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Pastors and Masters: the Beneficed Clergy of North-East Lincolnshire, 1290–1340

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2017

Nicholas Bennett
Affiliation:
Lincoln Cathedral Archives
Nicholas Bennett
Affiliation:
Visiting Senior Fellow, University of Lincoln [Former Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral] Now retired - but still LRS General Editor [June 2013]
Janet Burton
Affiliation:
Professor of Medieval History, University of Wales: Trinity St David
Charles Fonge
Affiliation:
Charles Fonge is the University Archivist for the University of Warwick
Christopher Harper-Bill
Affiliation:
Christopher Harper-Bill is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.
R. H. Helmholz
Affiliation:
Professor of Law, University of Chicago
B. R. Kemp
Affiliation:
B R Kemp is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading.
F. Donald Logan
Affiliation:
F. Donald Logan is Professor emeritus of History at Emmanual College, Boston, U.S.A.
Christopher Brooke
Affiliation:
Christopher Brooke is Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and Dixie Professor Emeritus of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge, UK.Christopher Nugent Lawrence BrookeDate of birth: 23.06.27; British
Philippa Hoskin
Affiliation:
Reader in Medieval History, University of Lincoln.
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Summary

The little nunnery of Greenfield lay a few miles to the north-west of the Lincolnshire town of Alford. Carrying out a visitation here in 1293, Bishop Oliver Sutton found that the prioress, Christine of Owmby, was ill-suited for either the spiritual or the temporal rule of the house. Shortly afterwards, he issued a commission to the prior of Markby and to the rector of Aylesby, Master Simon de Luda, to examine and confirm the next prioress to be elected by the convent. Events did not altogether proceed as planned, however, because Master Simon was ill and unable to travel to Greenfield. To avoid prolonging the vacancy therefore, the prior, with the prioress-elect Elizabeth of Harrington, decided that if the rector could not come to them, they would go to him, and the examination duly took place, in Master Simon's presence, in Aylesby church.

On the surface, this might seem to be a purely routine item of diocesan business. There is, however, an element of what Sherlock Holmes might have called ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. The popular view of the beneficed clergy of late medieval England is that they were ill-educated absentees who abandoned their parishioners for the easier life of a chantry or a prebend. Yet here we find an incumbent who was educated, resident and, despite his temporary indisposition, active. This is a long way from Langland:

I haue be prest and persoun passynge thretti winter,

Hete can I neither solfe ne singe ne seyntes lyues rede;

But I can fynde in a felde or in a fourlonge an hare,

Better yan in beatus vir or in beati omnes

Construe oon clause wel and kenne it to my parochienes.

This portrait of ‘Parson Sloth’ encouraged the belief, at one time widely accepted, that the average incumbent was lazy and ignorant, neglecting his spiritual duties in favour of his rhymes of Robin Hood and his love of the chase. Three complaints in particular recur constantly: the parish clergy were ill–educated, they failed to proceed to the priesthood, preferring to remain in minor orders, and they were absentees, enjoying the fruits of their livings but not performing their spiritual duties in person.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History
Studies Presented to David Smith
, pp. 40 - 62
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2005

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