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Ecclesiastics and Economics: Poor Priests, Prosperous Laymen, and Proud Prelates in the Reign of Richard II1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

A. K. McHardy
A. K. McHardy*
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Extract

It is a truth widely recognized, though perhaps insufficiently emphasized, that late-medieval England contained large numbers of unbeneficed clergy. The difficulty of studying such men lies in their elusiveness; they made little impact on the obvious source for a study of the English Church during this period, the bishops’ registers (apart from their appearances in the ordinations lists), for these are essentially concerned with benefices and benefice-holders. There is, however, one class of material which tells us much about the unbeneficed, namely the assessments made in connection with clerical poll-taxes. Levied in the years 1377, 1379, 1380, and 1381, these poll-taxes demanded what was virtually a clerical census on each occasion. The resulting returns are a boon to church historians and provide an unparalleled amount of information about the unbeneficed clergy, described in these documents as ‘chaplains’ and ‘clerks’. If we are to have a realistic picture of the late-medieval Church, the unbeneficed should receive more attention. Moreover, it is suggested that an examination of this class can throw light on the relationship between the Church and wealth during this period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 129 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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Footnotes

1

Much of the research on which this paper is based was funded by the Social Science Research Council (now the Economic and Social Research Council) whose help is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Miss Barbara Harvey and Dr Carolyn Fenwick who read this paper in draft and made many valuable suggestions.

References

2 There are useful comments on the unbeneficed in Moorman, J. R. H., Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1945)Google Scholar, cap. 5, and Thompson, A. Hamilton, The English Clergy and their Organisation in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947), pp. 122–8 Google Scholar. Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), p. 28 Google Scholar, devotes one paragraph to the unbeneficed. His conclusion that ‘in some districts they outnumbered the beneficed clergy by nearly two to one’ is surely overcautious.

3 Usually there was only one beneficed man per parish; divided rectories or the beneficed chaplains of perpetual chantries occurred very rarely.

4 PRO, E179/3 5/7.

5 Ibid., and E179/35/5.

6 PRO. E179/35/24.

7 J. L. Kirby, Two Tax Accounts of the Diocese of Carlisle, 1379–80’, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society Translations, 52 (1952), pp. 74–81, and for important comments, pp. 71–3.

8 M.J. Bennett, The Lancashire and Cheshire Clergy 1379’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 124 (1973), p. 5.

9 McHardy, A. K., The Church in London 1375–92 (London Record Society, 1977)Google Scholar.

10 PRO, E179/35/24 m.2; LRS (forthcoming? 1989), no. 949; this assessment was previously published, but misdated, by J. E. Brown, ‘Clerical Subsidies in the Archdeaconry of Bedford’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Publications, 1 (1913), pp. 31–59. See the map of Bedfordshire hundreds and parishes in A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire (English Place-Name Society, Cambridge, 1926) in the folder at the end of the volume.

11 D. M. Owen, ‘Medieval Chapels in Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 10 (1975), pp. 15–22.

12 For examples of bequests to buy masses for the testators’ souls by villagers in Bucks, see McHardy, A. K., ‘Some Late-medieval Eton College Wills’, JEH 28 (1977), pp. 389–90 Google Scholar.

13 Half the London property-owners in the period 1375–81, Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, ed. R. R. Sharpe, pt II (London, 1890), pp. 169–227; compare the percentage of 47 for the laity and 35 for the clergy in the years 1370–1439 found in Norwich, N. P. Tanner, The Church in late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984), p. 220.

14 Sharpe, pp. 185–6.

15 The quality of the material will be discussed in more detail in the introduction to my forthcoming volume for LRS. The point may be made here, however, that the quality of the assessment for the archdeaconries of Lincoln and Stow is much higher than for the archdeaconry of Leicester which came within the responsibility of the same collector, the Abbot of Barlings (Lines.).

16 The roll is now listed as two separate documents in the PRO, E179/35/5, E179/35/7; the material relating to four deaneries in the archdeaconry of Lincoln is now incomplete.

17 On 11 July 1374 writs of aid were issued to sheriffs of all nine counties coextensive with the bishopric of Lincoln, ordering them to proceed without delay against the clergy who had not paid dieir share of the £50, 000 subsidy of 1371, CCR 1374–7, p. 37. The hostility generated by the poll-tax of 1381 is notorious.

18 McHardy, Church in London, pp. x-xi, and nos. 111–17.

19 L. R. Poos, The Rural Population of Essex in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, ser. 2, 38 (1985), esp. pp. 527–9.

20 Rigby, S. H., ‘Late Medieval Urban Prosperity: the Evidence of die Lay Subsidies’, and Bridbury, A. R., ‘Dr Rigby’s Comment: a Reply’, EcHR, ser. 2, 39 (1986), pp. 411–21 Google Scholar.

21 LRS vols 4–40; 134; 153–67; 103, 754; 750; 747; 752; 456; 383–4; from PRO E179/35/5 mm.1, 1d; E179/35/7 mm.1, 1d.

22 These figures have been supplied by Dr Carolyn Fenwick; 1 am most grateful to Dr Fenwick for allowing me to make use of her work on an edition of the lay poll-tax returns in advance of publication.

23 Glasscock, R. E., ‘The Lay Subsidy of 1334 for Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society reports and papers, 10, pt 2 (1964), pp. 115–33 Google Scholar; ibid., ‘The Distribution of Wealth in East Anglia in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Institute of British Geographers Transactions and Papers, 32 (1963), pp. 113–23.

24 Calendar of Letter-Book G of the City of London, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1905), p. 328.

25 McHardy, Church in London, no. 214.

26 Ibid., nos 1–117, 173–92.

27 Compare ibid., nos 72–81 with nos 173–4, 177–84.

28 B. H. Putnam, ‘Maximum Wage-Laws for Priests after the Black Death, 1348–1381’, AHR 21 (1913), pp. 12–31.

29 Commission to proceed against the riotous chaplains, 4 September 1364, CPR 1364–7, p. 67.

30 21 October 1385, Lincolnshire Archives Office, Register 12 (Buckingham, Memoranda), fol. 312v.

31 On 2 January 1364 Buckingham issued a licence for three chaplains in Leicester to receive stipends of 1005. p.a., which was above the permitted maximum, ibid., fol. 15; Robert Braybrooke of London also considered the legal maximum to have been too low, R. Hill, ‘A Chaunteriefor Soûles: London Chantries in the Reign of Richard II’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. F. R H. Du Boulay and C. M. Barron (London, 1971), pp. 242–55.

32 The grant of a half-tenth in the convocation of May 1394 was conditional on the exemption of nuns and other religious women, Lambeth Palace Library, Register of William Courtenay (Cant.) II, fol. 195. For the Lincoln exemptions under this condition see PRO E179/35/21, E179/35/22a nos 1–5.

33 Hill, Chaunterie, p. 244.

34 In 1379 eleven London rectors were said to have scarcely enough to live on, McHardy, Church in London, nos 23, 25, 26, 29, 51, 62, 66, 67, 76, 90, 100.