THE CHUECH OF OUR FATHERS

BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL AT WARWICK

Fron tlspicce

CHURCH KE1

AS SI

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CO

r G. W. HART

OK THE COMMUNITY OF TH» ftKS! t

VOLUME III

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEM

1905

THE

(sy

CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

AS SEEN IN ST. OSMUND'S EITE FOE THE CATHEDEAL OF SALISBUBY

WITH DISSERTATIONS ON THE BELIEF AND RITUAL

IN ENGLAND BEFORE AND AFTER THE

COMING OF THE NORMANS

BY DANIEL ROCK, D.D.

CANON OF THE ENGLISH CHAPTER

A NEW EDITION IN FOUR VOLUMES EDITED BY G. W. HART AND W. H. FRERE

OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION

VOLUME III

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1905

ELECTRONIC VERSION AVAILABLE

CONTENTS OF VOLUME III

PART THE FIRST CONTINUED

CHAPTER VIII

The Anglo-Saxons knew that the prayers and good works of the living help the souls in Purgatory, 2. The " belt of Pater Nosters," 6. Bondsmen's freedom was given them over the corpse of their dead lord, 10. Mass immediately over the tomb of the dead, n. Churchyard and wayside crosses, 13. The witness of Heaven was yielded to the doctrine of Purgatory, 17. Soul-shot, 21. Doles, 26. The pious customs belonging to the bygone times in England, 33. Our old English tombs and grave-stones, 42. Collar of SS, 51. Indulgences multiplied, 57. Lights set upon the grave, 70. The Easter sepulchre upon the tomb, 76. The year's mind, anniversary, or obit, 80. The bell-man, 80. Chantries, 85. The chantry-priest an ankret, 93. The low side or ankret's window, 96. A "certain," 103. Beadsmen, 107.

CHAPTER IX

The invocation of Saints and Angels among the Anglo- Saxons, 1 1 8. The merits of such Saints, 123. The interces sion of Saints, 128. The intercession of Angels, 133. The Anglo-Saxons invoked the Saints and Angels, 136. The Virgin Mary, the object of the Anglo-Saxons' particular devotion, 143. The "Doom," 158. The weighing of the soul, 1 60. The merit of good works, 162. The souls of the Saints go to Heaven immediately after death, 166. To each

vi CONTENTS

one is given an Angel guardian, 170. The intercession of Saints, 175. The invocation of Saints and Angels, 181. The Litany, 183. The bending of a piece of money, 190. A wax-taper the measure of the person, 191. Catholic Eng land's devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, 197. Perpetual virginity, 198. The lily, 203. The warmth with which Catholic England invoked the Blessed Virgin Mary, 207. St. Mary Mass, 213. Our Lady of the crib, 220 — of Pity, 221. An evening hymn to the Virgin, 224. Other liturgi cal and religious practices in honour of the Blessed Virgin, 228. Popular devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary, 241. The "Hail Mary," 258. Our Lady's Psalter, or the Rosary, 262. The tolling of the " Ave " bell, 276. The Gabriel bell, 279. The " worship " of the B. V. Mary, 285.

CHAPTER X

The veneration paid to Saints' relics, 287. Shrines, 292. Reliquaries, 295. The gang-days, 297. The frithstool, 302. The English feelings of respect for Saints' relics, 306. The shape in which shrines were built, and the spot whereat they stood, 312. The coronation-chair, 333. Lights about shrines, 340. The practice of watching, the whole night, at shrines, 343. The cures wrought at the shrines of the Saints, 347. The Canterbury water, 348. Pilgrim's weeds, 356. Taking the cross, 367. Cross-legged effigies, 369. The Church blessed the pilgrim and his weeds, 376. Votive offerings at Saints' shrines, 381. Music at shrines, 387. Relics hanging over the altar, or set to stand upon it, 388. The " beam " and the " perch," 388. The relics of the Saints carried in procession, 39 i. The translation of Saints' relics, 398. Papal Supremacy, 399. The beatification and canonisation of Saints, 407. The trial of relics by fire, 410. Other things esteemed as though they had been relics, 411. A mistake about relics rectified, 412.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The plates marked with an asterisk (27) appear now for the first time in the book ; those marked with a dagger (2) were in the previous edition, but have been more accurately made for this edition.

PAGE *Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick . . . Frontispiece

*Cross at Geddington . . . • . . -37

*01d English Funeral . . . 49

From a French MS., but illustrative of the English Custom ; Brit. Mus. MS. Egerton, 2019, f. 142.

*Tomb of the Black Prince at Canterbury Cathedral . 54 *Brass of Roger Legh at Macclesfield . . . .60

*Image of Pity (c. 1508) . . . . . .63

Pasted into the Lincoln Chapter Library MS., A. 6, 15.

fBeauchamp Monument at. Warwick . . . . 74

* Easter Sepulchre at Heckingtoii .. .. . .'78

*The Enclosing of an Ankret . . . . -95 From the Clifford Pontitioal at Corpus Christi College, Cam bridge, reproduced in Alcuin Club Collections, vol. iv. pi. vi. fig. 18.

*Othery Church . . . . ' . . . . 98 From the Arch&ological Journal, iv. 316.

*Cell of an Ankret at Walpole St. Andrew . . . i o i

* Doom at St. Thomas's, Salisbury . , . .159

Weighing the Soul . . . . . . .160

From wall-paintings at Islip and Beckley, Oxon.

* A Soul being borne by Angels . . . .. .174

From Brit. Mus. MS., 2 B. vii. f. 301.

Device of the Perpetual Virginity of B. V. M. . 202

vii

viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

*The Annunciation ....... 203

From the Archasological Journal, ii. 206.

*B. V. M. and Child (St. Michael's, Oxford) . .218 From Parker's Calendar of the Anglican Church and Calendar of the Prayer-Book illustrated.

^"Frontispiece to " Hore Beatissime Virginia Marie " . 241 From Regnault's octavo edition, A.D. 1526.

*" Salve Regina " Roll . ' . . . . .256 From Jesus College, Oxford, MS., cxxiv.

"^Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer . . . . .270 From Caxton's folio edition of Canterbury Tales.

** " Clerke of Oxenforde " and " Nonne " . . ' . 271 From Caxton's folio edition of Canterbury Talcs.

*The Berdewell Brass in West Harling Church . .281 From Cotman, Sepulchral Brasses.

*High Altar of St. Austin's, Canterbury . -316

From Alcuin Club Collections, vol. i. pi. ix.

Shrine of St. Edward the Confessor . . . -317 *Shrine of St. Edward the Confessor (1902) . 318

St. Edmund the Martyr's Shrine at Bury . . .321 From Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. , 2278.

^Shrine from La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei . . 340 Cambridge Univ. Library MS., Ee. iii. 59, f. 36.

f Illustration of Watching at Shrines .... 344 From Cambridge Univ. Library MS., Ee. iii. 59, f. 33.

An Ampul for the " Canterbury Water " . . . 353

*Pilgrim at Ashby-de-la-Zouch . . . . .362 From Carter, Specimens, pi. vi.

*Shrine of St. Thomas Cantelupe in Hereford Cathe dral .".... -37°

*A Hospitalar . . . . 371

From Magri, Hierolexicon (Rome, 1677), P- J92«

"^Translation of the Relics of St. Alban . . . 406

From Brit. Mus. MS. Nero, D. i, f. 22.

PAET THE FIEST

(Continued)

CHAPTER VIII

TAUGHT as all our Catholic forefathers were out of God's own word, as every one must be who meekly hearkens to it, how efficacious, through the free gift of Heaven, good works are, and that in the next world the souls of those who go thither loathing their faults and calling for pardon, may be loosened from their bonds and have their cleansing torments shortened by the hallowed deeds and prayers of the living ; the Anglo-Saxons held that one among the several ways laid down in Holy Writ for soothing God's anger and hastening his forgiveness towards departed but sorrow-smitten sinners, was the pious labour of holy men in Christ's Church here on earth undertaken in be half of the dead.1 Like their present Catholic

1 In Sacris Scripturis legendum est quod Omnipotens Deus per xii. res hominibus dat remissionem peccatorum eorum. Octava- remissio est ut homo ex hac vita ad supplicium discedat, et deinde amici ejus qui in vivis sunt, eum redimere, et remissionem ei ser- vitio divino, et possessionibus mundanis suis apud Deum consequi possint. (Egbert Penitential, iv. 63, in Thorpe, Ancient Laws, iL 223, 225.) The same teaching is embodied in the liturgy of the VOL. III. A

2 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

brethren, (2) not only in this land, but throughout the earth,

THE ANGLO-SAXONS KNEW THAT THE PRAYERS AND GOOD WORKS OF THE LIVING HELP THE SOULS IN PURGATORY,

therefore this sound belief of theirs made them not only build churches,2 but led them into many a (3) hallowed and hallowing practice, almost each one of which was followed, with the same kindly earnestness, by their Norman and English suc cessors.

Soul-shot was a name given to a small sum of money ordained by law to be paid into that church

Anglo-Saxon Church : — V. D . . . qui ieiunii obseruatione, et ele- mosinarum gratissima largitiorie, nos docuisti nostrorum consequi remedia peccatorum. Unde tuam imploramus clementiam, ut his observationibus, et ceteris bonorum operum exhibitionibus muniti, ea operemur, quibus ad seterna gaudia consequenda, et spes nobis suppetat et facultas. Per Christum. (Leofric Missal, 78.) What their prayers taught them, that the Anglo-Saxons reduced to works. In one of his deeds of gift, Cnut says : xvi. mansas Deo omnipotenti et sanctse Marise semper virgini, hilari vultu menteque prseclara (ego Cnut rex Anglorum), concede pro redemptione animse mese et criminum meorum absolutione, cum omnibus bonis ad mensam coenobialis vitae fratribus Deo servientibus largitus sum, quatinus illi famuli Dei apud altissirnum Deum semper fundant preces et cotidie flagitant Deum in psalmodiis et missarum cele- brationibus, pro facinoribus meis, ut post obitum meum per misericordiam Dei et per eorum sancta suffragia possim ad regna coelorum pervenire. — Kemble, Cod. Dipl. Anglo-Sax., vi. 185.

2 At Aldborough Church, Holderness, Yorkshire, may yet be seen, built into a wall, a round stone, with this Anglo-Saxon inscription : — Ulf het araeran cyrice for hanum 7 for GunJ?ara saula. — Ulf bade this church to be reared for his own and Gunthar's soul. [See Poulson, History of Holder ness, ii. 6.]

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 3

whereat the body was buried and the service for the dead celebrated : under this same term, large bequests were often freely made to ecclesiastics and favourite churches, for the purpose of get ting them to pray for the soul of the deceased donor.3

Fasting in behalf of the dead was not forgotten : when a direful pestilence had been sweeping over many parts of this island (c. A.D. 68 1), the brother hood of Selsey minster kept a fast of three whole days, and humbly besought God to vouchsafe and stretch forth his mercy, freeing such as were threatened with the disease from present death. (4) and preserving those already hurried by it out of this world from never-ending damnation.4

Of the clergy, each one according to his degree prayed for the dead after such a way that every grade in orders was able, by supplications and the ritual observances of the Church, to afford ghostly comfort unto the smarting soul of a deceased friend or benefactor : it was begged of the priest to sing mass, of the deacon to read the gospel-history of

3 The noble Anglo-Saxon lady Wynflaed bequeathed (A.D. 995) a mancus of gold to each of God's servants, as her soul-shot : Hio (Winflaed) becweS . . . hyre to saulsceatte aelcon Godes ]?eowe mancos goldes.— Cod. Dipl., vi. 130. In the same deed, she charges one of her estates with the sum of half a pound in money, as a soul- shot for her to Wantage : and hio wile 8aet man finde aet Inggeries- hamme healfes pundes wyrtme saulsceat to Waneting for hy. — Ibid., p. 131.

4 Visum est fratribus triduanum jejunium agere et divinam suppliciter obsecrare clementiam ut . . . raptos e mundo a per- petua animse damnatione servaret. — Beda, Hist. Ecc.} iv. 14.

4 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

our Redeemer's passion, and of all lower clerks to go through the whole or part of the psalter, or to say so many " belts " of " Our Fathers" for such a merciful purpose.5 To give doles to the aged, the

5 aec ic bidde higon ttette hie 5as godcundan god gedon aet ftere tide fore hiora sawlum, Saet eghwilc messepriost gesinge fore osuulfes sawle twa messan twa fore beornSrySe sawle. 7 aeghwilc diacon arede twa passione fore his sawle twa fore hire ond eghwilc godes 5iow gesinge twa fiftig fore his sawle twa fore hire. Saette ge fore uueuorolde sien geblitsade mid t)em weoroldcundum godum 7 hiora saula mid Sem godcundum godum (Codex Dipl., i, 293, circa A.D. 805). Concerning these passions, see note 65, p. 248,. in vol. ii. of the present work. At the end of the Sherborne chartulary (described in a note to Leland's Itinerary, ii. 57, Oxford, 1744), and [now] possessed by Sir Thomas Phillips, Bart., may be seen a fair Passionale of the Anglo-Saxon period. Before the passion according to St. Mark, there is an illumination of that evangelist ; St. John is also figured before his, and most likely each passion began with a painting of its writer.

It was a common thing for an ecclesiastic to know the whole Psalter off by heart ; hence the ease with which young clerks could readily fulfil the dying request of a benefactor, and say fifty or a hundred psalms for the good of the dead person's soul. In his youth and still a layman, St. Wilfrid knew the whole of the Psalter off by heart : omnem Psalmorum seriem memorialiter . . . didicit [Eddius, in R.S., Ixxi. i. 4]. The singing of the Psalter through once, if not twice, in the same day, was a devotion practised among the Anglo-Saxons, as we learn from St. Beda : — Namque fratres ad aecclesiam principio noctis concurrentes,. psalterium ex ordine decantantes, ad octogesimum tune et secundum cantando pervenerant psalmum. — [Hist. Quin. Abbat., £ 14, ed. Plummer, i. 378.] Cotidie bis psalterium ex ordine decantare curauit (Ceolfridus) [§ 22, ibid., 386]. In a fair Liber psalmorum or psalter, ten and a half inches high by seven inches broad, belonging to me, written out, as it would seem, somewhere within the province of York, and by an Anglo-Saxon hand, a little after St. Edward the Confessor's reign, there is the following prayer to be said before beginning the psalms : — Suscipere dignare Domine Deus omnipotens hos psalmos consecrates quos ego indig- nus peccator decantare cupio in honore nominis tui et beate Marise semper virginis et omnium sanctorum pro me misero, seu

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 5

(5) sick, or the needy, for the good of a friend's or benefactor's soul, was always a favourite religious

(6) practice among the Anglo-Saxons. No sooner did Archbishop Wilfrid breathe his last at Hex- ham minster, which he had built, than its abbot began to bestow daily alms upon the poor for the special behoof and in the name of the departed founder of that house.6 By an early canon of the Anglo-Saxon Church, it was enacted that at the death of a bishop, each one in the diocese should give to the poor a tithe of whatever he had, and the thrall who had fallen into bondage during that episcopacy, was to be let free, for the purpose of winning from God the forgiveness of the dead prelate's sins : every bishop and abbot throughout the land had to get the psalter said six hundred times, and one hundred and twenty masses sung, besides freeing three bondsmen, to each of whom

pro cunctis consanguineis meis vel pro amicis meis necnon et pro illis qui in me habent fiduciam, et pro cunctis fidelibus vivis seu defunctis. Concede Domine Ihesu Christe ut isti psalmi omnibus proficiant ad salutem et ad remedium anime, atque ad veram penitentiam faciendam, necnon et ad vitam feliciter faciant nos pervenire eternam. Amen. This prayer would by itself show that among the reasons for saying the Psalter, one was to ease the souls of the dead.

6 Nam omni die pro eo Missam singularem celebrare, et omni hebdomada quintam feriam, in qua obiit, quasi Dominicam, in epulis venerari ; et anniversaria die obitus sui universas decimarum partes de armentis et de gregibus pauperibus populi sui dividere omnibus diebus vitse suse ad gloriam Dei constituit, absque his eleemosynis, quas omni die pro se et pro anima Episcopi sui semper nominatim simul indigenis et Deo dabat. — Eddius, Vita S. Wilfridi Ebor., Ixiv. [£.£, Ixxi. i. 98].

6 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

were to (7) be given three shillings.7 But this was not all : every servant of God was called upon to keep a fast, and all through the next thirty days, after the (8) canonical hours of the public service were over, seven " belts " of Our Fathers had to be sung for the deceased.8

7 In the council of Calchuth, or Chalkhyth (A.D. 816), there is a canon headed thus : —

Ut episcoporum fiant exequise.

Jubetur . . . ut quandocunque aliquis ex numero episcoporum migraverit de seculo, tune pro anima illius prsecipimus ex sub- stantia uniuscuj usque decimam partem dividere, ac distribuere pauperibus in eleemosyriam, sive in pecoribus et armentis, seu de ovibus et porcis, vel etiam in cellariis ; necnon omnem hominem Anglicum liberare, qui in diebus suis sit servituti subject us, ut per illud sui proprii laboris fructum retributionis percipere mereatur, et indulgentiam peccatorum. . . . Prorsus orationes et eleemosy- nas quse inter nos specialiter condicta habemus ; id est, ut statim per singulas parochias in singulis quibusque ecclesiis,, pulsato signo, omnis famulorum Dei coetus ad basilicam conveniat, ibique pariter xxx psalmos pro defuncti anima decantent. Et postea unusquisque antistes et abbas DC psalteries et cxx missas celebrare faciat, et tres homines liberet, et eorum cuilibet tres solidos dis- tribuat, et singuli servorurn Dei diem jejunent, et xxx diebus canonicis horis expleto synaxeos et vn beltidum Pater noster pro eo cantetur ; et hoc expleto tricesima item die obitus sui tarn bene reficiantur sicut in cujuslibet apostolorum natali die refici soleant et per omnes ecclesias tarn fideliter pro eo agant, sicut moris habeant pro eorum domesticis fidei exorando facere. Ut communi intercessionis gratia, commune cum sanctis omnibus regnum per cipere mereantur seternum. — Synodus Calchuthensis, x., in Wilkins, Concil., i. 171.

8 See note 7, above. Though the reading, in the Cotton MS., of this canon be hopelessly incorrect, its meaning may be easily gathered. This belt of " Pater Nosters " spoken of by one of our Anglo-Saxon councils, held at the beginning of the ninth century, as a thing then in common use, is the earliest notice, at least in western Christendom, of that pious usage of employing a string of some kind or another, the knots, notches, or knobs upon which might serve to tell, as the fingers went on holding one of them

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 7

(9) Sometimes these mortuary doles consisted of money, sometimes of food, occasionally of both together ; and were given not only at the burial, but very often at each year's mind-day of the dead : in not a few instances, they were meant to be distributed on one, if not every day of every

the while a certain prayer was said, exactly when the due number of such supplications had been gone over. What may have been the shape of, what the mode used, in bearing about with them this prayer-belt among the Anglo-Saxons, we do not know : perhaps the girdle worn around the waist by religious persons was of leather, and studded with small metal button-like bosses, or else deeply notched all along that end which, after being fastened by a buckle, hung loose almost to the ground at the wearer's side, so that it could be easily used for telling the " Our Fathers " at prayer-time. What may have been the precise number of such petitions forming a belt of "Pater Nosters," we are unable to guess. During the latter Anglo-Saxon period, it would seem that beads strung together just like our present rosaries, carne to be employed for a similar purpose among lay folks, since we are told how the far-famed Godiva, wife to Count Leofric, bequeathed a circle of threaded jewels upon which her wont was to number her prayers as she said them, to be hung about the neck of the Blessed Virgin Mary's image in a church at Coventry : Cum thesauros vivens ibi (Coventreise) totos congessisset (Godiva), jamjamque moritura circulum gemmarum, quern filo insuerat, ut singularum contactu singulas orationes incipiens numerum non prsetermitteret, huric ergo gemmarum circulum collo imaginis sanctae Marise appendi jussit. — Will. Malmesburiensis, l)e yestis Pontif. Anglor., iv., § 175 [U.S., lii. 311].

Whilst, then, the above native documents are the earliest notices anywhere to be found of the beads as a method for counting the number of prayers to be said, these same documents show that the Anglo-Saxons were the first to bring into use such a devotional appliance, the very name of which leads us back to the times and country of its inventors : for the word " bead " is Anglo-Saxon, meaning " prayer " : beads at first signified, not a lady's adorn ments, but a string of globules for counting prayers. Some such a belt was needful, as by Anglo-Saxon devotion, prayers to a cer tain number were often said. — Canons under K. Edgar, in Thorpe, Ancient Laws, ii. 285.

8 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

week throughout the whole year round.9 For the (10) fulfilment of their pious wishes upon this point, while bequeathing to friends and kinsfolks their land, the Anglo-Saxons charged it with the finding of so much bread, meat, and money, to be thus applied, for ever, to the poor.10 Wishful

9 In quo etiam scripto constituit (Wulfredus archiepiscopus Cantuariensis) elemosinam quam cotidie fieri prsecepit, in illis terris quas ipse adquisivit pro anima sua et pro animabus omnium illorum qui ecclesise aliquid auxilium impendissent. . . . Apud Hergam v. pauperes, apud Otteford v. apud Clive ii. apud Gravenea ii. apud Oesvalun vii. in civitate Dorobernise vi, uni- cuique detur cotidie ad manducandum quod convenienter sit satis, et per annum unicuique pauperi ad vestitum xxvi denarii. Cotidie quoque preecepit missam celeb rari pro animabus supramemoratorum. In anniversario suo prsecepit dari MCC. pauperibus ad manducan dum, cuique panem unum et caseum, aut lardum et denarium unum. (Circa A.D. 832.) — Codex Dip., i. 298.

10 This we find done in many Anglo-Saxon wills ; the holder of certain lands at Bourn, Kent, was bound to give twenty barley loaves every Sunday for Ealdred's soul and Ealhburga's : — suelc mon se Set lond hebbe eghwylce sunnan dege. xx. gesuflra hlafa to Sare cirican for ealdredes saule 7 for ealhburge. (Circa A D. 831.) — Ibid., i. 297. But the following extracts from Osuulf 's will, ratified by Archbishop Wulfred, afford an apt illustration of this religious practice : " I Osuulf, ealderman, with God's grace, and Beornthryth my wife, give to Christ's Church at Canterbury, the land at Stanhamstede, viz., xx carucates to God Almighty and the holy congregation, in the hope and for the reward of the eternal and future life, and for the health of our souls and our children's. • . . I Wulfred then, with God's grace, archbishop, confirm these aforesaid words, and bid that these things be given after a twelve month, from Limene to which this aforesaid land belongs, from the same land at Stanhamstede, cxx wheaten loaves, and xxx clean (of fine flour) simnel cakes, and j sound ox, and iv sheep, and ij flitches, and v geese, and x hens, and x Ib. of cheese, if it be a fowl-day, but if it be a fast-day, let a wey of cheese be given, and of fish, butter, and eggs, what may be got, and xxx ambers of good Welsh ale, which is equivalent to xv mits, and a mit-ful of honey, and ij of wine, whichever is to be had : and of the common goods of the brethren at the minster, let there be given cxx barley loaves in

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 9

that there (11) should be a religious solemnity shed around the very act of distributing these mortuary doles, the Church drew up a form of blessing to be spoken over the food before it was given away ; and from the words of this prayer, all around knew the alms were bestowed in the name and on behalf of that dead man's or woman's soul who had bequeathed such a kind of charitable help to the poor.11

(12) But deeds of a higher, because holier, species of goodwill towards the lowly and forlorn were, upon those sorrowful occasions of a burial, done by the living out of love for the dead : thral dom unhappily was in being among the Anglo- Saxons as well as every other people of Europe in their time ; but often at the behest of a weeping son, the while he bowed him down in prayer by his sire's bier at the foot of the altar, his

alms for their souls, as is done at Christmas-tide ; and let all these aforesaid eatables be delivered to the ruleward, and let him distri bute them as may be most advisable to the brethren and best for their souls. Let the wax also be given to the Church, and do good to their souls for whom it is done. Also I bid my successors who shall have the land at Bourn, that after a twelvemonth, they always against that time get ready ten hundred loaves and as many barley loaves, and deal them out in alms at that time, for my soul, and Osuulf's, and Beornthryth's, at Christchurch, and let the rule- ward tell in the town when the time is," &c. — Cod. Dipl.,\. 292, 293.

11 This is shown by the following Anglo-Saxon rubric, and Latin prayer : C\ve5 this ofer <5one mete the man for deadne gedaeleS.

Prsecamur te Domine clementissime pater, ut elemosina ista fiat in misericordia tua, ut accepta sit cibum istum pro anima famuli tui, ill., ut sit benedictio tua super omnia dona ista, per. — Wanley, Librorum Vet. Catal, p. 83 [in Hickes, Thesaurus].

io THE CHUKCH OF OUR FATHERS

BONDSMEN'S FREEDOM WAS GIVEN THEM OVER THE CORPSE OF THEIR DEAD LORD,

with a wish from his kind-hearted child that his father's soul might ever be prayed for by those who there became freemen only under the promise of fulfilling such an easy stipulation.12 More fre quently, however, the pious father and mother left not such an act of humanity to be done for them by their offspring, nor did the wealthy churchman trust for its performance to the un bidden generosity of his friends and those among his kindred to whom he gave a portion of his lands, but thoughtful of it themselves, they made the freedom of all or some of their serfs a parti cular article marked down in their last will.13 Moreover, the saying of

12 Her ky<5 on )?issere bee $ Waltere Wulfordes sune ureode A]?elune inna Sees Petres mynstre over his faderlic. his fader saule to aliseonisse, 7 his. — MS. in Bib. Cath. Exoniensis, in Hickes, Thes., t. ii., Diss. Epist. p. 15.

13 That this custom was old among the Anglo-Saxons of giving their freedom to bondsmen, for the good of a soul after death, is well shown by a letter to the abbess Eadburga from our St. Boniface. In writing to her the details which he had told him by a certain Anglo-Saxon religious man, of all that the same monk, whilst lying entranced, was given to behold in the other world, among other things, the archbishop says that their countryman spoke thus : — Fratris cujusdam qui paulo ante defunctus est, animam tristem ibi videbam, cui antea ipse in infirmitate exitus sui ministravi, et exequias prsebui, qui mihi moriens pnecepit, ut fratri illius germano verbis illius testificans demandarem, ut an- cillam quandam quam in potestate communiter possederunt, pro anima ejus manumitteret. Sed germanus ejus, avaritia impedi-

PART I, CHAP. VIII. ii

(13) MASS IMMEDIATELY OVER THE TOMB OF

THE DEAD

was, among our Saxon forefathers, another litur gical rite which grew out of their belief in a middle state.

As the year, in creeping round, brought back the (14) anniversary14 of a benefactor, or a friend, or

ente, petitionem ejus non implevit (St. Boniface, Opp., ed. Giles, i. 59). The whole of the archbishop's account of his countryman the Anglo-Saxon monk's vision, is highly curious. In her last will, after setting free many bondsmen and women on her lands, Wyn- flaed says, if there be any others brought by her into thraldom, she trusts her children will let them oft' for her soul's sake : and gif 5aer hwylc witeSeowman sy butan Syson 5e hio geGeowede, hio gelyf 5 to hyre bearnon Gaet hi hine willon lyhtan for hyre saulle (Cud. J)ip. Anglo-Sax., vi. 132). Again: 7 ic wille f man frigse haelve mine men on elcu tune for mine sawlee. 7 *$ man dele seal healf ^ yrue j5 ic haebbe on selcu tune for mire sawle — Ibid., iii. 273, ^Elflaed's Will. And he wyle 5aet man freoge aefter his daege aelcne witefaestne man Se on his timan forgylt waere (Abp. ^Elfric's Will, Ib., p. 352). Like bequests of freedom to bondsmen for the same object occur at pp. 360, 361. Wulf wished : xxx de mancipiis meis libertatem pro anima mea habeant. — Ibid., iv. 289. 14 Hard by where King Oswald set up a wooden cross, and kneel ing with all his army before it, begged of God to give him victory, just before he began the onset with the barbarians near the Roman wall, stood Hexham minster. For years afterwards, until assured by miracles that the holy warrior was a saint in heaven, did the brotherhood of that church go to the spot the evening before the day upon which Oswald was slain in another battle ; and having spent the night in keeping a wake, that is, in singing that part of the Church-service still called Vigiiise- Mortuorum, or " matins and lauds," they offered up in behalf of his soul the holy sacrifice of the mass during the morning : Fratres Hagustalderisis ecclesise, . . . advenientes omni anno pridie quam postea idem rex Oswald occisus est, vigilias pro salute animse ejus facere, plurimaque psalmorum laude celebrata, victimam pro eo mane sacrse oblationis offerre

12 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

of their religious brethren, the Anglo-Saxon monks would (15) go to the churchyard wherein they lay buried, and pitching a tent there, on the very spot, sing psalms beneath its roof, and offer up, upon a temporary altar which overspread the grave itself, the holy sacrifice of the mass, during some days, for the souls of those, their friends more especially, whose bodies were crumbling into dust below.15 Like feelings gave rise to

(Beda, Hi*t. Ecc., iii. 2). The mass for such an occasion is pre served in a very valuable monument of the Anglo-Saxon times.

MlSSA IN ClMITKRIO.

Deus cujus miseratione animse fidelium requiescunt animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum, vel omnibus in hoc cimiterio quiescentibus, da propitius veniam peccatorum ut a cunctis reati- bus absolutes sine fine laetentur. per.

Alia.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, annue, qusesumus, precibus nostris ea que poscimus, et dona omnibus, quorum hie corpora requiescunt, refrigerii sedem, quietis beatitudinem, luminis claritatem ; ut qui peccatorum suorum pondere pregravantur, eos supplicatio com- mendet secclesie. per.

Seer eta.

Pro animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum et omnium hie dormientium, hostiam, Domine, suscipe benignus oblatam, ut hoc sacrificio singular! vinculis horrende mortis exute vitam mereantur seternam. per.

Post Communionem.

Deus, fidelium lumen animarum, adesto supplicationibus nostris, et da omnibus quorum corpora hie requiescunt refrigerii sedem, quietis beatitudinem, luminis claritatem. per. — Egbert Pontifical, 56.

15 In recording the burning of Croyland minster, then called Ancarig, and the slaughter of its monks by the Danes, Ingulph gives us a strong instance of Anglo-Saxon piety in praying for the dead : multo sudore omnia monachorum dicti monasterii corpora comportata, numero 84 in medio coemiterio dicti monasterii, con tra frontern ecclesise quondam orientalem, scilicet in uno latissimo

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 13

(16) CHURCHYARD AND WAYSIDE CROSSES.

In setting up at the south end of their burial grounds a tall stone rood,16 graven with its many sculptures, but especially the figure of Christ our Lord outstretched upon it, one of the objects which the pious Anglo-Saxons had before their eyes while doing so, was that all who went into church might thus be put in mind to remember in their prayers the souls of those whose bodies were mouldering beneath the green sod of that hallowed ground. Not only within their church yards, but by the pathside, was it the practice among the Anglo-Saxons to raise beautifully wrought stone crosses; (17) and of those tokens of Christianity which are yet left standing, the greater part seem to have been erected to mark the spot whereon some distinguished individual

tumulo ad hoc aptato . . . sepilivit, ponens supra corpus abbatis in medio filiorum suorum quiescentis petram piramidalem tres pedes in altitudine et tres in longitudine et unum in latitudine continen- tem, insculptasque imagines abbatis ac monachorum suorum cir- cumstantium gestantem . . . et omni anno quam diu vixit, semel visitans, supraque petram suum tentorium figens, pro animabus ibidem sepultorum Missas per biduum devotione continua cele- bravit (abbas Godricus), . . . et crucem lapideam similiter imagine Salvatoris insculptam . . . prsedictus abbas Godricus tune ibidem posuit . . . ut transeuntes viatores memores monasterii sanc- tissimi pro animabus fidelium in ipso coemiterio quiescentium preces Domino solverent. — Ingulph, Hist. [ed. W. de Gray Birch, 1883, pp. 40, 41].

16 Of such a cross put up by St. Cuthberht, see note 67 in vol. ii. of this work, p. 249.

i4 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

either had met with sudden death, been killed, or whereat the corpse was set down by its bearers while they halted a few hours for rest and prayer on the road to its burial-place, and thus ask each wayfarer to breathe, on going by, a short supplication to Christ for his forgiveness, and that everlasting happiness in heaven which he bought for us on the cross, unto the dead man's soul.17 Nay, so strong were these (18) Anglo-

17 The Runic legend upon the curious cross at Lancaster says, — Pray for Cynibald son of Cuthert (Archaeological Journal, iii. 72), where the cross itself and its runes are figured. " The old cross " — c5a ealdan rode — is not unfrequently noticed in Anglo- Saxon deeds and grants of property, as one of the landmarks of a township. — Kemble, Cod. Dip. Anglo-Sax., vi. 2, 177.

The smarts of purgatory, and those various depths in its cleansing fires unto which, according to Anglo-Saxon belief, each soul, on falling into that burning pool, was made to sink, as the blots of sin were few or many upon it, are strongly set forth in Archbishop St. Boniface's description of an Anglo-Saxon monk's trance, wherein we are told how : Nee non et igneum piceumque flumen bullions et ardens mirse formidinis et teterrimse visionis cernebat, super quod lignum pontis vice positum erat, ad quod sanctse gloriosreque animse ab illo secedentes conventu, propera- bant desiderio alterius ripse, transire cupientes, et qusedam non titubantes constanter transibant : qusedam vero labefactse de ligno cadebant in tartareum flumen : et alise tingebantur quasi toto corpore mersse : alise autem ex parte quadam veluti ad genua media, qusedam vero usque ad ascellas : et tamen unaquseque cadentium multo clarior speciosiorque de flumine in alterant ascendebat ripam quam prius in piceum bulliens cecidisset flumen. Et unus ex beatis angelis, de illis cadentibus animabus dixit : Hse animse sunt quse post exitum mortalis vitae quibusdam levibus vitiis non omnino ad purum abolitis aliqua pia miserentis Dei castigatione indigebant ut Deo dignae ofterantur. — St. Boniface, Opp., ed. Giles, i. 57.

In his account of Ripon minster, Leland says : — " One thing I much notid, that was 3 crossis standing in row at the est ende of the chapelle garth. They were thinges antiqnissiini operis, and monumentes of sum notable men buried there." He calls these

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 15

Saxon cravings, that they must needs make themselves known through the smaller actions of (19) life, and on the slightest opportunity. Hence in bestowing a psalter, or a copy of the gospels, or any other liturgical codex upon his favourite church, the high-born Anglo-Saxon would ofttimes have written at the beginning of the volume a wish, set forth in prose or verse, asking of those who might take up and read its pages, to pour out a short prayer in behalf of the soul of him who gave the book.18 In bidding,

crosses " tokens of the old monasterie left after the depopulation of the Danes " (Itin., i. 90). At Heddenham was the base of a cross, now removed to Ely minster, commemorating Ovinus, Etheldreda's steward, native here, who died about 680.

*J* Lucem . Tuam . Ovino . Da . Deus . Et . Requie . Amen .

— Camden, Britannia, ed. Gough, ii. 141*.

An Anglo-Saxon bishop of Worcester has left us a very valuable notice of these burial crosses : — " Ad locum ubi sacrum corpus ejus (S. Aldhelmi) jacebat, lta ferme milibus ultra Meldunense monasterium situm deveni (ait S. Eguinus Wigorn. Epis.) ; et ad sepulturam adduxi et honorifice sepelivi, mandans ut, in quocun- que loco sacrum corpus in asportatione pausaverat, sacrse crucis erigerentur signacula." Manent omnes cruces, nee ulla earum vetustatis sensit injuriam ; vocanturque biscepstane, id est lapides episcopi (Will. Malmesb., Vita Aldlielini Epis. Scireburnensis, in Gesta Pontif., v. § 230) [R.S., lii. 384]. From a passage a little before, it would seem that one of these stone crosses was set up at every seven miles on the road between Doulting, the place of the saint's death, and Malmesbury, where he was buried :— Celebris ilia pompa funeris fuit, dum pro miraculorum frequentia figerentur semper lapidese cruces ad septem miliaria. — Ibid., p. 383.

18 Hunc codicem ^ESelstan rex devota mente Dorobernensi tribuit ecclesise beato Augustine dicatre. Et quisquis hoc legerit omnipotenti pro eo proque suis fundat preces (MS. Bib. Reg. i, A.

16 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

just before death, a last (20) farewell to all their friends, or in stating what words they wished to be cut upon their own gravestone, the most learned and eminent of our Anglo-Saxon scholars, like Beda19 and Alcuin,20 earnestly (21) besought a remembrance in the prayers of all who lived after them.

xviii., in the British Museum). In another codex may be read these line's : —

Qui legis inscriptos versus rogitare memento Xpin ac in requie semper die vivat Athelwerd Qui dedit hunc thomii Aedhelmo pro quo sibi Xps Munera larga ferat largitor crimina laxans.

— Corpus Christi Camb. MS., 23.

Upon this as well as every other point of Catholic belief, our Anglo-Saxons kept up a strict communion with the rest of the Church on the Continent ; for at the death of his great friend Pope Hadrian I., the Emperor Charlemagne sent over to Offa, king of the Mercians, a baldric, a sword, and two silk mantles for him self, besides dalmatics and altar-palls to be distributed among the cathedral churches of this country, with a request that prayers should be said for the good of the dead pontiff's soul : — cognoscat quoque dilectio vestra quod aliquam benignitatem de dalmaticis nostris vel palliis ad singulas sedes episcopales regni vestri vel Ethelfredi direximus in eleemosynam Domni Apostolici Hadriani deprecantes ut pro eo intercedi jubeatis . . . vestrse quoque dilec- tioni unum baltheum et unum gladium Huniscum et duo pallia serica. — Epist. ad Offam Itegem Merciorum, in Baluze, Capit. Iteg. Fra.ic., i. 197, Venetiis 1772 [P./-., xcviii. 907].

19 See before in this work, ii. 241, note 57.

20 Alchwin nomen erat sophiam mihi semper amanti,

Pro quo f unde preces mente, legens titulum. — Alcuini Epitaphium, in Mabillon, A A. SS. 0. £., v. 154.

Of this epitaph, written for himself by Alcuin, it is said by the writer of his life— who gathered his facts from the mouth of Alcuin's scholar and friend, Sigulf, of the church of York : — super cujus tumulum positus est, sicut ipse jusserat titulus quern ipse vivens dictaverat, lamina scriptus in serea, parietique insertus. — Ibid., p. 153.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 17

This knowledge that something more could be done than sighing forth idle bemoanings for the fondly beloved but death-stricken object of affec tion, was thought to hallow while it sweetened Christian friendship ; and it was held that, of two friends, he whom death carried off the first, ought to be looked upon as the happier, leaving behind him, as he did, one who, with a brother's love, would daily call upon heaven for its forgiveness to his deceased friend, the blemishes of whose early years he would strive and wash out with his own living tears. Nay, it was deemed that such a holy care for the departed soul, must avail alike the living who bestowed it and the dead on whom it was bestowed : the living would earn for himself the meet reward of such a work of true belief and love ; to the dead, his punishment would be light ened, or his happiness made greater.21 But

THE WITNESS OF HEAVEN WAS YIELDED TO THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY.

For had they wanted, which they did not, other arguments, besides the teaching of the Church, to (22) help their belief in this Catholic doctrine of a

21 Si duo sunt amici, felicior est mors praecedentis quam subse- quentis ; habet enim qui fraterno amore pro se quotidie intercedat, et lacrymis lavat pristinse errores vitse. Nee dubites prodesse pise sollicitudinis curam, quam pro anima illius geris. Tibi proficit, et illi. Tibi itaque, quee in fide facis et dilectione : illi, ut vel pcena levigetur, vel beatitudo augeatur. — Alcuin, Epist. cc. ad Edilthru- dam[P.L. 0.474,475].

VOL. III. B

i8 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

middle state, the Anglo-Saxons might have easily found them in the records of many a miracle, as they looked through the writings or read the lives of those among their countrymen who have, from time to time, shed upon this and other lands the light of their learning, and filled them with the sweetness of their holiness.22

22 From the life of St. Lioba (who with some nuns was sent from Winborne over to St. Boniface in Germany), we learn that Tetta, the abbess of that minchery in Dorsetshire, beheld how the heaped-up grave of a nun there, who had died unforgiving the over-sternness of a superior, by its sinking down into a deep hollow, showed the soul of the dead was ill at rest, and therefore needed prayers ; and how, after fastings and supplications in its behalf to God, that spirit got set free from purgatory, which be came known to the sisterhood by the uprising of the grave and its little hillock to its first height : — Defuncta est ergo in hac perti- nacia. et sepulturse tradita (monialis), tumulusque super sepul- chrum ejus congesto terrse aggere compositus est. Mater congre- gationis venerabilis Tetta . . . perrexit ad tumulum, et mirum in modum conspexit terram quee desuper congesta erat subsedisse^ et usque ad semipedis spatium infra summitatem sepulchri descen- disse. Quo viso vehementer expavit : iritellexit enim ex defectu teme,, pcenam sepultee; et severitatem justi judicii Dei perpendit ex detrimento sepulchri. . . . Pro defuncta sorore eas (moniales) obsecravit, ut quidquid ante mortem in quamlibet earum peccasse videbatur, ex animo remittentes, secum pariter orationi incum- berent, et pro absolutione illius divinam clementiam invocarent. C unique omnes unanimiterexhortationibusejus annuissent, indixit eis triduanum jejunium, monens unamquamque psalmodiis et vigiliis ac precibus sanctis pro ea studiosius insistere. Die autem tertia, expleto jejunio,cum omni congregatione virginum basilicam intravit, et illis litanias facientibus, et nomen Salvatoris invocan- tibus, ipsa cum lacrymis ante altare, pro anima defunctao sororis rogatura, prosternitur. Cumque in oratione persisteret, fossa sepulchri, quse prius pene vacua videbatur, humo excrescente, paullatim ccepit repleri : ita ut uno eodemque momento et ipsa ab oratione resurgeret, et terra sepulchrum complanaret. Qua de re manifeste ostenditur, quod cum monumentum visibiliter ad priorem statum rediit per orationes sanctse virginis, defunctre animam

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 19

(23) Carrying out in practice the pious dictates of such a tenet, no wonder the Anglo-Saxon Church (24) decreed, as she did in her synods, that, at all the canonical hours of the public ser vice, the clergy should pray not only in behoof of

virtus divina invisibiliter absolvit. — Rudolf of Fulda, ssec. ix., Vita S. Liaise, in Mabillon, AA. SS. B. iv. 223, 224.

The vision in which the Anglo-Saxon ankret St. Balther saw the soul of one who,, through shame, had once kept back a sin in con fession, writhing under its purgatorial torments,, and afterwards, its joyful flight up to heaven when he had poured forth to God long and earnest prayers in its behalf, is well pictured in the following lines, from the pen of an unknown monk of York, who was perhaps our Alcuin : —

Vir pius ille quidem quodam dum tempore solus

Incubuit precibus meditans ccelestia tantum ;

Horribilem subito strepitum simul atque fragorem

Audivit, veluti vulgi erumpentis in hostes.

Tune anima ex superis cujusdam nubibus ejus

Ante pedes cecidit, nimio tremefacta timore

Quam mox turba minax ingenti horrore secuta est,

Cum variis miseram poenis torquere volentum.

At Pater ille pius placidis amplexibus illam

Arripuit gremio, statimque inquirit ab ilia

Quse esset, cur f ugeret, faceret vel quse mala : cui tune

Respondit :

Et culpam erubui juvenis in carne fateri Nunc idcirco feri duris incursibus hostes Post triginta dies meme torquere sequuntur.

Tune pius interventor humo prosternitur, atque Cum lacrymis Domino pro culpa supplicat ilia. Nee prius ille preces desistit f undere sacras, Quam propriis animam ferri vidisset ocellis Altius angelicas cceli super astra per ulnas.

— Frag. Hist, de Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecc. Eboracensis, Anon., circ. A.D. 785. Ed. Mabillon, AA. SS. 0. B. iv. 508 [P.L. ci. 839, 840]. How the shackles used to fall from the wrists of the living but captive warrior, every day, at the hour that mass was offered up by his brother for his soul, under the impression that he was among the slain, has been already noticed (ii. 243) in this work.

20 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

the living but also of the dead, for the good of whose souls she likewise enjoined that the holy sacrifice of the Mass was to be often offered up.23 Lay folks, too, (25) were called upon to fulfil the same charitable office every day ; and as a help to them in its performance, those same councils pointed out the exact form of supplication for every one to say, either in Latin, the language of the liturgy, or in their own native Saxon, as best they might be able.24

The Anglo-Saxon's and the Norman's belief being the same upon this as on every other point of doctrine, Norman was like Anglo-Saxon practice in following it.

23 Statuerunt ut deinceps per canonicas orationum horas non solum pro se ecclesiastic! sive monasteriales, sed etiam pro regibus ac ducibus totiusque populi christiani incolumitate, divinam incessanter exorarent clementiam . . . et ut pro viventibus divina precaretur dementia, et pro mortuis pise placationis celebratio ssepius pro illarum requie animarum, per plurimorum officia sacerdotum Christi ageretur, &c. — Condi. Cloveshoviense (A.D. 747), in Wilkins, Cone., i. 100.

24 Sive dum pro se ut faciant in ilia sancta modulatione, Deum multiplici modo et laudant et orant ; sive etiam pro aliis, viventi bus seu mortuis, cum expleta quantalibet psalmodia, genu flectentes in orationem, et lingua Latina, vel qui earn non didicerunt, sua Saxonica dicunt : " Domine miserere illi et parce peccatis illius, et converte ilium, ut faciat voluntatem tuam : " sive id pro mor tuis : " Domine secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, da requiem animse illius, atque ei pro tua immensa pietate gaudia lucis seternse donare cum tuis sanctis dignare." — Ibid., p. 99.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 21

SOUL-SHOT

under another though not so fit a name — mor tuary25 (26) — continued to be paid; and while

25 Sic dictum eo quod relinquitur ecclesise pro anima defuncti . . . et quia cum mortuo, tempore sepulture, consuevit ad ecclesiam deferri. — Lyndwood [i. 3, p. 21, note o]. Archbishop Langton in one of the constitutions (A.D. 1209) for his province of Canterbury, while speaking about an older statute on the subject, lets us see what were the grounds upon which the Church founded her right to these mortuary gifts : Satagebat idem predecessor saluti con- sulere animarum, eo quod considerabat laicos utriusque sexus sub- ditos suos, quandoque per ignorantiam, nonnunquam vero per negligentiam et injustam decimarum et oblationum suarum deten- tionem graviter deliquisse. Et quia non dimittitur peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum, prudenter attendens, salubriter statuit, quod pro recompensatione decimarum taliter subtractarum . . . secun- dum melius animal defuncti, ecclesire damnum passe debuit applicari ... ad solutionem mortuarii de jure debiti contradict ores et rebelles volumus per locorum ordinaries censura ecclesiastica coarctari. — Wilkins, Condi., i. 530. Such, too, are the reasons given by the Synod of Exeter (A.D. 1289), ibid., ii. 158. In old English wills, it is no uncommon thing to meet with a bequest to a church " in recompense of tithes and oblations forgotten and not paid," as in that of Elizabeth, Lady Latimer (A.D. 1480), Test. Vet., i. 359. The best animal the deceased died worth, went to his parish church as his mortuary, which for a knight was, in general, a war-horse trapped in all its military harness. Sir Wil liam Vavasour says (A.D. 1311): "Corpus meum ad sepelliendum in nova capella Sancti Leonardi de Heselwod: et pro mortuario meo meliorem equum meum cum armis ad militem pertinentibus." — Wills, etc., of the Northern Counties, i. 13. This chapel is, and always has remained, in Catholic hands, and being extra-parochial, is one among the very few old buildings of Catholic worship in England which has never been desecrated by the performance within its walls of a heterodox service. In his will (dated A.D. 1345), Richard de la Pole, knight, leaves : — Meliorem palefridum meum debito modo paratum eidem ecclesie nomine mortuarii mei. — Test. Ebor., p. 7. But other objects of the same or higher value were often presented : the rich sacrificial garments, the costly orna ments, and the sacred vessels called his "chapel" were usually left, under this name of mortuary, by a bishop to his cathedral,

22 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

those endowments which the Anglo-Saxon thane had made to gain for his soul the prayers, through

as we learn from several curious inventories of such liturgical appliances (Wills, &c., i. i, 2, 3, &c.) ; while by both men and women in the middle ranks of life, their bettermost garments were thought to be no insufficient equivalent. Thus Thomas Harpham gives (A.D. 1341), meliorem supertunicam meam cum capucio ejus dem sectse fururatam nomine mortuarii. — Test. Ebor., p. 2 ; and Helen de Bilburgh bequeaths — pro mortuario meo unam super tunicam cum capucio (ibid., p. 3) ; Agnes Percehay leaves forty shillings in money — pro mortuario meo xls. — Ibid., p. 53. The more usual practice was that followed by William Bevill, who says in his will (A.D. 1487), "my best hors, in ye name of my mortuary, after the custom of the cuntre." — Test. Vet., ii. 78 1 . The more solemn offering of a baron's and a sovereign's mortuary, has already been mentioned in this work, ii. 407, &c. ; but there was another kind which asks for our notice here. The living showed their esteem for a dead friend by sending one or more wide rich palls of golden cloth, to be strewed by their messenger, if they did not go themselves and with their own hands outspread them at offer ing-time, over the coffin as the body lay before the altar during Mass : such costly presents were kept by the church as a part of the mortuary gift, and vestments were made out of them : thus — In die funeracionis (Richardi Kellowe episcopi Dunelmensis) Thomas Comes Lancastrise optulit super corpus ejusdem iij pannos rubeos cum armis ejusdem; de quibus facta sunt vestimenta ilia in quibus celebratur quando conventus est in albis. Rex vero Edwardus secundus post conquistum misit ab Eboraco elemosina- rium suum Dunelmum et de pannis auro textis corpus honoravit. — Wills, &c., of the Northern Counties, i. 21. John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, in his will (A.D. 1347), says : leo voile que touz les draps d'or et de seye qui serront offortz pour mon corps . . . demoergent a la dit esglise ou mon corps serra enterretz. — Test. Eborac., p. 42. When Ralph, Lord Nevill, was buried (A.D. 1355), four costly palls, which afforded the materials for as many vest ments, were offered. At our royal obsequies, this rite used to be performed with more than common solemnity : in describing Richard II.'s funeral, Hardyng tells us how : —

At Ponies his Masse was done and diryge, In hers royall semely to royalte, The Kyng & lordes clothes of golde there offerde, Some viii. some ix. upon his herse were proferde. — Hardyng, Chronicle, ed. Ellis, p. 357. When Prince Arthur,

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 23

future (27) ages, of the poor, by the distribution of alms among them, were in many instances

Henry VII. 's eldest son, was buried, " all the offerings of money done, the Lord Powys went to the queere doore, where two gentlemen ushers delivered him a rich palle of cloth of gould of tyssue which he offred to the corpse, where two officers of armes receaved it, and laid it along the corpse. The Lord Dudley in like manner oft'red a palle, which the said officers laid over the corpse. The Lord Greye Ruthen oft'red another ; and every each of the three Earles offred to the corpse three palles of the same cloth of gould: the lowest Earle began first. All the palles were layd crosse over the corpse. That done, the sermon beganne," &c. — Leland, Colled., v. 380. After the offering of the mass-penny, at Henry VII.'s burial in Westminster Abbey, " twoe herauds came againe unto the said Duke of Buck, and to the Earles, and con veyed them into the revestrie, where they did receive certen palles which everie of them did bringe solempnly betwene theire hands, and cominge in order one before another, as they were in degree, unto the said herse, they kissed theire said palles, and delivered them unto the said heraudes which laide them uppon the Kyngs corps, in this manner: the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck, was laid on length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick as they might lie. Which palles were offered in the manner aforesaid, in token of their homage which they of dutie ought to doe unto the Kinge." — Ibid., iv. 308. In " The ordre of the ofteringe at the Masse of Requiem " at the burial of Queen Mary in the same church, we find thus described under an especial rubric, " The Offeringe of the Paules : " " Item, the Ladyes stode uppe within the hersse, and the Lady Northe came fourth to the ralle at the hedd, unto whome Garter delyvered twoo paules, whoo, with the officers of armes before her, went about the hersse, and at the feate of the said Lady (Queen Mary) offered the said paules, the which were reseved by the fore- said Garter, and laid on the feet of the corsse acrosse ; and when she had don she retorned to the hersse agayne. Item, all the Baronesses did offer ij paules a pece in lyke manner. Item, all Countesses did offer iiij paules a pece in like manner." — Ibid., v. 322. Among the liturgical practices of old Catholic England, few are more fitting to be brought back into use than this custom of strewing the bier with such gifts as may be wrought up into sacred garments, or can otherwise help to ornament the house of God. While the living show their sorrow for the loss of their dead friend, or relative, in a way so lasting and becoming, they at the

24 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

faithfully administered (28) for that purpose, up to the times of our eighth Henry,26 the Anglo- Norman and the English (29) baron strove, each in his day. to outdo the pious munificence of his Saxon forerunners, whose design (30) and wishes, upon this religious subject, were exactly like his own. Of this, proof might be (31) gathered after proof. Within many of our larger churches in the olden time, often did straying pilgrims gaze with admiring wonderment upon the rich silver cross fashioned as a reliquary, and on the precious vessel wrought with beauteous skill for holding the adorable Eucharist, as hovering, dove-like, it hung down from the chancel's roof. On asking about them, those strangers learned, in many instances, that such ornaments — perhaps, too, the

same time aid in providing for the decent administration of the holy sacrifice ; and on each occasion they happen to behold the vestments, the frontals, or the curtains made out of their mortu ary offering, they will be reminded to pray for the soul of him or her in whose behalf that gift was presented.

26 Among the alms given away to the poor by the monastery of Peterborough when its lands were seized by our old Harry, were : Elemosina data pauperibus orantibus pro animabus regis Piade, Ulferi, et Etheldredi fundatorum predicti monasterii (De Burgo S. Petri) tarn in festis principalibus quam in festis duplicibus ex antiqua fundacione cxvs. viijrf. Et in denariis annuatim solutis octo pauperibus hominibus existentibus in hospitali Sci Leonardi juxta burgum . . . ibidem cotidie orantibus pro animabus funda torum predictorum ex antiqua fundacione, &c. — Valor. Eccl., iv. 283. Again another religious house, the monastery of the B. V. Mary at Middleton, until the same period, kept up the custom of bestowing : Elemosina pro anima regis Athelstani f undatoris monasterii (Beate Marie Virginis de Myddelton). In elemosinis annuatim distributis xiij pauperibus ville de Myddelton, &c., xxxZ. vijs. xrf. — Valor. EccL, i. 251.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 25

splendid signet of gold which they beheld glisten ing on the shrine, but which a weeping husband had drawn from off his widowered finger to bestow upon it — had been all brought by him at offertory-time, in the Mass sung over the corpse of his beloved spouse, unto that altar, and left there not merely for a burial gift, but to be so many earnests by which he meant to bind himself before God and man that he would grant broad lands — some rich manor — and thus provide un ceasing prayers within those hallowed walls for his dead wife's, his friends', and when he himself should die, his own soul, for (32) evermore:27 many an ornament, meetly beautiful, so came to the Church.28

27 Willielmus de Albeneyo (temp. Henrici primi) . . . assistens ad exequias uxoris suae Matildis . . . gemens et plorans, et ad salutem ejusdem defunctae prospiciens pro spe retributionis aeternae, pro salute regis Henrici . . . pro anima regis Willielmi . . . contradidit ecclesiae sanctse Dei genetricis et perpetuae Virginia Marise de Wymundham. . . . manerium quod vocatur Hapesburg, in elemosinam sempiternam. . . . Hanc donationem confirmavit ipse W. de Albeneyo ipso die sepultures ejus (Matildis) per crucem argenteam in qua reconditae sunt reliquiae . . . et per annulum ejus aureum per cifum quoque argenteum in modum sphserae mira arte fabricatum et ad Eucharistiam proprie con- servandam. Quae omnia super altare posuit per manum episcopi, facta supplicatione et completa letania, jam missam celebraturi. — Mon. AngL, iii. 330.

28 Under these feelings, a master of Sherborne Hospital made the following bequest to the church of that house: — Textum meum argenteum lego domui de Schyreburn, et rogo quatenus quotienscunque ad ornatum altaris deferatur singuli fratrum et sororum singulis diebus dicant pro anima mea orationem Domini- cam cum salutacione Beatae Virginis ; et hoc scribatur in marti- logio. — Wills, &c., of the Northern Counties, p. 7.

26 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

To help by alms-deeds the poor man's wants, on the condition that he pray for certain departed souls, is an act of brotherly love kind alike to wards the living and the dead, the performance of which ever has been, and still continues to be, strongly urged upon her children by the Church. On the (33) burial-day, therefore, were invariably distributed not only by the Anglo-Saxons, but by the people of this country till the last moment of England's Catholicism, doles of some sort or another, which, if not always, at least often, reached a high amount.29 (34) Not only the feeble,

29 yery large doles either in money, in food, or in clothing, were bestowed upon the poor at burials : William le Vavasour says — Die sepulturse mese in distributione pauperum, videlicet cuilibet jd. sexaginta sex libras tresdecim solidos et quatuor denarios et plus si necesse fuerit. — Wills, d-c., of the Northern Counties, i. 14. Richard, Bishop of Durham (A.D. 1316), provides thus for his burial dole : Lego pauperibus die sepulturse mese centum marcas. — Test. Ebor., p. i. Hugh of Tunsted makes the following bequest : Lego ad distribuendum pauperibus in die sepulturse mese decem quarteria frumenti in pane seu pecunia ad valorem tanti bladi, secundum discretionem executorum meorum. — Ibid., p. 18. I will — says Joan, Viscountess L'Isle — that my executors provide three hundred shirts and smocks for poor folk, the one half for men, the other for women. — Test. Vet., ii. 466. The dinner given to the friends of the dead on the day of burial was in general costly, and the alms to the poor most plentiful : Do et lego — says Ralph Neville, Lord of Raby and Earl of Westmorland (who died A.D. 1440) — De bonis meis ad valorem ccc. marcarum, pro convivio et expensis funeralibus ; et xl/. ulterius ad distribuendum pauperibus in ele- mosina per duos dies tantum ; videlicet utroque die distribuendo xx/. — Wills, &c. , of the Northern Counties, p. 72. Alan, master of Sherborne Hospital (A.D. 1411), says: Volo ut die exequiarum mearum xx marcse pauperibus distribuantur. . . . Item volo ut die obitus mei executores mei conveniant in prandio cum amicis meis per eos invitandis, sumptibus meis, et cibent L pauperes, et habeant secum fragmenta sua, &c. — Ibid., 52. Ego W. Percehay,

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 27

the bedridden,30 and the old, but helpless child hood and the fatherless, were (35) thought for on such occasions ; and amongst all these, the poor maiden who, being without friends or help, might miss her chance of entering into holy wedlock,

dominus de Ryton . . . lego in distribucione pauperum xl. libras argenti. Et volo quod executores obligentur periculo animae suse quod nullus pauper recedat sine denario vel pane equivalente denarii. — Test, Ebor., p. 6. Ego Petrus del Hay ... do lego in distribucione pauperum quinque marcas arg'. Et convocatione vicinorum meorum duas marcas. — Ibid., 12. Lego in convocacione amicorum tres boves, quatuor vitulos, xvj oves, iiij porcos. — Ibid., 327. See also the will of John Fairfax, rector of Prescote, ibid., 187. Other testamentary bequests are to a like purport : Also I will that on the day of my byrying that ilk a pur man that es at the kyrk door present have ane ob', when the Messe es done. — Test. Ebor., p. 185.

30 Lego ad distribuendum, die sepulturae mese, cecis, claudis, et pauperibus in lecto languentibus, x*-. — Test. Ebor., p. 325. Eliza beth, Countess of Salisbury, bequeathed (A.D. 1414), "to fourscore poor men and women bedridden, xxvi/. xiii.s. ivd., viz. to each of them vis. viiid." — Test. Vet., i. 184. Joane, Lady Bergavenny, de vised (A.D. 1434), "c/. ... to be given and dealt among bed-rid men and other poor people," &c. — IUd., 226. Sir Thomas Bryan, Knight, says : " I bequeath ... in almes at my burying, five pounds by penny mete to bed-ridden folks. " — Ibid.,ii. 552. In his will (dated 1419), Sir Thomas de Hengrave : — Lego cuilibet pauperum vocatorum bedlawermen infra civitatem predictam (Norwich) iiij (7. ad orandum pro anima mea. — MSS. at Hem/rave. To bestow an alms on poor bedridden folks was a favourite pious practice up to the change of religion in this country : Stow., in his description of Houndsditch, London, lets us know how it was followed even in his early years — In my youth, I remember, devout people, as well men as women of this city, were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Fridays weekly, to walk that way purposely, and there to bestow their charitable alms, every poor man or woman lying in their bed within their window, which was towards the street open so low, that every man might see them ; a clean linen cloth lying in their window, and a pair of beads; to show that there lay a bedrid body, unable but to pray only. — Survey of London, i. B. ii., p. 23, ed. Strype.

28 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

was not forgotten, and ofttimes a portion of the funeral alms was especially allotted by will to be bestowed as the marriage dowry for destitute orphan girls.31

(36) Though our old English Church, at the last words of her touching burial-service, as set forth in the Salisbury and other national uses, bade the grave to shut up the lifeless lump of clay just lowered down within it, and to let that dust moulder all unseen beneath its dark some shroud, she did not tell those friends who stood around weeping, to snatch a farewell gaze of the coffin, then go home, lock up their alms- store, and take no further heed about him or her whom they left there, but think how best they might feast, or be feasted by, the living : quite otherwise ; she taught our forefathers never to forget the dead, but to let the stream of kindness flow for their sake, and thus soften the cleansing smarts felt by the undying souls of friends and kinsfolk in the other world, by daily,

31 "I will," says Richard Towler (A.D. 1477), "that xl. be dis posed of at my burying among poor people, and that x£. be given to the marriage of poor maidens not having father or mother." — Test. Vet., i. 345. Thomas Spencer gave c marks to a c poor men's daughters to buy them kine at their marriage. — Dugdale, War wickshire, i. 329. Dame Alice Wyche willed — to poor husbands ploughmen in the country such as have wives and children, and poor widows, and other such poor diligent labourers in poor vil lages, cd. — item to one hundred poor householders, to have every one of them a milch cow and xiiis. ivc/., and three ewes, price xvirf. a piece ; item, in marriage of poor maidens of good conversation in the country, and in mending the highways, cc^. — Test. Vet.,\. 337.

PAKT I. CHAP. VIII. 29

by weekly, monthly, or at least by yearly doles given in their name to Christ's poor here upon earth.32 While England remained Catholic, many of its aged poor were wholly supported by these (37) means alone,33 and a greater number owed

32 The dead themselves are often made, in those quaint rhymes traced upon their grave-brasses, to warn the living of their death- day, and get ready for it ; at the same time they bid them now to spend their wealth in works of holiness, telling them that what is hoarded here is lost, and that kept which is given unto God and the wants of the poor : —

Quisquis ades vultumque vides, sta, perlege, plora, Juditii memor esto tui, tua nam venit hora. Sum quod eris, fueramque quod es, tua posteriora Commemorans miseris miserans pro me, precor, ora.

Non homo leteris tibi copia si fluat eris Hie non semper eris, memor esto quod morieris Corpus putrebit, quod habes alter habebit Es evanebit, quod agis tecum remanebit.

— Weever, Ant. Fun. Monum., 223.

Verses in English, speaking the same awful truths, may be found written over some graves, thus : —

Have yis (this) in mynd and memory

Ye yat (that) liven lerneth to dy.

And beholdyth here yowr destine,

Such as ye erne, sometym weren we.

Ye sail be dyght in yis (this) aray

Be ye nere so stout and gay.

Therfor frendys we yow prey

Make you redy for to dey

Yat (that) ye be not forr sinn atteynt

At ye dey of judgment.

— Ibid., 198.

As I was, so be ye, as I am, you shall be ; What I gave, that I have, what I spent, that I had : Thus I count all my cost, what I left, that I lost.

— Ibid., 207.

33 Besides other alms, Cerne Abbey, Dorsetshire, was charged with the distribution of the following ones in behalf of its founder's

3o THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

the better part of their livelihood to those alms which (38) they every morning received at the chancel door,84 or sometimes at the high altar's end itself35 of their (39) parish church, after having

soul : Et in elimosina inter pauperes annuatim et in perpetuum distributa xiiijmo die Decembris pro anima Aialmari quondam Ducis Cornubie fundatoris monasterii prsedicti, &c. xlvjs. viijrf. Et in victu, vestitu, lectis et aliis necessariis pro duobus pauperibus ibidem annuatim inveniendis pro anima fundatoris Ixvjs. viijd. Et in elemosina panis et servicie ebdomadatim distributa xiij pauperi bus vocatis freers, viz. cuilibet eorum ad valenciam iiijd. per septi- manam pro anima ejusdem fundatoris, &c. xj£. vs. iiijrf. — Valor. Eccles., i. 256.

John Russell holds in the town of Papworth-Anneys, in the county of Cambridge, two hides and a half of land of the king (Edward I.) in capite by the serjeantry of feeding two poor persons, for the souls of his ancestors. — Blounfs Tenures, ed. Beckwith, p. 282. Ralph Blundus and others held of our lord the king (John) half a hide of land in alms, by the service of distributing and giving one cask of ale on the day of All Saints, for the soul of our lord the king and his ancestors. — Ibid., 285. It was no uncommon thing to bestow ale on the poor for the sake of the dead : Volo, says Emma Stayngate, who seems to have once carried on a brewery at York (A.D. 1369) — volo quod ipsa Agnes juret, tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis, quod durante anno predicto, de qualibet pandoxacione sive bracione quam contingat ipsam braciare, pro anima mea animabusque omnium ndelium defunctorum, quatuor lagenas de meliori servisia pauperibus ad hostium ubi solebam trahere moram, fideliter donet. — Test. Ebor., p. 87.

34 Septem pauperibus dietim orantibus pro fundatore juxta ordinacionem suam, vjt. xiijs. iiijd. — Valor. EccL, iii. 193. Ele mosina distributa annuatim singulis diebus, tribus pauperibus ad hostium chori tempore magne misse pro anima WrHi Nesfelde ex fundacione sua ad iijd. per diem imperpetuum, &c. — Ibid., v. 6.

35 Alice Digby gave land to the intent that " every day in the year, immediately after the sacring of the high Mass in the church of Colshill, and at the end of the same altar where the said Mass should so happen to be sung, to a child, m&. male or female whose parents are householders dwelling within the parish, and under the age of ix. years, that can and will, before the said sacring, kneel down at the said altar's end and say five Pater nosters, five Aves, and a Creede, for the soul of Simon Digby her late husband,

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 31

come thither to pray and hear the Mass sung for their departed benefactor's soul, or got, on certain days of each week, at the gates of some religious house.36

(40) In almost all our country parish churches, a dole was given away every Sunday throughout the year : 3' there, as soon as the High Mass had been sung, the allotted number of loaves were carried to the tomb of him or her who had bequeathed these alms, and the poor of the place gathering round received their due portion of the bread, then knelt down by the grave of their founder, and put up, all together, a prayer to God for mercy on the soul of their departed benefactor.38 The doles given away

her's, her children's, and all Christen souls, a peny of silver ster ling, &c." — Dugdale, Warwicks., ii. 1013.

36 Quinque egenis . . . orantibus pro animabus Witti Peverell et Adeline uxoris ejus . . . per septimanam vs. ; et qualibet die Dominica jd. cuilibet eorum ... in die anniversarii predicti Witti Peverell et Adeline . . . pauperibus illic advenientibus liijs. iiijd — Val. EccL, v. 149. So many of the poor in our larger cities were fed by these alms, that the crowds who flocked to get them, at the gates of the great monasteries, often choked up the public thorough fare, as we learn from the martyred Sir Thomas More, who says : —

I heare some saye that there is, and I see sometyme my selfe so mani poore folke at Westminster at the doles, of whom as farre as ever I heard the monkes use not to send away many unserved, that my selfe for the preace of them have ben fain to ryde another way. — The Works of Sir Thomas More, p. 895. London, 1557.

37 Et in elemosina distributa inter pauperes pro animabus f unda- torum, qualibet die Dominica vs. in toto per annum xiij7. — Valor. Eccl, i. 280.

38 At Tideswell Church (Derbyshire) bread is every Sunday given away to the poor on the tomb of Sampson Meurrell, who died A.D. 1462. — Beauties of England, <£c., iii. 481 ; this is but one out of the many other traces of our old Catholic Sunday doles for the dead, which might be cited as still lingering in this country.

32 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

but once in the year, were usually very large, and sometimes their distribution was not limited to the anniversary of the dead, but lasted through the next whole fortnight following.89 One solemnity (41) of the year — Maundy Thursday — was particu larly chosen by our Catholic forefathers whereon to do this work of brothers' fondness, for while they were then put in mind by the Church's services how Christ so loved us as to die for our sake, and to bequeath us his own self — his very flesh and

39 That his father may be prayed for, Thomas Trumpe, by his will (A.D. 1528), leaves xi shillings for a jewel to be bought for Wissingset church, " and lands to keep a yearly dole of one penny worth of bread, and one penny-worth of herring every Pulver Wednesday in Lent to every house-holder in the town." — Blome- field, Norfolk, x. 86. In die anniversarij Gundolphi quondam epi Roflen' in pane et alleci' dat' pauperibus annuatim in quadra- gesima xls. — Valor. EccL, i. 102. Pauperibus in die obit us Radulphi Deynecourte et per quatuordecem dies sequentes pro anima dicti Radulphi et pro animabus antecessorum et heredum suorum et omnium fidelium defunctorum, &c. — Ibid, v. 152. Upon the day when a dole was distributed, the bellman was sent about the town to excite the people to repair to church and pray for the soul of the donor. — Dugdale, Warwickshire, i. 349. Upon a brass plate, fastened to the pillar nearest the grave of William Lamb, in old St. Paul's, Undercroft, were written, amid other verses, the fol lowing : —

I pray you all who receive bread and pence To say the Lord's prayer before ye go hence.

— Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, p. 77. Sir William de Clinton directed that on his anniversary day " there should be a dole to a c. poor people, viz. Maxstoke, and other places, to each a loaf — and every day at dinner time over and above the accustomed bread allowed to the poor, one white conventual loaf and a mess of meat out of the kitchen, together with a flagon of beer, assigned to one of the poorest people of Maxstock, or from some other place — for the health of the said founder's soul, and the souls of the persons above named, and all the faithful deceased." — Dug dale, Warwicks., ii. 998.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 33

blood, in the Eucharist which he instituted on that day, those same warm English hearts under the

(42) feelings awakened at that holy season, strove to show a love for their fellow-man, by more abundant alms unto the poor living in this world, thereby to assuage the sorrows of the suffering dead in purgatory.40

The religion of Christ is not a cold and forget ful one ; nor does the gratitude of its children die with the death of their benefactors. Never was this so beautifully shown as in some of

THE Pious CUSTOMS BELONGING TO THE BYGONE TIMES IN ENGLAND.

Whether it were citizen or baron, king or bishop, who wrought any good deed for the public, and bestowed a wished-for favour, the town and

(43) locality so befriended, kept up a religious re-

40 Et in denariis solutis pro elimosina distributa pauperibus quotidie et in die cene Domini pro animabus fundatorum nostrorum, &c. xvjZ. vj.s. viijri — Valor. EccL, i. 150. Perpetua elimosina data pauperibus in cena Domini pro animabus Henrici Hussy militis et Henrici Gilford clerici annuatim distribuenda per annum xxv js. viijd — Ibid., 321. Distributa (elimosina) pauper ibus in cena Domini juxta ordinaciones primi fundatoris, xls. — Ibid., iii. 193; pro animabus fundatorum. — Ibid., 254. In elemosina annuatim distributa inter pauperes in cena Domini videlicet DC pauperibus dante et liberante cuilibet eorum unum panem frumenti precij obuli in toto xxvs. ; ac cuilibet predictorum DC pauperum unum allecem vocatum a Heryng, &c. — Ibid., iv. 301. Item, upon Sherethursday in almes to pray for the founders, &c. xxs. — Ibid., 366 ; for the meaning of Sherethursday, see note 53, p. 145, vol. i. of this work.

VOL. III. C

34 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

membrance of the boon by praying for the soul of the giver, at the bidding of the beads every Sunday in the parish church,41 or walking to his grave in solemn procession, once if not oftener during the year, to say over his ashes a Deprofundis, and other supplications for the dead.42 When, too, the (44)

41 King Eadgar gave very great frauncheses and privileges onto Bathe. In knowlege wherof they pray in al their ceremonies for the soule of king Eadgar. — Leland, Itin., ii. 40. There is every Sunday prayers made in S. Hilarie chapelle (at Denbigh) for Lacey and Percy. — Ibid., v. 58.

42 Of such a £ pious custom, we have several interesting memorials : — " The same day after dinner the new maior was wont to go from his house to the church of St. Thomas of Aeon, those of his livery going before him ; and the aldermen in like manner being there met together, they came to the church of St. Paul, whither when they were come, namely in the mid place of the body of the church, between two little doors, they were wont to pray for the soul of bishop William, who, as is said, obtained great liberties by his entreaties for the city (of London) from William the Conqueror, a priest saying that office ' De profundis.' From thence they passed to the churchyard where lie the bodies of the parents of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and there they said also for all the faithful of God departed ' De pro fundis,' &c., near the tomb of the aforesaid parents." — Stow, Survey of London, t. ii. b. iv. p. 78. The procession must have been kept up some years after the change of religion, for Wharton, in his short notice of this same bishop of London, says: Quod quidem beneficium Londinenses adeo devinxit ; ut anniversaria processione senatores urbis sepulchrum illius in navi ecclesise versus occidentem positum circuire usque ad patrum nostrorum memoriam consueverint. — Hist, cle Episcopis, &c., Londinen., 1695. Again, of another eminent benefactor of the city of London, we are told : — " For the great zele and love which the fore sayd bysshop of London (Robert de Braybroke) ought unto the cytye, and that by his meanys theyr lybertyes were agayn restoryd, they therfore, of theyr owne goodly dysposycion, after his decease, accustomyd theym, and yet at this day done, to goo yerely upon theyse feest full dayes folowynge, that is to say, first, the morowe after Symonde and Jude, which day the mayer takyth his charge at Westmynster, to Pawlys, and there to saye in the

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 35

heat of civil war had cooled down, such as had been killed in those unhappy broils, on either side, (45) were thought of to be prayed for ; and the wayside cross at the spot whereon some popular leader had been slain,43 and the ankret's cell and

west ende of the churche where he lyeth graven De profimdis, for his soule and all Crysten ; and in lyke maner uppon Alhalowen daye, Cristemasse day and ii. the next dayes folowyng, Newe yerys day, Twelfe day, and Candelmasse day, with also the morowe after Myghelmasse day, — all which ix. dayes not all onely the mayer and his bretherne use this progresse and kepe this obsequy, but also all the craftys of the cytie in theyr lyvereys use the same yerely." — Fabyan, Chron., ed. Ellis, p. 538. Other cities of England were not behind London in such a holy work : — " There is a conduct in the market place (of Wells) derivid from the bisshopes conduct by the licens of Thomas Bekington bisshop sumtyme of Bath, for the which the burgeses ons a yere solemply visite his tumbe, and pray for hys sowle." — Leland, Itin., ii. 41. The mayr of the town (of Canterbury) and the aldermen ons a yere cum solemply to the tumbe of archbishop Sudbury to pray for his sowle yn memory of his good deade (the building of the West Gate, &c.). — Ibid., vii. 135. The corporation of Norwich used to keep an anniversary obit, for the souls of all the deceased benefactors to the city, whose names and gifts were all read out of a bead-roll kept for that purpose; it was held at the chapel of the college of St. Mary in the Fields, to which the court always went in proces sion, viz. the mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, common council, the twenty-four constables of the city, then thirteen poor people in one sort of clothing, who had 2.d. each to pray for them, then nine chaplains to perform the exequies or service, each of which had 46?. ; at the same time 6d. was given in bread to the prisoners in the gild-hall, and the same to those in the castle, and 4<Y. to each house of lepers at the city gates, \2d. for ringing, and 4^. to the bell man, 4^. for lights, and i6d. for the herce. — Blomefield, Norfolk, iii. 1 60. The bellman's duty, as distinguished from that of the ringers, at obits, is pointed out at note 88 further on [pp. 80-82].

43 Speaking of Wakefield, Leland says : — There was a sore batell fought in the south feeldes by this bridge. And yn the flite of the Duke of Yorkes parte, other the Duke hymself, or his sun therle of Rutheland was slayne. ... At this place is set up a crosse in rei memoriam. — Itin., i. 42. To show the spot at Pontefract whereon Thomas Earl of Lancaster had been beheaded (A.D. 1322),

36 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

little (46) chapel catching the wayfarer's eye as he wandered over some wide lonely waste where once a hloody battle had been fought, asked him to tell his beads, as he went by, for the souls of those who fell and lay buried all about him there.44 But it is in those many proofs of individuals' love towards departed friends and kindred, and gratitude towards departed benefactors, set forth in architectural monuments even now the most beautiful we have, or in pious and scholastic en dowments 45 still the wealthiest in the land, that we may yet behold how warmly the custom of prayer for the dead was whilom cherished in England. As they sorrowed over the loss of the dead, the English, like the Anglo-Saxons, threw open the door of his prison-house to the captive, and gave freedom to the bondsman, that the departed soul might be lightened in purgatory, by the grateful prayers of those who had been re leased on earth (47) for its sake.46 Our weeping

a wooden cross was set up : later one of stone took its place, as we gather from the will of William of Northfolk, who says : Lego ad oonstruendam imam crucem lapideam ponendam ubi crux ligneus stat versus montem Beati Thomae juxta viam ducentem versus Bongate xs.—Test. Eborac., p. 281.

44 « There is a chapel or heremitage upon Towten Feld in token of praier and memory of men slayne there." — Lelarid., Itin., vi. 15.

45 In the statutes of every one of those colleges and halls built" at Oxford or Cambridge during the Catholic times of England, we see how the founder expressly directed that his and his friends' and benefactors' souls should be for ever prayed for by its fellows and scholars.

40 Alienor regina, mater praedicti ducis, reginalem curiam cir- cumducens, de civitate in civitatem et de castello in castellum,

CROSS AT GEDDIXGTON

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 37

Edward had the well-beloved of his heart, his Eleanor, not only borne to her grave with all the burial honours meet alike for England's queen and such a good and loving wife, but near unto every one of those several churches whereat the body halted for the night on its road from Lincolnshire to Westminster, he caused a hand some stone cross, fraught with the most elaborate carvings, to be built, that men for ever after on going by and seeing there the image of this princess, might be stirred to breathe a supplica tion to heaven in her soft, gentle, soul's behalf.47

sicut ei placuit, profecta est ; et missis legatis per universes comitatus Anglise prsecepit captives omnes a carceribus et capti- onibus liberos reddi pro anima Henrici domini sui, &c. — Roger Hoveden, Annal. de Ricliardo Primo, p. 373 [R.S., li. iii. 4].

47 In omni loco et villa quibus corpus (Alienorse) pausaverat, jussit rex (Edwardus I.) crucem miro tabulatu erigi ad reginse memoriam, ut a transeuntibus pro ejus anima deprecetur, in qua cruce fecit imaginem reginte depingi. — Walsingham, Hist. Ang. [JR.S., xxviii. i. 33]. These crosses were nine in number, viz. at Lincoln, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Alban's, Waltham, Cheap, and Charing ; that at Geddington is not mentioned in the rolls. Richard of Stowe, John of Battle, Roger and Richard of Crundale, and Dymenge de Legeri or de Reyns, built the crosses. The statues, especially those of Eleanor, were carved by Alexander of Abingdon and William of Ireland, very likely from the models in wax, the work of William Torel (Manners and Household Expenses of England, printed for the Roxburghe Club, p. Ixxxiv.). With the exception of Dymenge de Legeri, all these workmen were English. Some who can see nothing beautiful but what is done by foreigners, wish to think Torel an Italian : for such an imagination there is not an atom of positive or presumptive evidence ; and the name — William Torel — upon which all the stress is laid, sounds anything but Italian ; on the contrary, very English, slightly varying from the Anglo-Saxon Thorald.

The ceremonial followed, in marking, as the corpse halted the

38 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

The once poor lowly clerk, after he (48) reached the highest honours of the Church, did not forget nor disown the kindness of those who (49) had heartened him onwards in his steep rough path, and outstretched to him a helping hand when most wanted, as he clambered over cragged difficulties in this world's path. Such an one, often, like Abp. Kempe,48 endowed a church on purpose that those

while, the spot whereon these crosses were to be built, is set forth in the following words : Corpus ipsius (Elianorse reginse Anglise) per nos transiit, et una nocte quievit. Et dati sunt nobis duo panni pretiosi, scilicet baudekyns. De cera habuimus quater- viginti libras et amplius. . . . Et cum corpus dictse reginse transiret per Dunstaple, in medio fori subsistit feretrum donee cancellarius regis et magnates, qui tune aderant ibidem, locum congruum designassent, ubi postea, sumptibus regiis, crucem erigerent magnitudinis admirandse, priore nostro tune prsesente, et aquam benedictam aspergente. — Chronicon, sive Annales Prioratus de Dunstaple, ed. Hearne, ii. 586 [R.S., xxxvi. iii. 362, 363].

Of such way-side crosses put up for lowlier people than those of royal blood, there are still a few, once they were very numerous in this country. At Edenham . . . was an octangular cross, nine inches diameter, four sides twice as broad as the other four. The inscription, Priez : pur : le alme : Ranle : fiz : Rob : On the other side, Priez : pur : almeis : des : tutz : (Camden, Britannia, ed. Gough, ii. 245). Going out of Doricaster on the York road are the fragments of another of these way-side crosses, the inscription on the foot of which runs thus : — ^ ICEST : EST : LA : CRUICE : OTE : D : TILLI : A : Ki : Alme : DEU : EN : FAICE : MERCI : Am: This is the cross of Ote de Tilli, on whose soul God have mercy, Amen. — Ibid., iii. 33. Near Cambridge there once stood a way-side cross asking the traveller to pray for one Evrard : —

Quisquis es Eurardi memor esto Bechensis, et ora Liber ut ad requiem transeat absque mora.

Inscriptio in basi crucis sitae publ : via in Occident : parte de Bernewelle. — Leland, Collectanea, ii. 438.

48 Kempe . . . byshope of Rochester, afterward of Chichester and London, thens translatyd to Yorke . . . thens translatyd to Cantewerbyri and made cardinall . . . was a pore husband-man's sonne of Wye where upon for to pray for the sowles of them that

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 39

friends of his early youth might ever be prayed for, at the same time that by his munificence towards his beloved university he sought to gain from all its future members a pious remembrance for his own soul.49 Our seats of learning, (50) especially Oxford, once so looked up to by Chris tendom,50 not only with readiness fulfilled these

set hym to schole and them that otharwyse preferryd hym he made the paroche churche of Wye a college, &c. — Ibid., p. 2.

49 Quilibet doctor S. Theologise post lectionem suam ordinariam in novis scholis theologize dicat has preces " Anima Domini Johan- nis Kempe Cardinalis, et anima Domini Thomse Kempe London. Episcopi, et animee omnium benefactorum nostrorum per miseri- cordiam Dei in pace requiescant." Et quod quilibet Graduatus quandocunque prsedicaturus in his tribus locis, aut aliquo istorum, viz. infra Universitatis prsecinctum, ad Crucem Sancti Pauli, vel ad Hospitale Sanctse Marise extra Bishopsgate London, dictos reverendos patres . . . nominatim et expresse suis orationibus commendare teneatur (Statuta Universitatis Oxon. in Hearne, Antiq. of Glaston., p. 298). Dominus Henricus Fitzhugh, Baro, non im- merito inter primos et speciales benefactores computatur et in singulis sermonibus anima ejus recommendatur. — The Syon-House Martyrolocjiuin MS., [formerly] in the possession of the Earl of Shrewsbury [now at the British Museum, Add. MS., 22,285].

60 By a Roman pontiff in the xiv. century, Oxford was called one of the Church's pillars ; and the way in which our own country men wrote of it, shows how high in the admiration of Christendom its learning once stood. Matt. Paris tells how it rivalled the French university, and that the youth of all countries came hither to study : — Ibidem (Oxoniam) convocata scolarum universitate quce de diversis mundi partibus illic studuit congregata (Hut. AngL, p. 574) [R.ti., Ivii. v. 353]. Confiteri cogebantur quod Oxonialis universitas semula Parisiensis censeri promeretur [ibid.]. Oxoni- ensis universitas . . . scola secunda ecclesise, immo ecclesise funda- mentum (ibid., 636) [jR.<S., 618]. Walsingham thus addresses her: Oxoniense studium . . . quod quondam inextricabilia atque dubia toti mundo declarare consuesti, &c. (Hist. AngL, 201) [R.ti., xxviii; i. 345] ; and in one of their synods, our old catholic bishops thus spoke of Oxford : Aliquando ejus fama et gloria ita percelebris apud omnes nationes et gentes Christianas fuit, quod non modo hujus inclyti regni, sed et totius pene orbis homines studendi atque

40 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(51) well-spoken wishes, but unbidden and of themselves, under true Catholic feelings, appointed the holy sacrifice to be offered up ofttimes during the year for all their dead as well as living bene factors.61

(52) Other works of piety, wrought either for the purpose of throwing greater solemnity around the

discendi gratia ad earn confluxerunt (Uonvoc. Prael., A.D. 1438, in Wilkins, ConciL, iii. 528). What Christian nations hold communion with Oxford now ? None. Is she one within herself ? No. Alas, fallen Oxford !

51 Virtute statuti universitatis Oxford, sub poena perjuri habebit capellanus qui pro tempore fuerit, in missis suis singulis, et in memoria commendatos specifice speciali, quorum nomina sequuntur. . . . Insuper universitas statuit et decrevit, quod pro prospero statu omnium vivorum mortuorumque, qui ad librarian! illam, vel ad alios universitatis usus aliquid notabiliter contribuunt, quolibet anni quarterio de Spiritu Sancto missas tres, ac de Requiem ex vi statuti totidem cele^brabit. Una cum onere dictre Librarias teneatur etiam universitatis missas et exequias celebrare.

Universitas statuit et decrevit quod capellanus idoneus in sacerdotio constitutus, in custodem Librarise communis in congre- gatione Regentium solenni eligatur, &c. — Hearne, Hist, of Glaston., p. 295.

Not only the universities, but all our old religious houses were most grateful to those who helped them in learning.

From the Syon martyrology [Add. MS. 22,285] we nn^ (fol. 7), that once every year a service for the dead benefactors to the libraries, most likely two, there was celebrated : De exequiis pro benefactoribus Librariarum. Semel in anno . . . net plenum servicium mortuorum cum ix. lectionibus secundum Ordinale Sarum . . . cum missa de Requiem in crastino ad privatum altare sine sono campanarum, tempore quo alie misse sine nota dici solent.

A custom prevailed in some, most likely in all, religious estab lishments in this country, to pray, at grace after every meal, not only for benefactors, but for the souls of all the faithful departed : Post refectionem vero gratias Deo reddere, et pro salute vivorum et animabus f undatorum et benefactorum dicti collegii omniumque fidelium defunctorum, preces ad hoc ordinatas et confectas cotidie facere non ornittant.— Statuta Ecc. collegiatse de Tonge, in Mori. Anglic., viii. 1408.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 41

Church's services,52 or to benefit the commonweal, so that by mending the roads, or rebuilding a broken-down bridge, men might be thus helped to come, with more readiness and ease, to God's altar, on the Sunday and the festival, were often done in behalf of the dead.53 Again, when our (53) sovereigns of the old English period wished to recompense the faithful servants of the crown, they often bestowed land upon them and their offspring, on the condition that each day and for ever, the holders of the property should say so many prayers for the welfare of the king of the time, and for the souls' peace and rest of all the kings departed of this realm.54 But

52 Et de xs annuatim solutis pro olio et cera ad ardendum sem per coram crucifixo pro salute anime Margerie Gulburn. . . . Et de liijs, iiii'1 annuatim solutis pro olio et cera scilicet ad ardendum semper coram crucifixo pro salute anime domini Osberti, &c. — Valor. Eccl, iv. 38.

53 To the repair of the high-way called the causeway, in Stawyk marsh, which Walter Lord Hungerford, my father, first caused to be made, for the health of the soul of the Lady Katherine his wife (Test. Vet., i. 293). Johanne Beauchamp, Lady of Bergavenny, devised " to the marriage of poer may dens dwellyng withy n my lordships c. /., and to makying and emendyng of febull brugges and foul weyes, c. 1., and to the fynding and deliverans of poer prisoners that have been well condicioned, xl. /." — Ibid., 2,2.6, and Dugdale, Warwickshire, ii. 1031. Religious feelings sweetened the homeli ness of every-day life : over the parlour chimney-piece in the vicarage-house at Besthorp, Norfolk, built by Sir Thomas Downyng, priest, are these lines : —

All you that sitt by thys fire warmyng Pray for the sowle of Sir Jhon Downyng.

— Blomefield, Norfolk, i. 492.

54 Thomas Winchard held land in Coningston, in the county of Leicester, in capite, by the service of saying daily five Pater-nosters and five Ave-marias, for the souls of the king's progenitors, and

42 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

nowhere do we behold our (54) forefathers' creed on Purgatory told in a more feeling and truthful way than in

OUR OLD ENGLISH TOMBS AND GRAVE-STONES.

Holding, as all our countrymen did, the true Catholic belief in the Eucharist, with a faith that was unhalting, those among them who could, often willed an altar to be built at the foot of their grave, and bequeathed an endowment for Mass to be said thereon through future ages.55 Nigh the grave,

the souls of all the faithful departed (Blount, Tenures, ed. Beck- with, p. 281). John Paternoster holds one yard-land, with the appertenances, in East-Hendred, Berks, by the serjeantry of saying, for the soul of our lord the king, one pater-noster daily. — Ibid., 282. Alice Paternoster holds one yard-land in Pusey, Berks, by the service of saying every day five pater-nosters, for the souls of the king's ancestors. — Ibid.

55 Convenerunt executores cum priore et conventu quod . . . exhiberent inperpetuum unum monachum divini celebrantem ad altare quod idem venerabilis pater (W. Skirlawe ep. Dunelm.) ad tumbam suam in vita sua construxit (in eccl. Dunelm.), &c. (Wills, &c., of the Northern Counties, p. 44). This was done, for we read: — Obiit A.D. 1406 (Walterus Scirlawe ep. Dunelmensis) sepul- tusque jacet in boreali plaga chori ecclesise Dunelmensis inter binas columnas, &c. Et circa utramque partem istius sepulchri in altum erigebatur ferreum clatrum curiose compositum, in quo missa quotidie pro illius anima dicebatur (W. de Chambre, Cont. Hist. Dunel. in Hist. Dunel. Scriptores Tres, p. 145). Elizabeth, Countess of Salisbury (A.D. 1414), makes, in her last will, provision to maintain " one canon priest, and one secular priest, perpetually at my altar and tomb, to be made on the south side of the quire of that church, opposite to the tomb of my lord and husband, to pray for my soul, and for the souls of such others as were named," &c. (Test. Vet., i. 184). Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, says: "I desire (my tomb) be made of marble ... as also a chapel of timber surrounding it, with an altar for masses to be daily celebrated

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 43

(55) too, might sometimes be found, within a little ambry sunk into the wall, a "portoos"56 lying on a small shelf, to which it was so fastened by a short chain, that it might be taken out easily and read, but not carried off; and an inscription asked all those who took up and used the book, to say a prayer out of it, for the soul of him who had put it there.57 With this same object the Bible and other

thereat for the health of my soul." — Ibid., 217. We give — says Henry VII. — and bequeath to the altar within the grate of our tomb, our great piece of the Holy Cross. . . . Also to the same altar . . . one Mass-book, hand-written, &c. — Ibid., p. 31.

56 The service-book now called " breviarium " was named in Eng land " portiforium," whence the words "portfory," " portehors," " portous," " portoos," come.

57 In St. George's Chapel, Windsor, towards the eastern ex tremity of the south aisle, is buried Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury. Opposite to this prelate's tomb is a niche in which was anciently kept, no doubt secured to the wall by a chain, a breviary, or as it was then called, a " portoos," as may be gathered from the following inscription : — " Who lyde this booke here ? The reverand fader in God Richard Beauchamp, bischop of this dyocesse of Sarysbury. And wherfor ? To this entent that priestes and ministers of Goddis Church may here have the occupation there of seyying thyr devyne servyse and for alle othir that lysten to sey therby ther devocyon. Askyth he any spiritual mede ; yee> as moche as oure Lord lyst to reward hym for his good entent ; praying every man wos dute or devocyon is eased by thys booke, they woll sey for hym this commune oryson. Due Ihu Xpe ; knelyng in the presence of thys holy Crosse, for the whyche the Reverand Fader in God aboveseyd hathe graunted of the tresure of the Churche to evy man x dayys of pardun."

On the centre stone of the adjoyning arch, the cross referred to is rudely carved, together with the figures of Edward IV. and Bishop Beauchamp beside it, on their knees. — Beauties of England, i. 251. The Swaffham bead-roll, read out every Whitsunday, asked prayers " for the soule of John Botewryth sumtym parson of this chirch which gaff . . . divers bokys cheyn'd in the chawnsell and in our Lady's chapell." — Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 220. Henry de Briggesle, chaplain, desired a breviary to be put up for common

44 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(56) volumes were often chained to the wall, for the people's use, in different parts of a church.58

(57) These fine old English tombs — and how many of them are beautiful even now ! — over spread with every kind of artistic ornament, and showing forth the emblems of the evangelists, and images of patron saints within rich canopies,

use nigh his own and his friend's grave : corpus meum ad sepelien- dum . . . juxta sepulchrum domini Walteri quondam vicariiejusdem capellse. — Item do et lego unum portiforium ponendum in quodam loco pro libro propriato, juxta sepulchrum dicti domini Walteri, &c.—Test. Ebor., 131.

68 Our English clergy were fond of bequeathing the Bible and service-books to be chained in some part of a church, for common use, with the hope of getting a prayer from those who read them : thus (A.D. 1378) Thomas de Farnylawe, canon of York Cathedral, leaves a Bible and concordance to be put in the north aisle of St. Nicholas's, Newcastle — Vellem quod concordancise domini mei una cum Biblia sua essent cathenatse in portion boriali ecclesige beati Nicholai Novi Castri ad usum communem pro anima mea.— Test. Ebor., p. 103. Nicholas de Schirburn (A.D. 1392) gives a manual to an altar: Lego unum parvum manuale ad ligandum cum una chathena cuidam formulae vel cistss coram altari (Sanctse Annse). — Ibid., 172. An inventory (taken A.D. 1385) of all the things then belonging to St. George's, Windsor, gives a long list of the books chained in different parts of that chapel — Libri diversarum scientiarum cathenati in ecclesia : among them is a Bible with a Concordance. — Mon. Arty., viii. 1362. "Mendyng a chayne to a boke in the quere, iid" is an expense to be found in Church wardens' old Accompts. — Illustrations, tfcc., p. 94. For a like pur pose books were often bequeathed to a library : — Ordino quod omnes predicti libri tradantur et liberentur capellano ecclesise cathedralis (Ebor.) predicts, in eorum libraria pro perpetuo reman- suri pro salute animre mese et omnium fidelium defunctorum. — Test. Ebor., p. 369.

The studious industry of the secular clergy during Catholic times in England, is exemplified in " John de Exeter, clerk, who bequeathed to the collegiate church of Ottery St. Mary (A.D. 1445) books to the number of 136" (see Lacy, Register, vol. iii. fol. 513) — " and stated that he had written the books with his own hand, for the most part." — Oliver, Mon. Dioc. Exon., p. 261 n.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 45

and rows of shields blazoned with heraldry, and written scrolls telling the name of, and begging a prayer for, the soul of him or her whose bones lie mouldering beneath them, were not so adorned without a deep and solemn meaning, and a high and holy purpose. The monument itself, 'with its little chantry altar, its figures of saintly men and women now gone to (58) Christ above, and its bright colours and rich gilding, stands forth as the creed cut in stone of its tenant ; and speaks what was his belief while here, what were his hopes for a hereafter. That same monument tells how its owner knew that in the " communion of saints," God's Church, whether in heaven, upon earth, or in the middle state, is and will be till time be done, linked together by one bond of love : it tells how, whilst he was living, he had asked the saints above to pray for him ; and now when dead, how he cries out to the just in heaven and the good on earth to help, by their prayers, his suffering soul in purgatory : it says how he had been made to understand that all such supplica tions could be no otherwise available than through the merits of Christ his only Saviour, on whom alone he trusted and still trusts for his release from the cleansing torments of the middle state, and for a call unto heavenly happiness.59 (59)

59 In the wills and inscriptions of our old Catholic England, the broadest distinction is strongly made between Christ's media tion of redemption, and his saints' mediation of intercession.

46 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

These and other such-like splendours of the grave were not however meant to foster an earth-born

Christ is always called upon as our only Saviour, our mediator of redemption ; the saints are begged to pray unto him in man's behalf : of the Godhead forgiveness as coming at once from itself, is besought ; but of the B. V. Mary, and all other saints, nothing more is asked than the help, as friends, of their prayers suppli cating Heaven for that forgiveness. In her last testament, Johanne Beauchamp, Lady of Bergavenny, says : I bequethe my soule to the mercy of my blessed Saviour and Maker Jhesu Chryst, through the besechyng of his blessed Moder Mary, and alle holy companye in hevene, and my symple and wreched body to be buried, &c. — Dugdale, WarwicJcs., ii. 1031. On an old coffin-lid, preserved in the church porch, at St. Pierre, near Chep- stow, Monmouths., may be read the following rhyming inscrip tion : —

ICI GIT LK CORS U. DE SENT PERE PREEZ PUR LI EN BONE MANERE KE IH5V PUR SA PASIUN DE PHECEZ LI DONT PARDUN

AMEN. P'R. — Arch&oloyical Journal, v. 165.

A grave-brass gives us these lines : —

Sancta Trinitas unus Deus miserere nobis Et ancillis tuis sperantibus in te. O mater Dei memento mei. lesu mercy, Lady help.

— Weever, Ant. Fun. Monum., 180. On another: —

Mary moder mayden clere

Prey for me William Goldwyre ;

And for me Isabel his wyf,

Lady, for thy joyes fyf.

Hav mercy on Christian his second wyf,

Swete Jesu, for thy wowndys fyf.

— Ibid., 376. About " thy wowndys fyf," we have several notices scattered through our old national monuments ; another inscrip tion says : —

Vulnera quinque Dei sint medicina mei Scilicet

Pia mors et passio Christi.

— Ibid., 396. Henry Pisford wills that as soon as may be after his decease, there be said for him five trentals, in the worship of the five

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 47

(60) vanity, or to feed its cravings after this world's idle pomp. If our kings, our bishops, our high-

(61) born ladies, our stalworth warriors — the mighty ones of this earth — asked to have, or had a burial in all things befitting the position which they held whilst here, it was that, by such funeral solemnity, the lowliest beholder, as well as near and cherished friends, might be thus the sooner stirred to pray for the soul as the corpse was

wounds of our blessed Lord, and they to be said in five days ; and the priest that says Mass, to remember the first day the wounds of the right hand, the second day the wounds of his left hand, the third day the wounds of his most precious and blessed heart, the fourth and the fifth days the wounds of his two feet, and to have him (Henry Pisford) in remembrance, and pray to the blessed Lord of Heaven, for the blood that He shed out of those five wounds, to have mercy on him, and to take him to his grace ; and in worship of the said five wounds, he willed that his executor should cause to be made five lights, and set them before the picture of our Lord in the Greyfriars' Church, &c.— Dugdale, Warwicks., i. 185. On one of the brasses, copied by Weever, are written these lines : —

Who that passyth by this way,

For mercy of God, behold, and pray

For all souls christen, and for us

On (one) Pater noster and an Ave.

To the blessyd saynts and owr blessyd Lady

Saynt Mary to pray for us.

— Ant. Fun. Monum., 444. Nothing is more common than the prayer " Jesu mercy, Lady help ; " or thus : —

X. (Christ) me spede. Dere Lady help at nede. — All Saints' Church, Stamford. And again: —

Robert Were preest und this stoii lyth That Itiu m'cy and Lady help cryeth Prayeth for my soole for charyte now, As ye wolde other dede for yow.

— Wilbrooke, Beds.

48 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

carried by.60 Whilst (62) they begged to be laid after death in an ornamented tomb, or wished to

00 I will that my body ... be carried unto the place of my burying . . . with all the worship that ought to be done unto a woman of mine estate, which, God knoweth well, proceedeth not of no pomp or vain glory that I am set in for my body, but for a memorial and remembrance of my soul to my kin, friends, servants, and all other. — Will of Joanne Lady Bergavenny (A.D. 1434), in Test. Vet., i. 225. As we noticed before (vol. ii. 395), it was a custom in this country to set a waxen figure of the dead over the corpse : among the charges for the burial of Thomas abbot of St. Austin's Canterbury, there is one — pro corpore ficto cum hersia. — Chron. W. Thorn, ed. Twysden, ii. 2152. More than one of such effigies were sometimes made for the same personage, as we learn from the funeral expenses of Queen Eleanor : — In cccc. et di. et i. quarterio et iij. lib. cerse emptis pro imaginibus supra viscera Reginse (Eleanorse) apud Lincolniam et apud fratres Prsedicatores Londonise, ix. Ii. xviijs. ix(i — Manners, &c., of Entjlund, ci-c., 122. Her bowels were buried at Lincoln ; her heart in the church of the friars preachers, London ; her body at Westminster. That such figures were wrought by the best artists of the day and coloured, appears from other entries in the same document : Magistro Willielmo Torel in partem solutionis pro factura imaginis supra viscera reginae apud Lincolniam xls. — Ibid.) p. 125. Magistro Alexandro imaginatori, in perpacationem, pro factura cerse pro iij. par vis imaginibus apud fratres Prsedicatores Londonise et Lincolnise, pro regina, vi. marc, et di. — Ibid., 129. The object for such a custom is well set forth in the following description of our Henry V.'s funeral : — Super- posita namque fuerat cistse, in qua corpus ejus (Regis Henrici V.) habebatur, qusedam imago staturse et faciei Regis mortui simillima, chlamyde purpurea satis longa et larga, cum furrura de ermyn induta, sceptrum in una manu, et pila rotunda aurea, cum cruce infixa in altera ; corona aurea in capite, super capellum regni, et sandalis regiis in pedibus, impositis. Et taliter elevatur in curru ut a singulis videri potuisset, ut per hoc moeror et dolor accresceret, et ejus amici et subditi pro ejus anima Dominum tenerius exorarent (Walsingham, Hist. Anyl, ed. Camden, 407) [R.S., xxviii. ii. 345, 346]. Others, in great lowliness of heart, wished to be buried without even a coffin, but merely in a winding sheet wrapped about them : bodies so shrouded are sometimes figured on old grave- brasses. Hence was it that Dame Maud de Say (A.D. 1369), in her last will ordered : — immediately after iny decease my corpse shall be carried to burial, covered only with a linen cloth having a red

PART I. CHAP. VIII.

49

have their armorial (63) bearings fixed about the holy buildings, often did the dignified churchmen

OLD ENGLISH FUNERAL

cross thereon, &c. (Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas, i. 83). In that truly splendid, and for English art, most valuable manuscript, the Sherbourne Missal, now belonging to the Duke of Northum berland, written out by John Whas, a monk of that house, about the end of Edward HI.'s reign, there may be seen, at folio 686, over the Missa pro omnibus defunctis, an illumination, wherein the dead bodies are wrapped in white, and have their heads marked with red crosses, seemingly three in number, upon each figure, VOL. III. D

50 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

and the nobles of this land declare that their wish in doing so, was to awaken thereby, through ages to come, a kind remembrance of themselves in each beholder's thoughts, and thus win a short prayer for their souls from him, the while he stopped and gazed upon their sepulchre, or looked at their escutcheon.01 Well, too, does the monu-

though two only of these crosses are shown. Thomas de Boynton, Knight (A.D. 1402), says in his will: Volo quod quandocumque anima mea exierit de corpore, volutus fuero in eodem linthiamine in quo morior, et in tumulo absque mora ponar (Testam. Ebor., 287). John de Burton, rector of St. Helen's, York (A.D. 1407), speaks of his burial thus: Pnecipiens et inhibens executoribus meis ne corpori ineo cistam ligneam vel alia indumenta pneparent, nisi tan- tummodo unum lintheamen pro corpore meo involvendo (ibid., 349). The usual custom was for priests to be buried in their sacred vestments ; hence Peter de Bolton, the rector of another church, says (A.D. 1414) : Quod parochiani dictse ecclesise de Scrayngham concedant michi unam veterem casulam in qua intendo sepiliri (ibid., 371). Among the vestments at Salisbury Cathedral (A.D. 1222), there was Ad sepeliendum magistrum Th. Thesaurarium, casula una. — Wordsworth, Salisbury Cercm., 175.

61 Upon the arch overspreading the tomb of Prior Bozoun, in Norwich Cathedral, are written these lines : —

O tu qui transis, vir, aut mulier, puer an sis, Respice picturas, apices lege, cerne figuras, Et memor esto tui, sic bene disce mori.

— Blomefield, Norfolk, iii. 605. Round a grave-brass in Gillingham Church, Kent, runs the inscription following : —

Es testis, Christe, quod non jacet hie lapis iste, Corpus ut ornetur, sed spiritus ut memoretur ; Hinc tu qui transis medius, magnus puer an sis, Pro me funde preces, quia sic michi venie spes.

— Thorpe, Eegistrum Roffense, p. 822. In St. Stephen's, Norwich, under the two effigies on the grave-brass of Robert Brassyer, is this legend : —

O vos oinnes picturas istas intuentes, devotas ad Deum fundite preces pro animabus Roberti Brassyer . . . et Christiane uxoris ejus, quibus requiem eternam donet Deus, Amen (Blomefield

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 51

ment itself bespeak those longings : (64) the prelate arrayed in his pontificals, the king in his garments of royalty, the priest in his (65) sacrificial vestments, the soldier armour-clad, and with the white or red flower blazoned about him to tell which side he took in the wars between the rival houses, with his collar round his neck showing us by its suns and roses that he had been for York, or by its SS that he had gone with Lan caster62— and all the decorations of knighthood

Norfolk, iv. 155). On a grave-stone in Beeston Church in the same county, it is declared : —

Not for an ornament of the body this ston was laid here, But only the soul to be prayed for, as charite requere.

— Ibid., viii. 89. Another grave-inscription in St. Foster's, Lon don, says : —

Now ye that are liuing, and see this picture Prey for me here whyle ye have time and spase That God of his goodness would me assure In his euerlasting mansion to haue a plase. — Weever, Ant. Munum., 178.

Quisquis ades vultumque vides, sta, perlege, plora Judicii memor esto tui, tua nam venit hora, &c.

— Ibid., 223. Thomas Earl of Derby says in his will (A.D. 1504): — Having provided a tomb to be there placed with the personages of myself and both my wives for a perpetual remembrance to be prayed for (Test. Vet., ii. 458). Joan Viscountess L'Isle makes the following insertion in her last testament : — I will that my executors cause to be made and set up on the high rood-loft in the church of St. Michael upon Corn-hill, two escotcheons, the one of them with the arms of my right noble lord and husband the Viscount L'Isle and my own arms jointly, and the other of the arms of my right worshipful husband Robert Drope and my own jointly, to the intent that our souls by reason thereof may the rather be remembered and prayed for. — Ibid., ii. 466.

02 The Lancastrian red rose and the Yorkist white were symbols of our country's strife but too well known to all who have read

52 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

on, (66) and having at his side his noble dame in the robes of her estate, the franklin in his

English history. York's white rose and the sun, the token of that bloody fight at Mortimer's Cross, and victory gained there by Edward IV. over the Lancastrians, were strung together into a collar, with the white lion of the house of March hanging from it, and given by that king to his party. As early, however, as the first year of Henry IV.'s reign, the followers of this king might always be known by the collar which they wore of his house of Lancaster. When the Earl of Kent arose against him — detraxit (comes Cantii) signa Regis (Henrici quarti), scilicet collaria, de collis quorundam quos vidit ibi habentes signa talia, cum despectu, dicens non esse gestandum de csetero tale signum (Walsingham, Hist. Any., ed. Camden, 363) [R.S., xxviii. ii. 244]. The ornaments composing this Lancastrian emblem were nothing more than the letter S, multiplied many times, and linked one to the other.

This celebrated collar of esses or SS has hitherto been an archaeological puzzle. What these esses mean, and wherefore they have been employed, has often been asked : the following solution is offered. In his very interesting will, John of Gaunt made this, amongst other bequests, to his very dear son Henry Duke of Hertford, who afterwards became Henry IV. : — Je ly devise un fermail d'or del veil manere et escript les nouns de Dieu en chescun part de icel fermail, la quel ma treshonore dame et miere la roigne que Dieux assoile me donna en me commandant que je la gardasse ovecque la benison et vueille q'il la garde ovecque la beneson de Dieu et la mien (Test. Ebor., 231). This chain of gold, after the old manner with God's name written on each part of it, seems to have been a kind of heirloom in the house of Lancaster : John of Gaunt's mother had had and left it to him, along with her blessing, and wishes that he should keep it : in his turn John of Gaunt handed it down, with the same wishes, to his son Henry. That the letter S, especially when woven into a collar, became a well-known cognizance and a part of the livery (as the word was then understood) belonging to John of Gaunt and his house, seems certain ; for in an indenture of plate, &c., once belonging to Edward III. and Richard II., we find mention made of — un paire de basynys d argent ennorrez . . . ove (un) coler gravez ove Ires de <&• del live de Monsr de Lancastr t le covekii ove une corone desuis gravez ove Ires de j$. entoure ; ? les armes de Monsr de Lancast? dedeins. — Ant. Kalendars and Inventories of the Exchequer, iii. 322. The name of God was written on every piece composing this collar. What was that name? [The liturgy will tell us:

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 53

burgher dress — (67) each lies before us out stretched on his tomb, with hands meekly clasped upon his breast and uplifted towards heaven, beseeching its forgiveness towards his sins, and asking, by an inscription, in which he (68) often calls the lowliest clown his kinsman,63 every one here to pray for him. At Canterbury Cathedral,

it was SANCTUS contracted into simple S. According to the Salisbury use, when the crucifix on Good Friday was about to be uncovered, there were sung these words several times : " Sanctus Deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus et immortalis, miserere nobis," as we find in the Sarum Processional, in Die Paras., fol. lx., A.D. 1528, and fol. Ixvii., A.D. 1555 [ed. Henderson, 1882, p. 69]. Moreover, in the " Preces " at the hour of Prime, the Salisbury portoos or breviary recites the same words. Every day at mass, not only was said the hymn, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, &c., but whilst the priest was going through it, a bell, called from that circumstance the " Sancte-bell," was solemnly rung. Furthermore, in the " Te Deum " comes the verse, " Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth." Now, as the people, during the Catholic times of this country, more particularly the higher class, thoroughly knew the prayers of the church-services, it is not to be wondered at that words so striking should have left a deep impression on their minds, and that a princely house like that of Lancaster should, in assuming an emblem of God's name, take the SS of the SANCTUS repeated, and weave them into a collar.

0:5 O vos omnes qui hie transitis, pro me orate ; Precibus vestris, qui fratres estis, meque iuvate.

— in Erith Church, Kent (Weever, Ant. Fun. Monum., 129).

John, sixth abbot of St. Alban's, had the following lines written beneath some stained glass windows which he put up :• —

Propicii patres, compassive quoque matres Orat, ut oretis, sua quod sit pausa quietis Vester acloptatus hie filius intumulatus.

—IUd., 328.

Thou art my brother or my sister, Pray for me a Pater Noster. — On a grave-brass, Morley, Derbyshire.

54 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

above the Black Prince's grave, may yet be seen the velvet surcoat embroidered with the arms of England and France, the helm, the gauntlets, the short dagger, and the shield, all of which that warrior once wore ; but they were set up there less to tell of the hardihood and hundred battles of him — the boy who won his spurs at Cressy — the man who fought and gained, against such fearful odds, the fight at Poitiers — than to bid us call upon Christ for mercy on the soul of Edward Plantagenet,64 sometime Prince of Wales. The helmet, (69) and the breast-plate, and the gloves of steel, which we yet find rusting on the walls of many of our village churches, and that once had drooping over them banner and pennon

64 How meek, how touching, how truly catholic, is the in scription on the grave of one so high, and who made such a noise here : — Cy gist le noble prince Monss. Edward, &c. Lalme de qi Dieu eit mercy. Amen.

Tu qi passez ove bouche close Par la ou ce corps repose, &c.

Pour Dieu priez au celestien roy Qe mercy ait de 1'alme de moy. Tous ceulx qi pur moy prieront Ou a Dieu macorderont Dieu les rnette en son paradis Ou mil ne poet estre chetiffs.

— Dart, Cathedral Church of Canterbury, 80.

The inscription on the tomb of another flower of English knight hood, begins thus : —

Preith devoutly for the sowel whom God assoille of one of the most worshippful knyghtes in his dayes of monhode and conning, Richard Beauchamp, late Eorl of Warrewik, &c. — As may be seen in the beautiful Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick.

TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE AT CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL

Page 54

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 55

and blazoned tabard now all in tatters, or dropped clean away, were hung up there by Catholic hands, above the grave of some Catholic knight, while England was yet Catholic, for the same Catholic purpose of beseeching the prayers of the people for his soul.00 With like (70) cravings was it that the wealthy yeoman, or flourishing trader, who bestowed anything, for the splendour or becom ing performance of the liturgy, upon his parish church, besought to have his name written on his gift.66

The memorials of the dead, whether goodly little buildings in themselves, richly dight in gilding and colour, or unadorned, simple grave stones, were thought of and provided, for no other object — and rightly so — than, by the cross marked

65 Under this feeling was it that Thomas Maners says : my bodie to be buryd in the quere . . . w* soulle messe and derege the day of my buriall for my soule and all Christen soules, and my coat armoure to be sett upon my gravye for remembrans, &c. (Wills of the Northern Counties, 122). Sometimes, as it would seem, a knight's armour, after his death, was set up in the church where he lay buried, upon a wooden figure of St. George. John Arden says, in his will : I bequethe my white harneis complete to the church of Aston, for a George to wear it, and to stand on my pewe, a place made for it : provided always that if the said George be not made within a year after my decease, that then I will that mine executors do sell it, and hire a priest to sing in the chapell of Orton so long as the money will extend. — Dugdale, Warwickshire, ii. 928.

66 Have mercy good Lord on the soul of Thomas Holden, That hit may rest with God good neyghbors say Amen. He gave the new organs, whereon hys name is set : For bycause only yee shold not hym forget In yowr good preyers, &c. — Weever, Ant. Fun. Montfm., p. 382.

56 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

upon them,67 (71) to utter, in behalf of those beneath, a belief in Christ and his Church, and a hope for happiness in heaven through his merits,68 at the same time that they begged,

07 Describing an old grave-brass in St. Alban's abbey-church, Weever says : " Upon the same marble, under the picture of the cross, these words are engraven, which the aforesaid ' Smith ' seems to speak : —

By this tokyn of the holy cross Good Lord sav our sowls from loss.

Elizabeth his wife these : —

Cryst who dyed for us on the rood tree Sav the sowl of my hosbond, owr chyldren, and mee." —Ibid., 333.

68 This is strongly set before our eyes in almost every old tomb ; a few examples will be enough : —

" But in this passage, the best song that we say can Is Requiem eternam, now Jesu grant hit mee, When we have endyd all our adversitee Grant us in paradise to have a mansion That shed his blood for our redemption. Therefore we tenderlye requier yee For the souls of John Benson And Anne hys wyff, of your charitie To say a Pater noster and an Ave." — Weever, Ant. Fun. Monum., 175.

Lord, of thy infinit grase and pitee Haue mercy on me, &c. —Ibid,, 178.

Wherfor Jesu that of Mary sproung Set theyr soulys thy saynts amoung Though it be undeservyd on their syde Yet, good Lord, let them evermore thy mercy abyde. And of your cheritie

For their souls say a Pater noster and an Ave. —Ibid., 1 80. The following verses are not uncommon : — Qu A D T D P

os nguis irus risti ulcedine avit H Sa M Ch M L

— Ibid., 207.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 57

for his love's and for charity's sake, (72) to be recommended to his mercies in the prayers of the living.69

To quicken the faithful in the discharge of such a brotherly kindness, our old English bishops often granted a ghostly reward — an indulgence, or, as it was then better called, a " pardon " of so many days — unto all those who with the fitting dispositions should answer this call made to them from the grave, and pray especially for him or her who lay buried there.70

Ecce sub hoc tumulo coniux uxorque iacemus

Eternam pacem donet utroque Deus. Nil unquam abstulimus, si quod benefecimus ulli,

Est qui pro meritis preniia digna dabit Est tamen una salus Christi miseratio, quam qui

Transis, ambobus sepe precare Deum. —Ibid., 349.

Jesu noster saueor de la grande pite De lor almes eit mercie. Amen. — Ibid., 1 10.

Haue mercy on my sowl yat bowght hit with yi (thy) bloodde. —Ibid., 76.

Jhu for thy marcy their sowlys now save. — Dugdale, Warwickshire, ii. 1079.

69 In his last testament, Edmund Hampden (A.D. 1419), writes thus : I will that a white stone be placed over me and Joane my wife, with this writing —

Ye yat this see Pray ye for charite

For Edmund's soul and Jane's, a paternoster and an ave. — Test. Vet., i. 200.

For the love of Jesu pray for me, I may not pray now, pray ye That my peynes lessyd may be With on (one) Pater Noster and on (one) Ave, &c. — Weever, Ant. Fun. Monurn., 83.

70 Often would the bishop of the diocese grant an indulgence of forty days to all those who should stop and say a prayer over the

58 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(73) If some of these old funeral monuments be beautiful, all of them are most precious as

grave in behalf of the buried person's soul ; and not unfrequently such a privilege is mentioned in the inscription on the tomb-stone, thus : —

Dame Jone de Cobeham gist ici,

Dieu de sa alme eit merci. Kire pur le alme priera

Quarante jours de pardoun avera. —Thorpe, Regisirum Roffense, p. 764.

The friends of the dead strove and got as many prelates as they could, to exercise their canonical right of bestowing a like favour ; and in some instances, such as that of a high personage, the roll of episcopal names was a long one : two sheets of parchment were needed for writing down the list of bishops, each of whom gave an indulgence on behalf of Eleanor, Edward I.'s queen : — Pro duabus cedulis continentibus indulgentias dierum pro anima reginse (Eleanorse) per diversos prselatos concessas, scribendis et perficiendis (Manners and Expenses of England, &c., printed for the Roxburghe Club, p. 137). That no bishop should ever, except at a church's dedication, grant an indulgence of more than xl. days, was decreed by the General Council of Lateran (A.D. 1215): Decernimus, ut cum dedicatur basilica, non extendatur indulgentia ultra an num, sive ab uno solo, sive a pluribus episcopis dedicetur : ac deinde in anniversario dedicationis tempore quadraginta dies de injunctis pocnitentiis indulta remissio non excedat : hunc quoque dierum numerum indulgentiarum litteras prsecipimus moderari, quse pro quibuslibet causis aliquoties conceduntur, cum Romanus Pontifex, qui plenitudinem obtinet potestatis, hoc in talibus moderamen consueverit observare. — Condi. Later., iv. cap. Ixii., Harduin, Cone., vii. 66.

Very soon afterwards, this wholesome discipline for checking the overgrowth of Indulgences became a part of the canon law in this country. Archbishop Peckham, in his Statutes (published A.D. 1280), observes: — Cum salubriter sit statutum, ut prselati in indulgentiis conferendis xl dierum numerum non excedant, ne claves ecclesise contemnantur . . . caveant alii quicunque, ne per multiplicatas indulgentias a prselatorum gratia qusesitas dedecus faciant prselatis ecclesiae, &c. — Wilkins, Condi., ii. 48. Our Eng lish bishops did not always grant a xl. days' indulgence ; but sometimes those days amounted but to xx., sometimes to xxx., as well as xl. — See the Priory of Finchale, p. 179.

Amongst some it was imagined that an Indulgence became widened

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 59

witnessing (74) to the creed and the religious usage of our forefathers. These tombs speak to us

by as many xl. days as there were bishops who had agreed to give it ; hence we at times find mention of longer periods, which, though not always, are usually some multiple of xl., thus : —

Johan La Gous . . . gist issi Prie pur I'alme de lui Ky pur I'alme de lui priere Cent jours de pardoun avere.

— (once in St. Neot's, Beds., but now gone, though preserved in Gough's engraving) ; and in the inscription on the tomb of Wil liam de Basynge, Prior of Winchester : — Hie jacet Willelmus de Basynge quondam prior istius Ecce, cujus anime propicietur Deus : et qui pro a'ia ejus oraverit in annos c et XLV dies indulgencie percipiet. This latter monument shows us how the indulgence of xl. days must have been multiplied by 31, the number, no doubt, of bishops who had concurred in granting it, to make the time amount to as much as three years, one hundred and forty- five days : 3 jrears being equal to 1095 days, which, along with 145 days, make 1240, which, divided by 40, give 31.

Such a system for the enlargement of indulgences granted to encourage any work of holiness, was, however, quite against the Church's meaning, as we gather from the Lateran decree above quoted ; and our own canons forbade it under the name of " in- dulgencise multiplicatse," to use the words of Archbishop Peckham, just cited. Was there any good then in getting more than one bishop to concede his indulgence ? Certainly ; and L} ndwood tells us wherefore. This old English canonist lays it down for a rule that as no bishop has spiritual power over other than his own spiritual subjects, so no person can gain any indulgence but the one accorded by his own diocesan : — Plures episcopi sub ana litera apponentes sigilla sua, vel simul existentes, prout saepius con- tingit, ad crucem Sancti Pauli concedunt, et quilibet eorum con- cedit xl. dies indulgentiee. In quo casu indulgentia non excedit in toto numerum xl. dierum, sicut legitur eo. li. c. fi. li. 6, qd capitulum, ut ibi dicit Card, fuit editum contra tales fraudes. Uncle tantum dat unus sicut omnes. . . . Ratio potest esse, quia indulgentia unius episcopi non prodest nisi subditis suis propriis, &c. (Provinciale, v. 16, p. 336, note s). According then to this, were any one from Durham, for instance, to have gone, let us say, into Westminster Abbey, and prayed at Queen Eleanor's grave for her soul, that person could not have gained the indulgence

6o

THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

Catholic England's (75) belief in the all-atoning merits of our only Redeemer Christ — her belief in

of xl. days held out to all those who should do so, if at no time a bishop of Durham had consented to the granting of it : the man or woman, however, from any see in the world whose bishop had

BRASS OF ROGER LEGH

been one among those who allowed the indulgence^ by fulfilling its conditions, would have earned it. Lyndwood makes one exception ; and it is in favour of an archbishop whose indulgence of xl. days is to be reckoned over and above the xl. days of any of his suffragans ; so that, under such a circumstance, an indul gence of Ixxx. days could be gained : — Verurn tamen est, qd quoad

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 6 1

the unfitness of (76) man's soul to go to heaven until cleansed from every smallest speck of sin by

indulgentias concessas per archiepiscopum, singuli de provincia sunt sui subditi. Unde si archiepiscopus et episcopus simul existentes concedant, et uterque eorum concedat xl. dies indulgentias ; ille qui est subditus episcopi habebit Ixxx. dies, xl. scilicet ab archiepiscopo, et xl. a suo episcopo. Alius vero provincialis non subditus dicti episcopi solum habebit xl. dies, &c. (ibid.). The only authentic in dulgence of a specified time longer than this, was one of a hundred days, for the bestowing of which Walter Raynold (Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 1313), had an especial privilege from Pope Clement V. : Clemens, £c., fratri W. in archiepiscopum Cantuar. electo . . . prsesentium tibi auctoritate concedimus, ut cum te Missarum solennia celebrare contigerit, seu proponere verbum Dei, possis omnibus vere poenitentibus et confessis, qui hujus modi celebra- tioni seu propositioni devote intererint, centum dies de injunctis sibi pcenitentiis misericorditer relaxare. — Wilkins, Condi., ii. 435.

With these documents before us, we can have no kind of doubt but those startling indulgences of so many thousand years, some few stray traces of which may yet be found among our old national monuments, were spurious and imaginary. On his grave-brass in Macclesfield Church, Roger Legh is figured kneeling, with this sentence coming out of his mouth — " a dampnacione perpetua libera nos diie "—on one side, but above him is a "St. Gregory's Pity " (a subject of which we have spoken before, vol. i. p. 45), but in this representation of it, the pontiff alone is shown, and be neath is written, " The pdon for saying of v. pater nost. and v aves and a cred is xxvi thousand yeres and xxvi dayes of pardon." Roger Legh died, A.D. 1 506. On rebuilding the church of Quatford, Shropshire, were found a number of figures painted on the walls, representing the day of judgment, and on a piece of vellum nailed to an oak board the figure of Christ rising from the sepulchre, and these lines under him : —

Saynt Gregory and other popes and byschops grantes sex and twenty thousand zere of pardon t thritti dayes to alle that saies devou- telye knelyng afor yis ymage fife paternosters, fyfe aves and a cred.

— Camden, Britannia, ed. Gough, ii. 409. Other indulgences, or pardons, as they were called, may be seen in the " Hours of the B.V. Mary," according to Salisbury use [Hoskins, Horse, passim].

62 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

the sacred blood (77) which Jesus shed for all man kind upon the cross — her belief in the existence

If while blaming certain indulgences of a very much shorter length, the General Council of Lateran, in the thirteenth century, branded them as " indiscretse et superfluse " (Harduin, Cone., vii. 66) ; if, too, our own provincial synods forbade them, and, two hundred years afterwards, writers in this country, like the jurist Lyndwood, leaning on the words of a Roman cardinal, call them frauds (see above), we must believe those later and before-mentioned ex aggerated indulgences to have been put forth not by ecclesiastic and lawful authority, but by private individuals with more piety than learning, and whose zeal was not unto knowledge. Though, from this, it follows that such indulgences were far short of the worth set down to them, it will not be amiss to seek out their origin.

As was said just now,, some there were who supposed that every bishop's xl. days enlarged by so much an indulgence for whatever work of holiness it happened to be granted; thus we are told of Ralph, Bishop of Wells, who died A.D. 1363; — Plures indulgentiae sunt concessse omnibus locum ejus sepultures visit- antibus et devote pro anima ipsius Radulphi orantibus. — Angl. Sacr., i. 569. Upon this principle, our monastic writers, while recording the events of their particular house,, were not only careful to note down the name of each bishop who had ever granted his indulgence to the pious visitors of the minster, but sometimes, after casting up the whole number of days into one sum, proclaimed that the indulgence to be gained there amounted to so many years : for instance, while giving us the " Nomina episcoporum qui nobis aliqua contulerunt," one of the monks of St. Alban's says : — Summa dierum indulgentise quas isti episcopi et alii summi sacerdotes huic ecclesise contulerunt se extendit ad novem annos octies viginti decemque dies. — Mon. Anglic., ii. 219; and more nicely still the historian of Glastonbury speaks of his own church : — Cartse pontificum de indulgenciis concessis Glas- toniensi ecclesise sive fabricse ecclesiae.

Nicholaus Tusculanensis episcopus et legatus Anglise xxx. dies

indulgencise concessit. Idem dedit xx. dies. J. legatus Anglise xx. dies. Hubertus Carituariensis arch. xx. dies. Richardus Cantuariensis arch. xv. dies. Item Richardus Cantuariensis xxx. dies et confirmavit ii paria.

PART I. CHAP. VIII.

of a place beyond the (78) grave, a purgatory, wherein the truly sorrowing sinner's soul must

Stephanus Eboracensis arch. xiii. dies. Bernardus Ragusine arch. Ix. dies. Jocelinus Ardacadensis episcopus xv. dies. Gervasius Menevensis episcopus xl. dies et ii. paria. Robertus Lammensis episcopus xx. dies ad fabricam et x. ad reliquias.

IMAGE OF PITY

Radulfus Kildarensis episcopus xiii. dies. E. Landavensis episcopus xx. dies. Et multi alii.

Summa DCCCC. ix. dies. — Johannes Glaston., p. 385.

For stirring up his flock to think upon Christ's bitter pangs upon the cross, and thereby awaken within their hearts a true sorrow for sin, a bishop (as we may readily suppose) granted an

64 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

have all its stains washed away (79) in that blood, amid sharp but temporary pangs — her belief in the assurance that one of those means (80) through which Christ's blood comes to be so applied, is the "communion of saints," or that help afforded to those souls in purgatory by the faithful upon earth, in the prayers, the fastings, the alms-deeds which they offer unto God for the dead.

indulgence, or, as it was better called, a " pardon " of xl. days out of that time which ought, according to the canons, to be spent in working out the penance due to the individual's sins, under the condition that certain prayers should be said, and the better to help their pious thoughts, before a figure of our Lord showing his blood-stained wounds. Seeing how much good had been thus wrought, many other bishops throughout the Church did the same thing, and the supreme pontiff, the Pope himself, to show how he liked and wished to behold the spreading of such a religious exercise, bestowed his indulgence of xl. days to all who should worthily perform it. As soon, then, as this particular devotion began to grow into favour with the people, to forward it still more those zealous but indiscreet magnifiers of indulgences bethought themselves first, of all the xl. days of pardon ever granted by any bishop to the exercise of that devotion in one particular church ; then, in all the churches of one particular country ; then, in every place over all Christendom ; and, at last, taking the Pope's indulgence or pardon to be a ratification of each and all the others, they added up the whole, and let the sum come to what it might — whether to two, or twenty-six, or thirty thousand years and some odd days, it mattered not — they un hesitatingly gave out that such was the length of the indulgence to be gained by every one, and in every place, each time the devotion itself was duly performed. Such, to my thinking, was the way in which those extraordinary indulgences sprang up: they were put forth, not by lawful, but private authority; and thus being frauds, the Church has always blamed and forbidden them. The dispositions and conditions required for gaining any of these " pardons " have been slightly noticed before in this work, while speaking of the indulgenced mazer-bowl (see vol. ii. 276, 277).

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 65

(81) It is not every Englishman who, in these our days, while he stops to spell the words half- eaten away by time on the old Christian Briton's cross in Wales or Cornwall, or looks for the spot where our British Arthur was buried at Glaston- bury and our Anglo-Saxon Alfred near Win chester, or stoops him down to read the legend running round the flat Anglo-Norman grave-stone, and bends over the high tomb of the English period, will do what those monuments ask of him —say a prayer for the dead beneath them, and thus hold communion in faith with all those who have ever lived in this island since the time that Christianity was brought hither, till the sad epoch of the lustful Henry's reign. Only he who still clings fast to the ancient creed, only the Catholic can comply with such a behest. When this country forsook its old for a newly-born belief, it threw off its old pious usages : in wedding itself unto a new religion, it brought up new religious customs ; a new bride is always arrayed in new fresh garments. Nowhere does the Protestant Establishment of England show a wider departure from those devotional practices followed by this land during ages gone by, than in what belongs to the burial of the dead.

Nine-tenths of the funeral monuments erected by Protestantism in this country, are highly blam- able for several reasons : they show a heathenish rather than a Christian feeling in their words,

VOL. III. E

66 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

their ornaments, and symbolism : their " Sacred to the (82) memory" of no matter who, however black and well-known a sinner, startles those who think that nothing can be sacred to man, but only to God and God's worship ; their fulsomeness and utter want of truth while praising the departed, outdo anything of that kind in the pagan world itself, so that to "lie like an epitaph,"71 has grown into a saying ; nay, downright pagan instead of Christian (83) sentences may be sometimes found inscribed upon them.72

71 The object of the old Catholic epitaphs, which were almost always very short, was not to tell boasting untruths of the dead, but to stir the reader to pray for them : Respicias lector nostrum epitaphium ut ores pro nobis Deum, says an inscription in Seven- oaks church, Kent. — Weever, 1 18.

Neptune, Hercules, Victory winged, and wingless,, Britannia, and little fat boys for genii, may be met with — some or all of them — on almost every tomb put up during the last half century, in St. Paul's, London : Westminster, too, can show no small band of pagan deities. As far as the inscriptions beneath these heathen isms speak, it would be hard to find out whether the brave men to whom these monuments are built, were Gentiles or Jews, Infidels or Christians. The heathenish ideas of some funeral tablets are quite offensive : take, for instance, the verses in Speld- hurst church, Kent : —

Ide prayse thy valour, but Mars gins to frowne ; He feares when Sols aloft that Mars must downe : Ide prayse thy forme, but Venus cryes amayne, Sir Water Waller will my Adon stayne : Ide prayse thy learning, but Minerva cryes, &c.

— Thorpe, Begistrum Rojfense, 808.

72 Over the grave of a youthful couple, one of them his own child, a Protestant rector sets up the following Gentile inscription, in his church : —

Quern Dii amant, adolescens moritur.

— Blomefield, Norfolk, i. 21 1. In the church at Waterloo, over the grave of one of those brave men who fell in that great fight, may

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 67

What a broad, sad difference from what used to be the custom here while this land continued Catholic ! Then the stones upon our fellow- countrymen's graves, though various in shape, in decoration, and in the words written on them, told that beneath lay those who, however distinct in blood and language, whether Britons, Saxons, Normans, or English, were yet all of the one same hope, the one same belief, the one same Church. Whilst meekly acknowledging them selves, in sentences out of holy writ and the liturgy, to be wretched (84) sinners,73 those men

be read, not some sweet soothing words taken out of Holy Writ, but this scrap from Cicero : —

Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

How widely different was it in our old Catholic times ! Then the grave-stone inscription told of the Christian belief and wishes of the dead beneath, at the same while it asked all those whose eyes might fall upon it, to pray for the soul of the person buried there, either in those words : Orate pro anima . . . cujus animse pro- picietur Deus ; or, in the English form : Of your charity pray

for the soul of , on whose soul and all Christian souls may

Jesus have mercy.

73 In describing an old grave-brass, Weever says : Within the circumference of the heart this word " Credidi " : from the heart these lines : —

Redemptor meus vivit.

In novissimo die super terrain stabit :

In carne mea videbo Deum Salvatorem.

— Ant. Fun. Monum., p. 499. On another tomb are graven these invocations from the litany : —

Pater de celis Deus miserere nobis :

Fili redemptor mundi Deus miserere nobis :

Sancta Trinitas unus Deus miserere nobis.

— Ibid., 378. The following are not unfrequent : —

68 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

say to us how they look to Christ the Saviour for their forgiveness ; and to hasten it, beseech the living to put up a prayer for them to Him, and not for them alone, but, in a spirit of true brotherly kindness, for all Christian souls going through the woes of purgatory.74 Ah, (85) too, many a dear old Catholic tomb seems to have,

Qui me plasmasti miserere mei.

Qui me pretioso tuo sanguine redimisti miserere mei.

Qui me ad christianitatem vocasti miserere mei.

— Ibid., 394. Often may be seen on old brasses a scroll coming out of the dead person's mouth, and having written on it these words of the fiftieth psalm : — Miserere mei Deus secundum mag- nam misericordiam tuam. Sometimes the same sentiments are spoken in verse, thus : —

Miserere, Miserator, quia vere sum peccator, Unde precor licet reus, miserere mei Deus,

— Flamstead, Herts. Ibid-., 348.

74 Our old English grave-inscriptions were thoroughly Catholic — Catholic in the belief they uttered, Catholic in those kindly wishes which they showed towards all Christian brethren. One of the commonest forms to be met with is : " Of your charity, pray for ... on whose soul, and all Christian souls, may Jesu have mercy" (Weever, 120, and puasim), or — " Orate pro anima . . . cujus anime propicietur Deus." — Ibid. [cf. n. 72].

Often, too, the living are earnestly asked to pray for all the dead man's friends, kinsfolks, and all the faithful departed, thus : Orate pro animabus . . . Johannis, Julianse et Alicise ux. ejus . . . patris et matris . . . fratrum, sororum suorum et filiorum eorum . . . et pro animabus omnium benefactorum nostrorum et omnium fidelium defunctorurn, quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen (ibid., 123). Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, sancte misericors salvator, miserere animabus. . . . Nee non orate pro animabus omnium defunctorum hie et ubique in Christo quiescencium. — Ibid., 406.

Da requiem cunctis Deus et ubicumque sepultis.

— Ibid., 530.

Prey for the saulygs of Henry Denne, and Joan his wyf, theyr fadyrs, theyr modyrs, bredyrs and good frendys, and of al Christian saulygs Jesu haue mercy. Amen. — Ibid., 201.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 69

even now, hovering all about it, a little atmosphere quite its own, made up, as it were, of holy breath ings from out the mild, warm, God-loving heart of him or her who lies within. What, though that heart is now cold, beatless, shrivelled up, dwindled into dust, its last sighings died not away as they came wafted from off those dying lips that gave them utterance ; but still live, still are floating around, and make themselves heard in low soft (86) whisperings to our ear, as we pause and read upon the stone — " Sweet Jesus of Nazareth" — "Jesus Mary's son" have mercy — grant everlasting life to the soul 75 — thus showing how, in the truest sense, "love is strong in death." 76

75 Among the ruins of Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire, was found a grave-stone marked with a cross, and bearing this inscription round it : —

DOUCE JHU DE NAZARETH FITES MERCY

A ELIZABETH DE STAYNTON JADES PRIORES DK CEST MAISON.

— Leland, Itin., ii. 97 : about the foot of a cross at Braithwell, near Doncaster, may be read the invocation following :

>%< JESU LE F1Z MARIE PENSE TOI LE FILS NOTRE ROI JE VOUS PRIE.

— Camden, Britannia, ed. Gough, iii., plate 2.

WHOS SOWL SWKTK JESU PARDON ends the inscription on the grave of Aleys Walleys, in Codham church, Kent (Weever, Ant. Fun. Hon., 124); and SWETE JESU, GRANT TO THEM AND us EUERLASTYNG LIFE, may be read on a tomb in Stone church. — Ibid., 127.

70 The heart's own feelings, good in their kind, but found to kindle of themselves as warm a glow within the heathen as the Christian bosom, are, by the Church's belief about Purgatory, uplifted from the common level of human to the loftiness of religious love, and become holy and hallowing. Who but a

yo THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(87) Besides writing on the stones beneath which they were buried, such longing wishes to be prayed for by the living, our forefathers be thought themselves, in their strong Catholic belief, of another way, of a symbol as fitting as it was beautiful — that of

LIGHTS SET UPON THE GRAVE

— to remind all who should behold it, to say, as they went by, a prayer asking of God that the soul of him or her whose ashes lay there, might be soon brought out of darksome woe to the happiness, and everlasting brightness, of heaven. Friendless indeed, during those ages of faith, must that man have been, and small the love his kinsfolks bore him, upon whose tomb, if buried within the church, no wax-taper was kept burning for at least the first month,77 if not throughout the whole year after his death. Examples there are, and not a few, of endowments that were made for providing a certain quantity of wax-tapers and lamps to burn, both day and

Catholic husband could have said as William Herbert, Lord Pembroke, did to his wife, in his will (dated A.D. 1469): — Wife, pray for me and take the said order (of wydowhood) that ye promised me as ye had in my lyfe, my hert and love. God have mercy on me and save you and our children, and our Lady and all the Saints in Hevyn help me to salvation. — Test. Vet., i. 304.

77 In the roll of expenses for the funeral (A.D. 1466), of John Paston, are mentioned the torches and wax made at Bromholm for to brenne upon the grave, iij marks, — for light kept on the grave, x8. — Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 485.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 71

night throughout the year, and for ever, upon the grave of some royal and high-born individuals, in this country.78 Other less (88) distinguished

78 Quene Elyanore the kynges wyfe was buryed at Westmynster, in the chapell of Seynt Edwarde, at ye fete of Henry the thirde where she hathe .ii. wexe tapers brennynge vpon her tumbe both daye and nyght (Fabyan, Chronicles, ed. Ellis, p. 393). He (King Henry IV.) prouyded that .iiii. tapers shulde brenne daye and nyght about his (Richard II. 's) graue whyle the worlde endureth (ibid., p. 577). William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, made a grant of xxs. yearly rent to St. Paul's Cathedral, London, for the health of the soul of his wife Alice, one part thereof to be spent upon a lamp continually burning over her tomb (Dugdale, Hist. of St. Paul's, p. 1 8). The keeper of the lamps about the tomb of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in the same church, is especially mentioned by the provisions made for keeping the anniversary of that prince (ibid., p. 27). The expense of keeping up the lights around Queen " Elyanore's " and King Henry V.'s tombs in Westminster Abbey, is thus noticed : Pro factura cere- orum quadrantium et rotundorum imperpetuum circa tumbam dicte regine cremendorum, &c. Et pro tortis et cereis rotundis emptis stantibus circa tumbit' regis Henrici quinti, &c. (Valor. EccL, \. 423): square candles are not now in liturgical use in the western parts of the Church ; an old square wax candle, ornamented with figures of saints in low relief, which was shown me not long ago by a friend, I think is of ancient Russian work manship. These square candles seem to have been much employed at one time: Robert, Earl of Suffolk (who died A.D. 1369), says : " I will that five square tapers and four mortars, besides torches, shall burn about my corpse at my funeral" (Test. Vet., i. 74). Again, Sir John Montacute directs (A.D. 1388), "Upon my burial day I will that there be five tapers, each weighing twenty pounds, placed about my hearse, and four morters, each of ten pounds weight" (ibid., 124). "I will," says Thomas, Earl of Warwick (A.D. 1400), "for my funeral that there be three hundred 'pounds weight of wax in six tapers and seven morters — also that sixty- four men, in gowns made of white cloth, carry each of them a torch," &c. (ibid., 154). Richard, Earl of Arundel (A.D. 1375) desires " That no men at arms, horses, hearse, or other pomp be used at my funeral, but only five torches with their morters " (ibid., 94). Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester (A.D. 1399) directs thus : My body to be covered with a black cloth, with a white cross and an escutcheon of my arms in the middle of the said cross, with four

72 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

personages ordained that such lights should be kept up for them, on all Sundays and (89) festivals ; 79 while people of small wealth be-

tapers round it, and four full mortars being at the four corners (ibid., 147). A " mortar " was a wide bowl of iron or metal; it rested upon a stand or branch, and was filled either with fine oil or wax, which was kept burning by means of a broad wick. Mortars of a small size, holding a perfumed wax, are put all around the shrine or " confessional " of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, on the festival of those apostles, the 29th of June.

Knoll, and many other lands, were given by Edward I. to West minster, on condition that upon the eve of St. Andrew, Queen Eleanor's anniversary, there should be sung a Placebo and Dirige with nine lessons, c. wax candles weighing xii Ib. a piece being then burning about her tomb, and every year new ones made for that purpose. — And of the waxen tapers before specified, xxx to remain all the year long about the said queen's tomb, till the renewing of them on the day of her anniversary ; all which to be lighted upon the great festival days, and upon the coming of any nobleman thither, and as often else as they should see fit ; and moreover, that the abbot, prior, and convent, and their successors, should find two waxen lights, each of them weighing two pounds of wax, to burn continually at the tomb of the said queen (Dug- dale, Warwicks., ii. 959). Henry IV. gave land to the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, London, for the keeping of his father's and mother's anniversaries ; and " to find eight great tapers to burn about that tomb on the day of the said anniversaries, at the exequies, and Mass on the morrow, and likewise at the processions, Masses, and vespers on every great festival, and upon Sundays at the procession, Mass, and second vespers." — Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, ed. Ellis, p. 27.

79 In not a few of our country churches may be seen a low browed, shallow, but somewhat wide, blind arch, sunk into the wall, much oftener on the north than the south side of the chancel. Beneath, and but little raised above the pavement, lies either a grave-stone showing a floriated cross, or a cumbent effigy : almost always some distinguished benefactor to that church is buried there. Sometimes, from out the face of the arched wall, juts forth a little bracket, the use of which was to uphold a lamp ; at others, the key-stone of the arch is carved in the shape of a human head, having drilled into it at top, a hole deep and big enough to bear a wax taper : this lamp, or candle, as it might be, was, no doubt, lighted and kept burning all through the Sundays

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 73

queathed enough to have this, among other rites, observed (90) for them once every year at each returning mind-day or anniversary of their death.80

(91) To give strong meaning and more solemnity to this liturgical usage for hindering the dead from being forgotten by the living in their prayers, the custom was to overspread the grave with a rich pall. For this purpose a wagon-headed frame, like (92) the one here shown,81 made of wood or

and festivals of the year, but in a more especial manner on the anniversary of that benefactor, to bid the people think of and pray for his or her soul. In his last testament, Rob. Cok (A.D. 1492) says: — Item, I will that a laumpe be founde brennyng on my grave every Sonday and fest-full in the yere at all divine service, and also that it be light dayly at vij of the belle before mydday, and brenne from vij of the belle dayly till high Mase be endid in the said -church of St. Sepulchre (Blomefield, Norfolk, iv. 139). Simon Blake appoints a lamp to burn by his grave on all holidays and Lordsdays, from matins to complin, and the bell-man of the town of Swaffham to take care of it.— Ibid., vi. 203.

On the eve of his year-day or anniversary, as soon as service was done, a pall was thrown over the founder's tomb, and a wax taper lighted up at the head, and another at the foot, to burn there the remainder of that day and all through the night ; on the following morning, four other wax tapers were lighted and kept burning until the high Mass had been chanted for his soul and his kindred's souls ; then the four tapers were put out, and other two were placed there till after complin. — Consuetudines ecclesise, Norwicenris, &c. [Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. MS., 465].

80 Robert Fabyan directed that his " obite " should be kept for nine years, and that yearly " there be ordeyned .ij. tapers of .ij.lb every tapir, and .ij. candilstyks of the wax chaundeler, and they to be sett at my grave, and to brenne the tyme of the hole obsequy " (Fabyan, Chron., ed. Ellis, p. viii.). Hugh Thurlow says : — I will that my obit be kept with solemn " dirige " and Mass, with lights upon the hearse for ten years.— Test. Vet., ii. 557.

81 Taken from the Beauchamp monument, in the old contract for the making of which, we find this item: — Also they shall make

74

THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

iron, and so large as to cover the whole length of the tomb and high enough to enclose the figure, if

BKAUCHAMP MONUMKNT

one lay there, was sometimes placed upon it ; 82 and (93) over this hearse, (for thus like the larger

in like wise, and like latten, an hearse to be dressed and set upon the said stone, over the image,, to bear a covering, to be ordeyned, &c. (A Covenant., &c., xiii. Junii, 32 H. VI., Dugdale, Warwick^., i. 445). Dugdale himself caused a new velvet pall to be got " to lie over the hearse of Earl Richard." — Descrip. of the Beauchamp Chapel, by Nichols, p. 36.

s- When the grave was slightly raised above the pavement, or merely marked by one of its large flat stones, this hearse had much effect. When, too, upon the sepulchral monument was put this dead person's figure, cut, as large as life, in stone, this frame or

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 75

erection it was called,83) fell the pall or hearse- cloth in ample folds, and the lights in tall candle sticks were set around.84

smaller kind of hearse seemed almost requisite for giving a seemly look to the pall spread over it. From often being cut out after this shape, so as to fit such a sort of frame, the pall itself got to be named the hearse- cloth ; and of these old Catholic embroid eries, the London city companies even yet

possess some magnificent specimens, among | |

which the Fishmongers' and the Saddlers'

are the handsomest. Whether, however, the tomb arose much or little above the pavement, or the grave-stone was quite flat and level with the ground of the church or cloister which it helped to flag, it would seem that the funeral pall cast over a low small hearse, always mantled the sepulchral effigy, as well as the plain flag-stone, during the anniversary services for him or her who lay buried beneath ; for in the Syon Martyrology, we read this regulation : Determinatum est quod . . . orriacio f eretri seu pavimenti, accensio luminum, &c., cum ceteris observanciis tarn in exequiis quam in missis per omnia observabuntur ut prius (fol. 5).

83 See before ii. 399, 403, 416, of this work.

84 Ad abbathiam monialium de Godestowe pervenit (Hugo Lin- colniensis episcopus) ubi ecclesiam intrans cum ante magnum altare prolixius orasset, vidit ibi quoddam sepulcrum ante altare panno serico coopertum et cereos circumastantes cum lampadibus ardenti- bus, &c. (Chron. Jolian. Bromton, ed. Twysden, i. 1235). Among the things given to Durham Cathedral at the death of Bishop Bury, there was a green pall, shot with gold, for covering that prelate's tomb : j pannum aureum viridis coloris pro tumba ejusdem. —

Wills, rf.v., of the Northern Counties, p. 25. Of Vitalis, abbot of Westminster, and who was buried in the south cloister of that abbey, Sporley, a monk of that house, tells us : — Quolibet anno die anni- versarii ipsius ponatur unum tapetum cum panno serico auro texto, et duo cerei pond, ii li. quos sacrista providebit ab hora vesperarum usque in crastinum. Finita Missa de Requiem ibidem jugiter ardebunt (Cotton MS., Claud. A. viii. fol. 39). " My body," says William Norreys (A.D. 1486), " to be buried in the chancel of our Lady, in the parish of Asshe, at the south end of the altar there. I will that my red cloth of baudkyn be laid upon my body in the said church, and so there to remain for a perpetual remembrance, and especially to be provided for therewith an hearse and a black cloth, with two tapers thereupon set, to be light and burning in

76 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(94) In the wish to be buried in one particular spot on the chancel's northern side, and in those (95) injunctions for the architectural adornments of the grave to be fashioned so that there always might be set

THE EASTER SEPULCHRE UPON HIS TOMB,

we meet another proof of that eagerness in by gone times, to be prayed for when dead, felt by him who could have his will fulfilled in such

the time of saying divine service there, to be had and ordained over my tomb for a special remembrance of prayer," &c. (Test. Vet., i. 385). In his will (dated A.D. 1 501), John Blome gave all his lands to the keeping of his anniversary for ever, placing one herse over his sepulchre and finding two lights on it, of one pound of wax, to burn in time of exequise and Mass performing on the day of the commemoration of his death, four torches to burn before his sepulchre ... in the time of divine service, and one penny offer ing at the Mass, &c. (Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 182). Among the funeral expenses of John Sayer, Knight (A.D. 1530), are the follow ing : — For wax upon his hearse to burne ev'y messe tyme v searghs viiis. For v yeards of blakk cloth to his hearse ijs — JVills, &c., of the Northern Counties, p. no.

Poor Queen Catharine of Arragon was buried in the church of Peterborough, betwixt two pillars on the north side of the choir, near tovthe great altar; her hearse being covered with a black velvet pall, crossed with white cloth of silver : this pall was after wards changed for one of meaner value, which had her Spanish escutcheons affixed to it ; but even that was taken away in 1643 (Mon. Any I., i. 364). The latter fact we learn from Gunton, who, in speaking of the Puritans, tells us of those men who " rob and rifle the tombs, and violate the monuments of the dead.— They demolish Queen Katherine's tomb, Hen. the eighth his repudiated wife : they brake down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse ; overthrow the herse itself, displace the gravestone that lay over her body," &c. Hist, of the Church of Peterborough , p. 335.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 77

things. While doing this, the owner of the soil, or the lord of the manor, only sought to avail himself best of those opportunities for getting his soul remembered, afforded him by those highest and therefore rare but impressive solemnities of the ritual, which once in every year were sure to bring all the people in crowds to the parish- church, as they mingled in its heart - stirring celebrations.

During holy week our Catholic countrymen went, as Catholics still go, to church — on Maundy Thursday, to partake of, or at least to adore the Blessed Eucharist, the day that pledge of love was instituted— on Good Friday, to weep over their sins and crave forgiveness of Christ crucified for them, as they crept to and kissed on bended knees the cross, the emblem of redemption, bought for the world that day — on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, (96) to rejoice at the uprising of our Lord and Saviour from the grave, and to hope through Him for a joyful resurrection. This then is the season of love towards God — of love towards man — of asking from Heaven forgiveness not only for one's own but others' sins — of praying for all, the living and the dead. From the early part of Maundy Thursday till Easter morning, the Blessed Eucharist was kept in what was called the " sepulchre " ; and night and day crowds thronged to watch and worship there. But the people of the parish knowing who it was that

THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

had made their " sepulchre " to be so beautiful, and had endowed the church with the means of

EASTER SEPULCHRE AT HECKINGTON

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 79

lighting it up so splendidly,85 were taught to pray for the soul, while they remembered that there lay hard by the remains of him who be sought as a precious boon that the marble table of his monument might " bear the body of our Lord at Easter." ' [See the picture opposite and a similar picture in vol. iv.]

(97) It was, however, as each year brought back the day on which a person died, that his soul used to be, and still is, commended unto God's mercies, in a service especially set forth by the Church for

85 Thomas Lord Dae re says (A.D. 1531): My body to be buried in the parish church of Hurst Monceaux, on the north side of the high altar. I will that a tomb be there made for placing the sepulchre of our Lord, with all fitting furniture thereto in honour of the most blessed sacrament ; also, I will that cl. be employed towards the lights about the said sepulchre, in wax-tapers of ten pounds weight each, to burn about it. — Test. Vet., ii. 653.

86 Half Verney, knight, directs (A.D. 1478) his body to be buried in the tomb standing under the sepulture between the choir and our Lady's chapel, &c. (Test. Vet., i. 350). Thomas Wyndesor, esquire (A.D. 1479), speaks thus in his will: My body to be buried in the north side of the quire . . . before the image of our Lady, where the sepulture of our Lord standeth, whereupon I will that there be made a plain tomb of marble of a competent height, to the intent that it may bear the blessed body of our Lord and the sepulture at the time of Easter to stand upon the same, &c. (ibid., 352). In her will (A.D. 1499), Eleanor, wife of Judge Townsend, orders her body to be buried by the high altar, before our Blessed Lady in the chancel . . . and a new tomb to be made for her husband's and her bones, upon which tomb to be cunningly graven a sepulchre for Easter-day. — Bloinefield, Norfolk, vii. 132.

The liturgical student will not fail to observe how these extracts show that our Blessed Lady's image, which was ever to be found in our old parish churches, always stood upon its bracket on the north side of the east-end wall in the chancel : the image of the patron-saint under whose name the church had been dedicated, was on the south.

8o THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

such a brotherly purpose, and called by one or other of these names,

THE YEAR'S MIND,ST ANNIVERSARY, OR OBIT.

Upon its eve, the bell-man of the town (and every (98) town of yore made its own bell-man do this duty), went all about that neighbourhood, ringing his hand-bell at the head of every street and lane : in a country parish, this was done by the sexton, before the cross at the village end, upon the green, and at those quarters of the hamlet where the cot tages stood closer thronged. Whilst giving out, in a slow sort of mournful chaunt, the deceased individual's name, this lowly official asked all who were listening, to say a short prayer to God, be seeching mercy on the soul of him or her whose year's mind he was then proclaiming, and for whom Placebo or even-song, and Dirige or matins and lauds for the dead, would be sung that after noon at church, with a Mass of Requiem on the morrow, to be followed by a dole to the poor.88

87 To the parish church of Thaxted " Rychard the younger gawe a meide callyd Abel Meide, for a perpetual mynd yerly to be kept for ther (his kinsfolks') soulys and al christen soulys."— Weever, Ant. Fun. Monuments, p. 385.

88 Lego portatori campanse orantis circa villam de Tykhull vjd. die exequiarum pro anima mea (Test. Ebor., p. 141). Sir Adam Outlaw, priest, bequeaths a tenement to the West Lynn town bellman, on condition that on the vigil of Sir Adam's "yere day" this bellman " pray for the souls of Thomas of Acre and Muriel his wife, his (Sir Adam's) soul,, and the souls of his benefactors, with his bell going about the town," &c. (Blomefield, Norfolk, viii. 536). Simon de Stalham leaves to the bellman at Great Yarmouth vj<i. a year to keep our anniversary, viz. of me and

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 8 1

(99) All that evening, and from earliest dawn next day, the church bells tolled a knell : 89 the grave,

Christiana my wife, annually at a certain term for ever (Swinden, Hist, of Great Yarmouth, p. 818); and about the same time (A.D. 1349) William Motte says in his will: I give to the bellmen and their successors vjd. of an annual rent out of my capital messuage for ever, to keep my anniversary for ever, and pray for my soul, and the souls of Margaret my wife, and Margaret Child my wife, and the souls of John Motte, and my children, about the town of Great Yarmouth, as the manner and custom is, &c. (ibid., p. 820). Isabel, wife of Jeffery de Fordele (A.D. 1349), left "to the two bellmen of the town, and their successors for the time being, for ever, v]d. of annual rent, on condition that they celebrate the anniversary of her and Thomas Sydher, and ring for our souls, "&c. (ibid., p. 824). In the Statutes for St. Mary Magdalen College, of his founding at Oxford, Bp. Wayneflete, while providing for the keeping of his own anniversary, says : " Every year on the day of the said burial service, four pence for his trouble shall be paid to the common bellman who is accustomed to make public pro clamation, after the Oxford practice, for Master John Bowyke, and myself as benefactors" (Statutes of Magdalen Coll., Oxford. ed. Ward, p. 152). These bellmen were often employed in other services about the church, for in the accompts of St. Nicholas's church, Great Yarmouth, we find (A.D. 1511) money was paid to the bell-man for covering the images in Lent (Swinden, Hist., p. 812); and it is to be presumed that the bells carried about by them were ecclesiastical property, since among the things belong ing (A.D. 1 504) to the above-named fine old church, its different sorts of bells are thus fortunately noticed — the saints' bell — the housil bell — three hand bells — and a bell to go with the Sacrament (ibid.) ; the " three hand bells " must have been for the bellmen's use to carry with them about the town as they went to ring and bid the people to pray for the dead. This same custom, as once, and maybe still in some places, followed on the opposite shores of France, is thus noticed : —

" 'Twas about this time the sexton old, and in his hand a bell, Was going all the country round chiming the funeral knell, ' Pray for the soul of him that was a gallant cavalier

And to-morrow about the sunset — there in his state he lies — We shall bear him then to the White Church for his holy obsequies.' "

— A Summer among the Bocages, dec., by L. S. Costello. VOL. III. F

82 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(100) meanwhile, was shrouded with a funeral pall or hearse-cloth ; 90 and wax tapers, more or less in number, (101) were set lighted all about it.01 The kinsfolks and the friends of the person, always, and often the (102) civic functionaries of

In some of the wards within the city of London, a bellman went about every evening for the purpose, amongst others, of asking people to pray for the souls of the dead : —

The xiij day of January (A.D. 1557) in alderman Draper ward, called Chordwenerstrett ward, a belle-man went about with a belle at ever lane end and at the ward end, to gyff warnyng of tfyre and candyll lyght, and to help the powre, and pray for the ded. — Machyn, Diary (C. S.), p. 123.

S9 Having provided for a priest to pray for his soul the second Sunday in Lent, Sir Adam Outlaw, priest, also bequeaths (A.D. 1501) to the parish clerk for the time being, three acres of land, so that he do ring in pele on the vigil of the aforesaid yereday (Blomefield, Xcrfolk, viii. 536). Among other charges to be paid by the priory of Uske, one was : " Item, to pray for Doctor Adam and rynging of his mynd every ye re vj(1." ( Valor. Eccl., iv. 366). The solemn knell rung on the eve of an anniversary, is spoken of in most old documents : thus Sporley tells us of Abbot Walter : — Obiit in festo Cosmse et Damiani (A.D. 1191) sepultusque est in australi parte claustri (Westmonasteriensis) sub piano pavimento ante primum scamnum a cimbalo. . . . Quolibet anno in vigilia predict orum sanctorum, prior et conventus ejusdem loci Placebo, et Dirige cum tribus lectionibus ut in aliis annivers£friis princi- palibus fieri solet cum campanarum pulsacione solemniter decanta- bunt, duobus cereis ad tumbam ipsius continue ardentibus a vigilia predicta usque ad finem Missse de Requiem crastino die quam cantabit prior vel alius custos ordinis loco ipsius. — MS. Cotton, Claudius A. viii. ff. 44, b. 45.

90 The covering of the grave on the anniversary day with a pall or hearse-cloth, is mentioned on pp. 75, 76, note 82 and note 84.

91 The great number of hearse-lights at an anniversary, and the expenses of making and putting them up, are shown in many old documents : — Magistro Willielmo Le Chaundeler, pro CC.XLV. lib. cerse, emptis ad anniversarium Reginc^e (Eleanore) vjli. viijs. vjd. ;

Item, eidem Magistro W., pro meeremio ad pegones cereorum, carpentariis et portitoribtis cereorum . . . arkon' et filo ad cereos ligandos Iviijs. iiijrf.,

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 83

the borough,92 went to both these religious services ; and all of them made their offering of money at the Mass, for the good of the departed soul whose anniversary they had come to celebrate. After the Holy Sacrifice was over, a dole of money or of food, oftentimes of both, was distributed among the poor;93 and to a banquet (103) which usually

Item, pro factura istius cerse, circa aniversarium Reginse, pro eodem, c.xijs. vjd.

Item, Magistro Roberto de Colebroke, pro meremio ad hercias Dominse Reginae apud Westmonasterium et apud fratres Prsedica- tores, et pro aliis necessariis circa dictas hercias, die aniversarii Reginse, Ixxvs. ijcL (Manners and Household Expenses of England, &c., 101, printed for the Roxburghe Club). The blaze of wax tapers around the tomb of Gundred, Countess of Norfolk, in Bungay church, must have, on her anniversary, been very great, since the cost of those lights came to xs. iiijd., no mean sum in her times : In cera ardente circa tumbam dictse Gundredse annuatim per fundacionem pnedictre, xs. iiijd. — Valor. Eccles., iii. 430.

92 The mayer of Faversham with ij of his brethern for the time beyng hath and shall receyve yerely for ever before the mas of the said obit xxiij'1, that is to say the same mayer shall receive . . . xiiij'1 and shall offer at the same masse j(1 and either of the said mayers brethern shall receyve v(1 and either of theym shall offer in lyke manner j(1. (Valor. Ecc., i. 84). John of Gaunt directed a certain sum of money to be given to the Lord mayor and Sheriffs of London each time they came to his anniversary, in St. Paul's. — Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, p. 27.

93 Edward I., in bestowing certain lands, for the good of his queen Eleanor's soul, on Westminster Abbey, required among other things, that on the queen's anniversary, the prior and convent should distribute unto every poor body repairing to that mon astery, one penny sterling, or money to that value ; staying till three of the clock, expecting their coming, before they should begin the dole, which was to be unto seven score poor people (Dugdale, Warwicks.) ii. 959). Not only our kings and queens, but all our countrymen, no matter of how lowly a degree, left, when they could afford it, moneys to be given yearly, for ever, to the poor on each anniversary of their death. Not a chantry was ever rounded in Catholic England, but there may be found, among its several provisions, one somewhat like the following : In denariis annuatim

84 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

consisted of the nicest dishes then known, and never lacked of plentifulness, not only the friends of the deceased, but all strangers who had chosen to come and attend these obsequies, were bidden ; 94 and if, in some instances, we be struck with the splendid hospitality provided for these guests, we are still more approvingly (104) surprised at those abundant alms bestowed upon those crowds of the indigent who flocked from all sides to these anniversaries.95

So strong in the hearts of our Catholic country men was the wish to have the Holy Sacrifice offered up for their souls after death, and not merely once during each year, but every day, that so many of them as could, founded what was called

distributis pauperibus in anniversario Thome More fundatoris ejusdem cantarie ad orandum pro anima dicti Thome et parent urn suorum. — Valor. EccL, i. 63.

94 Walter, Abbot of Westminster (dying A.D. 1194), bequeathed the manor of Paddington to that church for the keeping of his anniversary. The ordinary guests, who dined that day in the refectory, had two dishes of meat, with bread, wine, and ale ; but for persons of distinction, the same provision was made as for the monks, who on that obit were feasted with more abundance than usual. To all comers whosoever, from the hour that the table concerning the anniversary was read out in the chapter-house, until complin the day following, were given meat and drink, a& well as hay, oats, and everything they should want ; so that every one, whether he came on horse-back or on foot, might find free admittance. Of three hundred poor men, each one had a loaf of bread of the convent weight, together with a pottle of ale. Besides all this, mead was given to all the monks "ad potum charitatis." — Sporley, in MS. Cotton, Claudius A. viii. f. 44.

96 See last two notes, 93, 94, as well as the following, 97.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 85

A CHANTRY.9'5

This was a pious endowment, most often in land, sometimes in money, enough for the sup port of one priest at the least, but more frequently of several, and to meet all those little expenses of daily Mass, as well as to buy new vestments and altar furniture when wanted, to keep in be coming repair the small chapel within which this service was celebrated, to bestow a weekly dole upon the poor,97 and to solemnise the founder's anniversary.98

90 As not only among the Anglo-Saxons (vol. i. p. 121, note 27), but till the latest times, " singing " was the usual word to signify the saying of Mass (see note 99, p. 86 here), and the host to be consecrated at the Holy Sacrifice came to be called " singing bread " (see note 32. vol. i. p. 124) ; the endowment for a Mass was termed a "chantry."

97 A weekly dole to the poor was usually provided for by most founders of chantries, amongst their other regulations. From the " certificat of Sir Xpofer Clarke chauntre prest " of Hedcron, Kent, we learn there was " distributed yerly by the foundacion of the same chantre " —

First weekly every weeke vijd. to vij poure people of the parishe of Hedcron — xxx8. iiij'1.

Item, an obit for my founder yerly xxs.

Item, to the lights of the crucifyx and sepulchre of our Lord God yerly iij8. iiijd. — Valor. Eccl., i. 63.

98 The usual items of an anniversary may be here seen: — In die anniversarii Johannis Lotte et Margarete uxoris ejus, pro animabus eormn parentum et benefactorum, &c. xs.

Vicario ecclesie Sci. Egidii eodem die ijs.

Tribus presbiteris, eodem die celebrantibus missam xijd.

Duobus clericis ecclesie predicte et sex pueris ibidem minis- trantibus xviij'1.

xijcem pauperibus torchias ferentibus xij(l.

Et in panibusdistributisetdistribuendis pauperibus eodem die xx8. — Valor. Eccl., iv. 315. Sir W. Denham left by will to the Iron-

86 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(105) Chantries were of two kinds: one when the endowment was to last for a limited period, for two, four, ten, or twenty years after the founder's death, (106) during which time Mass was to be offered up, and certain specified prayers said every day by the priest who under took this duty;99 the other, when (107) the

mongers' Company in the city of London, thirteen messuages, on condition that the Company should for ever have a dirge sung by note, within the chapel of our Lady of Barking, for the soul of the founder, his wife, his parents, his children, and benefactors. To this Mass the master and wardens were to bring their best cloth for the hearse, and distribute x/. sterling. To the vicar, is. 4(7. ; to seven priests, 48. Scl: three clerks, 2s. • for wax, 2s. ; for the bells, 4*. 8(7. ; for bread and cheese, is. 4</. ; for ale, 3$. 4(7. ; to 100 poor persons, 3/. 6s. 8(7. ; to 45 poor, 30.3. ; and to 25 poor, 4is. 8(7. — Herbert, Livery Companies, ii. 605.

99 Also I (John Sherwode) will that syr Leonarde Hall shall synge for my sowll one holl yere. — Wills, &c., of the Northern Counties, p. in. I (Jhon Trollop) bequeth to Sir Thos. Cornay iij1. to synge for me for two yeres if the same Sir Thos. so long lefe. And if he die afore the said two yeres so ended, then I wylle that myne executors cause another preest to synge oute the same two yeres s'vyce for my soule (ibid., 105). Also I (John Hedworth) wyll that on (one) prest singe messe iij yers for the well of my sowll and all Christen sowlls and to haue messe and diridge songe at Chester for well of my sowll yeirlie fo1' euer more, &c. (ibid., 1 12). Item do et lego (Thomas de Walkyngton rector ecc. de Houghton) capellanis meis (tres erant) ad celebrandum pro anima mea et animabus omnium ndelium defunctorum per tres annos proxirne post obit um meum sequentes, xlviij1. . . . ita quod transeant scolis Oxonise sive Cantabrigise utrum voluerint (ibid., 50). Item cuidam capellano idoneo celebranti pro anima mea per sex annos in ecclesia de Seggefeld xx libras (ibid., 20). Volo eciam quod duo honesti et idonei capellani per xij annos ibidem pro anima mea et Johannse uxoris mese, ac omnium parentum et benefactorum nostrorum, et pro animabus quibus teneor, celebraturi inveniantur, horas can- onicas cum placebo et dirige singulis diebus a canone licitis prsemissa dicturi, &c. (ibid., 47). Item volo quod ordinetur ut unus capellanus celebret in ecclesia Ebor. ad altare Sancti Johannis Evangelists pro anima Thomre fratris mei et animabus parentum

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 87

foundation and the religious services which it sought to get, were meant by the testator to abide for ever, and therefore called a perpetual chantry.1

meorum et omnium eorum quibus tenentur, et anima mea, per xx annos proximo sequentes mortem meam, &c. (ibid-., 52). Ego Richardus Feryby . . . volo quod tota pecunia pro predictis duabus bovatis terrse sic venditis solvatur capellanis secularibus, aut uni capellano seculari, ad celebranda divina officia pro anima mea, quamdiu dicta pecunia extendere valeat. — Test. Ebor., p. 120.

Sometimes these temporary chantries were served by as many as ten priests all the time ; William Lord Roos says :— Lego cccc1. ad stipend ium decem honestorum capellanorum pro anima mea, animabus patris et matris, fratrum, sororum, amicorum, et bene- factorum meorum, et specialiter pro anima Thomse fratris mei, per octo annos in capella infra castrum de Belvero celebraturorum ; ita quod singulis diebus Missam cum nota, ad disposicionem unius eorum qui ut decanus inter eos habebitur, celebrent, &c. — Ibid.,

359-

1 William de la Zouche, archbishop of York, in making provision for a perpetual chantry (A.D. 1349), says: — Do et lego pro una perpetua cantaria duorum capellanorum . . . pro anima mea sub certis modo et forma imperpetuum celebraturorum in honore Dei, &c. ccc. marc, sterling (Test. Ebor., 55). Marmaduke Constable leaves (A.D. 1376), unum vestimentum de viridi vellewet cantarise ... in ecclesia de Flaynburgh. Item capellano occupanti dictam cantariam meam perpetuam xls. (ibid., 98). Lord Latimer wills thus (A.D. 1381) : — Nous volloms que . . . deux chapelyns co- venables soient perpetuelement estables celebrer especialment pour Palme nostre seigneur le roi Edward que Dieu assoile, et pour nostre alme, en la esglise de Appelton entre quartre chapeleyns, &c. (ibid., 1 1 6). Ego Johannes de Clyfford (A.D. 1393) volo quod mis- sale meum notatum et portiforium . . . cum duobus vestimentis et calice meo meliori et melior cista mea qute est in thesaurario Ebor. pro hujusmodi ornamentis asservandis, perpetue remaneant cantarioe de Bramham, et ligetur cum duabus cathenis ad murum boriale capellae ubi dicta cantaria debet ordinari (ibid., 171). In his highly curious will, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, makes provision for a perpetual chantry, thus : — Je ordenne et devise que de mes biens et chateulx, mes executeurs facent ordenner et establir en 1'avant dit esglise de Seint Poul un chanterie de deux chapellains a celebrer devine service eri ycell a toutz jours pour m'alme et 1'alme de ma dite nadgairs compaigne Blanche. — Ibid., 227.

These chantries had each its own sacred ornaments and

88 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

(108) The first care of those who wished to establish one of the latter, was to get leave and have in that (109) church at which they meant to be buried, their foundation attached to some altar,2 or to obtain the (110) use of any small

appliances furnished to them by their founders : — At the altar in the chapel of St. Laurence, the two perpetual chaplains of canon Roger de Waltham celebrate mass for the souls of the forefathers and friends of the said Roger, and for the health of this Roger whilst he shall live, and for his soul and the souls of the above- mentioned after death, — with which chaplains in the said chapel, there are the following ornaments which were blessed by the said Sir Roger, and assigned for ever to the said chantry ; namely, two pair of complete vestments, one for daily use, consisting of a chasuble of gold cloth upon canvas, with a cloth of a similar kind to hang in front of the altar, with linen sown to it. Towels to cover the altar, and for the vestments to be folded up in, with alb, amice, stole, maniple, &c., with a thread girdle and two altar- towels, one of which has a frontal of plain gold bordering. The other principal vestment has a chasuble of gold cloth upon silk, one missal, price xxs. A chalice and paten, the greater part gilt, weighing xxs. and worth xxxs. A brasier (chausepoyn ?), value iiis. Two blessed corporals in a case. Two new hand-towels. A box for altar beads. Two new pewter cruets, and a small suspended bell. A good key to the chapel-door. For all which the aforesaid chaplains and their successors are for ever to answer, according to the oath which they take on their admission to the chantry (Dugdale, St. Paul's, p. 335). The bell hanging in this chantry- chapel served, as it does frequently at altars in the churches of Italy at the present time, to tell the people in the further parts of the church when the Mass was about to begin, and to give warning of those more solemn parts of the holy Sacrifice, especially the consecration or sackering. If " brasier " be indicated by the word " chausepoyn," it will be evident that in those beautiful chantries they kept a small charcoal fire burning, during winter time, at the celebration of the Mass early in the morning, and at the recital of other prayers later in the day, for the soul of the founder. The chantry was kept locked, and the key was in the custody of the chantry priest, who was rendered responsible by the oath which he took on being presented to the benefice, of guarding with care the vestments and appurtenances of his chapel.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 89

chapel so placed that the grave might be hard by. The cross-aisles of many of our old churches lent themselves admirably to such an object ; but when this was not so, the founder had to build his own chantry-chapel, which in general he made abutting on the southern side of the sacred edifice. In our cathedrals and larger collegiate churches, where there was room enough, these chapels arose more commonly between the pillars of the nave and aisles, like so many distinct erections, guarding from the sullying fingers of the thoughtless and mischievous the effigy of the founder, stretched out on its high tomb, and the little altar (111) at the eastern end all illuminated, with minute care, in gold and brilliant colours, at

2 Lego — says H. Snayth, clerk — altari S. Jacob! in ecclesia de Snayth ad quod altare perpetua cantaria mea fundata existit, duo paria vestimentorum (Test. Ebor., p. 11 1); John Fayrfax, rector of Prescote (A.D. 1393) — Lego cuidam altari in corpore dictre ecclesise, ex parte boreali, in honore Sancti Johannis Evangelistre facto, ubi propono ordinare cantariam perpetuam, unum missale usus Ebor., unum vestimentum, &c. (ibid., 187) ; and John de la Pole, clerk (A.D. 1414) — Do et lego residuum omnium bonorum meorum . . . can- tarire sen collegio de Wyngfeld ad amortizandum certas terras pro sustentacione unius capellani ad altare Sanctse Trinitatis in ecclesia predicta, pro anima mea, necnon parentum meorum, et omnium ndelium defunctorum (ibid., 373). Roger de la Leye founded a chantry, for one priest to celebrate divine service for his soul at the altar before which he should be buried (Dugdale, Hist, of St. PauFt, p. 19). Raphe de Baldok settled lands on the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, for the maintenance of two priests per petually celebrating for his soul at the altar of St. Erkenwald, and for all the faithful deceased, giving a muniticent legacy to all the officers of the church for the solemnising his yearly obit on the eve of St. James the Apostle, with an ample allowance thereat for the poor. — Ibid., p. 20.

90 THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHERS

the same time that its open tracery allowed those who knelt outside to behold the beauties, and to hear the divine service celebrated within its elaborately ornamented inclosure.3 Sometimes a narrow stair, winding inside a turret, at one of the corners of its western end, leads up to a tiny chapel, raised one story above the floor of the tomb, and where, instead of being below, the altar stood, against the eastern wall, with its little sculptured reredos and over - arching canopy. Not a few of these exquisitely ornamented monu mental chantry - chapels are still left us. Their slight open screen-work looks but a frame for the deeply undercut thin foliage roving everywhere about it ; and the crispy crocketing that creeps up those tall airy pinnacles, and those leaf-like bunchy finials that crown them, seem all too soft and light to be of stone. When they had their rich gilding and their many-tinted colouring (112) bright and fresh upon them, and they twinkled with the waxen tapers that were often kept there burning night and day,4 these chantries must

3 Roger de Waltham founded an oratory on the south side of the quire in St. Paul's, London, to the honour of God, our Lady, St. Laurence, and all Saints ; and adorned it with images of our blessed Saviour, St. John the Baptist, &c. ; so likewise with the pictures of the celestial hierarchy, the joys of the blessed Virgin, and others, both in the roof about the altar, and other places within and without. In this oratory, the chantry which he had endowed was placed, and his anniversary was kept. — Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, p. 21.

4 How any of these erections could have been mistaken for a saint's shrine, is hard to imagine ; and yet* such has happened in

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 91

have looked most beauteous indeed, and fittingly expressive of that gladsomeness and everlasting light in God's church above — in heaven — wished, through Christ's throes upon the rood, to the souls of those whose ashes lay buried there. The sounds of prayer that were daily heard from within, beseeching God on behalf of the founder, his kindred, and (113) all the truly believing dead, came like whisperings from out the grave, telling how the soul can never die, and how man must overcome sin and the devil in this life, if he wish to rlee from hell and win heaven and God's happiness hereafter.

If he who had this world's wealth, thought first for himself, as he lawfully might, and then of his kindred, when he founded a perpetual chantry, he did not forget the poor and friendless among

the instance of a late (though valuable) existing example in Christ Church, Oxford. On the north side of the northern aisle to the choir of that cathedral, there stands what is commonly (though most erroneously) called St. Frideswide's shrine, which, however, is nothing more than one of these chantries with its chapel raised a story above its high tomb, the brasses inlaid upon which, but long since wrenched away, once showed the knight and his lady who lay interred there. Of them or their name, nothing is now known ; but a family burial-place and chantry it undoubtedly was, and no sort of shrine whatever, and had its altar in a little oratory above, which is even now reached by a short, narrow, well-worn night of stairs. The shrine of a patron saint always stood near the high altar of the church ; and nobody, even king or queen, was ever allowed to be buried within it. As great a mistake is the supposition that the upper part of this Oxford chantry-chapel was the sleeping-room of the warden of St. Frideswide's shrine, which was not only far away, but could not have been seen from out of it.

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Christ's people, but had them also remembered, as he bade, that together with himself and his, all the faithful departed should be prayed for. This was every wise meetly done : however soon he hoped his own and his friends' souls might be washed from every sullying speck by the blood of his only Saviour Jesus,0 poured out upon them in (114) purgatory at the beseeching of godly men upon earth ; he wished, with sound Catholic feelings of communion, that the work of ghostly help which he had provided for himself, should, even after by God's kindness he had ceased to want it, still be carried on, for the need of others, everlastingly.6 Not unoften was

5 Octo choristis ecclesie Lichfeldensis pro eodem obitu misse Jhesu et antiphona Jhesu cantantibus pro anima Magistri Thome Heywod, &c. (Valor. Eccl., iii. 137.) Pro missa nominis Jhesu quotidie in ecclesia Southwell celebranda pro anima Wi&mi Bothe, quondam Ebor. archiepiscopi, &c. (ibid., v. 195). For "Jesus Mass " as it was called, our forefathers had a warm devotion, and through it besought God for health to the living and forgiveness towards the dead. It is, I presume, the Missa de quinque vulneri- bus D.N.J.C. found at the end of the Salisbury missal among the votive Masses, and one of the three set down for Friday. In some of our churches, it would seem this Mass was said every day during the week, and he who did this duty, used to be named " the Jesus-mass priest," an appellation not unoften to be met with among our old documents. By Salisbury use, the feast of the Name of Jesus was kept on the 7th of August, in the mass of which there is a long sequence in honour of that sacred name : so there is in the Mass of the five wounds.

6 In all endowments for chantries, whether of a limited or perpetual duration, it is invariably noticed that not merely the founder's soul, but the souls of all the faithful departed, shall be prayed for : the same truly Catholic and brotherly feeling is made to show itself in each inscription on a grave, and in every liturgical formula of the Church.

PART I. CHAP. VIII. 93

THE CHANTRY-PRIEST AN ANKRET 7

whose footsteps never went beyond the threshold of that building within which he had vowed to live and die : there he dwelt, either in a room above the vestry, or in some little cell com municating with and near to the chantry -chapel itself.8 Thus, (115) whilst he watched over the safety of the church night and day,9 and fulfilled

7 Lego capellre cantarise de Kexby vestimentum meum rubeum. . . . Item lego eidem capellse magnum missale et magnum porti- forium quse emi de domino Thoma Coke presbitero ac anachorita in eadem capella, &c. (Test. Ebor., p. 244.) An ankret lived in St. Cuthberht's church, Thetford, and performed divine service therein. — Blomefield, Norfolk, ii. 75.

8 For becoming an ankret, or, as Richard Fraunces is called," inter quatuor parietes pro Christo inclusus " (Peter Langtof t, Chron., ed. Hearne, ii. 625 in glossary), the bishop's written leave was requisite, and one such licence is preserved by Hearne (Annales J. de Trokeloiv, p. 264, in addenda). Often his days were spent in studious occupa tions besides prayer ; " Rycharde Rolle hermyte of Hampull " (who died A.D. 1349), " Symon anker of London Wall," and several others, became celebrated for their devotional writings, and some of them copied out and illuminated church service books.

About many of our parish churches, there are indications in rooms over the porch and vestry, or well-marked traces of buildings that once were, which show how those places must have, at one time, been used as dwellings. Not always, however, did the ankret live beneath the church's roof ; his ankrage or house, in which he was solemnly shut up, often stood quite apart by itself, either at the further end of the churchyard, on a bridge, by the wayside, or in a lonely wood, and always had its little chapel.

9 These little chantry chapels were sometimes chosen as the safest place for keeping things of value : Omnia ista divisa — says Sir Thomas Ughtred — volo quod includantur optima cista mea et ponantur in custodia duorum presbiterorum meorum in capella cantarise de Kexby quousque dictus Thomas Ughtred et Margareta pervenerint ad plenitudinem etatis. — Test. Ebor., p. 244.

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his founder's wishes, and at early morn offered up the holy sacrifice, and at noon and even-tide said the canonical hours of his portoos or breviary at the dead man's grave, this recluse was ever ready to guide, by his (116) instructions and warnings, those among the living who chose to come, and, amid the stillness and loneliness of the churchyard, speak of their trials, their sorrows, and their weaknesses to him, through his grated window, which was usually built low down in the wall at the south-western corner of the chancel.10

10 That some one usually slept in almost every church, is told us by many passages in ecclesiastical documents. The Durham sacristan who left a lighted taper among the vestments, and at the head of whose bed there was a shelf, upon which — omnium cortinarum, dorsalium, ac cseterorum ornamentorum ecclesise tota collecta superposita conquievit (Reginaldus Dunelm., De adm. S. Cuthberti, etc., 80), must have slept in a room over the vestry and looking on the inside of that cathedral, as the same writer tells us : — Clericus ecclesise prsedictse diaconus, cum collegis suis ad aquilonalem ecclesise plagam dormiturus sompno indulserat, &c. (ibid., 117). That at one period there was an ankret living in Durham Cathedral is certain, for " at the east end of the north alley of the quire . . . was the grandest porch, called the anchorage, having in it a very elegant rood . . . with an altar for a monk to say daily Mass, being in ancient times inhabited by an anchorite," &c. — Antiquities of Durham, p. 21. Besides written, we have architectural, evidence, that even in not a few of our smallest parish churches, the custom was, at one time or another, for a person to sleep, since we often find that all doors, whether for the people into the nave, or for the clergy into the chancel, of the sacred building, could no otherwise be securely fastened than by a strong thick spar of wood, which had to be drawn out of a long narrow hole made for that purpose in the wall, and into which it could be slid back again only by some one inside the church : he therefore who so shut up the door or un loosened it, must of necessity have stayed all night within the edifice. This " staking " of the church-door, as it was called, is sometimes spoken of by our native writers. Bromton tells of

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95

(117) The same pious individual who, whilst thinking of the hereafter, endowed a chantry, to

the "hostium ecclesire inmani obice clausum " (ed. Twysden, i. 941). Of these men who slept in the churches both of this and other countries, the greater number were of that kind of religious order called Inclusi, or ankrets : speaking of an inroad made by the first Norman William into France, Ralph Coggeshale tells us how that king : — Oppidum quod Mantua dicitur cum ecclesiis combussit, ubi

THE ENCLOSING OF AN ANKRET

et duo reclusi combusti sunt (Chron. Anglic., ed. Martene, Vet. Script, am.pl. Collect, v. 803) [R.X., Ixvi., 2]. The ritual service for blessing and shutting up ankrets and ankresses is given both in the Manual and Pontifical after Salisbury Use. The ankress, or female recluse, had her cell, or small house, generally in the churchyard ; and was allowed to have a woman servant to live along with and wait upon her.

The men "inclusi," or ankrets, were very often in priest's orders, and therefore said Mass. Knighton mentions a priest-

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have every (118) day throughout all ages the prayers of the Church for his own, his friends',

ankret who was shut up in one of the churches of Leicester : Erat quoque illis diebus apud Leycestriam quidam sacerdos Willelmus de Swyndurby quern Willelmum heremitam vulgus vocabant, eo quod heremiticam vitam aliquamdiu ibidem colebat ... in quadam camera infra ecclesiam ipsum receperunt propter sanctitatem quam sperabant in eo,, et ei ex more aliorum sacer- dotum procuraverunt victum cum pensione. — Henry Knighton, Chron. [R.S., xcii. ii. 189, 190].

Among those several uses for the low side window, with its bars and shutter, to be found in so many of our old parish churches, generally at the south-western end of the chancel, one assuredly was, that the recluse or ankret dwelling therein might speak and be spoken with through its iron gratings, after public service-time, and when the doors of the church were shut. Roger of Wendover's short sketch of St. Wilfric's life throws no small light upon this subject. Of this holy man, who was a priest as well as ankret, the monk of St. Alban's tells us : — Beatus vir Wlfricus ex mediocri Anglorum gente oriundus, in Contona, villa a Bristollo octo milliaribus distante, natus, nutritus est et conversatus ; ibi etiam per annos aliquot sacerdotis omcium exercuit ... ad aliam directus est villam, nomine Haselbergam . . . ubi, in cellula ecclesire contigua Christo se consepeliens, multo labore multaque carnis ac spiritus amictione Christi sibi gratiam comparavit. . . . Humilis erat cunctis in eloquio et jucundus, cujus sermones cselestem quandam harmoniam audientibus redolebant, licet hominibus semper clausa fenestra loqueretur (Flores Hist., ii. 274, &c., ed. Coxe) [ti.S., Ixxxiv. i. 4-6], A distinguishing part of ankret rule seems ever to have been the use, for all communi cation with layfolks, of a barred small window. Thomas Becon,