Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:01:15.900Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Archbishops of Canterbury and the Practice of Hospitality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Felicity Heal
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One dinnertime in the early 1540s Thomas Seymour, brother to the future Lord Protector, arrived at Lambeth Palace with an urgent message from the king to the archbishop of Canterbury. He found Cranmer's household at their meal in the great hall, the company sitting in due order under the watchful eyes of the senior officials of the establishment. Seymour was warmly received by the archbishop in his chamber and a meal was pressed upon him; then he was sent on his way with the appropriate response for the monarch. The occasion was more than a routine one for an exchange of messages: indeed it may have been deliberately contrived by Henry vm, with or without the connivance of the archbishop, to force the courtier literally to eat his words. Seymour had been busy denouncing Cranmer for keeping no hospitality ‘or house correspondent with his revenues and dignities’, but, instead, for wasting his income on the purchase of lands for the benefit of his family. When the king enquired of him about the adequacy of the Canterbury household he was, grudgingly, forced to admit ‘he be not in the realm of none estate or degree that hath such a hall furnished, or that fareth more honourably at his own table’. Henry seized the opportunity to lecture the assembled company on the dangers of seeking after episcopal wealth. So long as the prelates continued to dispense hospitality he would not, he asserted, allow them to be despoiled by laymen who had already dispersed the wealth of the monasteries. As for the archbishop he was above reproach and a model to all his fellows ‘for he spendeth (ah, good man) all that he hath in housekeeping’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 544 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

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

References

1 Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. Nichols, J. G. (Camden Society, xlii, 1848), 260–3Google Scholar. Foxe, J., Acts and Monuments, ed. Cattley, S. R. and Townshend, G., London 1837–1841, viiGoogle Scholar. 14–15. Both versions derive from Morice, but the latter has additional detail, including the king's final remark.

2 Starkey, D., ‘The age of the household’, in Medcalf, S. (ed.), The Context of English Literature: the later Middle Ages, London 1981, 225–90Google Scholar.

3 For example The Institution of a Gentleman, London 1555Google Scholar; Dives and Pauper, London 1493Google Scholar; Civil and Uncivil Life, London 1586Google Scholar; Vaughan, W., The Golden Grove, London 1608Google Scholar.

4 Decretum Gratiani, dist. 85, ante c.l. B; C12 q2, c. 23 and cc. 26–31. Tierney, B., Medieval Poor Law, Berkeley 1959, 125–7Google Scholar.

5 Becon, T., Early Works, ed. Ayre, J. (Parker Society, Cambridge 1843), 24Google Scholar.

6 Lever, T., Sermons, ed. Arber, E., London 1870, 43Google Scholar, 64, 77. Starkey, T., A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. Cowper, J. W. (Early English Text Society (hereafter cited as EETS) extra series xii, London 1871), 200Google Scholar.

7 Public Record Office (hereafter cited as PRO), SP 12/184/50. For a more detailed discussion of royal attitudes see Heal, F., Of Prelates and Princes, Cambridge 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 5, 7 and 9.

8 Wycliffe Bible, ed. Forshall, J. and Madden, F., Oxford 1850, ivGoogle Scholar. 329.

9 Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 69 n. 2.

10 For the practice of gate doles see The Boke of Curtasye, ed. Halliwell, J. O., London 1841, 30Google Scholar. The description of the almoner's duties could be replicated from almost any of the other domestic advice books or household ordinances.

11 British Library (hereafter cited as BL), Sloane MS 1986, 193. Printed in The Babees Book, ed. Furnival, F. J. (EETS, xxxii, London 1868), 329Google Scholar.

12 Decretum Gratiani, dist. lxxxii, c.i.

13 The connections between Aristotelian ethics and the practice of hospitality can be traced most clearly in Vaughan, The Golden Grove; Cooper, T., The Art of Giving, London 1615Google Scholar; Brathwait, R., The English Gentleman, London 1630Google Scholar.

14 Camden, W., Annals of Queen Elizabeth, in The Complete History of England, London 1719Google Scholar, ii. 452.

15 See Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, 239–43. This was a charge levelled not only at the Elizabethan bishops: Northumberland had already alleged that the clergy were ‘so sotted of their wives and children that they forget both their poor neighbours and all other things’. PRO, SP 10/18/3.

16 Harington, J., Nugae Antiquae, ed. Park, T., London 1804, iiGoogle Scholar. passim; Correspondence of Archbishop Parker, ed. Bruce, J. and Perowne, T. T. (Parker Society, Cambridge 1853), 208Google Scholar.

17 Cavendish, G., Life of Wolsey, ed. Sylvester, R. S. and Harding, D. P., New Haven 1962, 142Google Scholar.

18 Pilkington, J., Works, ed. Scholefield, J. (Parker Society, Cambridge 1842), 594–5Google Scholar, pointed to this injustice and argued that the Protestant bishops neither could afford, nor wished to offer, the prodigal hospitality common among their predecessors.

19 Bodleian Library, Roll 8. Printed in Hearne, T., Ltland Collectanea, London 1774Google Scholar, vi. 2–6.

20 Ibid., 16–34.

21 Most valuable of all are the surviving household ordinances, though they have to be used with caution as a guide to the actual practices of these great establishments. The Northumberland ordinances, for example, are more elaborate than the normal practice of the Percy household. The Northumberland Household Book, ed. T. Percy, London 1770. For a good summary list of the ordinances in print see Girouard, M., Life in the English Country House, New Haven 1978, 319–20Google Scholar.

22 Dictionary of National Biography, Winchelsea.

23 Fuller, T., Worthies of England, London 1840Google Scholar, iii. 246.

24 Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, ed. Graham, R. (Canterbury and York Society, London 1917)Google Scholar, i. 1292; cf. Langton's constitutions of 1222 in A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England, ed. Johnson, J., Oxford 1850, ii. 103Google Scholar.

25 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Butler-Bowdon, W., London 1936, 64Google Scholar.

26 The Book of Nurture in The Babees Book, 189.

27 Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter cited as LPL), Estate Doc. 1973. Another two expenditure accounts survive for temp. Archbishop Stratford, 1341 and 1343. The pattern of entertainment that they reveal is much the same as that of the Bourchier document, important guests being received on 26 out of the 40 days recorded. See Boulay, F. Du, The Lordship of Canterbury, London 1966, 259Google Scholar.

28 There was a presence chamber at Lambeth as early as the fourteenth century, Survey of London, London 1971, xxiiiGoogle Scholar. 99.

29 PRO, E101/518. Warham also claimed in his will that he had spent £30,000 on buildings and repairs, PRO, PROB 11/24/18. Erasmus, D., Ecclesiastae sive De Ratione Concionandi, Antwerp 1535, 71Google Scholar.

30 T. Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, 77.

31 Gleanings of a Few Scattered Ears during the Reformation, ed. Goring, G. C., London 1857, 21–2Google Scholar.

32 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vi. 644–5; Vowell, J. Hooker alias, A Catalogue of the Bishops of Exeter, London 1584Google Scholar, unpaginated.

33 For discussion of different views of the household, see Heal, Of Prelates and Princes, chap. 10; Greaves, R. L., Society and Religion in Elizabethan England, Minneapolis 1981Google Scholar, chaps. 7 and 13.

34 LPL, MS 884. It is difficult to disentangle Cranmer's ordinances in this MS from Parker's later annotations and additions. However, the second half of the main series has no particulars relating to the Elizabethan period and seems most likely, on internal evidence, to be the rules governing Cranmer's establishment. The whole of this part of the document is written in a hand of the later sixteenth century, almost certainly dating from Parker's archiepiscopate.

35 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 106, no. 348. The document is printed, without all the annotations, in Wilkins, D., Concilia Magnae Britanniae, London 1737Google Scholar, iii. 862. It should probably be associated with the acts of the Convocation of 1541 which was much concerned with similar regulatory measures.

36 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, viii. 13.

37 Schenk, W., Reginald Pole, Cardinal of England, London 1950, 155Google Scholar. Strype, J., The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, London 1821, iiiGoogle Scholar. 445. The Latin life is printed as an appendix to Strype's volume.

38 Ibid., 444.

39 Roper, W., The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, London 1729, 18Google Scholar. Roper, here describing More's indifference to luxury in food as in other material things, follows closely on the image of the humanist given in Erasmus's letters especially in the letter to Hutten, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S., and Allen, H. M., Oxford 1906, ivGoogle Scholar. no. 999.

40 Letter Book of John Parkhurst, ed. Houlbrooke, R. (Norfolk Record Society, xliii, 1974/5), 111Google Scholar; Zurich Letters, ed. Robinson, H. (Parker Society, Cambridge 1842-5), iiGoogle Scholar. 86.

41 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, viii. 20–1.

42 See, for example, the arguments of James, M., ‘English politics and the concept of honour’, Past and Present, supp. 3 (1978)Google Scholar, 28ff; Greaves, Society and Religion, 14–25.

43 Strype, Parker, iii. 287–91. Hearne is almost certainly right in his conjecture that it was Parker who had the details of the Neville and Warham feasts published. The printing format of the Bodley roll is almost identical with that of the Corpus Christi dietary, cited above, which is known to have been published at the archbishop's initiative.

44 Clark, P., English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution, Hassocks 1977Google Scholar, chaps. 5 and 10.

48 See in particular Harington, J., Ajax Metamorphosised, London 1596Google Scholar; , I. M., A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingman, London 1598Google Scholar; Topsell, E., The Householder, London 1610Google Scholar.

46 Strype, J., The History and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal, London 1710, 193Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Collinson for drawing my attention to this reference.

47 Paule, G., Life of Whitgift, London 1612, 77Google Scholar.

48 Clark, Provincial Society, 170ff. Dr Clark overlooks Paule's testimony of co-operation between Whitgift and the Kentish gentry.

49 Ibid., 305–7.

50 Heylyn, P., Cyprianus Anglicus, London 1671, 230–1Google Scholar.

51 LPL, MS 1730.

52 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 217.

53 Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 505.

54 PRO E101 /547/5.

55 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 494.

56 LPL, MS 1730.

57 Paule, Life of Whitgift, 78.

58 Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, 300.

59 Paule, Life of Whitgift, 77–8.

60 See, for example, the famous Christmas celebrations held by the duke of Buckingham at Thornbury in 1507. Gage, J., ‘Extracts from the household book of Edward Strafford, duke of Buckingham’, Archaeologia, xxv (1834), 318–41Google Scholar. Girouard, English Country House, 24–5.

61 Paule, Life of Whitgift, 84–5. Dictionary of National Biography, Abbot.

62 LPL, MS 884. The main Cranmer/Parker series in the MS is followed by three other sets of ordinances. D is specifically dated to Juxon's archiepiscopate immediately after the Restoration. Neither B nor C as any date or attribution, but B can be placed later than 1622 on internal evidence. It is possible that B dates from the later years of Abbot's rule and C from the 1630s.

63 LPL, MS 1730, fo. 7.

64 LPL, MS 884.

65 Ibid., The Cranmer ordinances lay particular emphasis on the need for commensality and communal harmony.

66 Ibid., Ordinances B.

67 LPLMS 1730.

68 LPL, Estate MSS 1415–19. See Heal, F., ‘Archbishop Laud revisited’, in O'Day, R. and Heal, F. (eds), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, Leicester 1981, 134Google Scholar.

69 Foxe, Acts and Monuments, vi. 644–5. Fuller, T., Abel Redivivus, London 1867, iiGoogle Scholar. 61–2.

70 Stone, L., Crisis of the Aristocracy, Oxford 1965, 42–3Google Scholar.