
Of Loddon, Norfolk, we are told that " no complaint
appears about Church Rates, for there were none, as the
revenue of the Town Farm . . . rendered a tax of that
description unnecessary."*
Of St. Petrock's, Exeter, we are informed that "the
parish became so well endowed by donations of land and
houses as to enable the wardens to dispense almost entirely
with the quarterly collections entered in the earlier ac-
counts."^ The editor of the Thatcham, Berks, Accounts,
writes : " In the early years of these churchwardens accounts
the available funds were derived chiefly from the two oldest
charities, one called * Lowndye's Almshouses,' the first ac-
count of which is for the year . . . 1561 ... to 1562; the
other known as ' the Church Estate,' the first account of
which begins in 1566."^ Summoned by the Bodmin, Corn-
wall, justices in January, 159%, to make a report as to the
parish stock, the representatives of Stratton certify at ses-
sions that their stock "ani[oun]ts to the now some of
Sixteene poundes, some yeares it is more & some yeares
lesse. ..." And, they continue, " the vsinge of our sayde
stocke is by the two wardens & the rest of the eight men
w[hi]ch for the same stande sworne, And it is bestowed
aboute her ma[jes]ties service, for buyenge of armor,
settinge forth of souldiers w[i]th powder & shott. . . . And
likewise for the relievinge & mainetayning of the poore.
..." They thereupon give the names of the impotent and
decrepit persons and orphan children " wholly relieved " by
the parish, ten in number, and add that there are upwards
of a hundred poor "w[h]ich are not able to Hue of them-
*Jas. Copeman in Norf. and Norw. Arch. Soc, ii (1849), 64.
The Loddon Acc'ts cover the period 1 554-1847, some of the dona-
tions, or endowments, being made in the i6th and some in the 17th
centuries.
''Robt. Dymond in Devon Assoc, for Advanc. of Science (etc.)
Tr., xiv (1882), 407. These acc'ts run from 1425-1590. For a list
of parish properties in 1565, see pp. 460-1. Their yearly rent then
amounted to £g 14s. 2d.
'Sam'l Barfield, Thatcham, Berks, and its Manors (1901), i. 121.
62 The Elizabethan Parish. [364
selues, but haue reliefe dayly one thinge or another of the
seide p[ar]ish."^ The little parish of St. Michael's in Bed-
wardine, Worcestershire,® possessed lands and tenements in
various parishes, and in 1599 invested iio in buying two
more tenements in Worcester city.® Its wardens accounts,
we are told by their editor, disclose that there was never
any lack of money for parish purposes " in spite of a rather
lavish expenditure at times in the luxury of law [suits] ."^®
Lapworth, Warwickshire, had many acres of parish land.^^
The churchwardens of St. John's, Glastonbury, Somerset,
return in their accounts the rent of the parish lands in 1588
at £g 13 s. 10 d.,^^ and, as these accounts show, they occasion-
ally received important sums for fines on changes of tenants.
The various properties managed by the wardens of St.
Michael's, Bath, numbered thirty-seven in 1527, yielding a
revenue of £11 8s. ;^^ and even in 1572 the rent amounted
to in 8s.i*
Indeed, though parish lands and houses were generally
vested as to title in trustees (often a numerous and cumber-
'R. W. Goulding, Records of the Charity known as Blanch-
minster's Charity, Stratton (1898), 64-5.
*In 1562 it is said to have contained only 48 families. John
Amphlett, Churchwardens Acc'ts of St. Michael's in Bedwardine
Ced. for Worcester Hist. Soc, 1898), introd., p. iii.
* Op. cit., 142-3. See ihid., and for the year named, the receipts
from these properties. Thus £4 is paid for one and a half years*
rental of parish land lying in Severn Stoke parish; 44s. for two
years' rent of parish houses in St. Peter's parish, Worcester city, etc.
" Op. cit., pp. xxx-i.
"Hudson, Memorials, etc., 85 ff. Consult Mr. Hudson's map of
the parish lands.
"Notes and Queries for Somer. and Dorset, v (1897), 94.
^'Somerset Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc. Tr., xxiii, Mr. Pearson's
introd., p. iii, and op. cit., vol. xxvi, 106-9. Cf. A. G. Legge, North
Elmham, Norfolk, Acc'ts (1891), 5-6 (Long list of lands managed
by wardens in 1549). Also J. H. Butcher, The Parish of Ashburton
(Devon), 49 (1580). Owen and Blakeway, Hist, of Shrewsbury,
ii, 342 (St. Mary's parish lands with 32 tenants and rental of
i6. 7s. 8d. in 1544. The churchwardens were here called "Lady
Wardens" as managing the " Rentall of our Lady").
^* St. Michael's Acc'ts, op. cit., vol. xxvi, 129. The wardens of
this parish record among their expenditures many items for the
repair of the parish tenements and other property. In early times
they received I2d. as a salary for management. Later this was
changed into an honorarium of varying amount "pro bono servicio
sua." Op. cit., vol. xxiii, intro., p. ii.
365] Parish Finance. 63
some body),^' the churchwardens themselves and sometimes
other accountants/® who like the wardens were appointed
from year to year, usually exercised the actual management.
The feoffees existed chiefly for the purpose of making it
difficult to alienate the parish properties, ** and the larger
the trust body the more difficult such alienation was sup-
posed to be."^^
Contenting ourselves with the above examples, which
could easily be multiplied, we pass on under this same head
of general endowments to an interesting form of personal
property, viz., cattle, for not only did the wardens derive
receipts from parish holdings of real estate, but also from
Endowments of Cows or Sheep. The Pittington, Durham,
Twelve Men, a sort of parish executive and administrative
body, enact in 1584 " that everie iiij pounde rent^^ within
this parrishe, as well of hamlets as townshippes, shall gras^®
winter and somer one shepe for the behoufe of this
church f^^ and we are told that these " Church Shepe,"
as they were called, were here one of the chief means of
raising funds for parochial purposes.^^ It was the custom
of pious donors, especially among the lowly, to leave one or
more sheep or cows to their parish. In the year 1559 twelve
sheep were thus given or bequeathed to Wootton Church,
Hants, by ten donors.-^ These sheep, as well as the parish
"Thus at Lapworth, Warwickshire, a trust of parish lands was
re-created in 1563 with twenty-two feoffees ; and one Collet in 1567
enfeoffed seventeen men of a field of only three acres, fourteen
perches, to parish uses, Hudson, Memorials (etc.), 85-6.
"£. g., the Grasswardens of St. Giles, Durham, who managed
the common lands of the parish, and accounted yearly for them.
They made disbursements for many parish expenses which else-
where churchwardens usually paid out (e. g., for bridges, houses
of correction, poor prisoners, armor and musters), yet were them-
selves distinct from the churchwardens. See Surtees Soc, xcv, i ff.
Cf. the bridge wardens of Loughborough, Leicester (W. G. D.
Fletcher, Hist, of L., 1883, pp. 40 ff). Also the townwardens of
Melton Mowbray, Leicester Archit. (etc.) Soc, iii, 61-2, note.
" Hudson, Memorials, etc., 88.
"That is (apparently) holdings returning £4 of rent annually.
" Pasture.
^ Surtees Soc., Ixxxiv, 15.
^Editor's (Mr. Barmby's) introd., ibid., 4.
" (Dean) G. W. Kitchen, The Manor of Manydown, Hants Rec.
Soc, 1895, 171. For other examples both of parish cows and sheep
64 The Elizabethan Parish. [366
cows, were often hired out to parishioners, who gave security
for their return. Sometimes they were given to poor men
at a reduced rent, and thus they served to support the
poor.^^
That the keeping of cattle was a well-recognized source of
parish income is seen by the Queen's Injunctions of 1559
in which she alludes to " the profit of cattle " among other
sources of parish revenue to be devoted to the poor, " and if
they be provided for, then to the reparation of highways
next adjoining," or to the repair of the church.^*
Leaving the topic of general endowments to take up those
sources of revenue destined to defray particular forms of
expenditure, we find that Permanent Parish Endowments in
lands, goods or money devoted to the defraying of Specific
Parish Administrative Burdens or Utilities were very nu-
merous in the local documents of the i6th century. Some-
times a land or fund was set apart by the donor, or by the
parish itself, for the support of a parish servant or officer ;^"
see Hale, Crim. Prec, 221 (40 parish sheep of Billericay, Essex,
for the relief of the poor. 1599). Littleton, Worcestersh. Acc'ts,
Midland Antiquary, i (1883), 107 (Purchase of cow for parish
in 1556). Ibid., 108 (Wintering of a church heifer). Morton,
Derbysh., Acc'ts, The Reliquary, xxv, 17 (Same as above. 1593).
Owen & Blakeway, Hist, of Shrewsbury, ii, 342 (St. Mary's had in
1544 ten cows and three sheep renting for ii is. 8d. yearly).
Rotherfield Acc'ts, Sussex Arch. Coll., xli, 26, 46. St. Michael's,
Bath, Acc'ts, Somerset Arch, (etc.) Soc, xxiii, introd., et passim.
Great Witchingham, Norf. and Norw. Arch. Soc, xiii, 207 (Cows in
1604). Hartland, Devon, Acc'ts, Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., v, Pt. i
(1876), 573 a (Custom circa 1601 for poor to leave sheep to church
by will). Hudson, Memorials, etc., 106-10 (Parish meeting about
renting out of cows. Surety bonds given by hirers in 1580 ff.).
Many other examples will be found in the wardens acc'ts and else-
where.
^ See Hudson, op. cit., supra, 106. In 1595 two cows were be-
queathed to Lapworth to be rented out at 20 d. yearly. The pro-
ceeds of one to mend a certain parish road, of the other to support
the poor {ibid., 109).
"Art. xxv, Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 189 flf. So in the Visitation
Articles of the same year {ibid., 213) we read : " Item, whether the
money coming and rising of any cattle or other movable stocks
of the church [etc.] . . . have not been employed to the poor men's
chest."
"In North Elmham the term "office land" seems to have been
used for lands set apart for the remuneration of parish servants.
See A. G. Legge, North Elmham Acc'ts, 81, s. a. 1566: "It[e]m for
office Land of the ten[emen]te fost[er] . . . vij d." Cf. Mr. Legge's
367] Parish Finance. 65
sometimes its revenue maintained this or that cripple or
bhnd man,^® or a number of them; sometimes it was used
for feeding the poor,-' or for buying wearing apparel for
them;-® for setting them at work in houses of correction,-**
or for parish education.^^
In particular, lands or funds were frequently set apart as
special and permanent endowments for the repair of
bridges.^^ In fact, the proceeds of parish lands or other
endowments might be appropriated to alleviate any tax
burden whatsoever. In 1549 it was stated by the wardens
of North Elmham, Norfolk, that the net proceeds of the
five and thirty or forty acres which they rented out were
note (p. 129). He cites other examples in Norfolk parishes, viz.,
" Constable Acre " in Stuston, " Constable Pasture " in Fralingham,
"Dog Whipper's Land" in Barton Turf. Cf. J. L. Glasscock,
Records of Bishop Stortford, 55 ("sexten's meade," 1563). In an
early year temp. Henry VHI one Jesop left two tenements to Men-
dlesham, Suffolk, "to y* fyndyng of a clarke to pley att ye
organys for a p[er]petuite." Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., v, Pt. i (1876),
596 a. See also Shrop. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc, iii, 3rd ser. (1903),
315 (26s. and 8d. and 12 bushels of rye issuing annually out of
Idsal rectory for the poor and the maintenance of a clerk). E.
Freshfield, St. Christopher-le-Stocks' Acc'ts, 38 (Bequest of a per-
petuity of 20S, annually for clerk and sexton. 1602).
•' Swyre, Dorset, Parish Acc't Book in Notes and Quer. for Somer.
and Dorset, iii (1893), 293 (Lands allotted by parish for support
of a blind man).
^ E. g., St. Christopher-le-Stocks' Acc'ts, 38 (Yearly perpetuity of
£3 4s. in bread and money to poor. 1602). St. Michael's in Bed-
wardine Acc'ts, 99 (House left to parish, 12s. of whose rental to
go to poor, and is. to the churchwardens. 1590).
^ Butcher, Parish of Ashburton, 46 (Land given to buy shirts and
smocks for the poor. 1575).
^'T. P. Wadley, Notes on Bristol Wills (1886), 230 (£20 for a
stock of money to remain for ever " in the howse of correction "
for the maintenance and " settinge on work of such people as shalbe
therevnto co[m]mitted for their mysdemeanors." Thos. Kelke's
will. 1583).
^ Wills and Inventories, Pt. ii, Surtees Soc, xxxviii, 83 (Keyper
school of Houghton and its endowment of £240. 1582).
" Examples among many are the Edenbridge, Kent, lands. These
bridgewardens held lands in three parishes. Arch. Cant., xxi
(1895), no ff. Also Burton's Charity lands at Loughborough. The
" bridgmasteres " here in 1570 collected £33 i8s. 6d., and disbursed
£16 I2S. I id. Fletcher, Hist, of Loughborough, 41-2. Also Hay-
ward bridge lands. Notes and Quer. for Somer. and Dorset, iv
(1895), 205-7.
5
66 The Elizabethan Parish. [368
devoted exclusively towards the paying of the fifteenths due
from time to time to the king and his successors.^-
To illustrate the variety of purposes for which parish
trusts were created, I cannot do better than quote part of
the preamble of the 43 Eliz. c. 4, known as the Statute of
Charitable Uses : " Whereas Landes, Tenements, Rentes
. . . Money and Stockes of Money," it is there rehearsed,
" have bene heretofore given, limitted . . . and assigned
. . . some for Releife of aged, impotent and poore people,
some for Maintenaunce of sicke and maymed Souldiers and
Marriners, Schooles of Learninge . . . some for Repaire
of Bridges, Portes, Havens, Causwaies, Churches, Sea-
bankes and Highewaies, some for Educac[i]on and
p[re]fermente of Orphans, some for or towardes Relief e,
Stocke or Maintenaunce for Howses of Correcc[i]on, some
for Mariages of poore Maides, some for Supportac[i]on,
Ayde and Helpe of younge Tradesmen, Handiecraftesmen
and p[er]sons decayed, and others . . • for aide or ease of
any poore Inhabitants conc[er]ninge paymente of Fif-
teenes, settinge out of Souldiers and other Taxes [etc.]
"33
As for money and goods left by testators or given inter
vivos for Temporary Expenses or Special Occasions (as
opposed to the creation of permanent trusts and endow-
ments), we find a constant stream of such benefactions
throughout the Elizabethan period.
By the Queen's Injunctions of 1559 parsons are diligently
to exhort their parishioners, " and especially when men
make their testaments," to give to the poor-box, the surplus
of which, after provision for the needy, might be devoted
to church and highway repair.^*
Bequests made to the highways or bridges were consid-
ered as donated in pios usus. " I thinke," wrote a prebend-
ary of Durham Cathedral in 1599, " it also a deade of chari-
""Legge, North Elmham Acc'ts, 87-90. So too at Eltham, Kent,
where the " Fifetene peny Lands " have special wardens who account \
for their revenue. ArchcBologia, xxxiv, 51 ff.
** Statutes of the Realm, iv, Pt. ii, 968-9.
"Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 189 ff.
369] Parish Finance. 6y
tie and a comendable worke before God to repaire the high-
wayes, that the people may travaille saifely without daunger.
I therefore will to the mending of the highwayes [etc.]
"35
Noblemen and wealthy men were expected to help main-
tain the local poor in particular. Elizabethan ballads cele-
brate the liberality to the destitute of an Earl of Hunting-
don,^® of an Earl of Southampton,^^ or of an Earl of Bed-
ford.^® At the funeral of George, Earl of Shrewsbury, in
1 59 1, eight thousand got the dole served to them, and it
was thought that at least twice that number were in waiting,
but could not approach because of the tumult.^^ The
churchwardens and overseers of the poor accounts, espe-
cially in London and the larger cities, abound with receipt
items of gifts from great personages or wealthy mer-
chants.*<^
"Dr. Pilkington's will, Surtees Soc, xxii, Append., p. cxxxviii.
For a few other examples of bequests for parish utilities see ibid., p.
ciii (George Reyd's will, 1559). Ibid., p. ex ff. (William Birche's will
of 1575 in which are many bequests to poor artificers, to prisoners —
a very frequent bequest — to " needf ull briggs or highe waies," etc.).
See also Benefactions to Dorset Parishes, Churches, etc., in Notes
and Quer. for Somer. and Dorset, x, 164 ff. Also T. P. Wadley, Notes
on Bristol Wills, passim (e. g., Thos. Kelke's will of 1583, on p. 230.
He leaves £13 to Newgate prisoners, a frieze gown to 12 women
and 12 men — a frequent bequest — 6s. 8d. each to 52 poor maidens
for their marriage, etc.). Also Wills and Inventories, Surtees
Soc, xxxviii, Pt. ii, passim. Surrey Wills in Surrey Arch. Coll.,
X (1891), passim. ,
" The crie of the poore for the death of the right Honourable
Earle of Huntington (printed 1596), Joseph Lilly, A Collection of
Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads and Broadsides, 1559-1597
(1870), 230.
''Ibid., 263.
" The poore people's complaynt, Bewayling the death of their
famous benefactor, the worthy Earle of Bedford (Died 1585). Bed-
ford was described as "a person of such great hospitality that
Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of him that he made all the
beggars." Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 256.
''J. C. Cox, Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, i, 136.
"E, Freshfield, St. Bartholomew, Exchange, Acc'ts, s. a. 1598,
et passim. Freshfield, St. Margaret, Lothbury, Vestry Book, 32
(1595)- ^i- Margaret's, Weslininstcr, Overseers' Acc'ts in The
Westminster Tobacco Box, Pt. ii (1887), ^- g-, s. a. 1572-3, where
we find donations from Lord Burghley, the Lord Chief Justice,
the Dean of Westminster, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Hert-
ford, etc.
68 The Elizabethan Parish. [370
Owing to the difficulty of investing money because pres-
ent-day intermediaries were absent between capital seeking
employment and would-be borrowers; and because the me-
dieval stigma attaching to money loaned at interest had by
no means wholly disappeared,^^ there grew up in Eliza-
betlian parishes a system of laying out money, raised by
the parish or donated by benefactors, in various trades,
such as wool-spinning, linen-weaving, the buying of wood
or coal to sell again at a profit,*^ etc. Sometimes well-to-do
parishioners with good credit would themselves borrow
parish money, returning ten per cent, for its use.^^ Usu-
*^ Though by 27 Hen. VIII c. 9, sec. 3 {Stats, of Realm, iii, 996)
interest up to 10 per cent, per annum -was permitted, all interest
was prohibited by the 5 & 6 Ed. VI, c. 20, sec. 2 (Stats, of Realm,
iv, Pt. i, 155). Interest is here dubbed usury, "a vice most odyous
and detestable." Interest up to 10 per cent, was, however, again
made lawful by the 13 Eliz. c. 8, sec. 4 (Stats, of Realm, iv, Pt.
i, 542) which, however, stigmatizes usury as sinful.
^ Examples are, Vestry Minutes of St. Margaret, Lothhury, 2,2
(Gift of £20 in 1595 to be employed in wood and coal for the use
of the poor. A committee of four was appointed to invest and
make sales. See their account for 1596, p. 34). The Westminster
Tobacco Box, Pt. ii, 22 (One of the overseers of St. Margaret's
to keep a gift of £42 " untill the same may be bestowed upon somme
good bargaine as a lease or somme other such like commoditie
w[hi]ch may yeelde a yerely rente to the pore." 1578). Cf. St.
Bartholomew, Exchange, Acc'ts Books, 3 ff., where in 1598, and
regularly in subsequent years, appears the item : " Alowed to this
account for the geft of the Lady Wilfordes xx li for the pore
XX [s]." Also another item, likewise of 20s. yearly, on Mr. Nut-
maker's i20 — in other words, 10 per cent, in each case every year.
Cf. Jas. Stockdale, Annals of Cartmel (Lancashire, pub. 1872),
37-8 (£65 6s., money belonging to Cartmel grammar school
" placed " in the hands of various persons, some of whom give
pledges, others mortgages, for repayment. The revenue from this
is £6 IDS. 7d., i. e., 10 per cent, in 1598). In 1613, in allowing the
overseer's accounts of Swyre, Dorset, the local justices indorse:
"Upon this condition that from henceforth the overseers and
Churchwardens do yearlie charge themselves with the some of xxs.
for thuse of a stocke of xli [i. e., 10 per cent.] giuen to the poore
by the testam[en]t of James Rawlinge." The practice above illus-
trated is simply that enjoined by 18 Eliz. c. 3, amended and com-
pleted by 39 Eliz. c. 3 and 43 Eliz. c. 2, with an object of making
the poor administration self-supporting as far as might be. The
fact that Elizabethan poor laws were based on the best-approved
parish customs made them perdurable. For a model adminis-
tration of parish stock according to the poor laws see the Cowden
Overseers Acc'ts, Sussex Arch. Coll., xx, 95 flF. (1599 ff.).
"£. g., in St. Michael's in Bedwardine (Acc'ts ed. John Amph-
lett) one Stanton left 50s. to the poor in 1588 (Acc'ts, p. 97-^).
I
371] Parish Finance. 69
ally, however, parish money was loaned gratis, the parish
taking sureties for its repayment and sometimes articles of
value, being, apparently, not always above doing a little
pawnbroking business.** On the other hand, when the
parish itself had occasion to borrow money it would occa-
sionally give its own valuables as security. Thus the Mere,
Wiltshire, wardens record in 1556 that they have redeemed
on the repayment of 40s. to one Cowherd, " borowed of
hym to thuse of the Churche," " certeyn sylver Spones of
the Churche stocke."*^ Finally, parishes would now and
then make some cautious speculation in real estate, such as
the buying of a local market or fair with a view to profit."*®
Robt, Chadboume paid 5s. for the use of this money for several
years {Acc'ts, p. 108, etc.). It then was loaned to John Brayne,
an entry being made from time to time that the principal was
owing as well as the interest {Acc'ts p. 108). Brayne paid the
50s. to the wardens in Sept., 1595. Cf. preceding note (Cartmel
school money).
** St. Michael's in Bedwardine Acc'ts, supra, 96 (One Fletcher
loaned 30s. in 1586, he depositing with the wardens " a gilt salt
with a cover"). For numerous gratuitous loans of parish money,
see the Mere Acc'ts, Wilts Arch, and Nat. Hist. Mag., xxxv (1907),
passim. Cf. also the document of 1586 relating to the parish of
Heavitree, in Devon Notes and Quer., i (1901), 61, where it is stipu-
lated (inter alia) that if any parishioner of good character upon
reasonable cause shall desire to borrow from any surplus funds of
the church for a season, " such a one shall not be den3'^ed."
" See Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxv. Cf. J. E. Foster, St. Mary the
Great (Cambridge) Acc'ts (1905), 208.
*®In 1564 the parishioners of Chagford, Devon, bought from the
lord of the manor for iio the local markets and fairs, subject to a
yearly rent of i6s., which they had always paid as tenants. They
then repaired and enlarged the market house. Presumably their
venture was a profitable one, for in 1595 the revenue from these
m.arkets and fairs was £3 los. G. W. Ormerod in Devon Assoc,
for Adv. of Science, etc., viii (1876), 72. Same, Local Informa-
tion reprinted from the Chagford Parish Mag. (1867) in Topo-
graphical Tracts in Brit. Mus. As it was sometimes hard for the
authorities to prevent the churchwardens from utilizing the church
for plays, so it was hard for them to keep the wardens from giving
up the churchyard or outlying portions of the church structure for
fairs and stall-holders. In Herts Co. Rec. Quarter Sess. Rolls
(ed. W. J. Hardy, 1905), p. I3, we read, s. a. 1591-2, that a pre-
sentment was made that some part of the " fayer of Starford has
usually been kept within the compase of the churchyard." See
also St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts (ed. H. J. F.
Swayne, Wilts Rec. Soc. 1896), introd., p. xxiii (St. Edmund's
fair held within and without the churchyard. Wardens receipts
from cheesesellers, butchers, etc., for stalls and standings).
70 The Elizabethan Parish. [372
Leaving the subject of endowments we shall now take up
in order the measures which may be called Parish Expedi-
ents for raising money.
Of all means ever devised for obtaining large sums of
money for parish uses, the most popular, as certainly the
most efficacious, was the Church-ale. Widespread during
the first years of Elizabeth's reign, church-ales, for reasons
hereafter to be mentioned, ceased to be held in many
parishes towards the end of the reign. They constitute,
nevertheless, at all times during the i6th century an impor-
tant chapter in the history of parochial finance. In some
wardens' accounts the proceeds of these ales form a yearly
recurring and an ordinary receipt item ; in others ales were
resorted to when some unusually large sum had to be
raised, or some heavy expense was to be met, such as the
rebuilding of the church tower, the recasting of the bells,
the raising of a stock to set the poor to work, or the buying
of a silver communion cup.**^ Frequently, also, funds were
raised by means of ales called clerk-ales, sexton-ales, etc.,
to pay the wages of clerks, sextons and other servants of
the parish. " For in poore Countrey Parishes," writes an
early 17th century bishop, " where the wages of the Gierke
is very small, the people . . . were wont to send him in
Provision, and then feast with him, and give him more
liberality then their quarterly payments [or offerings]
would amount unto in many years." Indeed, he continues,
since these ales have been abolished " some ministers have
"As late as 1633 the bishop of Bath and Wells could write to
Archbishop Laud: "I finde that by Church-ales hertofore many
poore Parishes have cast their Bells, repaired their Towers, beauti-
fied their Churches, and raised stocks for the poore." Wm. Prynne,
Canterburies' Doome, etc. (1646), 151. Cf. Philip Stubbes,
Anatomic of Abuses (4th ed., 1595), iio-ii. Spudeus: "But, I
pray you, how do they bestow that money which is got thereby?"
[i. e., by church-ales]. Philopomus: "Oh well, I warrant you, if
all be true which they say; for they repaire their Churches and
Chappels with it; they buy bookes for service, Cuppes for the
celebration of the Sacrament, Surplesses for Sir John [i. e., the
parson], and such other necessaries. And they maintaine other
extraordinarie charges in their Parishes besides."
373] Parish Finance, yi
complained unto me, that they are afrayd they shall have
no Parish Clerks for want of maintenance for them."*^
Church-ales were usually held at or near Whitsuntide,
hence they were also called Whitsun-ales or May-ales in the
accounts. If the occasion were an extraordinary one, and it
was sought to realize a large sum, notices were sent to the
surrounding parishes, say to ten, fifteen, or more, to be read
aloud from the pulpits of their respective churches after
service, which notices contained invitations to any and all
to come and spend their money in feasting and drinking for
the benefit of the parish giving the ale. As the day ap-
proached for the opening of the ale, which, if it were a great
one, would be kept for four or five days or more, all was
bustle in the parish to prepare for a feasting which often
assumed truly Gargantuan proportions. Cuckoo kings and
princes were chosen, or lords and ladies of the games; ale-
drawers were appointed. For the brewing of the ale the
wardens bought many quarters of malt out of the church
stock, but much, too, was donated by the parishioners for
the occasion. Breasts of veal, quarters of fat lambs, fowls,
eggs, butter, cheese, as well as fruit and spices, were also
purchased. Minstrels, drum players and morris-dancers
were engaged or volunteered their services. In the church-
house, or church tavern, a general-utility building found in
many parishes, the great brewing crocks were furbished, and
the roasting spits cleaned. Church trenchers and platters,
pewter or earthen cups and mugs were brought out for use ;
but it was the exception that a parish owned a stock of these
sufficient for a great ale. Many vessels were borrowed or
hired from the neighbors or from the wardens of near-by
parishes, for, as will presently be seen, provident church-
**Bath and Wells to Canterbury, Prynne, supra, loc. cit. In 1536
at Morebath, Devon, the parish agreed that the clerk should gather
his "hire meat" (i. e., so much corn of each one) at Easter, "&
then y* p[a]rysse schall helpe to drenke him a coste of ale yn ye
churche howse." J. E. Binney, Morebath Acc'ts (1904), 86. When
in 165 1 at St. Thomas', Salisbury, clerk-ales were abolished, "both
the clerk and sexton claimed compensation for the loss of income
sustained." The same was true of St. Edmunds' (in the same city)
in 1697. Swayne, St. Edmund and St. Thomas Acc'ts, introd.,
p. xvii.
72 The Elizabethan Parish. [374
wardens derived some income from the hiring of the parish
pewter as well as money from the loan of parish costumes
and stage properties. When the opening day arrived people
streamed in from far and wide. If any important personage
or delegation from another village were expected, the parish
went forth in a body with bag-pipes to greet them, and (with
permission from the ecclesiastical authorities) the church
bells were merrily rung out. At the long tables, when the
ale was set abroach, " well is he," writes a contemporary,
*' that can get the soonest to it, and spend the most at it,
for he that sitteth the closest to it, and spendes the most at it,
hee is counted the godliest man of all the rest . . . because it
is spent uppon his Church forsooth."*^ The receipts from
these ales were sometimes very large. So important were
they at Chagford, Devon, that the churchwardens were
sometimes called alewardens.^^ At Mere, Wilts, out of a
total wardens' receipts of i2i 5s. 7^d. for the two years
1559-61, the two church-ales netted £iy 3s. i>4d.,^^ thus
leaving only £5 2s. 6d. as receipts from other sources for
these two years. At a later period, on the other hand, this
relation of receipts was entirely reversed. For instance, in
1582-3 the wardens secured only £4 los. 4d. from their ale,
while proceeds from other sources amounted to £iy 9s. 7d.'^^
"Stubbes, Anatomie, etc., no. The above account of church-ales
has been derived partly from Stubbes and from a curious little
pamphlet, edited by Rev. Fredk. Brown in 1883, entitled On some
Star Chamber Proceedings, 34 Elis. 1592; partly, also, from many
churchwardens acc'ts, in particular the Seal Acc'ts in Surrey Arch.
Coll., n (1864), 34-6 (See items in detail for the ale of 1592, and
especially the ale of 161 1. Expenses for all manner of provisions
and delicacies, for minstrels and evidently, too, for a play occur.
In 161 1 the festivities lasted at least 5 days). Cf., too, the Ex-
penses of the Maye Feast at Dunmow in 1538 (Cooks, minstrels
and players mentioned), Essex Arch. Soc, ii, 230. Also Kitchen,
Manor of Manydown, 172-3 (Lists of delicacies provided at the
Wootton ale in 1600. Expense items for lords' and ladies' liveries,
players, etc.)
"^^The Parish of Chagford in Devon Ass. for Adv. of Science,
viii, 74.
^^ Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxv (1907), Mere Acc'ts, 30. These have
been transcribed verbatim by Mr. T. H. Baker.
" Op. cit. Because of greatly increased expenses the wardens
here thenceforth resorted to collections according to a book of rates.
They also devised other means of income, such as parish burial
375] Parish Finance. 73
In the thirty-one years from 1556-7 to 1587-8 in this parish
the recorded wardens' expenditures had more than doubled.
In the first-named year they had been but £8 12s. 5d. f^ in
the latter year they had swelled to ii8 14s. 3^d." This
characteristic is true of all Elizabethan church budgets, and
the writer has seen a number of them."^^ The Wootton
churchwardens enter under the year 1600 the following:
" Rec. by our Kingale, all things discharged, xij li. xiiij[s].
jd. ob.," an important sum for the day.^®
Besides the churchwardens other wardens or gilds some-
times busied themselves with the selling of ale for the benefit
of the church. One of these gilds at South Tawton, Devon,
records in its accounts for 1564: " We made of our alle and
gathering xl 1. viijs. viijd."^^
So important a source of parish income had to be care-
fully looked after. A church-ale with its attendant festivi-
ties for drawing visitors was an important business matter.
Accordingly we find the parishioners of St. John's, Glaston-
bury, making an order in 1589 "that the churchwardens
shall yearly keape ale to the comodeti of the parishe upon
payne of xxs. a yere.""®
fees, collections for the holy loaf (i e., blessed but not consecrated
bread), etc.^ This casting about for new sources of revenue was
characteristic of all parishes as the reign advanced.
^^ Op. cit, 26.
" Op. cit, 92.
"In 1605 and 1606, doubtless to meet some extraordinary ex-
penses, the Mere wardens roused themselves to great efforts at
their church-ale, and netted ii5 6s., and £20 respectively. Sir Rich.
Colt Hoare, Hist, of Modern Wiltshire (1822), i, 21.
"Kitchen, Manor of Manydown, 174. At this ale there were six
tables and the receipts from each were tabulated separately. For
other large receipts see the Wing, Bucks, Acc'ts, Archcuologia,
xxxvi, 219 ff. In 1598 the ale here yielded ig i6s. 4d. At More-
bath, a small and poor parish, an ale had produced £10 13s. 5d. in
1529. but the receipts from this source fell off here in Elizabeth's
time. At Stratton, Cornwall, up to 1547, at any rate, if not later,
ales were the chief source of income. ArchoBologia, xlvi, 195-6.
"Devon Notes and Quer., iii (1905), 224. Cf. the Young Men
Wardens' ales at Morebath (Binney, Morcbath Acc'ts, 213 [1573],
et passim). Also St. Anthony's Gild ales at Chagford. Devon
Ass. for Adv. of Science, viii, 74 (1599). Various persons at
Milton Abbot sold ale and bread. Op. cit., vol. xi (1879), 218.
^ Notes and Quer. for Somer. and Dorset, v (1897), 48. The same
year in these acc'ts we find three conduit wardens mentioned. These
74 The Elizabethan Parish. [376
In Ashburton, Devon, in 1567 Christopher Wydecomb had
to pay 20s. to the wardens "because he refused the office
of the drawer of the church ale."^® At Wing, Bucks, those
refusing " to be lorde at Whitsuntyde for the behofe of the
church " were fined 3s. 4d. apiece.®*^ In some places these
masters of the revels were called Cuckoo Kings, and the
office seems to have gone in rotation like other parish
offices."
When invitations had been sent out to surrounding par-
ishes, interparochial courtesy seems to have required the
attendance either of the churchwardens or of some other
more or less official representatives of the neighboring com-
munities. These representatives carried with them some
^mall contribution made at the expense of their respective
parishes ( * ale-scot ' ) .^^
Because of the alleged drunkenness and disorderly con-
duct attendant upon some of these ales, the justices of assize
and the justices of the peace attempted in some shires to
are to have "the assistance of William Ellis plomer [plumber]."
Of them it is also determined that they "do kepe an alle for the
comodetie of the condytts in the sayd Tovvne to be kept abowts the
tyme of Shrofftyde," i. e., just before Lent.
"Butcher, The Parish of Ashburton, 41. It would seem that
there were special wardens here for ale drawing. (See p. 44
[1570-1].)
Archceologia, xxxvi, 235,
'^ " And because John Watts hath ben long sick, hit is agreed
that if hee be not able to s[e]rve at/the tyme of the Church ale,
That then John Coward . . . shall s[e]rve and be king in his place
for this yeare." Mere Acc'ts (Wilts Arch. Mag., I. c, 34) s. a.
1561. Cf. J. H. Matthews, History of St. Ives (1892), 144, et
passim.
°* Bishop Hobhouse, Churchwdn's Acc'ts of Croscomhe, Pilton, etc.,
Somerset Rec. Soc, iv (1890), 80, where he says: "The [Yatton]
wardens attended these festivals at Ken, Kingston, Wrington, Con-
gresbury, etc., with more or less regularity, making their contribu-
tions, commonly xijd. in the name of the parish and at the cost
of the parish ..." Cf. Morebath Acc'ts (ed. Binney), 224: "It
there was payd a trinite Sonday at the Churche ale at Bawnton
[Bampton] for John Skynner . . . xjd." (1565). Mere Acc'ts
(Wilts Arch. Mag.), 60: "Item paied for bread and drink to make
the Sum[m]er Lord of Gillingham Drink . . . ijs. vjd." (1578-9).
T. Nash, Hist, and Antiq. of Worcestershire, ii, appen.. p. xxix
(Halesowen Acc'ts: " Paid when we went to Frankley to the church
ale 2od.").
277] Parish Finance. 75
put them down on various occasions.®^ More effective, per-
haps, in doing away with them was the gradual growth of
Puritanism.
In conclusion it should be remarked that church-ales seem
to have obtained only in Central and Southern England.
The huge and thinly populated parishes of the North did
not favor the development of an institution so essentially
social in its character.
Church Plays, Games and Dances were allied in a measure
with church-ales, partly because they were sometimes held
concurrently with them, partly because they served as a
substitute for the ales when these fell into disrepute.
Miracle plays and other pageants were given by certain
parishes from time to time, too frequently in the churches
themselves, in which case the wrath of the ordinary was
called down upon the parish if he heard of them.^* Some
parishes kept various costumes and stage properties, which
were hired out to other parishes when not in use.®'' May
games, Robin Hood plays or bowers, Hocktide sports and
*^ See the precedents given for the Western Circuit in Prynne,
Canterburies' Doome, 152. Cf. also, ibid., 128 ff. That these ales
died hard in Devon and Somerset is seen by the repeated judicial
orders. See also J. W. Willis Bund, Social Life in Worcestershire
illustrated by the Quarter Sess. Rec. in Assoc. Archit. Soc, xxiii,
Pt. ii (1897), 373-4 (1617). A. H. Hamilton, Quarter Sessions
from Elisabeth to Anne (1878), 28-9. Harrison, Descrip. of Engl.,
Bk. ii, New Shak. Soc, 32. Saml. Barfield, Thatcham, Berks, and
its Manors, ii, 105 (Wardens Acc'ts 1598-9: "Item wee were
bounde over by Mr. Dolman, Justice, to appeare at Reading Assizes,
where it cost T. . L. . and R. , C. . conserning our business wee
kept at Whitsuntide xvs. apece, somme xxxs.")-
""Hale, Crim. Prec, 149 (Hornchurch wardens bringing players
into church. 1566). Ibid., 156 ("Tromperie" and "paynted stuff
for playes in the chefe parte of the [Rayleigh] church." 1574)-
Ibid., 158 (Two plays in Romford Chapel by "comon players."
Wardens plead in extenuation that proceeds went to "a poore man
in decay." 1577). Leverton, Lincolnshire, Acc'ts, Archceologia, xli,
2>2>2) ff- (Several examples of plays in the church. 1579-95).
*In the Chelmsford Acc'ts, Essex Arch. Soc, ii, 225-6 (1562),
is a most interesting inventory showing an elaborate stage outfit.
That it was used for miracle plays is seen on p. 227 ("Cotte of
lether for Christe," and " lyne for the clowdes," etc.). From
various towns the Chelmsford men received in 1563, and subse-
quently, large sums for the hire of these properties, e. g., £3 6s. 8d.
from "Starford" (Bishop Stortford?) ; 43s. 4d. from Colchester.
76 The Elisabethan Parish. [378
forfeits, morris-dances and children's dances were all turned
to the profit of the church, collections being taken up at
them.*'® ]\Iorris coats, caps, bells and feathers were fre-
quently loaned out for a consideration by wardens to other
parishes.®^
Church-house. Here were the brewing kettles and the
spits, and here was stored church grain or malt for beer
making.^® Here, too, presumably, the pewter ale pots,
trenchers, spoons, etc., which figure in the accounts, were
kept. These were hired out to other parishes for their ales.®**
While ale was brewed and drunk in the church-house for the
benefit of the parish, and that apparently on other occasions
than church-ales, it does not seem probable that the place
was often allowed to degenerate into a common ale-house,
even though in some parishes it may have borne the name
of " church tavem."^^ When not required for parish pur-
" Examples are Thos. North, St Martinis, Leicester, Acc'ts (1SS4) ,
80 (Children's morris-^dance. 1558-9). Ibid., 85 (Robin Hood
play). St. Helen, Abingdon, Acc'ts, Archcrologia, i (2d ed.), 15
(1560). J. H. Baker, Notes on St. Martin's (Salisbury) Church
and Parish (1906), Wardens Acc'ts, 153 (Whitsun dance in 1588
yielding 13s. 4d.). St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts,
introd., p. xvii. Also both acc'ts, passim (" Feast of Hokkes,"
" Childrens daunse." At St. Edmund's £3 12s. collected in 1581
[p. 131]; at St. Thomas' same year £3 6s. 8d. [p. 291]). T. N.
& A. S. Garry, St. Mary, Reading, Acc'ts (1893), 28^, et passim
(Whitsuntide and Hocktide money here drop out as early as 1575.
There was also here a Christmas gathering).
" Examples : Wandsworth Acc'ts in Surrey Arch. Coll., xvii
(1902), 158 (1567-8). John Nichols, Illustrations of the Manners
etc. of Antient Times (1707") (Great Marlow, Bucks, Acc'ts, 135.
1612), etc.
^ Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., loc. cit. (Mere Acc'ts: brass crocks in
inventory of 1584). Chagford Acc'ts in Devon Ass. (etc.), 74.
Binney, Morebath Acc'ts, 132. A. E. W. Marsh, History of Calne,
368 (Church furnace, 1529. Wardens expenditures for sowing
church lands, mowing them, and carrying the corn and storing it
in the church-house). The Antiquary, xvii, 169 (Stanford, Berks,
Acc'ts, s. a. 1569: laying corn in church-house, and making malt
there). Morebath Acc'ts, 132 (Spits put up in the church-house).
"Morebath Acc'ts, 142 (Church stock-taking). Mere Acc'ts {Wilts
Arch, (etc.) Mag. loc. cit.), 32, 37, 54, etc. Chelmsford Acc'ts, 217
("xv dosen pewter & ix peces," and rent of it owing to church.
1560).
" St. John's. Glastonbury, Acc'ts, N. and Q. for Som. and Dor., v,
94, s. a. 1588 (Selling ale in church-house). Tintinhull Acc'ts,
Somcr. Rcc. Soc, iv, p. xxii ("The chief source of income [church-
379] Parish Finance. yy
poses the church-house was rented out, and rooms in an
upper story were used for lodging.'^
As church-ales fell into disfavor Offerings or Gatherings
in church or at the church door became more frequent^^
and more systematized. As time went on these collections
were regularly taken up in many parishes every quarter, usu-
ally at Easter, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas.'^^
Hence the name quarterage.'* When the proceeds went to
general church furnishing and repairing, the gatherings were
sometimes called in the accounts " church works. "'^^ As
the sum given by each was often noted down in " quarter
books " or " Easter books,"^^ and was, on denial, occasion-
ally sued for before the official (together with dues for other
purposes — clerk's wages, pew rents, etc., presently to be
noticed), an "offering" might become virtually an assess-
ment or rate.'^^
house] at T[intinhull] and elsewhere to the end of the i6th Cen-
tury."). Stratton Acc'ts, Arch., xlvi, 198. Bristol and Glouc.
Arch. Soc. Tr., vii (1882-3), 108 (Tenement donated 1532 to
Northleach known as " the Churche Taverne." It was rented out,
but on the condition that the lessee should " permit the towne to
have the use of the same one month at Whitsontyde"). Of the
Stratton church-house we are told that men were fined (in 1541)
for drinking ale there, because the drinking was not for the profit
of the parish. Arch., loc. cit., supra.
''^Stanford Acc'ts, loc. cit., s. a. 1595. Stratton Acc'ts, loc. cit., 198.
"Thus at Calne (Wilts) in 1574-5 no church-ale was had, but
a gathering in lieu of it was made from the parishioners. Ales and
collections thenceforward alternated here, until church rates were
established. Marsh, History of Calne, 372.
'" See, e. g., Thos. North, St. Martin's Leicester, Acc'ts, 98, where
the times of collection are named.
'*See, among others, Ludlow Acc'ts, Shrop. Archit. (etc.) Soc.,m,
127 (1567), where the name occurs. Also St. Edmund's, Sarum,
Acc'ts, Wilts Rec. Soc. for 1896, p. 141 (1592).
"£. g., at St. Edmund's, Sarum, or at St. Martin's, Leicester.
" See, e. g., J. E. Foster, St. Mary the Great (Cambridge) Acc'ts,
148 ff. Offerings of the masters of arts and of the bachelors form
a distinct feature here.
" See pp. 41 ff, and 59 supra. In the Morebath Acc'ts (ed. J. E.
Binney, p. 178) we read, s. a. 1553-4, as a heading to the receipt
items : ** Now to pay y' f orsayd dettis & demawndis y" schall hyre
of all our resettis y* we have resseuyed, & how gentylly for y* moste
p[ar]te men have payd of there owne devoc[i]on w[i]t[h] out ony
taxyn or ratyng as y^ schall hyre here after." Then follows a list
of 30 names. There is evidently some sort of rough assessment
here, e. g., Nicholas at Hayne pays 4s. 9d., " consyderyng hys bothe
bargayns " (i. e., small farms). Cf. St. Edmund and St. Thomas,
Sarum, Acc'ts, p. xviii and p. 317.
78 The Elizabethan Parish, [380
We come now to Communion Dues, or Collections taken
up at the time of communion.
'' Paschall money " is defined in a vestry order of Stepney
parish, London, in 1581 as a duty of id. paid by each com-
municant at Easter " toward the charge of breade and wine
over and besides theyre offering mony due unto the vicar."
These paschal dues, the order further informs us, had long
been farmed by the vicar for 40s. yearly. But now the
yield of a penny from each communicant was " thought a
thing so profitable and beneficiall," that only as a special
mark of favor was the vicar to continue to farm it, but at
£4 thenceforth instead of at 40s.'^^ " Easter money," an
expression found not infrequently in the accounts, may have
referred to the same payment, or it may have designated
the offering which generally followed the celebration of
communion,^^ taken up, doubtless, from all those present,
whether communicating or not, the proceeds of which might
go to the minister or to the parish according to agreement
or custom.
Though the Second Edwardine Prayer Book (1552) pro-
vided that the elements were to be found by the curate and
the wardens at the expense of the parish, which was then
to be discharged of fees, or levies on each household, never-
theless, we meet with Communion Fees or with house-to-
house levies to defray the cost of bread and wine in many
parishes during Elizabeth's reign.^^ In order to ensure pay-
"Five years later, the vicar dead, the clerk was ordered to assist
the wardens in receiving the * paskall pence ' whether paid at Easter
or at any other time of communion. Hill and Frere, Memorials of
Stepney Parish, 4-5 and 13-14.
"Ordered by St. Edmund's, Sarum, vestry in 1628: "that the
bread and wyne for the Communion shalbe paid for by the auncyennt
paymentt of the halfepence, and yf it shall com[e] to more . . . Jt
shalbe supplied out of the rest of the mony given after the Co[m]-
munion." St. Edmund and St. Thomas Acc'ts {Wilts Rec. Soc),
187.
'"These levies were 2id. on each householder at St. Margaret,
Lothbury, London; 3d. a house at St. Lawrence Pountney, London
{History of St. Laurence Pountney, by H. B. Wilson [1831], 125 ff.).
Etc. At Salehurst, Sussex, the fee was id. a poll yearly, heads of
households being empowered in 1585 to abate that sum from their
servants' wages : Sussex Arch. Coll., xxv, 154. At Pittington, Dur-
ham, landlords were to answer for their cottagers for a yearly fee
of 2d.: Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv, 29 (1590). Cf. ibid., Houghton-L«-
38 1 J Parish Finance. 79
ment of the communion fee, tokens (or as we would say
today, tickets) were provided in some parishes which were
first to be handed in before the ministrant admitted the ap-
pHcant to reception.^^
In a number of parishes a fine wine such as muscatel or
malmsey was provided for the better sort, or the masters and
mistresses, while the servants, or poorer folk, were served
with claret.®^ Indeed where all were compelled to com-
municate thrice yearly the cost of wine was a very serious
item.
Collections for the Holy Loaf, that is, blessed but not
consecrated bread, which went to defray the costs of admin-
istering the Eucharist, occur in some of the earlier Eliza-
bethan accounts.^^ Surplus communion fee money, or com-
munion offerings were devoted to the care of the poor and
other expenses.^*
The heading Clerk's Wages, which is so often met with
in the wardens' receipt items, frequently serves (as do sev-
eral other special headings) as a mere peg on which to hang
a collection for various or even for general parish ex-
penses.®''
Spring Acc'ts, 269. Leverton, Lincoln, Acc'ts, Archceologia, xli, 368
(A penny a poll for the elements. 1612). In the Abbey Parish
Church Estate Acc'ts, Shrewsbury, every " gentleman " is to pay 6d.
yearly to the wardens for bread and wine ; " the second sorte " of
the parishioners 4d. each ; " the third or weaker sorte," each 2d. :
Shrop. Arch. Soc, i, 65 (1603).
"See Great Yarmouth Acc'ts, East Anglian, iv (1892), 67 flf.
(An item for purchase of 1000 tokens. 161 3-14). Also St. Mar-
garet, Lothbury, Vestry Minute Books, 14 (1584). Also Archce-
ologia Eeliana, xix (1898), 44 (Ryton, Durham, Book of Easter
offerings. 1595).
^^ St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts, 288 (Muscatel and
claret). Abbey Parish Church Estate Acc'ts, 62 (same). St. Mar-
tin's, Leicester, Acc'ts (ed. Thos. North), 100 (Malmsey and claret).
''Rubric §144 of the First Edwardine Prayer Book directs that
as ministers are to find the elements, the congregations are to con-
tribute every Sunday at the time of the offertory the just value of
the holy loaf. See E. Freshfield, St. Christopher-le-Stocks Vestry
Minute Book, p. vii, et passim. Stanford, Berks, Acc'ts, Antiquary,
xvii, s. a. 1582 (2d. collected every Sunday for holy loaf). Mere
Acc'ts (Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., xxxv, 38), s. a. 1568, et passim.
"J. V. Kitto, St. Martin's-in-thc-Ficlds (London) Acc'ts, append.
D., Vestry Order of 1590. Parish order of Salehurst (1582), Sus-
sex Arch. Coll., XXV, 153. St. Margaret's, Westminster, Overseers
Acc'ts in Westminster Tobacco Box, Pt. ii, 18 (1566).
"£. g., at St. Laurence Pountney, London, the "clerk's wages"
8o The Elizabethan Parish. [382
Peu^s and Seats in Church were often made a source of
revenue. Thus at St. Mary's, Reading, it was agreed in
1 58 1 by the chief men of the parish, in order to augment
the parish stock and to maintain the church, because " the
rentes ar very smale," that those sitting in front seats in
the church should pay 8d., those behind them 6d., the third
row 4d., and so on.®®
At St. Dunstan's, Stepney parish, London, a book was
made by the wardens " whearein was expressed the pewes
in the whole Church," distinguished by numbers. " Also
there was noted against everie pewe the price that was
thought reasonable it shoulde yeeld by the yeare. . . . The
w[hi]ch rates by this vestrie is allowed and confirmed to
be imploied to the use of the parish Church." When a few
months later it was determined to build a gallery because
the congregation needed more seats, it was also settled that
the cost should be met by a year's pew rent in one payment
down, over and besides the usual quarterly payments for
seats.®^ Sometimes the seats were sold outright and for
life only.®®
amounted in 1598 to nearly £30 in the wardens receipt items, but
in the expense items to £8 plus various dues for lighting, bell-ringing
and church-linen washing, in all £12 12s. Wilson, History of St.
Laurence, 125. In the St. Christopher-le-Stocks Acc'ts (ed. E.
Freshfield), p. 4, the receipts in 1576 for "Clarices wagis" are £9
6s. 5d., but we read : " Pd. to J. . M. . Clarke his whole yeares wagis
[etc.] . . . iij li." In St. Margaret, Lothbury, Vestry Minutes (p.
13) it was decided in 1581 to raise the " clarkes rolle " to £8 a year,
but expressly stated that the clerk is to be paid as before, "but
That [the] overplus Shall remayn For astocke to the churche to
beare owtt such charges as shalbe nessesarye for the same." In St.
Bartholomew, Exchange, Vestry Minutes (ed. E. Freshfield) in 1583
it is agreed (p. 27) that the clerk is to pay out of his wages the
statutory assessment of 2d. weekly on the parish for maimed soldiers
and mariners. Same stipulation at St. Alphage's, London Wall :
G. B. Hall, Records of St. Alphage (1882), 25 (1594).
"5/. Mary, Reading, Acc'ts (ed. F. N. & A. G. Garry), p. 56.
"Hill and Frere, Memorials of Stepney, 1-3 (1580). Later, 1606
(p. 50), the same method was employed to pay debts for casting
the bells. Those not paying their assessments were to be deprived
of their seats (p. 4). Other examples of raising money by pew
rents are Butcher, Parish of Ashburton, 49 (£6 4s. collected " for the
seat rent". 1579-80). St. Christopher-lc-Stocks Vestry Minutes, 71
(Clerk's wages to be " sessed by the pyews").
"Baker, Mere Acc'ts {Wilts Arch, [etc.] Mag.), 33 (i2d. for seats
for a man and his wife, "which before were his ffather's." 1561).
383] Parish Finance. 81
Mortuary Fees were a source of revenue in almost all
parishes, and sometimes an important one.®"* Consequently
tariffs of fees were drawn up in various places. So much
is charged for interment within, so much for burial without
the church ; so much for a knell according to duration and
according to size of the bell ; so much for the herse — a sort
of catafalque — so much for the pall, the fee varying from
that charged for " the best " to that charged for " the worst
cloth " ; so much if the body is coffined or uncoffined, most
of the dead being buried in winding sheets only, though
the parish provided a coffin for the body to lie in during
service in church and for removal to the graveside.®^ So,
too, one fee was charged for interring a " great corse," an-
other for a " chrisom child."^^ All, in fact, is tabulated
In a sale to a parishioner in 1556-7 it is expressly stated that she
is to hold the seat during "here lyfe Accordynge to the old usage
of the parishe": ibid., 24. At St. Edmund's, Sarum, the sale was
sometimes for life, sometimes for a lesser period. A fine was paid
for changing a pew, Introd., p. xxi. Cf. order made at Chelms-
ford in 1592, £jj^.;r-^rc^. 5'ac.,ii, 219-20. See in St. John's, Glaston-
bury, Acc'ts, Notes and Quer. for Somer. and Dor., iv, 384, s. a. 1574,
and op. cit, v, s. a. 1588, many receipts from the sale of seats. Cf.
Pittington Vestry order, 1584, Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv, 13. St. Michael's
in Bedwardine Acc'ts, tntrod., p. xvi. Fletcher, History of Lough-
borough, Acc'ts, 24 ff.
*® See, e. g., in St. Martin-in-the-Fields Acc'ts, 214, the long list
of receipts " for burialls, knylles and Suche Lyke," j. aa. 1563-5. At
St. Edmund, Sarum, burials with christenings and banns netted i8
Ss. 2d. in 1592-3 {Acc'ts, 141). At Kingston-upon-Thames in 1579
burials totalled 39s. 8d. : Surrey Arch. Coll., viii, 75. In St. Michael's,
Cornhill, London, Acc'ts (ed. W. H. Overall & A. J. Waterlow),
178-9, the receipts from knells and peals alone were 44s. 8d. in
1589-90.
'^J. V. Kitto, St. Martin-in-the-Ficlds Acc'ts (1901), 106, note.
'^ One of the most systematic tariffs I know of is that of St.
Alphage, London Wall (G. B. Hall, Records of St. A., 28-30) drawn
up in 1613. First there are The Parson's dutyes for Parishioners,
for bann-askings, weddings, churchings, etc., as well as a per-
centage on offerings. Then the burial fees due him, without or
with a coffin, in churchyard or in church, etc. Then comes the
heading, The dutyes belonging to the Parrish for Parrishioners, a
catalogue of fees for burial under various conditions. Then follow
The Parrishe's dutyes for the Bells (knells, peals, with small or
large bells). Finally, The Clarke his dutyes for Parishioners
(Bann-askings, weddings, churchings, grave digging, tolling the
bells for funerals in various ways, and on specified occasions, etc.).
All the above fees are doubled in case of non-parishioners. See
also the Salehurst tariff of 1597, most comprehensive and minute
6
82 The Elizabethan Parish, [384
with minute precision, the minister getting certain fees for
himself alone, and sharing others with the parish; and so
of the clerk and of the sexton, if any. Among other rea-
sons alleged by the vestry of Stepney parish for dismissing
their sexton in 1601 was because he made " composic[ilon
with diu[er]s & sundry p[ar]ishoners for the duties of the
church to the hinderannce & great damage of the bennefitt
of the church & p[ar]ishoners."®2
Fees for Weddings, Christenings and Churchings, and
for the ringing of the bells (at marriages), together with the
Offerings taken up on these occasions, might form a source
of revenue to the parish, either going directly into the parish
coflPers, or being paid in whole or in part to minister, clerk or
sexton, who, after all, had to be supported by the parish
(or otherwise), being essential officers or servants.®^
also: Sussex Arch. Coll., xxv, 154-5. Also parish order in St.
Martin's, Leicester, Acc'ts (ed. Thos. North), 19 and 128, s. aa.
1570-1 and I584-S» as to duties for bells. These are regulated
according to the rank of the person. St. Margaret, Lothbury,
Vestry Min., 2 (Order regulating fees for " weddinges, cristeings,
churchinges and berrialls " of 1571). See also the tariff of St.
Edmund, Sarum {Acc'ts, 194), of 1608.
For receipt items for palls in the acc'ts, see St. Martin's-in-the-
Fields Acc'ts, 317 (1580), where "best cloth" nets 2od. on each
occasion, the "worst" but 2d. See also Stepney vestry regulation
of 1602 concerning fees to be paid for palls : Memorials of Stepney,
41-2.
For expenses for making parish coffins see St. Martin' s-in-the-
Fields Acc'ts, s. a. 1546. Cf. St. Edmund and St. Thomas. Sarum,
Acc'ts, introd., p. xx. St. Helen, Bishopsgate, Acc'ts (ed. J. E.
Cox), 103 (Ordinance of 1564 that those buried within the church
are to be confined). Also the other acc'ts supra. At St. Edmund,
Sarum, the wardens sold tombstones for the benefit of the parish
(Acc'ts, 135. 1587-8).
^ Memorials of Stepney, 3^40.
"^See W. G. D. Fletcher, Hist, of Loughborough (Acc'ts). 24:
an order regulating fees for marriage peals in 1588. In St. Edmund,
Sarum, Acc'ts, 127, are receipt items, being money turned over to
the wardens by the sexton, for banns, christenings, etc. Cf. Introd.
to St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts, p. xix. Cf. also St.
Laurence Pountney Acc'ts (Wilson, Hist, of St. L.), 124 (A mar-
riage offering going to the parish. 1582). Usually marriage and
churching dues went to minister and clerk (see tariffs, p. 221
supra). Chrisoms, i. e., white robes put on children when baptized,
and given as an offering at churching, occasionally figure in the
wardens' receipt items. See, e. g., J. E. Foster, St. Mary the Great
(Cambridge) Acc'ts, 156 (1565-7), et passim. St. Thomas. Sarum,
Acc'ts, 282 (Chrisoms farmed out by the parish in 1562-3. In 1567-8
385] Parish Finance. 83
The parish poor and the parish church derived an uncer-
tain, but by no means negligible, income from the product
of Fines for various Delinquencies.
In the previous chapter fines for non-attendance at
church have been alluded to.^* A contemporary, writing in
1597, refers to these as an important fund for the support
of the poor if duly levied. He writes : " Whereunto [he
is speaking of various means to alleviate poverty] if we
adde the forfaiture of 12 pence for euerie householders
absence from Church (man and woman) forenoone and
after, Sunday and holiday (according to the statute without
sufficient cause alledged) to be duely collected by Church-
wardens and other appointed to that end, with the like re-
gard for Wednesday suppers: there would be sufficient
releefe for the poore in all places. . . ."^^
Ecclesiastical courts sometimes condemned offenders to
pay a fine for the use of the poor.®^ Sometimes they com-
muted a penance for money to go to church-repair or to the
parish poor.®'' The churchwardens or , overseers of the
the value of the chrisom offerings is 40s.). See Introd. to St.
Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts, p. xix.
"^ See p. 2y supra. Also p. 35 supra.
^Provision for the poore now in penurie Out of the Store-
House of Gods plentie, Explained by H. A[rth], London, 1597 (No
pagination). "Wednesday suppers" refers to fasting nights ap-
pointed by proclamation or by statute. A not uncommon entry
in the act-books is "no levy of the fyne of I2d." See, e. g., Man-
chester Deanery Visit., 57, et passim. Barnes" Eccles. Proc., 119,
et passim. Hale, Crim. Prec, passim. Cf. in Bishop Stortford
Acc'ts (J. L. Glasscock, Rec. of St. Michael, B. S.), 64, the rubric:
"Rec, of defaultes for absence" (9 names follow, each for I2d.,
except one for 3s.). Dean of York's Visit., 215 (Hayton wardens
report to commissary that they have a small sum from absentees yet
undistributed to the poor: "But it shalbe shortlie ". 1570).
"^ See examples in note 32, pp. 19 supra.
"Warrington Deanery Visit., 189 (Penance of three days
standing in white sheet for fornication commuted — the offender
" humiliter petens" — to 13s. 4d. to be paid to vicar and wardens
of Ormschurch to be distributed to poor, etc.). Hale, Crim. Prec,
232-3 (Commutation of a penance for having a bastard into £5
to be paid for the repair of St. Paul's, London, and also into
34s. 4d. to be paid to wardens of Horndon-on-the-Hill for the
poor. 1606). See also Chelmsford Acc'ts, 212 (20s. received
m 1560 " toward the pavynge of oure churche for part of his
penance"). Abbey Parish Church Estate Acc'ts, s. a. 1578 (20s.
received for a "purgation" to go to parish poor and to church).
84 The Elizabethan Parish. [386
poor accounts also mention fines received for profanation
of the Sabbath and for offences during service time.®^ The
Star Chamber often condemned offenders, especially en-
closers of cottage land and engrossers of com, to fines for
the benefit of the poor.®* Finally, most parishes derived
some income from fining men various sums for refusing
parish offices; for neglect of duty when in office; and for
not attending duly called vestry meetings. Sometimes a
parishioner would pay down a large lump sum for exemp-
tion forever from all offices served by the parishioners.^^**
For regulation of the practice see Canons of 1585, Cardwell, Syn.,
i, 142. Same, Doc. Ann., i, 415 (Whitgift's Articles of 1584). The
practice roused the ire of Puritanical contemporaries. E. g., Hale,
op. cit., 184 (An offender says to the court " that he is molested
and called only for money & that the word of God doth allowe
noe money for absolution [etc.] . . . ". 1584). Ibid., 187 (An
offender says to the archdeacon's registrar : " You daube upp ad-
dultories and whoredomes for monye". 1585). Stubbes, Anatomie
of Abuses (ed. 1595), 66 (Ecclesiastical hierarchy should beware
of maintaining stews, etc.).
"'For some interesting receipt items see The Westminster
Tobacco Box, Pt. ii. Overseers Acc'ts, 18 ff. (Fines in 1569 from
a player beating a drum in service time; for selHng coals on
Candlemas day; for selling wood on Sunday; for driving a cart
on that day, etc. In 1570 fines are received for retailing during
service time, from proceeds of forfeitures of pots and dishes, etc.,
etc.). Wandsworth Acc'ts, Surrey Arch. Coll., xviii, 146 (Receipts
for 1599 from fines for bricklaying on Sunday; for being in ale-
house at service time — a number).
**See John Hawarde, Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata,
1593-1609 ed. W. P. Baildon (1894), passim. E. g., p. 91
((Offender fined iio to use of poor for not laying sufficient ground
to his cottages). Ibid. (Ed. Framingham, of Norfolk, fined £40
to use of poor for same offence. Oct. 14th, 1597)- Ibid., 71
(Council commend a justice of the peace for condemning a
Wilts engrosser to sell his corn to the poor 8d. under the price
he paid for it).
^'^ Some examples taken from many are North, St. Martin, Lei-
cester, Acc'ts, 119 (Agreement in 1571 by mayor and brethren to
fine one refusing to be warden for the first year los. to the use
of the church). Ibid., 142 (This fine raised in 1600 to 20s.). St.
Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Acc'ts, Introd., p. xi, and St.
Edmund's Acc'ts, I2T, 129. Mere Acc'ts, 26 (Parish order of 1556-
7). St. Margaret, Lothbury, Minutes, S3 (An offer from a pa-
rishioner in 1595 of iio for church repair, " condicynellie that the
parish wowld dispence with him for the church warden. Officers
and cunstable ..."). Ibid., 36 and 45 (Two parishioners each
pay iio, being exempted thereafter "from all services as Con-
stableshipp. Churchwarden, syde men and any other offices what-
soever that the parish myght . . . hereafter Impose uppon them
. . . ". 1607). Memorials of Stepney, 44 (Fine for not attend-
387] Parish Finance. 85
Yet another irregular but appreciable means of revenue
might be classed under the heading of Miscellaneous
Receipts.
As the parishioners were always eager to turn an honest
penny for their own benefit, no possible source of receipts
was neglected. If, for instance, any part of the church or
the church premises might, temporarily or permanently, be
rented out without drawing upon the community the cen-
sure of the ordinary, the parishioners were happy to do so.
Owners of structures of any kind encroaching upon the
churchyard, or other church land, were promptly made to
pay for the privilege.^*^^ Occasionally parishes derived
more or less large sums from the sale of parish valuables.
The sale of costly vestments, embroideries, hangings, im-
ages, chalices, pyxes and other church furnishings and
ornaments condemned as superstitious by the Anglican
church, brought some income to the wardens of most pa-
rishes during the first years of Elizabeth. Examples will
be found in all the accounts. Now and then, too, a parish
would make a large sum from the sale of the wood or other
ing vestry. 1602). Clifton Antiq. Club, i (1888), 198 (4od. fine for
absence from St. Stephen's, Bristol, vestry, 1524. For other fines,
see ibid.). Clifton Antiq. Club, i, 195 (Same fine for absence from
St. Thomas', Bristol, vestry. 1579). St. Margaret, Lothbury, Min-
utes, passim (Fines for not accounting on a certain day, and for not
auditing accounts).
"^Examples are found in W. F. Cobb, St. Ethelburga-zvithin-
Bishopsgate, London, Acc'ts, 5 (los. received of a schoolmaster
allowed to keep school in the belfry. 1589). Ibid., same p.
("Receaved of the owte cryar for a quarters rente for settynge
of goodes at the churche doore . . . iiis. iiijd ..." 1585).
The canons of 1571 forbid this practice: " Non patientur [sc. the
wardens] ut quisquam ex . . . istis . . . sordidis mercatoribus
. . . quos . . . pedularios [peddlars] appellant, proponant mcrccs
suas vel in coemeteriis vel in porticibus ecclesiarum [etc.] . . . ",
Cardwell, Syn., i, 124. St. Michael's, Lewes, Acc'ts, Sussex Arch.
Coll., xlv (1902), 40, 60 ("Reed for sarttayn standyngs agaynst
the cherche at Whytson fayar xvd." 1588). Similar items to the
last are found in many accounts. See also St. Mary the Great,
Cambridge, Acc'ts, 215 (Receipt items " for the chirch style before
his house"; for the rent of the "p[ar]ishe ground wherevpon his
chymney standythe ". 1588). Ibid., 203 ("Yt ys also agreyd that
goodman Tomson shall from hence forthe paye vnto the p[ar]yshe
for hys byldynge into the Churche yarde I2d. by the yeare." 1584).
S6 The Elizabethan Parish. [388
products of parish lands.^®^ A fairly common item in city
parishes especially were fees paid for licences to eat flesh
during Lent and on other legal fast days.^**^
Wlien an Elizabethan parish undertook some work on a
great scale, such as the rebuilding of its church, or of the
church steeple ; or, again, when it had suffered great losses
by fire or flood, it solicited through Begging Proctors the
Contributions of Outsiders, sometimes from all parts of
England.^^*
To terminate our enumeration of means of raising money,
or of contributions of all sorts on which the wardens could
count (as apart from rates, properly so-called), we might
mention Fixed Contributions, of money or of labor, issuing
out of certain tenements ; and Annual Payments to Mother
Churches. Certain lands or houses, generally abutting on
the church grounds, had fixed upon them the obligation to
repair a certain portion of the churchyard enclosure, Tene-
"*Thus in 1561 Kingston-upon-Thames church sold brushwood
growing upon its land for £14 7s. 8d. : Surrey Arch. Coll., viii, 77.
In 1573 the wardens of St. Michael's in Bedwardine {Acc'ts ed.
John Amphlett, p. 74) brought a suit for the value of eight trees
sold to one Lode, alleging that the defendant had promised to pay
the price " for the reparacions of the . . . church and reliff of the
pore . . . ".
"' For the form and wording of such a licence see Parish Registers
and Documents of Kingston-upon-Thames, etc.: Surrey Arch. Coll.,
n (1864), 92 (1591). The fee according to royal proclamation was
6s. 8d. : St. Margaret, Lothhury, Vestry Minutes, 9. For receipts
from this source see St. Ethelburga-within-Bishopsgate Acc'ts, 5,
et passim, as well as the other London acc'ts already cited. Cf.
Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i, 370-2, for Council's letter to the archbishop
of Canterbury on the observance of Ember Days and Lent.
^***£. g., see in St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, Acc'ts, 227-9 and
240-2, long lists of persons from all parts of England who con-
tributed in the years 1592-4 towards the rebuilding of St. Mary's
steeple. A host of proctors licenced under the broad seal, or by
the justices of the peace, or otherwise, went from parish to parish
soliciting contributions for churches, alms-houses, hospitals, etc.
They seem to have entered parish churches at service time and
disturbed or annoyed the congregations. This probably led to the
parish order of Mere, Wilts (Mere Acc'ts, p. 80, in Wilts Arch.
[etc.] Mag.), which in 1585 forbade such persons going about the
parish or entering the church, but enjoined them all to repair to the
Mere churchwardens for contributions to be given at the expense
of the parish.
389] Parish Finance. 87
ment X, so many feet of fence, Tenement Y, such a portion
of brick or stone wall, and so forth. ^^'
Sometimes also certain houses or lands are spoken of as
yielding so much a year for the repair of the church and
the support of the poor.^*'® Incidentally we might mention
— though hardly connected with parish finance — certain
payments for church repair, etc., claimed of old by some
cathedral churches from the parishes of the diocese. Orig-
inally a tax varying from a farthing to a penny for each
household (hence the names " smoke farthings," " hearth
penny," " smoke silver"), the payments were commuted for
a small lump sum exacted yearly. Thus we find in the
Elizabethan accounts mention of " St. Swithin farthings ;"^^^
of "Ely farthings ;"^«» of "Lincoln farthings,"^^'® etc.,
according to the name of the cathedral to which they were
paid ; or, again, of " Whitsun farthings ;" of " Pentecost
farthings," etc., according to the time of the year at which
the payments were made.^^^ These payments must not be
confused with " Peter's pence," which had before the Ref-
ormation been paid by English parishes to Rome.^^^
"'At Winsham, Somerset, a document was drawn up in 1581,
apportioning among certain parishioners (by virtue of their hold-
ings), the vicar, and finally the whole parish, how many feet of
wattled fence each should keep in repair, or what stiles each was
to maintain: Notes and Quer. for Somer. and Dor., v, 538. See a
similar agreement in Morebath (Devon) Acc'ts, 38. Also in Marsh,
Hist, of Calne, 372, the list at Calne. Here are 25 groups of houses
and certain individuals charged with making and keeping the church-
yard bounds. See also Canterbury Visit., xxv, 34 (Suit brought
before the archdeacon against the tenant of a holding whose former
owners had for 40 years repaired a portion of the church fence.
1611). For presentments to the courts Christian for non-repair of
church fence by individuals, see Dean of York's Visit., 214, 228,
325 (1570-1599).
^'^ Canterbury Visit., xxv, 26 (A parishioner of Heme presented
for withholding 9s., *' which hath always been accustomed to be paid
out of a certain house and lands." 1592).
"'Early History of Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey Arch. Coll.,
viii, 74.
'"* St. Mary the Great Acc'ts, 148.
^''^ Hist, and Antiq. of Leicestershire, by John Nichols (1815), i,
Pt. ii, 569 ff.
"° See in T. Nash, Hist, and Antiq. of Worcestershire, i, pp. lii-lvi,
a long list of Pentecost, etc., farthings paid by each parish of the
diocese in lump sums varying from 3d. to 3s.
^^ Morebath Acc'ts (ed. Binney), 34, s. a. 1531, seem to offer a
88 The Elizabethan Parish. [390
Lastly the mother parish church, in large parishes requir-
ing chapels of ease, would exact (when it could) contribu-
tions from those congregations who frequented for ordi-
nary divine worship these chapels of ease within the parish.
And these exactions would be made irrespective of the fact
that these congregations were bound to repair their own
chapels and possessed their own churchwardens.^^-
When the means or expedients we have hitherto set forth
were found insufficient, or impracticable, or too tardy for
an emergency, the parish was compelled to resort to Rates
or Assessments.
Assessments were levied in all sorts of ways and for all
sorts of purposes. In an emergency, or if the sum to be
raised was not large, a levy might be made by the principal
men of the parish upon themselves only.^^^ A " rate "
might, however, be made to collect a very small sum, as
well as a very large one."* All kinds of units or rules of
assessment were resorted to from parish to parish, and
(apparently) sometimes no fixed unit at all was taken,
genuine example of such a payment of Peter's pence. But the
Minchinhampton wardens (Acc'ts in Arcliceologia, xxxv, 422 ff.),
confuse their payments to the mother church, made in 1575 ff.,
with Peter's pence. See, e. g., s. a. 1575, the entry: "to the sumner
[or apparitor] for peterpence or smoke farthynges sometyme due
to the Anthecriste of roome . . . xd."
^" See, e. g., Sam'I. Barfield, Thatcham, Berks, and its Manors, ii,
122 (Midgham and Greenham called upon against their will for
contributions to mother church). Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv, 123 (Dis-
pute ending in a suit between St. Oswald and St. Margaret. 1595
ff.). Memorials of Stepney, 1-2 (Parishioners of Stratford Bow
forced to contribute to St. Dunstan's, the mother church).
"*£. g., the vestry of St. Christopher-le-Stocks, London (Minutes,
ed E. Freshfield), agree to cess "the parishioners" for money to
prosecute a suit for certain parish lands in 158!. When the lands
were recovered each was to have his money back (Minutes, p. 12).
But those assessed numbered only 38 (p. 13), whereas we see by a
list (p. 12) that 43 persons were here assessed for the Queen's sub-
sidy; and subsidy men were the wealthier men of the parishes. Cf.
assessment at Lapworth for Barford bridge levied on 26 tenements,
cottagers not being assessed. Hudson, Memorials of a Warwick-
shire Parish, 115.
"* Hale, Crim. Prec, 198 (One Spencer presented for not paying
his proportion for the ringing on the Queen's anniversary, "being
rated at iiijd.")- Hudson, op. cit. supra (Barford bridge assessment
of 4s. 4d. spread out over 26 tenements).
39 1 ] Parish Finance. 89
men's ability to pay being roughly gauged, or a man being
permitted to rate himself/^^ or give his " benevolence."
In the wardens' accounts are frequently seen long lists
of names, each being taxed at a sum varying from 3^d. to
three or four shillings. Such lists may represent an at-
tempt to tax each man at y^d. or id. in the pound, or,
likely as not, it may merely mean a crude sizing up of the
ability of each to contribute.
Furthermore, a " rate " might consist in a fixed sum, the
same for all, and levied by polls or by households,^^^ say id.
or 2d. each. Or, again, it might be levied by pews at vary-
ing sums.^^^ Assessments to pay the parish clerk or sexton
might sometimes be made in kind, and issue from house-
holds, from cottages, or from ploughlands: so much corn
at Easter, so much bread, so many eggs.^^®
When it came to the more accurate basing of rates upon
lands, or goods at a valuation, the inhabitants of the various
communities observed no uniform ratio of taxation from
parish to parish, nor even in the same parish, and disputes
were always recurring.^^^
It must be borne in mind that parish financiering was
largely of the hand-to-mouth variety. Indeed, it was diffi-
"' Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 214 (John Basset "cessed" at 2d. a
quarter, but thought well able to pay 3d. for the clerk's wages.
Robert Sawyer, ditto. 1577). St. Margaret, Lothbury, Minutes,
16 (ed. E. Freshfield), where in 1584 thirty-four parishioners make
a " free offer " of sums from 2d. to 6s. 8d. to pay a lecturer.
Ibid., 10 (18 parishioners give from id. to £2 towards the erecting
of a clock. 1577).
"'Rates for bread and wine were commonly so levied. See
supra, p. 78 and note 80.
"^ See p. 80 supra and note 87.
"* Houghton-le-Spring Acc'ts, Surtees Soc, Ixxxiv, 271 (1596).
Binney, Morebath Acc'ts, 34 (1531). Ibid., 85 (1536).
"'£. g.. See Hale, Churchwardens' Prec, passim, e. g., where the
parishioners of Elstree (" Idlestrye"), Herts, cannot agree in 158!,
some contending for assessment " by their welthe and goods only,
and some others do require that the taxation might be made by
the acres of grounde only." Canterbury Visit., xxvii, 218 (2d. an
acre). Ibid., xxv, 42 (4d, an acre). Ibid., xxvi, 33 (Ploughland
of 140 acres paying 6s. 8d. for clerk's wages). Ibid., xxv, 33 (Two
"cesses" at Minster church, one at 2od. the score [of pounds?],
the other at I2d.). The Reliquary, xxv, 18 (Levy made in Morton,
Derbysh., of 8d. the oxgang of 15 acres).
90 The Elizabethan Parish. [392
cult it should be otherwise, for the exigencies of the civil
or the ecclesiastical authorities were constantly shifting,
now a petty lump sum being required (and to be spent as
soon as raised), now a great one to be disbursed in the same
manner.
In conclusion, a few observations on the parish as a finan-
cial unit in connection with county government may be
made. There seems to have been no general treasury at the
disposal of the hundred or of the county, but merely certain
treasurers charged with the disbursement of this or that
special collection for this or that special purpose. A collec-
tion is made by order of the justices, for instance, in certain
hundreds, or throughout the shire, for the support of the
prisoners in the county gaol, and a treasurer for the fund is
appointed. Or it may be that this treasurer is a more or less
permanent official. And so with collections for hospitals,
for houses of correction, for great bridges, etc. If the
constables levied more than was sufficient for a parish, or if
the contemplated disbursement turned out to be less than
originally estimated, the surplus, if the justices had no im-
mediate use for it, might be returned to that parish to go
back into the pockets of the rate payers.^^** Furthermore, it
seems scarcely accurate in Elizabethan times to speak of any
county rate,^^^ for there was no recognized basis of assess-
"* Order of Wiltshire justices, Michaelmas, 1600, that three of
their number shall call certain constables and others before them,
"and examine them what overplus of money is remaining in their
hands w[hi]ch they have collected of their hundredes for anie
service whatsoever, and if there be anie founde remayning the said
Justice to distribute the same amongst the inhabitants of the same
hundredes according to their discretion." Rec. of Wilts Quarter
Sess. in Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., xxi, 85.
"^According to the 22 Hen. VIII c. 5, where it cannot be known
who ought of right to repair a bridge, the justices of the district
shall call before them the constables of the parishes of the sur-
rounding hundreds, or of the whole shire, and " with the assent
of the . . . constables or [chief] inhabitants," tax every inhabitant
of the towns and parishes of the shire (if necessary). This looks
like a county bridge tax, but in practice the justices either threw
a lump sum on a hundred, or on a parish, and left each parish to
raise this sum according to local rating. Such, at least, would
seem to be the usual practice according to the churchwardens ac-
counts, which contain many lump payments made to constables for
bridges.
393] Parish Finance. 91
ment common to all parishes, unless it were at any given
time the then prevailing subsidy rate, and a rating according
to the subsidy books by the justices would fail to reach many
whom a parish rating might attain. As a matter of fact
the justices, when they had a large sum to levy on the county
at large, almost always apportioned it in lump sums among
the hundreds, or among the parishes of their respective
divisions, according to " the bygnes or smallnes of their
parishes."^-- It comes, then, to all practical intents and
purposes to this : that each parish is left to produce accord-
ing to its own local methods, or rating, the wherewithal for
carrying on county government.
While in local government itself the parishioners have
practically no voice, the large measure of freedom they en-
joy for the devising of ways and means to meet the de-
mands made upon them (though they have no option what-
ever in granting or withholding supplies) gives to the parish
a vigorous entity and a certain autonomous life of its own,
which otherwise it never could have possessed over against
the all-regulating and inquisitorial Tudor machinery of
Church and State.
^^.s the reign advanced the parish developed a selfish,
jealous and exclusive gild life of its own, especially under
the operation of the poor law^
Non-parishioners, or " foreigners," were viewed with the
strongest suspicion. Generally they were discriminated
against if they happened to have dealings with the parish.
Wedding or funeral fees were doubled in their cases.^^^ If
the parishioners could have had their will no alien poor could
have gained a settlement amongst them — no, not even after
twenty years' residence. In 1598 the West Riding, York-
shire, justices were compelled to interfere in favor of divers
""See Wilts justices order, 20 Eliz., Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., xxi,
8(>-i. Cf. ibid., 16, the appeal of Hilprington and Whaddon that
they have been compelled by the inhabitants of Melkesham to pay a
third part with the last named parish of these lump assessments,
though the acreage of Melkesham is much greater than either of
theirs, " and far better ground,"
^^ See p. 81, note 91 supra.
92 The Elizabethan Parish. [394
poor persons in various parishes, where officers were seek-
ing to expel them as vagrants born elsewhere, though they
had been domiciled in their adopted communities for twenty
years and upwards.^^*
Already that " organized hypocrisy," so characteristic of
parish life in later reigns, shows itself in the many present-
ments of, and petitions against, persons supposedly immoral
— especially single women. Not zeal for morality prompts
these indictments, but fear that the community may have to
support illegitimate children.^-^ Quite typical of the times
is the language held by the inhabitants of Castle Combe in
appealing to the Wiltshire justices against a townwoman in
1606. They are apprehensive, they say, lest " by this licen-
tious life of hers not only God's wrath may be powered
downe uppon us . . . but also hir evill example may so
greatly corrupt others than great and extraordinary charge
. . . may be imposed uppon us."^-^
Few laws on the statute book were so frequently enforced
as the 31 Eliz. c. 7, which required four acres to be laid to
every cottage to be constructed, for there was a powerful
local backing behind the law. When John Fletcher, " a
meere stranger lately come into this Parish with his wife
and children," took certain parcels of land in Severn Stoke
in 1593, and was suspected of the intention to build a cottage
without laying to it the requisite number of acres, the
parishioners immediately complained to the Worcester jus-
"*Johii Lister, West Riding Session Rolls, 85. As early as 14
Eliz. c. 5, sec. 17, city or parish officers might remove alien poor
to their places of birth, if such aliens had resided in their adopted
parishes not longer than three years.
^J. W. Willis Bund, Cal. Worcester Quar. Sess. Rec, i, p.
clxxxii. The appearance of a bastard was a portentous event. See
the many ridings to and fro across country to ecclesiastical and
civil magistrates in the Ashburton Acc'ts (Butcher, The Parish
of Ashburton), p. 47 (1576-7). The Devonshire justices order,
Easter 1598, that every woman who shall have a bastard child shall
be whipped : Hamilton, Quarter Session from Eliz. to Anne, 32. Cf.
the item: "paide for carriage of an Irish woman into Fynsburie
feildes who was delivered of a childe under the stockes." Brooke
and Hallen, St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch Hazv
(London) Acc'ts, s. a. 1587.
''• Wilts Quart. Sess. in Wilts Arch, (etc.) Mag., xxii, 17.
395] Parish Finance. 93
tices, for they wanted to provide against the contingent lia-
bility of having to support the inmates/-^ Four acres was
then the quantity considered necessary to maintain a man
and his family. It was an indictable offence to sublet, for
then there would be two families where only one was before.
Nor could lodgers be taken, for such increase of the inmates
of the house would surcharge the land.^^^
In short, that feeling of distrust and discrimination
against the outside world, which, in the i8th century, led a
Lancashire vestry to dub all outsiders " foreigners,"^^® is al-
ready fully developed by the end of the i6th century. But
we must also recognize that this feeling engendered in the
parish itself solidarity of interests, close fellowship and
local spirit.
Willis Bund, loc. cit. supra, p. 8. From 1599 to 1642 there were
twenty-four indictments for not laying four acres to a cottage at the
Worcester sessions. Ibid., Table of indictments for all offences,
p. Ivii ff. Cf. Wilts Quarter Sess. Rec. in Hist. MSS. Com. Rep.
on Var. Coll, i (1901), 66. W. J. Hardy, Herts Co. Rec. Sess. Rolls
(1905), i, 5, et passim. Norfolk ArchcBology, x (1888), 159. Les
Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata (ed. W. P. Baildon), passim.
^^ Bund, loc. cit, p. clxxxiii.
"'Geo. A. Wade, An English Tozvn that is still ruled by an
Oligarchy (Dalton-in-Furness), Engl. Illust. Mag., xxv (1901).
UOAN DEPARTMENT
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