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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
At the beginning of the fourteenth century ecclesiastical recruitment AA was flourishing in England. Hundreds of men turned up to be ordained at the four Ember seasons each year at which major ordinations were permitted to be held. The majority of these men were secular clergy; only a small proportion were members of religious orders. Of the scores of people in the diocese of Winchester who came at the stipulated time to be ordained to the major orders at this date only about one fifth were members of religious orders and of those, only a handful were mendicants. However, by the end of the century, after the ravages of the Black Death, although the total numbers of men being ordained had declined dramatically a greater percentage of these were regular rather than secular clergy. A similar pattern can be seen all over Southern England. It was a trend which persisted throughout much of the fifteenth century. This paper will investigate the changing patterns of secular and regular ordinations to the priesthood in southern England in the period between 1300 and 1500. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries extensive anti-mendicant feeling was expressed both in late medieval literature and in rivalry between the secular clergy and the friars over the pastoral role of the latter. Was this, in fact, a reflection of a reality which meant that, compared to the position in the early fourteenth century, far more ordained friars were on the streets and in the parishes?
1 Four days were canonically prescribed for the holding of ordination ceremonies. These were the Saturdays of the weeks following the commemoration of Ash Wednesday, Whit Sunday, the Exultation of the Holy Cross (14 September) and St Lucy’s day (13 December); on feast days lesser orders up to and including that of acolyte could be conferred. Men ordained to the minor orders of exorcist, doorkeeper and to the first tonsure were rarely recorded in episcopal registers but most registers record ordination to the rank of acolytes.
2 ‘One is tempted to prepare statistics as to the relative proportion of clerks and regulars but to do so for one diocese would not be very interesting or important. When the work of the Canterbury and York society has gone on a little longer and made more medieval registers accessible in print, an attempt to generalize as to the status of the ordinands in different dioceses and at different periods may be commended to students of ecclesiastical antiquities as a useful piece of research, never, so far as I know, systematically attempted.’ T. F. Tout, ‘Introducrion’ in The register of john de Halton,Bishop of Carlisle 1292–1324 (CYS 12 1913), 1, p. xxxix.
3 A brief introduction to the format and content of ordination lists is to be found in Hill, R. M. T., ed.. The rolls and registers of bishop Oliver Sutton, 7 (Lincoln Record Society, 69, 1069), pp. ix–xi Google Scholar; Bennett, H. F., ‘Medieval ordination lists in the English episcopal registers’, in Conway-Davis, J., ed., Studies presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson (London, 1957)Google Scholar is the basic article on the subject. Most work has been restricted to particular dioceses, Robinson, D., ‘Ordination of secular clergy in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield 1322–1358’, Archives, 17 (1985), pp. 3–21 Google Scholar; Williams, J. F., ‘Ordination in the Norwich diocese during the fifteenth century’, Norfolk Archaeology, 31 (1957), pp. 347–58 Google Scholar.
4 Williams, ‘Ordination in the Norwich diocese’, pp. 357–8.
5 There were Franciscan houses in Winchester and Southampton, Dominicans in Winchester and Guildford; Carmelites in Winchester and Austin Friars in Winchester and Southampton.
6 The register of Pontoise’s successor, Henry Woodlock, records the issue of a certificate of ordination to a John of Monte Hermeri stating that he had been ordained priest in the December in the first year of Pontoise’s episcopate.
7 Registram Henrici Woodlock, diócesis Wintoniensis A.D. 1303–1316, ed. A. W. Goodman, 2 vols (CVS 43.44.1940-41).
8 Smith, D. M., Aguide lo bishops’registers (Royal Historical Society, 1981), p. 207.Google Scholar
9 271 men were ordained acolytes, 196 as subdeacons and 234 as deacons, The registers of John de Sandale and Rigaud de Asserto, Bishops of Winchester, ed. F. J. Baigent (Hampshire Record Society, 1897).
10 Ordinations in 1317 were held on 26 February in Southampton; 19 March in Merton Abbey conventual church; 2 April at West Ham in the diocese of London; 28 May at St Mary Overy Priory in Southwark; 24 September in York, during a vacancy in the see and by permission of the dean and chapter of the cathedral; 17 December at St Cross in Winchester, Registers of Sandals, pp. 171–94.
11 Relatively little is known of the details of the examination procedure; details of the examiners do not often survive. In March 1316 Bishop Woodlock used as his examiners, Ralph de Caune, the precentor of Winchester cathedral and Master Peter de Worldham, the commissary general of the diocese, Registrum Woodlock, 1, p. 668.
12 Hockey, F. S., ed., The register of William Edington 1346–66 (Hampshire Record Series 8, 1986-87), 2, pp. 105—28.Google Scholar
13 Moran, J. H., ‘Clerical recruitment in the diocese of York 1340—1530: Data and commentary’, JEH 34 (1983), pp. 19–54.Google Scholar
14 Robinson, ‘Ordination of the secular clergy in Coventry and Lichfield’, p. 7.
15 Gasquet, F., The Black Death (1908)Google Scholar.
16 Ziegler, P., The Black Death (1969), pp. 148–55.Google Scholar
17 Register of Edington, 1, pp. xii-xiii.
18 Ibid., pp. 137–61.
19 Waynflete was bishop of Winchester 1447–86; his unpublished register is in the Hampshire Record Office, 21 M65 AI/13-14.
20 R. L. Storey reviewing Calendar of the Register of Henry Wakefield, ed. M. P. Marret in EHR 89 (1974), pp. 378–80.
21 Storey, R. L., ‘Recruitment of English clergy in the period of the conciliar movement’, Annuarium Hisloriae Conciliorum, 7 (1975), pp. 290–313.Google Scholar
22 Ordination lists do not survive for every year of Richard Fox’s episcopate. In addition a number of the surviving lists are clearly incomplete, Hampshire Record Office 21 M65 A1/ 17–21.
23 Moran, ‘Clerical recruitment in the diocese of York’, pp. 19–54.
24 Swanson, R., Church and society in lale medieval England (forthcoming, 1989)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Swanson for allowing me to see in advance of publication, the sections of his book relating to ordination and clerical recruitment.
25 Hatcher, J. C., Plague, population and the English economy 1348–1530 (London, 1977), esp. pp. 63, 68–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 Norwich, for example, does not appear to record regulars, Williams, ‘Ordination in the Norwich diocese’, pp. 357—8.
27 Registers for some religious houses record ordinations taking place within the house both for some of their members and on occasion for secular clergy, see for example that of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the fifteenth century, BX. Add. MS 14848.
28 In March 1318 for example. Bishop Sandale ordained William de Clyde of the diocese of Durham, rector of the parish of Angrcham. as acolyte. The following month, Clyde was ordained as subdeacon, Sandale’sRegister, pp. 195, 200. Of 271 acolytes ordained by Sandale, 11 were already holding parochial benefices and 30 per cent of those ordained as subdeacon during his episcopate were already holding parochial benefices.
29 Regislrum Henrici Woodlock, 1, p. 67.
30 Greatrex, J. G., ‘Some statistics of religious motivation’, SCH 15, pp. 179—86.Google Scholar
31 Wykeham’s Register, ed. T. F. Kirby (2 vols, Hampshire Record Society, 1896–9).
32 It has been estimated that almost half of the total population of the religious houses in England perished in the initial epidemic of the Black Death, D. Knowlcs, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1955), 2, pp. 256–7.
33 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Prologue’ to ‘The wife of Bath’s tale’, Canterbury Tales, line 868.
34 ‘Monkes and monyals and alle men of religioun her ordre and her reule wil to han a certeyne noumbre. Of lcwed and of lered the lawe wol and axcth a certcyn for a certeyne saue onelichc of frères.’ William Langland, The vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, ed. W. W. Skeat (London, 1924), B Passus XX, lines 262–70. The translation in the text is taken from Piers the Ploughman trans. J. F. Goodridge (2 edn., London, 1966), p. 252.
35 An introduction to the subject of anti-mendicant criticism can be found in Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 2, pp. 90–114. The activities of a group of bishops in opposition to the mendicants in the late 1340s and 1350s is dealt with by Walsh, K., Richard FitzRalph: A fourteenth century scholar and Primate (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar. See also Williams, A., ‘Relations between the mendicant friars and the secular clergy in England in the later fourteenth century’, Duauesne Studies Annuale Medievale, 11 (1960), pp. 22—95.Google Scholar
36 The reissue of Super cathedram did not finally settle the disputes. At the end of the 1340s and in the early 13 50s Archbishop FitzRalph of Armagh was foremost in an effort to counter the friars’ attempts to obtain a more favourable interpretation of the bull.
37 Russell, J. C., ‘The clerical population of medieval England’, Traditio, 2 (1944), pp. 206—11.Google Scholar
38 Little, A. G., Studies in English Franciscan history (Manchester, 1917), p. 116.Google Scholar