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II. Some Aspects of the History of the Chantries during the Reign of Edward III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Kathleen L. Wood-Legh
Kathleen L. Wood-Legh
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

Of all the institutions that grew up in the medieval church none has received so little attention from English scholars as the chantries. That they played an important part in the religious life of this country before the Reformation is indeed generally recognised; but our historians have done little more than to indicate the purposes for which chantries were founded, and to point out that their numbers increased greatly towards the end of the Middle Ages. In the present essay an attempt is made to render our knowledge of the chantries less vague by discussing at length some of the more important problems of their history, giving a detailed account of them during a single half century. For this purpose the reign of Edward III has been chosen, partly because its close is practically contemporaneous with our most important literary references to the chantries, those of Chaucer and Langland, but mainly because, since the Black Death occurred within a few years of the middle of this period, it affords an opportunity of studying the effects of the pestilence on this phase of English life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , 1932 , pp. 26 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1932

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References

1 Emma Katz, Mittelalterliche Altarpfründen der Diözese Bremen im Gebiet westlich der Elbe, p. 23.

2 Col. Pat. Rolls, 1371–4, p. 85.

3 The Little Red Book of Bristol, ed. F. B. Bickley, I, 212.

4 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1340–3, p. 467.

5 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, p. 230.

6 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, p. 266.

7 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1361–4, p. 474.

8 For example see Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1334–8, p. 334.

9 Cat. Pat. Rolls, 1348–50, p. 208.

10 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1343–5, p. 455.

11 Cartulary of St Frideswide's, ed. Wigram, II, 14.

12 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1350–4, pp. 329, 330.

13 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1327–30, p. 262.

14 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1340–3, p. 387.

15 Ibid. 1367–70, p. 179.

16 Records of the Borough of Nottingham, I, 132; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1350–4, p. 74.

17 The Little Red Book of Bristol, 1, 220.

18 Records of the Borough of Nottingham, I, 132, 136 n. 1.

19 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1367–70, p. 170.

20 Statutes of the Realm, I, 92.

21 Cal. Papal Letters, v, 519.

22 The Little Red Book of Bristol, 1, 219.

23 Cal. Papal Letters, v, 585.

24 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1364–7, p. 8.

25 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, p. 54.

26 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1370–4, p. 410.

27 This evidence confirms the statement in Piers the Plowman:

“Persones and parisch prestes · playneth to heore bisschops,
That heore parisch hath ben pore · seththe the pestilence tyme,
And asketh leue and lycence · at Londun to dwelle,
To singe ther for simonye · for seluer is swete.”
A. Prologue, 80.

28 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1388–92, 421.

29 Ibid. 1388–92, pp. 421–2.

30 Dugdale, Saint Paul's Cathedral, pp. 380 ff.

31 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1364–7, pp. 233, 234.

32 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1327–30, p. 552.

33 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, p. 376.

34 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, pp. 10, 11.

35 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1350–4, p. 118.

36 Church of Our Fathers, III, p. 85, n. 97.

37 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1340–3, p. 387.

38 The Schools of Medieval England, pp. 197, 199, 200, 210.

39 Constitutions of Simon Mepham, printed in Spelman's Concilia, II, 501.

40 Spelman, Concilia, p. 437.

41 Johnson, English Canons, Pt. II, p. 501.

42 Spelman, Concilia, pp. 436–7; see also foundation deeds in The Little Red Book of Bristol.

43 Johnson, English Canons, Pt. II, p. 501.

44 The Little Red Book of’ Bristol, 1, 214.

45 The Little Red Book of Bristol, p. 220.

46 “Chaplain” is here used in its ordinary medieval sense as designating any hired priest.

47 Spelman, Concilia, p. 603.

48 Cal. Close Rolls, 1349–54, P. 88.

49 Rot. Parl, II, 271.

50 Spelman, op. cit. p. 603; Rot. Parl, II, 271.

51 The Little Red Book of Bristol, I, 225.

52 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1330–4, p. 99.

53 A. Gray, The Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 85.