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Clerical Poverty in Early Sixteenth-Century England: Some East Anglian Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

John Pound
John Pound
Affiliation:
School of Education, University of East Anglia, Keswick Hall, Norwich NR4 7TJ
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Extract

The economic standing of the English parochial clergy in the early sixteenth century has been re-examined recently by Michael Zell, and the evidence at his disposal suggests that many of them were poverty-stricken in the extreme. He points to the large surplus of unendowed curates, chaplains and the like, and to the fact that when employment was available it was neither rewarding, in a monetary sense, nor necessarily secure. Stipends were officially regulated by an early fifteenth-century statute which set a maximum of £5 6s. 8d. per annum, and ‘evidence from all regions of England indicates that very rarely were curates and chaplains given more than that’. It was not uncommon for areas in the north to pay even less than this. In Lancashire, for example, the average salary of about 100 curates and chaplains in 1524 was £2 9s. 6d. In the East Riding of Yorkshire a year later it was £4. On the basis of such evidence, Mr Zell reasonably concludes that the unbeneficed clergy must have found it very difficult to survive, and that ‘the average country priest could not have been a person of high social status’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 389 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Zell, Micheal L., ‘Economic problems of the parochial clergy in the sixteenth century’, in O'Day, R. and Heal, F. (eds.), Princes and Paupers in the English Church, 1500-1800, London 1981, 19–43Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. 25-6.

3 Ibid. 40.

4 Tudor Exeter: Tax Assessments, 1489-1595, ed. Rowe, M. M. (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, NS xxii, 1977), 7–33Google Scholar;The Certificate of Musters for Buckinghamshire in 1522, ed. Chibnall, A. C. (Royal Commission on Historical MSS JP 18, 1973Google Scholar); The County Community under Henry VIII, ed. Cornwall, J. (Rutland Record Series i, 1980Google Scholar). Details for other counties are referred to in Cornwall, J., ‘A Tudor Domesday’, Journal of the Society of Archivists iii (1965), 19–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Public Record Office (hereinafter cited as PRO) E 36/22, fos. 20-1 and 53-5 for the Norfolk hundreds of Walsham, Brothercross and Gallow respectively; E 36/25, fos. 11-12, 53-5, 81-3, 114-18 and 189-92 for Great Yarmouth and the hundreds of West and East Flegg, Tunstead and Happing respectively; E 101/61/16 for South Erpingham, n.fo.; E 315/466, n.fo., for Holt; SP 1/234, n.fo., for Blofield; and Norfolk Record Society i (1931), 47-8, for the clergy of North Greenhoe. The return for Babergh Hundred is in the Lines. Archives Office, Ancaster 16/2.

6 Ancaster 16/2 passim. The Norfolk details are confined to the hundred of West Flegg, PRO E 36/25, fos. 57-71.

7 Hervey, S. H. (ed.), Suffolk in 1524 (Suffolk Green Books x, 1910),Google Scholar

8 Phythian-Adams, C., Desolation of a City: Coventry and the urban crisis of the Late Middle Ages, Cambridge 1979, 132Google Scholar; and Pound, J. F., Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England, LondonGoogle Scholar, 2nd edn forthcoming.

9 Seven of the unspecified twenty-two come from the hundreds of Gallow and Brothercross where the value of benefices alone was recorded. Some of the remaining five may not have received a stipend, but this seems unlikely.

10 I owe this suggestion to Mr R. A. Page. For Buckinghamshire, Chibnall has suggested that the average value of arable land was 6d., of meadow 15. 6d. and of pasture is. per acre respectively, with variations throughout the county. Chibnall, Certificate of Musters, 21.

11 While this article is concerned essentially with parochial clergy, whether residential or otherwise, it might be of interest to note that the prior of Hickling in Happing Hundred had £140 to his name as well as lands worth £100; and that the prior of Cockfbrd in Gallow Hundred was wealthier still, with a manor assessed at £120 and goods worth £333 6s. 8d. The prior of Hampton in the same hundred was estimated at £20 and £46 13s. 4d. respectively.