The dean and chapter of the great collegiate church of St Mary at Warwick were protective of their college's supposed exemption from diocesan jurisdiction. As a consequence, friction between the college and the bishop of Worcester was a recurrent aspect of the church's medieval life.Footnote 1 Continuing discord eventually brought about the imposition on the college of two new sets of statutes. The first were issued by Bishop William Whittlesey in 1367 and were addressed to inequities in prebendal incomes and the recovery of lost possessions. The second set was issued by Bishop Thomas Bourgchier in 1441 and reasserted diocesan authority after a period of local autonomy under Dean Thomas Yonge.Footnote 2 The place to begin this account of the role of the sacristan at Warwick is with these statutes of Bishop Bourgchier, in that among them are several that were directed towards regulating the safe husbandry of the college's treasures.Footnote 3 First, it was enjoined upon the dean and chapter that they keep at all times an indentured inventory of the church's moveable goods. One copy of the inventory was to remain with the keeper of the jewels, vestments, books and ornaments, and the other was to be kept in ‘the chest with three locks’. The statutes provided separately for this chest: it was to be set up in the treasury and used for the safe-keeping of the college's common seal, for the keys to the muniment chests and for the cash that remained after the annual expenses of the college had been met. The three keys were to be held by the dean, the canon treasurer and a resident canon.Footnote 4 The church goods themselves were to be kept only in the treasury under faithful guard: et omnia iocalia, ornamenta, vestimenta et libri ecclesie predicte infra thesaurariam predictam et non alibi sub fideli diligenter custodia statuimus conseruari.Footnote 5

While the dean and chapter may have been immediately obedient to this injunction, the first custodian of the treasures for whose activities there is evidence was a man by the name of Thomas Hillusley, who was sworn to the office of lay sacristan on Friday 22 February 1464/5. An inventory of goods in the church was drawn up at the same time, in the form of a bipartite indenture between Hillusley, acting as receiver, and the dean, William Berkeswell, all other canons then being absent.Footnote 6 Written on the dorse of this inventory is a most unusual document: the oath that Hillusley swore on the occasion of his appointment (printed in Appendix 1 below). This oath lays out the terms of the sacristan's employment and his duties and responsibilities. It therefore allows one to reconstruct the activities of the sacristan of a great collegiate church in sometimes picturesque detail, as it also allows one to interpret certain features of the existing fabric of St Mary's in relation to this office since, as the oath shows, the sacristan was required to sleep in the church. It is the intention here to explore all these aspects of the evidence before turning in the final part of this paper to consider architectural features in other churches which echo those at St Mary's, and which might allow the speculation that similar provisions to the custodial arrangements at Warwick could have been encountered elsewhere.

The oath's foremost condition was one of obedience to the dean and chapter, and duties that are a concomitant of obedience are stated in other rubrics. For example, Hillusley swore to inform the dean and chapter of any information prejudicial to the foundation as soon as he might learn it, and he was enjoined to keep the college's confidences and any secrets of the place to which he himself might become privy. He swore to keep safe all the church's treasures, ‘money, jewels, books and vestments’, and all other church goods, and neither take any item out of the church nor bring in any other man's goods for safe keeping without the prior assent of the dean and chapter.Footnote 7 The attributes that were desirable in a sacristan were spelled out: he should be sober and quietly behaved, foregoing taverns and dice-playing and hunting and fishing, and his attire should also be sober, without bolsters in his clothing or pikes on his shoes or long dagger at his side. Instead he was to clothe himself ‘like a clerk’, wearing surplice (‘habite’) and be available to assist at divine service when required.

The most surprising feature of the arrangements is the provision that, for the safe keeping of the treasures and also to be better available when needed, Hillusley was to sleep in the sacristy. He was to come to his bed ‘euery nyght at due tyme in somer by the clere light of the day’, and in winter by seven o'clock at the latest. If he had good reason to be absent, perhaps through sickness, and his absence had been approved by the dean and chapter, then it was incumbent on him ‘at his peril’ to provide a deputy who would sleep in the church in his place. The principle is clear that this medieval burglar-alarm should be reliably available every night. And for the further security of the treasures, Hillusley was forbidden to bring any outsider into the ‘secretness’ of the place. The importance of the role must have been significantly increased by the superb gift of treasure the college had recently received from Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d 1439), whose memorial chapel in the church stands as the apotheosis of late medieval commemorative art.Footnote 8 An inventory taken in 1468 of these treasures is stitched to the foot of the inventory already mentioned; Hillusley was still the sacristan at that time.Footnote 9 The salary was a generous sixty shillings a year.Footnote 10

The sacristy that Hillusley knew still exists at St Mary's. It had recently been moved to a position over the vestry on the north side of the choir, east of the chapter-house, when its previous place on the south side was taken by the new building of the Beauchamp Chapel (fig 1). It is a long chamber, 60ft in length by 18.5ft in width (18m by 5.6m), cut into since the 1970s by a staircase vestibule on the north side with partition walls carving out a small store-room at the western end. Its ceiling is modern (fig 2). Direct access from outside was originally gained by way of a door from the cemetery that opens into a lobby, and then by a vice in the north wall near the east end of the vestry (fig 3). To the west, an internal door opens from this ground-floor vestibule into the church. The present door is post-medieval, but if it were a replacement for a medieval door then the arrangement would suggest itself as a security feature, for with that door locked, the vestry could be internally secured from the rest of the church.

Fig 1 St Mary's, Warwick, from the north east, showing the vestry and first-floor sacristy (centre) and chapter house (right). Photograph: author

Fig 2 The medieval sacristy, now in use as a song-school. Photograph: author

Fig 3 The vice in the north wall of the vestry. To the left is the Victorian mantle of the medieval fireplace. Photograph: author

This first-floor sacristy room was furnished with a fireplace in the north wall, which might have been intended for the comfort of the resident sacristan, but seems instead, and more plausibly, to have been lit when the earl and countess came to this private space to hear matins and vespers.Footnote 11 The external churchyard door would have granted them access to this private pew. In the south wall are two large, handsomely made apertures, each with two squints, by which the activity of the choir could have been observed (fig 4). There are two small, square-headed windows at the east end and two on the north side.

Fig 4 The squints in the south wall of the sacristy. Photograph: author

The inventory taken at the time of Hillusley's appointment in 1465 describes the chests and cupboards that were in this ‘sacristy above the vestry’ (the evidence is printed below in Appendix 2). It is clear from the description of this furniture that this space was what Bourgchier's statutes had referred to as ‘the treasury’, and it also reveals that the chamber was internally partitioned, for it contained an ‘inner house’.Footnote 12 In this inner house was one new, tall cupboard with two doors for the college muniments, along with ‘one great old ark’ and certain other old cupboards (‘almaries’). The medieval staircase access was at the east end, which is where the squints and fireplace chimney also cluster (fig 5); one may speculate then that the ‘inner house’ was at the west end of the room.

Fig 5 Exterior of the sacristy, showing a buttress, stair turret and chimney. Photograph: author

In the main part of the room there was ‘one old ark’ at the east end, certain cupboards, one old coffer bound in iron with a ‘long lock of the old fashion’, and one smaller and newer coffer with three locks, called ‘the treasury coffer’. A chest matching this description, covered in leather and bound with iron, is still in the church at St Mary's, standing at the eastern end of the north aisle (fig 6). As has already been mentioned, the treasury coffer with three locks was enjoined upon the college by Bishop Bourgchier's statutes of 1441, to be kept in the treasury. Its appearance in the inventory is additional evidence that the dean and chapter were attentive to his injunctions, and its presence in this space determines that the treasury and sacristy occupied the same space in this first-floor room.

Fig 6 The possible treasury coffer. Photograph: author

The office of sacristan had some prior history at Warwick. By the early fifteenth century it had become separated from the office of canon treasurer (a dignity created by Bishop Whittlesey's ordinances of 1367), to whom, however, the sacristan remained responsible.Footnote 13 An inventory drawn up at the Feast of the Purification in 1408 names as sacristan John Besseford, a chaplain of Warwick who was presented to the vicarage of Whittlesford (Cambs) in 1423.Footnote 14 An addition at the foot of the document reveals that the inventory was used again in 1409 when the sacristan was Henry Derleston, who had been appointed in a ceremony on 9 October when Derleston's father and three local worthies stood surety for him.Footnote 15 Although friends were called in to stand as bondsmen for Derleston there is no evidence to show that the sacristan so appointed was required to sleep with the treasures (this earlier inventory is replete with such treasures). Hillusley's investiture is the only occasion when the sacristan's oath was written down in a way that allowed its transmission. In the oath's adherence to the spirit of Bishop Bourgchier's injunction of 1441 that the treasures be kept securely, paying a man to sleep in the sacristy might well have been a new custodial arrangement, designed to promote prudent accountability.

An institutional setting for the taking of oaths is visible at Warwick. By making these pledges, members of the collegiate foundation of whatever rank were bound in to the life of an increasingly devolved and complex collegiate foundation in a way that made them legally accountable for their behaviour. Under Whittlesey's ordinances of 1367 the dean and canons were all to swear to obey the diocesan, while new, more elaborate, oaths were devised for the dean and canon treasurer.Footnote 16 Under Bourgchier's statutes of 1441, oath-taking was enjoined on all ranks of the foundation, from the dean and canons to the vicars and ‘lesser ministers’, none of whom could enter into the emoluments of their position without first having sworn the oath in person, on a gospelbook (Hillusley reportedly used a missal). The terms of Hillusley's oath reflect the tenor of these others in its injunction to ‘kepe secret and priue alle the secrete counselles and ordinaunces that I shal knowe’. Keeping the secrets of the place is a term of the dean's oath, of which the (Latin) text survives. The other oaths that followed it are now lost where the manuscript breaks off, but a separate document of 1446 records the tenor of the vicars’ pledge; this too, like the sacristan's oath, bound them to revere the dean and chapter and keep the college's secrets.Footnote 17 Hillusley's was the more elaborate oath since it specified his duties.

Having identified the way in which the dean and chapter at Warwick secured their treasures, it is natural to wonder whether similar arrangements existed at other great churches. Certainly, it was a requirement of the Victorine order, as defined in the twelfth-century Liber ordinis of the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, that the canon-sacrist and his assistant, the matricularius, as well as a third man appointed by the abbot, spend each night in the church for the security of the place.Footnote 18 Other Augustinian houses followed suit, such as Barnwell priory in Cambridgeshire, where the custumal is transmitted by a manuscript dating from around 1295.Footnote 19 At Worcester cathedral priory, the sacrist was assigned to a house that was attached to the north side of the choir, built shortly before 1335 (demolished in 1712–15). It was of three storeys and had a polygonal oriel window opening into the choir, overlooking the shrines of Oswald and Wulfstan.Footnote 20 The arrangements at Worcester are particularly germane given that St Mary's, Warwick, was one of the great churches in that diocese and that improvements to her custodial arrangements had been implemented after episcopal visitation.

For collegiate churches in general, matching evidence is harder to find. At least one other college had adopted arrangements like those in place at Warwick, for a visitation of the college of St John the Baptist at Stoke-by-Clare (Suffolk) on 10 July 1532 heard that the sacristan was not sleeping in the vestry as was his duty.Footnote 21 For other collegiate churches the hints are architectural. At the former collegiate church of Holy Cross at Crediton (Devon) may be seen a building towards the south-eastern end of the church, abutting the south choir aisle halfway along its length, that is understood to have contained the collegiate chapter-house on the ground floor, where there is now a vestry. The building has three floors and there is an exterior door to the churchyard connected by a small vestibule to the stair turret. The second-floor chamber, known as the Governors’ Room, has a squint that allows a view of the high altar. The parallels with the situation at Warwick are suggestive.

The other great collegiate church in Devon, at Ottery St Mary, bears similar points of contact. Two vestries were added against the choir aisles, north and south, halfway along the length, in the same position as at Crediton.Footnote 22 The inspiration would certainly have been taken by Crediton from Ottery, since the Ottery vestries were put up a century earlier, by John de Grandisson (1292–1369), bishop of Exeter. Each vestry has an upper chamber, accessed by a narrow stone staircase in its western wall. The vestry on the south side shows an aperture on its northern wall for a fireplace and chimney. The treasury, however, seems to have been the upper chamber on the north side – an arrangement echoing that at the cathedral – where there are niches built into the western wall to take aumbries for such ornaments and plate as were not in constant daily use in the choir. However, neither vestry has external access; the churchyard door to the south vestry is an insertion of the eighteenth century.

At St Peter's, Irthlingborough (Northamptonshire), the striking west tower stands at a little distance from the west end of the church and is connected to it by two sections of building, originally part of the collegiate ranges, all belonging to the time of the college's foundation in the 1360 s.Footnote 23 The tower is of four stages and is crowned by a substantial octagonal lantern of two stages. Internally the lantern has three storeys connected by staircases in the thickness of the walls, and the lower- and upper-most chambers had fireplaces.Footnote 24 It would be a plausible suggestion that the tower was used as the college's treasure house and muniment room, and was so built to be inhabitable by a resident custodian or sacristan. Another example, the collegiate church of St Mary the Virgin, St John the Baptist and St Andrew at Wingfield (Suffolk), was substantially remodelled in the 1460s by Alice de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk.Footnote 25 The remodelled vestry includes the striking feature of an external door to the churchyard and a painted wooden gallery to the interior, which, to judge by the external chimney-stack, was once heated by a hearth. It has been argued that this was a private watching-loft for members of the de la Pole family, which would align with the evidence of the earls of Warwick having used the sacristy altar at St Mary's as a private chapel.Footnote 26 However, there is no corresponding loft at the de la Pole foundation at Ewelme (Oxon), whose architecture otherwise mirrors Wingfield's so exactly (and where the adjoining almshouse would have provided an alternative venue in which to secure valuables). It is also curious that the single aperture on to the high altar should only be large enough for one person at a time to have a view. While the idea carries weight that this chamber at Wingfield was intended to offer privacy to the aristocracy, the possibility that it was also intended for a resident sacristan cannot be excluded.

What all these colleges have in common is that the canons’ or fellows’ lodgings were at some distance from the church, and their premises lacked the security of shared space and cloistered enclosures that were a feature of the common life of some other colleges.Footnote 27 There would have been no need for an inhabited sacristy at either Winchester College or New College, Oxford, where the founder, William of Wykeham, placed the treasury and muniment tower at the centre of the buildings, the ranges wrapping around to form in each case a secure precinct. Likewise, a college standing within the walls of a castle, such as the chapel of St George at Windsor (Berkshire) or St Mary's College at Mettingham (Suffolk), might judge itself to be secure enough.Footnote 28

These examples of potentially inhabitable sacristies are conjectural and are not based on a systematic search. For the sacristan's responsibilities at Warwick, however, the documentary evidence combines with the architectural to reveal a custodial practice that can be firmly substantiated. While it is, by that same token, locally particular, architectural evidence suggests that it was a practice that found its echo elsewhere, and we might assume that it found its echo quite widely.