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Church Discipline in the Later Middle Ages: the Priors of Durham as Archdeacons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Harvey
Margaret Harvey*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

It is often forgotten that the medieval Church imposed public penance and reconciliation by law. The discipline was administered by the church courts, among which one of the most important, because it acted at local level, was that of the archdeacon. In the later Middle Ages and certainly by 1435, the priors of Durham were archdeacons in all the churches appropriated to the monastery. The priors had established their rights in Durham County by the early fourteenth century and in Northumberland slightly later. Although the origins of this peculiar jurisdiction were long ago unravelled by Barlow, there is no full account of how it worked in practice. Yet it is not difficult from the Durham archives to elicit a coherent account, with examples, of the way penance and ecclesiastical justice were administered from day to day in the Durham area in this period. The picture that emerges from these documents, though not in itself unusual, is nevertheless valuable and affords an extraordinary degree of detail which is missing from other places, where the evidence no longer exists. This study should complement the recent work by Larry Poos for Lincoln and Wisbech, drawing attention to an institution which would reward further research. It is only possible here to outline what the court did and how and why it was used.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 40: Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation , 2004 , pp. 95 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Details in Barlow, Frank, Durham Jurisdictional Peculiars (London, 1950), esp. 47–50 Google Scholar.

2 Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Late-Medieval England: the Courts of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, 1336-1349 and the Deanery of Wisbech, 1458-1484, ed. L. R. Poos, Records of Social and Economic History, NS 32 (Oxford, 2001), xiii-xiv gives the latest bibliography; the introduction gives an excellent account of the type of jurisdiction described in this paper.

3 Lyndwood, William, Provinciale (seu constitutiones Anglie) (Oxford, 1679, repr. Farnborough, 1968), Lib. 1, tit 10 Google Scholar.

4 Lyndwood, Provinciale, Lib. i, tit 2, under capitula ruralia.

5 See below. For otber capitula generalia see Lower Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, xxix.

6 Most recently, see Lower Ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

7 Durham Cathedral Muniments [hereafter DCM], Misc. Ch. 421.

8 Both these books are in the DCM.

9 See below, nn. 69 and 72.

10 Court Book, e.g. fols 86r, 93r.

11 Capitula, fols 2r, 5V, 8r, 14V and passim; Court Book, fols 49V, 57V.

12 Capitula, fol. 113V, vicar of [Monk] Heselden, accused of usurping jurisdiction; the Officer also claimed money pro sinodalibus.

13 Court Book, fol. 29V for instance; in Capitula the sums vary: cf. fols 87V, 105V.

14 Capitula, fol. 12V, vicar of Dalton.

15 Capitula, fol. I v; Barlow, Durham Jurisdictional Peculiars, 48.

16 Capitula, fols 48r, 56V, 59r.

17 DCM, Misc. Ch. 421, fols 13V-14V; DCM, 2.2. Archd. Dunelm. 4; DCM, Bursar’s accounts, under expenses; Capitula, fols 11v, 12v, 98r, 97V, 99v-100r, Misc. Ch. 7069 for Merrington and Court Book, fol. 130r, yconomi indicted for not following up the injunctions; Storey, R.L., Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham, 1406-1437 (London, 1961), 174 Google Scholar.

18 Now DCM, Misc. Ch. 5643.

19 DCM, 1.1. Archd. North. 11 and 14; DCM, Misc. Ch. 5643.

20 DCM, Misc. Ch. 5643 and for Norham only 1.1. Archd. North., 11.

21 DCM, Misc. Ch. 5643.

22 Ibid.; DCM, Loc.XII:17.

23 DCM, Loc. XII:17.

24 DCM, 1.1. Archd. North., 12, 13.

25 DCM, 2. 2. Archd. North., 1-3, 6.

26 Ibid., 7, 8.

27 Ibid., 9, 10, 11.

28 For Farnham see Historiae dunelmensis scriptores tres: Gaufiidus de Coldingham, Robertus de Graystanes, et Willielmus de Chambre, ed. James Raine, Publications of the Surtees Society 9 (London, 1839), cli, clxxvii.

29 Bursar’s Accounts 1362,1383/4 for instance, under necessary expenses.

30 DCM, 2.2. Archd. North., 1-4, 9-11, with 5 showing a summons to a capitulum in 1392 distinguished from a visitation.

31 Ibid.

32 DCM, 1.1. Archd. North., 13. See also DCM, Misc. Ch. 5643; DCM, 1. 1. Archd. North., 12 (Bedlington): nee alibi solent antiquitus clems etparochiani ipsius ecclesie hac occasione trahi.

33 DCM, 1.1. Archd. North., 12.

34 Capitula, fols. 93V, 111r, other examples Capitula, fols 82r, 83r. 106r; Court Book, fols 21r, 40V.

35 Capitula, fols 89V, 96r, 104V; Court Book, fols 84r:, 85r, 111r.

36 Court Book, fol. 74V.

37 Helmholz, R. H., ‘Assumpsit and Fidei Laesio’, The Law Quarterly Review 91 (1975), 406–32 Google Scholar.

38 See an example below, Capitula, fol. 1051-.

39 Capitula, fols 86v, 106r, 130V.

40 Capitula, fols 83r:, 86r; Court Book, fol. 43V.

41 Court Book, prior or terrar, lesio fidei, fol. 22r; communar, fol. 26v; bursar, lesio fidei, fols 59V, 66r, 72V, almoner, fol. 65r, tithes.

42 Depositions and Other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, extending from 1311 to the Reign of Elizabeth, ed. James Raine, Publications of the Surtees Society 21 (London, 1845), 35, from Capitula.

43 Capitula, fols 9V, 10v, 11r, R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400-1450 (Cambridge, 1973), 141.

44 Capitula, fols 123V, 124r.

45 Ibid., fols. 150,122, 152V.

46 Ibid., fol. 7r.

47 Ibid., fol. 110r.

48 DCM, Registrum III, fol. 40V; The Register of Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, 1406-1437, ed. R. L. Storey, 6 vols, Publications of the Surtees Society 164, 166, 169,170, 177, 182 (London, 1956-70), II: no. 287; Lichfield Joint Record Office, B/A/1/7, Register of John Burghill, Coventry and Lichfield, fol. 157r.

49 Register of Thomas Langley, IV: nos 1027-8, V: no. 1496; Capitula, fol. 99r, acting as a witness/notary in the Prior’s archidiaconal court See also Register of Thomas Langley, II: nos 287, 296, 297; York, Borthwick Institute, Register 18, (Bowet), fols 276V, 277r, exchange of his benefice with previous holder of chantry.

50 Capitula, fol. 110r.

51 Ibid., fol. 94V. See also Court Book, fol. 2or.

52 Capitula, fol. 105r.

53 Ibid., fol. 7r.

54 Ibid., fols 2r, 3r.

55 ‘Harbouring fornicators’: e.g., Court Book, fol. 55V, Michael Preston and his wife. ‘Scots’: e.g., DCM, Crossgate Court Book, fols 13V, 15r; ‘women’: ibid., fol. 56r; DCM, Loc. IV: 136, from Halmote court of Shincliffe, forbidding tenants to harbour Scots, 4 Henry IV (1402-3).

56 Court Book, fol. 50V.

57 Capitula, fol. 123r, February 1454, Cristina Johnson: fatet crimen tamen allegat quod non deliquit infra jurisiictionem. See also Capitula, fol. 100v.

58 Capitula, fol. 136r; for the writ see Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989, repr. 1993), 183, 186–7 Google Scholar.

59 Capitula, fol. 112v; see also fols 122r, 106v.

60 Court Book, fol. 119V.

61 Ibid., fol. 128v; see also fol. 18v and Capitula, fol. 105V.

62 Court Book, fol. 50V.

63 Ibid., fol. 60V.

64 E.g. Court Book, fol. 37V.

65 Bonney, Margaret, Lordship and the Urban Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1250-1540 (Cambridge, 1990), 196 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Logan, F. Donald, Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England: a Study in Legal Procedure from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century, Studies and Texts 15 (Toronto, 1968), 112–15 Google Scholar.

67 Capitula, fol. 2r.

68 Ibid., fols 7v, 8r.

69 DCM, Registrum III, fol. 203V.

70 Capitula, fols 8r, 10v.

71 Ibid., fol. 141V.

72 DCM, Registrum II, fol. 25 51:.

73 Court Book, fol. 87V.

74 Ibid., fol. 18v, for bim as a tanner, see Bonney, Lordship and the Urban Community, 181.

75 Court Book, fol. 501. See also DCM, Crossgate Court Book, fols 1r, 18r, 19v, 27V, 28r.

76 Court Book, fol. 52v.

77 Ibid., fol. 53r.

78 Ibid., fols 24V, 26r.