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  The Cambridge Manuals of Science and
  Literature

  THE HISTORICAL GROWTH OF THE
  ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
  C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

  Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
  Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
  Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
  New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

  _All rights reserved_

[Illustration: St Benet's, Cambridge: west tower from N.W.]

  THE HISTORICAL
  GROWTH OF THE
  ENGLISH PARISH
  CHURCH

  BY
  A. HAMILTON THOMPSON
  M.A., F.S.A.

  Cambridge:
  at the University Press
  1911

  Cambridge:
  PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  _With the exception of the coat of arms at
  the foot, the design on the title page is a
  reproduction of one used by the earliest known
  Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_

PREFACE

This small book is intended to be a companion and complement to the
writer's book in the same series on _The Ground Plan of the English
Parish Church_. In that book the growth of the ground plan is treated
with necessarily scanty reference to the circumstances to which,
directly or indirectly, that growth is due. Some attempt is made in the
present volume to supply an account of the historical conditions amid
which our parish churches were built, to say something of the builders,
and to remove the popular idea, still current even among educated
people, that our architecture is mainly due to the profuse benefactions
of the religious orders. A special chapter on chantry foundations,
which played so large a part in the life of the later middle ages,
follows the general historical chapter. The western tower, the porch,
and the chancel are then described with more fulness than was possible
in the description of the ground plan; and the decoration and furniture
of the various parts of the church are treated in the closing chapter.

The writer returns thanks for much help to his wife, to whom a sketch
and the plans in the book, except that of Burford, are due; to the Rev.
J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., and to the Rev. R. M. Serjeantson, M.A.,
F.S.A., who have read through his proofs, and provided him with many
useful suggestions; to the editor of the _Archaeological Journal_, for
the use of the plan of Burford church; and to Messrs C. C. Hodges, J.
P. Gibson, F.S.A., E. Kennerell, and A. J. Loughton, for the loan of
photographs.

                                                             A. H. T.

_April, 1911._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARISH CHURCH

 SECTION                                                            PAGE

 1. Early parish churches in England                                   1

 2. The monastic missionary settlements: church-building
       on private estates                                              3

 3. The Danish invasions and the monastic revival                      5

 4. German influence on pre-Conquest architecture                      6

 5. Influence of the Normans on the architecture of parish
       churches                                                        7

 6. The parish church at the Norman conquest                          10

 7. Appropriation of churches to monasteries: ordination
       of vicarages                                                   11

 8. Relation of monastic owners to the fabrics of churches            13

 9. The builders of medieval parish churches                          15

 10. The parish church and its rectors                                17

 11. Disadvantages of pluralism and litigation                        18

 12. Growth of the chantry system                                     20

 13. Chantry chapels at Beckingham, Lincolnshire                      21

 14. Summary                                                          22

CHAPTER II

THE CHANTRY CHAPEL IN THE PARISH CHURCH

 15. Chantries and colleges of chantry priests                        24

 16. Foundation of chantry colleges                                   27

 17. Parochial chapels                                                29

 18. Religious and trade guilds                                       30

 19, 20. The chantry chapel: its influence on the church
            plan                                                      33

 21. Chancels of collegiate churches                                  37

 22. St John Baptist's, Cirencester                                   39

 23. Chesterfield and Scarborough; charnel chapels                    41

 24. Burford church, Oxon                                             42

 25. St Michael's and Holy Trinity, Coventry                          45

 26. Importance of the work of lay benefactors                        48

THE TOWER, THE PORCH, AND THE CHANCEL

 27. Subject of the chapter                                           51

 28. The western tower before the Conquest                            53

 29. Survival of the older type of tower after the Conquest           56

 30. Architectural development of the tower                           59

 31. The spire                                                        60

 32. The tower of the later middle ages: its relation to the
        clerestory of the nave                                        62

 33. Western doorways and porches                                     65

 34. Side doorways of the church                                      67

 35. The porch: altars in porches                                     68

 36. Chambers above porches                                           71

 37. Altars in towers: habitations in connexion with churches         73

 38. Variety of position of the tower                                 75

 39. The chancel arch                                                 76

 40. Enlargement of the chancel and architectural treatment           78

 41. Fourteenth century chancels in Yorkshire and the
        northern midlands                                             80

 42. Decline of chancel building in the fifteenth century:
        the laity and the nave                                        85

 43. Sacristies                                                       88

 44. Squints, priests' doors, low side windows                        90

 45. Crypts and bone-holes                                            95

CHAPTER IV

THE FURNITURE OF A MEDIEVAL PARISH CHURCH:
CONCLUSION

 46. Remains of medieval decorations                                  98

 47. Mural paintings                                                  98

 48. Stained glass                                                   102

 49. Coloured furniture of stone and wood                            105

 50. Furniture of the nave and aisles: font and benches              106

 51. Chapels in aisles                                               109

 52. Pulpits, galleries, etc.                                        110

 53. The rood screen                                                 112

 54. The rood loft and beam                                          116

 55. Quire stalls and lectern                                        117

 56. Levels of the chancel                                           119

 57. The altar and its furniture                                     120

 58. Piscina, sedilia, and almeries                                  122

 59. The Easter sepulchre                                            124

 60. Exceptional furniture                                           128

 61. Parish churches after the Reformation                           129

 62. Later parish churches                                           130

 63. Post-reformation work and modern restoration                    131

     Bibliography                                                    134

     Index                                                           137

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 St Benet's, Cambridge: west tower from N.W.              _Frontispiece_

                                                                    PAGE

 Sketch of Hallaton, chantry chapel in S. aisle                       25

 Plan of Cirencester Church                                           40

 Plan of Burford Church                                               43

 Plan of St Michael's Church, Coventry                                46

 Plan of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry                                47

 Norton, Co. Durham: Saxon central tower, with transept               52

 Carlton-in-Lindrick, Notts: west tower                               57

 Tickhill, Yorkshire: general view from S.E., shewing clerestory,
    western tower and projecting eastern chapel                       63

 St Mary's, Beverley: south porch                                     69

 Cirencester: south porch                                             72

 Patrington: north side of chancel and vestry                         83

 Walpole St Peter: from N.E.                                          86

 Wensley: chancel, with low side window, from S.E.                    91

 St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol: from N.E.                                95

 Patrington: interior, looking across nave from S. transept           99

 Well, Yorkshire: font cover                                         107

 Banwell, Somerset: rood screen                                      113

 Hawton, Notts: Easter sepulchre                                     125

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARISH CHURCH

§ 1. The early history of the English parish church is obscure, owing
to the fact that architectural remains of the earliest fabrics are
somewhat scanty, and that their actual date still affords ground for
dispute. The episcopal constitution of the Romano-British church
is not fully known; but it is probable that, as in Gaul, every
considerable centre of population possessed within its walls a church,
which followed the 'basilican' arrangement common to the Christian
churches of the Roman empire. But while, on the continent of Europe,
the ecclesiastical history of the chief provincial capitals remained
unbroken, and the great cathedrals of the middle ages rose upon sites
which had been, from the establishment of Christianity in the empire,
the centres of the religious life of Roman cities, the continuous
history of church-building in England was broken by the relapse into
heathenism which followed the victorious invasions of the Saxons. The
history of church architecture begins again with the coming of St
Augustine in 597 A.D. Of churches which may reasonably be
said to have been built as an immediate result of his mission, there
are several remains in Kent; and the famous church of St Martin at
Canterbury is probably in large part the building which he and his
companions used for their first services. There is more than one theory
as to the original extent of the church; but there can be little doubt
that the western part of the chancel, the south wall of which is built
of Roman brick, is of Augustine's time. Bede tells us that Augustine
found an earlier church, built during the Roman occupation, on this
site or on a site closely corresponding to it. It is safe to assume
that he repaired this building, and spared all that he could of its
materials. Apart from the Kentish churches there remains, on the remote
part of the Essex coast, a building known as St Peter's on the Wall,
which appears to be connected architecturally with the Kentish group.
Its history cannot be traced back earlier than about 653 A.D.,
when St Cedd was sent from Northumbria to preach to the East Saxons.
One of his two chief missionary centres was the Roman city of Othona,
then known as Ythanceaster, at the mouth of the Blackwater. Here he
ordained and baptized: he also, says Bede, built churches in several
places. St Peter's on the Wall, now long disused, stands on the site of
the eastern gateway of Othona, and is largely built of re-used Roman
material. It presents difficulties of site and plan which forbid us to
connect it positively with St Cedd; but there is a high probability
that it is his church, while, in point of plan, it is too closely
allied to the Kentish group to admit of a doubt as to its connexion
with those churches. The actual way in which the connexion came about
is, however, a difficult problem to solve.

§ 2. There is much uncertainty with regard to the chronology of
pre-Conquest architecture in England. From the actual masonry of the
buildings it is difficult to gather much information. Saxon builders
shewed little architectural skill: their methods were unprogressive;
and the chief criterion by which we may estimate any degree of
progress in their work is found in their efforts to develop the
ground plan of their churches. The course of architectural evolution
between the coming of St Augustine and the Norman conquest suffered
more than one serious check. The later part of the seventh century,
the age of Wilfrid and archbishop Theodore, was an epoch during
which ecclesiastical art flourished. It is now that we arrive at
the beginning of the history of the parish church as distinguished
from the monastic missionary settlement of early Saxon times. The
churches which Augustine and his companions had founded at Canterbury
and Rochester were churches of monasteries, established as missionary
centres in a heathen kingdom. The work of evangelisation was carried
on for a century afterwards by the agency of monastic communities. The
churches of Benedict Biscop at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, Wilfrid's
churches at Hexham and Ripon, the Mercian churches of Peterborough
and Brixworth, were all churches of monks. But, as Christianity grew
in the Saxon kingdoms, churches were naturally multiplied. Wilfrid
himself was a large land-owner in Mercia, and may be credited with the
building of churches upon his lands: the foundation of the monastery
of Brixworth and the church of Barnack may be attributed to his
influence. His example would be followed by others; and we shall not
be far wrong if we look upon the private estate of Saxon times as
identical with the early parish. Owners of large estates built churches
upon their property; and undoubtedly the growth of church-building on
private lands led to that organisation of the ecclesiastical system in
England, which was the great work of Theodore's episcopate. During this
period, the church plan was founded upon a compromise; but continental
influence, if modified by contact with Celtic traditions, was strong;
and this influence came from Italy through the channel of the Gallican
church.

§ 3. When Wilfrid died in 709 A.D., the age of religious and
artistic activity was already passing. The power of Northumbria was
declining; and the record of the next hundred years is one of quarrels
between the various tribal kings of Britain. At the end of the eighth
century the Northmen appeared on the Northumbrian coast. Significant
features of their activity were the destruction of the church of
Lindisfarne and the sack of the monastery at Wearmouth. During the next
fifty years, while the kingdom of Wessex was rising to the front place
in English affairs, the incursions of the Danes became more constant.
In 851 A.D. a Danish army took up its winter quarters in
England. From Thanet and Sheppey the Northmen extended their ravages
over the whole east coast. The army which defeated the East Anglian
levies at Thetford in 870 marked its progress across Mercia and East
Anglia by the destruction of monasteries, chief among them the abbey
of Peterborough. During the next hundred years, under the constant
pressure of Danish invasion, little or no church-building can have
been done; and it is likely that, for a long time before 870, little
progress had been made. In 958 or 959 Edgar the Peaceable succeeded
to the throne of Wessex and became master of the whole of England.
During his reign, which lasted till 975, the great ecclesiastics who
rose to influence at his court, Dunstan, Oswald and Ethelwold, busied
themselves with the re-establishment of monasticism in England, and
the rebuilding of churches. The activity of Oswald in Worcestershire,
Gloucestershire, and at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, of Ethelwold at
Winchester, Ely and Peterborough, shews how widespread was the area of
the destruction wrought by the Danes. This period of revival lasted
until the beginning of the eleventh century. The Danish conquest under
the heathen Swegen brought more destruction with it, and although Cnut
restored the churches which his father had destroyed, it was probably
not until the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042 that another
era of church-building began in earnest.

§ 4. During the religious revival under Dunstan and his fellow
prelates, the reformers looked once more to the continent for
inspiration. Gaul, however, was no longer a possible source. Between
England and the French kingdom which was rising on the ruins of the
Neustrian monarchy, lay the Danelaw of Gaul, the province of Normandy.
Access to the old current of religious tradition, denied on that side,
was unimpeded on the side of the Low Countries and Germany, where,
along the Rhine, the Austrasian kingdom still pursued its existence
under the powerful sway of the Saxon emperors who had superseded the
house of Charles the Great. It was from monasteries in this district
that the restoration of the religious life in England was most
powerfully helped; and with such help, came inevitably architectural
influence. If we are to look anywhere for the immediate origin of
such well-known features of pre-Conquest architectural detail as
"long-and-short" work or strip-work, it is to be found in the early
religious buildings of the Rhine provinces. Their ultimate origin was,
no doubt, Italian; but during this period, English building indicates
no such close communication with original sources as existed during
the period of Gallo-Roman influence. The era of German influence
lasted but a short time, and examples of it, though familiar from the
peculiar details of their masonry, are comparatively few. The builders
of the period immediately preceding the Conquest seem to have been
thrown more upon their own resources, and to have abandoned German
details gradually in favour of a more simple fashion of building.
Certain German features, however, which had been imperfectly developed
during the period of revival, persisted in their work; and the closest
parallels to the English towers of the eleventh century, so common in
Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire, are to be seen in western Germany,
and in that part of Italy where German influence was most powerful.

§ 5. The development of Norman architecture in England was due to the
increasing skill in construction which followed the Conquest. For the
building of the larger churches, foreign prelates relied on the help
of Norman masons, trained in artistic methods far in advance of those
which Saxon builders had learned to use. The great aisled churches of
the monasteries, Durham, Winchester, Norwich, or Gloucester, planned
and built under the superintendence of men who were in close touch with
the contemporary art of Normandy, led the way, and provided patterns
of architecture which could not fail to exercise an influence upon
the smaller churches of the country. In the early parish churches of
the Norman period, we cannot expect to find this influence strongly
marked. Local masons had little opportunity of acquaintance with the
more advanced craftsmanship of the Normans until some large cathedral
or abbey church rose in their neighbourhood, and supplied them with
a model. Even then their imitation would be rough and uncertain,
until practice made perfect their first attempts. The model would
also provide them with a plan far beyond the requirements of a parish
church, where a single priest served a limited congregation. There was
no need of the provision of a large quire or of a number of separate
altars: the ritual necessaries were all of the simplest kind. The old
plan therefore sufficed in most instances. It is in the masonry that
we notice the earliest introduction of modifications and improvements.
The thin Saxon walling gives place to more massive construction:
walls composed of a rubble core with facings of dressed stone take the
place of the rubble masonry with through-stone quoins and dressings of
the later Saxon period. The recessing of the arch, with shafts in its
jambs, becomes gradually understood: the beginnings of the practice
were rough and unintelligent, and it was not without difficulty
that the local builder learned the structural use of jamb-shafts as
supporting and corresponding to the orders of the arch above. Our
country churches supply many instances of this faltering treatment
of new motives. Here and there it is possible to trace the direct
influence of some large Norman building on the work of the country
mason. At Branston, four miles south-east of Lincoln, the western
tower of the church belongs to the class which is common in the
neighbourhood--a class whose origin is earlier than the introduction of
Norman influence. Its masonry has several characteristics of the type
known as Saxon. But the high arch of its western doorway, and the small
arcades which have been introduced, on either side of the doorway, in
the face of the tower, shew very clearly that its builder had seen
Norman work, and was attempting, roughly, but not without success, to
copy it. Further, the arch of its doorway, and the tall shafts, with
crocketed capitals, which support it, are beyond doubt closely imitated
from the lower arches of the Norman west front of Lincoln minster.
As the Norman church at Lincoln was consecrated in 1092, the tower at
Branston can hardly be earlier than that date, and may be several years
later. Such examples as this shew that there is still much to discover
with regard to the chronology of the later Saxon architecture, and that
the grasp of new methods by native builders was acquired very gradually.

§ 6. We know, from the indications with respect to certain counties
supplied by Domesday Book, that in 1086 the number of parish churches
in England corresponded closely to the number which existed until
the comparatively modern sub-division of parishes. Domesday was
not intended to be a directory or clergy list; and the return of
the churches existing upon manors depended upon the view which
its individual compilers took of their duties. We have seen that
the earliest English churches were monastic centres of missionary
influence, built on land granted by wealthy converts to Christianity.
The revival at the end of the tenth century was also monastic. But,
after the age of Dunstan, the monastic ideal suffered an eclipse. The
parish churches of the later Saxon age, although many of them had been
granted to, and remained the property of monasteries, were for the
most part, if not entirely, served by secular priests who were under
no monastic obligation. The parish was co-extensive, so far as we can
tell, with the estate of the Saxon landlord: in most cases the church
was his property, the appointment of the priest lay in his hands,
and the church and its advowson passed to the Norman land-owner who
superseded him.

§ 7. With the Norman conquest came a great revival of monastic life.
The conquerors founded and heaped benefactions on new monasteries,
or enlarged the possessions of Norman abbeys by granting them new
estates in England. Many manors and more churches thus became
the property of religious houses; and, where the property of a
benefactor was widely scattered, a monastery might acquire a number
of churches in many different counties. Thus the church of Kirkby in
Malhamdale, in west Yorkshire, became the property of the abbey of
West Dereham, in Norfolk; while a moiety of the tithes of Gisburn,
in the same neighbourhood, belonged to the nuns of Stainfield, near
Lincoln. These gifts, in the first instance, depended entirely on
the free will of pious benefactors. The monasteries were naturally
expected to present suitable priests to the churches; but this was
left to their discretion. The logical result of these unconditional
benefactions was that, as time went on, many churches were totally
appropriated by monasteries: the income from the tithes, which should
have served for the support of parish priests, was absorbed by the
religious proprietors. Bishops recognised the evil; and towards
the beginning of the thirteenth century steps were taken to check
the control of monasteries over their subject churches. Archbishop
Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1205 allowed the abbey of West Dereham to
appropriate the fruits of the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, but
required them to reserve a stipend of ten marks yearly for a vicar.
Such ordinations of vicarages became common within the next few years;
and the great feature of the episcopate of Hugh of Wells, bishop of
Lincoln 1209-35, was the provision of vicars, not monks, but secular
priests with sufficient stipends, in the appropriated churches of his
huge diocese. The monastery was usually allowed to take the greater
tithes, _i.e._ the tithes of corn, for itself, the smaller tithes, or
a sum in commutation of them, being reserved to the vicar. The study
of episcopal registers shews that these provisions were sometimes
evaded; and anyone who has made out lists of vicars of appropriated
churches knows that frequently long gaps occur, in which it is probable
that the monastery allowed the presentation to lapse unchecked; but
the ordination of vicarages was in great measure a cure for the evil.
However, during the thirteenth century, laymen still continued to
present religious bodies with large gifts of property. The inroads
which these benefactions began to make upon estates held in chief of
the king were a menace to royal power. In order to provide a regular
restraint upon the growth of ecclesiastical property, the statute of
mortmain was passed in 1279. As a consequence of this measure, any man
who wished to alienate land or churches to a religious corporation,
was required to apply for royal letters patent. If it were found by
inquisition that the property could be alienated without prejudice
to the king or the lord from whom the fee was immediately held, the
licence was granted; and, if a church formed part of the property, the
religious corporation was allowed to appropriate it by the grant of a
further licence, the ordination of a vicarage being left to the decree
of the bishop. It need hardly be said that a very large number of
churches remained all through the middle ages in the hands of private
patrons, and that by no means all churches granted to monasteries were
appropriated by them. Of the arrangements for these unappropriated
rectories more will be said later. The connexion of the parish churches
with the monasteries is of great importance, however, for our present
purpose.

§ 8. As so many churches belonged to monasteries, it is constantly
assumed that the monasteries, especially during Norman times, provided
parish churches at their own expense. Thus the splendid series of
churches in south Lincolnshire, on the road from Sutton Bridge to
Spalding, is said, without historical foundation, to have been produced
by rivalry in church-building between Croyland abbey and other
monasteries. It is true that, as at Spalding in 1284, the religious
house would probably contribute a certain amount to the building or
rebuilding of an appropriated church, but that amount would be limited,
and the parishioners would be left to provide the rest according to
their means. When vicarages were ordained, the repair of the chancel,
the rector's peculiar property, was usually left to the monastery as
rector; but we often find that a special stipulation was made by which
part of the repairs even of this portion of the church devolved upon
the vicar, and that sometimes his stipend was so arranged as to free
the monastery of this obligation altogether. A monastery naturally
regarded the fruits of a church as an addition to its own income.
The most that could be expected of it would be that it would employ
a reasonable part of the profits in keeping the fabric in order. If
the monastery owned the manor as well as the advowson, it probably,
and here and there unmistakably, did more for the fabric of the
parish church. But these fabrics were in most cases existing when the
monasteries took seisin of the advowsons of the churches in question.
When appropriation followed, the enrichment of the monastery, not
the enlargement of the building, was the end in view; and the plea
made by the monastery in dealing with the bishop over appropriations,
was invariably one of poverty. When a church, then, was rebuilt or
enlarged, the money came for the most part from parishioners, the
monastery supplying its proportion, not without a view to strict
economy.

§ 9. Further, the builders were generally, it may be assumed,
local masons. We have seen an indication of this at Branston,
where the builder grafted imitative detail in a new style upon his
own old-fashioned work. The splendid development of many twelfth
century parish churches is no argument against their local origin.
Architectural enthusiasm in the middle ages was a possession of the
people generally: it was not confined to a limited and privileged
body. The large monastery or cathedral churches in every neighbourhood
were sources of inspiration to the builders of the parish churches:
details were copied, and methods of construction were learned from
them, and the structural progress which took place in them had a
constant influence upon the architectural improvement of the less
important buildings. Here and there, perhaps, a mason, who had taken
part in the building of one of the greater churches, would be called
into consultation for the design of a parish church; and this, as
years went by, would become more common. It should be noted that in
the middle ages the builder was not a mere instrument to carry out the
designs of an architect. He himself, the master mason of the work,
was the architect. His training lay, not in the draughtsmanship
of an architect's office, but in practical working with mallet and
chisel. Thus, during at any rate the earlier part of the middle ages,
design was in no small degree a matter of instinct. Architecture was
a popular, democratic art, in which the instinctive faculties became
trained to a high pitch. The individual mason was allowed free play
for his talent; and the result was that constant variety of design and
detail, that continual movement and progress, those forward steps or
that conservative hesitation in the art of different districts, which
are the eternal attraction of medieval architecture. One feature of the
instinctive faculty of design in the builder was that he did much of
his work by eye alone. He must have made some rough measurements for
the setting out of his buildings; but he was not always provided with a
plan or elevations. Even in our larger churches, his work was sometimes
left to his own judgment. The western transept at Lincoln, for example,
can hardly have been built with much forethought. Each set of masons
employed upon it seems to have been left to its own devices: accurate
spacing was entirely neglected, and the connexion between the different
parts of the design was evidently a matter of guess-work, which led to
curious irregularities in the elevation. In this striking instance, the
builders were doubtless hampered by having to build their new transept
round older buildings, which were not taken down until their work was
well advanced; and the encumbered site alone may account for some
bewilderment.

§ 10. Parish churches in England may be divided, for historical
purposes, into four classes. (1) In some monastic churches, as in the
Benedictine priory of Selby and the Augustinian priory of Bridlington,
the parochial altar was in the nave of the church, west of the rood
screen, and was served by a vicar or a curate, who was responsible
for the spiritual welfare of the parish. (2) In collegiate churches
a similar arrangement existed; but in the majority of such cases the
dean or warden of the college was regarded as the parson of the parish,
and had the cure of souls. (3) Of parish churches appropriated to
monasteries, we have spoken already. (4) There remains the very large
number of unappropriated parish churches, in which the rector or parson
was directly responsible for the cure of souls. The duties of the
rector were regarded in the middle ages with considerable latitude.
Nothing was more usual than for a man of good family, or one whose
clerkly talents made him a constant attendant on the king or the great
officers of state, to obtain a number of benefices which provided him
with a necessary income. Such parsons were naturally non-resident: as
often as not, they had not proceeded to full orders. The Patent Rolls
are full of grants of benefices to persons engaged in the work of the
royal chancery or exchequer; while the papal registers in the Vatican
library contain thousands of dispensations by which pluralists were
enabled to hold several benefices at a time, to acquire benefices up
to a stated value, or to defer their ordination to the priesthood.
Popes and bishops alike kept a careful watch on the attempt to obtain
additional benefices without licence; but it is quite obvious that
little discrimination could be exercised, and that dispensations
became matters of form, for which the applicant, backed by a request
from the king or some magnate, made a payment in money. Pluralism was
further increased by the pope's claim to reserve certain benefices on a
vacancy, and provide incumbents to them. This claim, which originally
was intended to prevent patrons from keeping benefices vacant and
appropriating their fruits, led to the enactment of the statute of
provisors in 1351. Papal provisions, though nominally forbidden, were
not stopped by this law, but became subject to regulation.

§ 11. To the medieval mind, the habit of a non-resident rector,
holding several churches in plurality, was a matter of course, which
cannot be judged by the moral standard of our own day. It must be
regarded simply as a fact, not as an abuse. The rector was required
to see that his churches were properly served, and probably, like his
successors after the Reformation, he paid a curate to do his work
in each of his churches. In some cases, like monastic impropriators,
he made an arrangement by which a vicar was provided with a fixed
stipend; and now and then a vicar was properly instituted by the
bishop at his presentation. This was the regular course of procedure
in parish churches attached to prebends in cathedral and collegiate
churches, which were held for the most part by king's clerks, and
often by foreigners appointed by the pope. But it is clear that,
where a man held ten or twelve churches at once, they might be served
very irregularly. Again, no form of litigation in the middle ages was
so common as that between two or more claimants of an advowson. The
sub-division of the ownership of a manor might and did constantly lead
to a dispute between rival patrons for the presentation to a living.
Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, the church of
Adlingfleet in Yorkshire became the subject of a long law-suit between
two separate patrons, the archbishop of York, and their presentees,
which was protracted for nearly thirty years before the royal and
papal courts. The candidates, all non-residents, strove to obstruct
each other. In the parish itself they made attempts to defend their
rights by force, and it is difficult to see how, during this period of
strife, the cure of souls could have been adequately served. Churches
appropriated to monasteries were more fortunate; for they, in most
instances, had the advantage of a resident vicar, and the appropriation
removed disputes as to the patronage.

§ 12. Pluralism and litigation, in themselves, had no noticeable effect
on architectural development. But they led to a desire, on the part of
the parishioners, for resident clergy with an endowment independent
of the caprices of lay patrons. And this led to the establishment of
chantry priests at the altars of churches, which had a powerful effect
upon the architectural growth of the churches in which they served.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, and from that time to the
Reformation, the foundation of chantries in parish churches became a
common thing. Zeal for the foundation of monasteries had spent itself.
Lay benefactors acquired the habit of alienating land, not to some
religious house, but to one or more priests who, as a condition of the
gift, should say mass daily at one of the altars of a parish church
for the good estate of the giver and other persons named by him, and
for their souls after death. These endowments of services were known
as chantries, and were intended to continue for ever. Many chantries
were founded in cathedral and monastery churches; but, as time went
on, the church of the parish in which the benefactor lived was more
and more frequently chosen as their site. That this had been always
the custom is probable; but it was a custom which certainly was not
universal until the later middle ages. From the time of the enactment
of the statute of mortmain, we possess a series of royal licences for
the foundation of chantries and gifts of land to chantry priests, which
are invaluable in tracing the history of the English parish church. A
chantry, however, is a service, not the building in which it is held.
It might be founded at the high altar of a church, but more usually
was connected with one of the lesser altars. It was natural, however,
that a founder would be willing to do something for the repair of the
part of the church in which his chantry was held. Repair took the form
of enlargement and rebuilding; and while special chantry chapels were
sometimes built as excrescences from the main body of the church, the
usual building which was done in connexion with a chantry implied the
widening or addition of an aisle.

§ 13. A good concrete example of this procedure is the church of
Beckingham, five miles east of Newark-on-Trent, a building of various
periods, but chiefly of the early part of the thirteenth century. The
aisles of the nave are wide, and belong, in their present condition, to
the fourteenth century. At the end of each are distinct indications of
the former presence of an altar. The parson of Beckingham in the second
quarter of the fourteenth century was Thomas Sibthorpe, a man of some
substance, and one of the royal clerks. His benefactions to the church
of his native village of Sibthorpe and to Beckingham involved him in
some litigation, ample records of which are to be found in the Patent
Rolls. In 1332 he obtained a licence to found a chantry in the chapel
of St Mary, in the north part of Beckingham church, and by the end of
1347, he built the chapel of St Anne, on the south side of the church.
Both the existing chapels agree with one another in date; and we may
safely infer that Sibthorpe probably widened, and certainly rebuilt
both the aisles between 1332 and 1347. He evidently intended his
chapel of St Mary to be of some importance, as the chantry priest was
called the warden, and was probably intended to be the head of a small
college, such as existed at Sibthorpe. Of a chantry in the chapel of St
Anne we know nothing: Sibthorpe endowed two candles to be burned there
at certain times. An interesting feature of this fourteenth century
rebuilding is that the north and south doorways, both of late twelfth
century work, were removed to the new walls.

§ 14. The growth of chantry foundations formed the most remarkable
feature of the lay activity of the later middle ages, and is treated
in the next chapter with a view to its influence on architectural
progress. We may sum up the influence of the historical facts already
indicated upon the fabric of the parish church in the following
conclusions: (1) The origin of the parish church was the spiritual need
of the private estate. (2) The lord of the manor was the founder and
provided the fabric. (3) The work of the fabric was entrusted to local
masons. (4) In the division of expense, the rector became responsible
for the chancel and the altar from which he received his dues. (5)
The parishioners were responsible for the fabric of the nave. (6) In
churches appropriated to monasteries, the chancel was the only part of
the fabric for which the monastery was responsible, and a part of its
responsibility was usually laid upon the vicar. (7) Where the monastery
was lord of the manor, it would take its share of the building and
up-keep of the church with the other parishioners. We shall see in
a later chapter some concrete instances of manorial and monastic
influence at work upon the structure of the church.

CHAPTER II

THE CHANTRY CHAPEL IN THE PARISH CHURCH

§ 15. The chantry and the guild chapel had so important an influence
on the plan of the parish church, and especially of the larger church,
that they deserve further consideration, in company with the anomalies
of plan which are their result. Chantries increased in number during
the fourteenth century, and, from the period of the Black Death to the
Reformation, had an ever growing importance. At Grantham, where it is
clear that the enlargement of the church was due to the increase of
chantries, three were founded in 1349, two of them at altars inside
the church. In 1392 two new chantries were founded, at the altars of
Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, and the maintenance of chantries
at the altars of St Mary and St John Baptist was increased by new
benefactions. Thus, to large churches, a large staff of priests became
attached. Although Grantham was never incorporated as a collegiate
church, the body of clergy which served it seem to have had common
services in quire together, and to have been known as the 'college.'
The chantry priests of a large church would benefit from incorporation
in the ordinary course of things, and it very often happened that
they were formed into a regular college, or that provisions were made
affecting their common life. St William's college at York was founded
for the chantry priests of the minster in 1461 by archbishop Neville
and his brother, the king-maker. In 1482-3 archbishop Rotherham founded
his college of Jesus at Rotherham, to which, as a secondary provision
of the foundation, the chantry priests already existing in the church
were to be attached. Rotherham recognised that a large body of
individual priests, whose duties for the day were finished with their
daily mass, would be open to temptation if they were allowed to choose
their own lodgings as they liked; and Thomas Kent, whose executors in
1481 founded a 'perpetual commonalty' of the seven chantry priests of
St James Garlickhithe in the city of London, expressed his opinion
that these chaplains 'conversed among laymen and wandered about,
rather than dwelt among clerks, as was decent.' Not infrequently, a
benefactor who wished to found a chantry of more than one chaplain,
acquired the advowson of the church in which it was to be founded, and
secured its appropriation to his chaplains, who held it in perpetuity,
and were incorporated as a college. This was the case with the college
of Sibthorpe. In 1333 Sir John Heslerton, patron of the church of
Lowthorpe in east Yorkshire, founded a college of six priests in the
church, whose duties were set forth in detail by archbishop Melton in
his ordinance for the new college, which included the appropriation
of the church to it. Sir John represented to the archbishop that the
fruits of the living would serve for the maintenance of more than
one parson, but that there were few ministers there. 'Many persons
there,' he said, 'who are attached to the worship of the Holy Trinity
and St Mary, and are desirous of daily service in their honour and
for the departed, grow lukewarm because of the frequent absence of
anyone to celebrate in the church, when their minister is engaged
in the visitation of the sick, or in discharge of the other duties
of his office.' Six chantries were founded, with a priest to each,
known as the chantries of the Trinity, St Mary, the archbishop, the
chapter, the founder, and the patron. The head of the college was
known as the rector. He and the six chaplains had a common habitation
in the rectory. Daily they were to assemble in the church, with the
three clerks attached to the college, one of whom at least was to be a
deacon, and chant the canonical services. The chaplains were obliged to
wear a common dress of black or nearly dark cloth with black surcoats.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. Hallaton, Leicestershire: chapel in S. aisle.]

§ 16. The great advantage of colleges of chantry priests was that they
ensured a constantly resident ministry in the parish. This, in days
when rectors were frequently non-residents or pluralists, whose real
business lay in attending on the king in the chancery or exchequer, was
a most desirable circumstance. But it is also quite easy to see that,
in a parish like Lowthorpe, a small country village between Bridlington
and Driffield, if there were too few ministers before the foundation
of the college, there probably were too many after. Their duty, as
enunciated by the founder, was to celebrate divine service for the
departed; and this was a duty which, sacred though it was, left those
who were bound by it a fair margin of leisure. Also, in some churches,
the chantry foundations were on a very large scale. The college of
Cotterstock in Northants was founded in 1337 for a provost and twelve
chaplains. In 1411 the college of Fotheringhay was founded, only two
miles away, for a master, twelve chaplains, eight clerks, and thirteen
choristers. Of the three chantry colleges in Shropshire, Battlefield
was founded at first for a master and seven chaplains, to pray for the
dead who fell at the battle of Shrewsbury; Tong was founded in 1410 for
a warden and four chaplains; Newport was enlarged from a chantry of two
chaplains, founded in 1432, to a college of a warden and four chaplains
in 1442. Other colleges which may be cited out of many were Haccombe in
Devon, founded in 1335 for an arch-priest and five chaplains; Bunbury
in Cheshire, founded in 1386-7 for a master and six chaplains; Clovelly
in Devon, founded in 1387-8 for a warden and six chaplains; Pleshy
in Essex, founded in 1393-4 for a master or warden, eight chaplains,
two clerks, and two choristers; Higham Ferrers in Northants, founded
in 1425 for a master or warden, seven chaplains, four clerks, and six
choristers; Tattershall in Lincolnshire, founded in 1439 for a master
or warden, six chaplains, six secular clerks, and six choristers, with
thirteen almspeople; and Middleham in Yorkshire, founded in 1477-8
for a dean, six chaplains, four clerks, six choristers, and one
secular clerk. All these foundations bore a distinct resemblance to
the ordinary collegiate bodies, such as those of the cathedrals, or of
Wolverhampton, Tamworth, Bridgnorth, or Westbury-on-Trym. But, while
the holders of prebends in collegiate churches were not necessarily,
and indeed were seldom, resident, the fellows or chaplains of chantry
colleges were obliged to be always on the spot. Nor were these
chantries of more than one priest founded merely in parish churches.
Lords of manors founded chantries on their estates: there was a
college of several chantry priests at the Beauchamp castle of Elmley
in Worcestershire, for example. Sir Robert Umfraville, who founded in
1429 a chantry of a master and a chaplain in the chapel of his manor
house at Farnacres, near Gateshead, strictly bound down the incumbents
to their religious duties, forbidding them to carry on any temporal
business as bailiffs or estate agents, on the ground that _dum colitur
Martha, expellitur Maria_.

§ 17. The foundation of ordinary chantries more than kept pace with
the foundation of chantry colleges. Individual benefactors sought to
secure their own salvation and that of their relations, by endowing an
altar in their parish church. In parishes where services were few, the
parishioners often clubbed together for the support of a stipendiary
service, paid out of property of which they were feoffees. The
chaplain whose services were thus secured would be of great use to the
incumbent of a large parish, especially at seasons when there were many
communicants, and many confessions had to be heard. Also, in distant
parts of large parishes, separated from the mother church by several
miles, or by foul roads and flooded streams in winter, chantry priests
were provided by individual or collective benefactions to serve the
altars of parochial chapels. In the great parishes of west Yorkshire,
Burnsall, Aysgarth, or Grinton, each including a vast tract of dale
and fell, parochial chapels, subject to the mother church, had existed
from a very early period. Such chapels became more numerous as the
middle ages advanced; and the famous chapel of South Skirlaugh, between
Hull and Hornsea, so often quoted as a perfect example of late Gothic
work, was one of these subordinate foundations. It may also be noted
that two of the largest parish churches of the same neighbourhood, St
Augustine's at Hedon and Holy Trinity at Hull, were originally chapels
to Preston-in-Holderness and Hessle. At Boughton in Northants, owing
to a shifting of the population, a chapel in the parish became the
parish church. Obviously, if the larger churches were to be properly
served, they must depend in no small measure on the goodwill of the
parishioners.

§ 18. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the parishioners came
forward with benefactions as they never had done before. The rich wool
stapler of Grantham, Newark, or Boston, returned thanks for his wealth
by founding a chantry in his church or one of its chapels. With the
rise of the commercial class, the churches of East Anglia were rebuilt
and transformed. Wealthy trade guilds at York, Boston, Shrewsbury,
or Coventry, maintained their own chaplains in the various parish
churches. Religious guilds or fraternities, composed both of men and
women, obtained royal licence for incorporation, and established their
chantries. Such was the Palmers' guild at Ludlow, which received its
first royal charter in 1284, and maintained a large body of chantry
priests, incorporated as a college, in the parish church. These
religious guilds existed for the purpose of mutual assistance and works
of charity. The guilds of St Mary and Corpus Christi in Cambridge
united together in one corporation, and founded Corpus Christi college
in 1352. In 1392 the guild of St Mary at Stamford had licence to
devote land to the maintenance of certain chantry priests in St Mary's
at the Bridge. In the same year, two guilds at Coventry were united
under the name of the guild of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, and St John
the Baptist, and founded a college of chaplains in St John's chapel
at Bablake. Still in 1392, the guild of the Holy Cross at Birmingham
was founded, with its chaplains in St Martin's; and the guilds of St
Mary and of Jesus Christ and the Holy Cross in the parish church of
Chesterfield. To 1393 belongs the foundation of the guild of the Holy
Trinity at Spalding, with a chaplain at the Trinity altar in the parish
church. In the reign of Henry IV the refounded guild of St Cross and
St John the Baptist at Stratford-on-Avon had licence to find two or
more chaplains in their parish church (1403); the guild of St Thomas
of Canterbury, with one or two chaplains, was founded at Long Sutton
in Lincolnshire (1405). Under Henry VI may be mentioned the guild of
St Mary at Louth, with more than one chaplain, founded in 1446-7; the
licence to the guild of the Holy Trinity at Nottingham, in the same
year, to maintain two chaplains in St Mary's church; the guild of St
Mary of Crediton, with a chaplain at the altar of St Peter, founded in
1448; the guilds of the Holy Trinity, with two chaplains, at Chipping
Norton, and, with one or more chaplains, at Louth (1450); and the guild
of St Mary, with two chaplains, at Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire
(1452). In 1460-1, the twelve chaplains, supported by seven guilds,
in All Saints, Northampton, were formed into a college. In the time
of Edward IV the trade guilds became more active in establishing
chantries; but the foundation of religious guilds went on with unabated
zeal. A number were founded in the small market-towns of Bedfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, with aid in more than one instance
from the diocesan, Thomas Rotherham, then bishop of Lincoln--the
fraternity of the Body of Jesus Christ at Leighton Buzzard (1473), the
guilds of the Holy Trinity at Luton (1474) and Biggleswade (1474-5),
a guild at Hitchin (1475), and the guild of St Mary and St Thomas
the Martyr at Stony Stratford (1476). In 1480 was founded a guild at
Thaxted in Essex, and in 1483-4 the fraternity of the Holy Cross at
Abingdon.

§ 19. The names of most of these guilds, which were joined by royal
and noble personages, are connected with churches of great beauty and
importance, which owe their final perfection in no small degree to the
benefactions of the brethren and sisters of the guilds. The chapel
of Bablake, St John Baptist's church at Coventry, was a result of
the incorporation of the guilds in 1392. The two guilds at Louth and
Chesterfield left their mark on the churches in which they worshipped.
The chancel, the aisles of the nave, the great porches, the west tower
and spire, at Thaxted, belong to the epoch, if they are not altogether
the direct result, of the foundation of the guild. Chantry chapels and
guild chapels may exert their influence on the plan of the fabric,
simply by providing it with a complete set of aisles. Of this type of
plan, we already have seen an example at Beckingham. But these chapels
often cause anomalies which are difficult to classify, and lead to
some confusion of plan; and some instances of this character must now
be given. In the first place, the chantry chapel is not confined to
any definite part of the plan. In our cathedrals it is frequently an
excrescence from an outer wall of the church, like the bishops' tomb
chapels at Lincoln or Hereford, or it is a rectangular structure of
stone, with elaborately traceried windows, cresting, and canopy work,
like prince Arthur's chapel at Worcester, or the episcopal tombs at
Winchester, set up within an arch of the nave or quire. Of these types
we have examples in our parish churches: the first is illustrated, on
a large scale, by Hall's chapel at Grantham; on a fair scale, by the
chapels at Long Melford and Berkeley; and, on a rather smaller scale,
by the chapels, now destroyed, of two masters of Peterhouse, on either
side of Little St Mary's church at Cambridge. All these have small
doorways and arches for table tombs between the church and the chapel.
The chapel east of the south porch at Sherburn-in-Elmet in Yorkshire,
has a tomb arch opening into the south aisle; but the entrance is in
the east wall of the porch. Many examples of the second type must have
existed in the larger churches of England: at Ludlow, for example,
there were chantry chapels in the eastern arch of the south arcade,
and in the two western arches of both arcades. We read of Sir John
Pilkington's chantry, founded in 1475 at the altar of St Mary in the
'south arch' of the parish church at Wakefield: in 1478 the chantry of
Roger Nowell was founded at the altar of St Peter in the 'north arch.'
There are stone chantry chapels in the north and south arches of the
chancel at Newark--the chantry chapel of Thomas Meyring (1500) on the
north, and that of Robert Markham (1505) on the south. These chapels
recall prior King's chapel at Bath abbey, the Warre chapel at Boxgrove
priory, and other small independent structures, like some of the tomb
chapels which form a ring round the apse at Tewkesbury. Most of these
chapels beneath arches were no doubt covered, like prior Leishman's
tomb at Hexham, with wooden canopies, which have now disappeared. At
Burford in Oxfordshire, however, there is, in the east arch of the
north arcade, a small chapel with a wooden tester and upright posts:
the sides are panelled up to a certain height. The whole structure has
been well restored and is still used.

§ 20. Some small chantry chapels form transeptal projections in unusual
parts of the building: thus, at Sherburn-in-Elmet, St Botolph's,
Cambridge, and Kewstoke, Somerset, such chapels project from the
south wall of the nave next the porch. Indeed, the variety in the
position of chantry chapels often invests the churches of the west of
England with a charm which is not always possessed by more regular
buildings. Churches like Beverstone in Gloucestershire, Croscombe
in Somerset, and Sherston Magna in Wiltshire, are full of little
surprises for anyone to whom variations in plan appeal. Perhaps the
most attractive surprise of this kind is at Long Melford in Suffolk.
On the south side of the chancel, opening out of the Martin chapel, is
a vestry, which communicates with another building at right angles to
it, behind the east wall of the chancel. From this building there is
a doorway into the lady chapel, which thus stands detached from the
body of the church. The chapel is a nearly square building, with three
external gables: internally, there is a central square space, entirely
surrounded by an aisle or ambulatory. At Boston there is a chantry
chapel, forming a short extra aisle, west of the south porch; while
at Witney, there is one west of the north porch. Sometimes, the whole
of an aisle of the nave, east of the main entrance of the church, was
screened off as a chantry chapel. There are instances of this at Croft
in Yorkshire, Hungerton in Leicestershire, and Stratton Strawless in
Norfolk. There are instances, again, in which, when a chantry chapel
was placed at the end of an aisle, its separate character from the
rest of the aisle was structurally defined. In Shropshire, at Alveley,
Cleobury Mortimer, Stottesdon, and one or two other places, one or more
chantry chapels have been formed by widening the eastern part of the
aisles in which the altars were placed.

§ 21. Where chantry colleges have existed, the fact is by no means
always obvious in the plan of the church. It is sometimes disclosed
by the presence of stall-work of unusual richness in the chancel, as
at Higham Ferrers; and sometimes, as in the same place, the altar
in the main chancel may have been reserved for the services of the
college, while another altar was provided for the ordinary parochial
services. But it must be borne in mind that a chantry college was not a
monastery. The church appropriated to the college was a parish church.
Although a chaplain might be specially deputed to look after parochial
services, the master, rector, warden, provost, arch-priest, or whatever
his title might be, was in the position of a resident incumbent. Many
splendid churches, now shorn of their chancels, recall the fact that
the naves of monastic churches were frequently used for the services
of the parish. This distinction doubtless extended to many chantry
colleges, Arundel and Fotheringhay, for example. But the services of
the college were not cut off, like the services of the monastery, from
the outer world. The college of Lowthorpe was founded specifically for
the benefit of devout parishioners who, before its foundation, could
not get all the masses they wanted. The result is that the plan of the
chantry church, as it may be called, differed little from that of the
ordinary parish church. Sibthorpe and Cotterstock are normal churches,
with fine chancels: the altars at which each of the three chaplains
of Chaddesden, or the four of St Michael Penkivel, said his daily
mass, are not confined to one part of the church, but are distributed
throughout it. Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which were originally
colleges of clergy, were practically identical with chantry colleges,
with the exception that their members were associated mainly for
purposes of study and teaching. To many of them parish churches were
appropriated, in which they held their services, and maintained their
own parochial chaplain. St Michael's at Cambridge, appropriated to
Michaelhouse, was rebuilt in the early part of the fourteenth century.
It has been little altered, and the division into collegiate quire
and parochial nave is clearly marked. There was a similar division in
Little St Mary's, belonging to Peterhouse. In the fourteenth century
the college began to rebuild the church on a large scale. The chancel
was nearly completed, when the Black Death put a stop to the work.
Later, an extra western bay was added to the chancel; and the aisleless
church thus formed was divided by a screen into a collegiate and a
parochial half. In 1446 Clare hall and Trinity hall added aisles to
the chancel of St Edward's: these aisles were wider than the aisles
of the nave, and also overlapped the nave by one bay. When Jesus
college entered into possession of the nunnery of St Radegund, the
priory church was shorn of the western end of the nave and of all its
aisles. The college reserved the quire for its own services, while
the parishioners of the old peculiar of the priory used the nave and
transepts. The ante-chapel of Merton college chapel at Oxford was used
till quite lately as the parish church of St John Baptist.

§ 22. No better instance of the complicating influence of chantry
chapels on the plan of a parish church could be given than the church
of St John Baptist at Cirencester. The oldest part of the present
building is the chancel with its south chapel, which contain twelfth
and early thirteenth century work, but are in the main the fruit of a
later thirteenth century reconstruction. The north chapel, known as St
Katharine's chapel, is a rather narrow aisle, communicating with the
chancel by fourteenth century arches. North of this, again, there may
have been a lady chapel on part of the site of the present one. Towards
the middle of the fifteenth century, the aisles of the nave were much
widened, the width taken for the new north aisle being about twice the
width of St Katharine's chapel, and the new south aisle being rather
wider than the south chapel of the chancel. The Trinity chapel was
formed by adding to the nave an extra north aisle, about half as long
as the adjacent aisle, from which it is divided by a stone screen.
There had been an earlier altar of the Trinity in the church; for the
licence granted to Robert Playn and others in 1382 to found a chantry
of two chaplains in Cirencester church placed one at the altar of the
Trinity, and the other at the altar of St Mary. In 1392 another chantry
was founded in the lady chapel. But, in its present state, the lady
chapel seems to belong to the later part of the fifteenth century,
when it was probably much broadened, so as to overlap the east wall of
the Trinity chapel. Both it and St Katharine's chapel open into the
north aisle through four-centred arches: they open into one another by
two arches pierced in the intermediate wall. Between these arches has
been left a thin piece of wall, in which rectangular slits, commanding
the altar of the lady chapel, have been cut. The plan thus includes two
chapels north of the chancel, and another north of the nave, as well as
the south chapel of the chancel. The rebuilding of the nave, with its
splendid south porch, its smaller north porch, and its western tower,
was not completed until early in the sixteenth century. The Jesus
chapel was enclosed within screens at the south-east corner of the
south aisle; and the roof of St Katharine's chapel was heightened, and
provided with fan vaulting.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Plan of Cirencester Church.]

§ 23. The tendency of the chantry chapels at Cirencester is to group
themselves at the east end of the church, the Trinity chapel forming
an excrescence at the end of the north aisle which is nearest the
chancel. At Chesterfield the high altar, below the great east window,
was flanked by the guild chapel of our Lady on the south, and the
chapel of St Katharine on the north. The guild chapel of the Holy
Cross was east of the north transept: an apsidal chapel east of the
south transept contained the altar of St George; while there were
two chantry altars against the screens in the arches of the south
transept. The four chantry chapels added to Scarborough church towards
the end of the fourteenth century were built in a row at right angles
to the south aisle, each with its own separate gable and pointed barrel
vault. The chapel of St Nicholas had been added to the church somewhat
earlier, by the building of an extra north aisle; a chantry was founded
at St Nicholas' altar in 1390. We also meet at Scarborough, Great
Yarmouth, and other places, with charnel chapels. That at Scarborough,
dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, was probably a separate building in the
graveyard. Such external chapels were often built, although few remain
to-day. Henry of Newark, archbishop of York 1298-9, founded about 1292,
while he was dean of York, a chapel of St Katharine and St Martha in
the churchyard of Newark. Some twenty years later, when the enlargement
of the aisles of Newark church was contemplated, archbishop Grenefeld
licensed the destruction of the chapel. Its materials were used for the
rebuilding of the south aisle, and the chantry was probably transferred
to an altar in the new building. There was probably a charnel chapel at
Grantham, to the south-west of the church.

§ 24. But the most interesting case of an external chapel is the
Sylvester chapel at Burford, which now forms a long arm stretching
to the south-west of the main fabric. The church and chapel were
originally separate. The church was, to begin with, an aisleless
twelfth century structure, with a tower between nave and chancel. In
the thirteenth century the chancel was produced to its present length,
the north and south walls of the tower were pierced with arches, and
transeptal chapels were added. A narrow south aisle was also added
to the nave. About the same time a long aisleless chapel was built
in the churchyard, some yards to the south-west of the church. In
the fourteenth century a chapel was constructed, with a bone-crypt
beneath it, west of the south transept, and was connected with the
south aisle. There seems to have been no north aisle to the nave.
East of the transepts were small chapels. The fifteenth century saw a
great transformation. A sacristy was built north of the altar. Aisles
and a south porch of great beauty were built in harmony with a new
nave arcade. The outer chapel, the axis of which was not parallel to
that of the nave, was prolonged eastward to meet the south porch, and
connected by an arcade with the south aisle. It was shortened at the
west end, but still projects two bays beyond the main body of the
church. The east chapel of the south transept was now taken away, and
a south chancel chapel built, the east wall of which interfered with
the thirteenth century sedilia of the chancel. The south wall of the
chancel, opposite the sacristy, was allowed to stand clear of the new
chapel. On the opposite side of the church, the north transept was
shortened, until it was little longer than the breadth of the north
aisle: its north wall was then continued eastwards and was returned to
join the west wall of the sacristy. The north chapel of the chancel
was thus formed. The whole progress of the plan is from a simple form
of aisleless church to an aisled rectangle with central tower and
spire; but the process is irregular, and the absorption of the outer
chapel is an almost unique step. It will be noticed that the south
aisle is entirely covered by a triple arrangement of buildings--first,
St Thomas' chapel next the south transept, then the south porch, and
finally the Sylvester chapel, which gives additional length to the
church from this point of view.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of Burford Church.]

§ 25. Other examples of churches in the wealthy market towns of the
west of England might be given, in which, as at Frome, chantry chapels
grafted themselves upon the plan, with immense advantage to the
picturesque effect. But there were few churches on which the foundation
of chantries, and especially of chantries maintained by religious
guilds, had such influence as on the great churches of Coventry--St
Michael's, Holy Trinity, and St John's. Licences for the foundations
of chantries in St Michael's bear date 1323 (two chaplains), 1344 (one
chaplain in the chapel of St Lawrence, augmented 1383, 1390), 1388
(one chaplain at the altar of All Saints), 1411-2 (one chaplain at
the altar of St Katharine), and 1412 (two chaplains at the newly made
altars of the Holy Trinity and St Mary). In addition to these altars
and the high altar there were altars of Jesus, St John, St Anne, St
Thomas, and St Andrew. The chantries at these various altars became in
time attached to the various trade guilds of the town, and the church,
greatly enlarged and extended in the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, contained several chapels, known by the names of the guilds.
Some details of the rebuilding have been touched upon already. The plan
is curious; for the chancel ends in a semi-octagonal apse--a feature
which also occurs in the late Gothic chancels of Westbury-on-Trym
and Wrexham--surrounded by a row of vestries on a lower level. On
the north of the chancel is the lady chapel, the altar of which was
new in 1412-3, known later as the drapers' chapel. The south chapel
of the chancel was the mercers' chapel, which probably contained
the Trinity altar. The eastern part of the north aisle was occupied
by St Lawrence's chapel. The outer north aisle was divided into two
parts: east of the doorway was All Saints' or the girdlers' chapel,
while west of it was St Andrew's or the smiths' chapel. Two further
chapels, St Thomas' or the cappers' chapel, and the dyers' chapel,
formed excrescences to east and west of the south porch. The beautiful
cruciform church of the Holy Trinity became flanked in process of
time by similar chapels. In the later part of the thirteenth century
the north porch was joined to the transept by St Thomas' chapel. At a
later date a chapel, afterwards the consistory court, was built from
the west wall of the north porch as far as the west wall of the north
aisle. Much later, in the sixteenth century, Marler's or the mercers'
chapel was continued from the east wall of the north transept along the
north aisle of the quire, the north transept being thus practically
absorbed in an outer north aisle. The lady chapel was at the end of the
north aisle of the chancel, north of the altar: opposite it, on the
south, was the Trinity chapel. The south aisle of the chancel was the
butchers' chapel: in the south transept was the Corpus Christi chapel,
now destroyed; while at the west end of the south aisle of the nave was
the tanners' chapel.

[Illustration: Fig. 4. Plan of St Michael's, Coventry. A.
                       St Andrew's Chapel. B. Girdlers' Chapel.
                       C. St Lawrence's Chapel. D. Drapers' Chapel.
                       E. Dyers' Chapel. F. Cappers'
                       Chapel. G. Mercers' Chapel.]

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Plan of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry.
                       A. Archdeacon's Court. B. St Thomas' Chapel.
                       C. Marler's Chapel. D. Lady Chapel. E. Tanners'
                       Chapel. F. Jesus Chapel. G. Corpus Christi
                       Chapel. H. Butchers' Chapel. I. Holy Trinity
                       Chapel.]

§ 26. Thus, by the gradual addition of chapel after chapel, the plan of
these magnificent churches, some of the finest productions of English
art, grew until, as at Burford or Holy Trinity, Coventry, it lost
all likeness to its original state, and seems at first sight to be a
collection of buildings heaped together without much method. It would
be interesting to trace the growth of churches like St Mary Redcliffe
or Ludlow, as we have traced that of Cirencester and Burford. In these
cases, it is impossible to give too much emphasis to the part played
by lay benefactors in the development of the fabric. Cirencester,
Burford, and the Coventry churches, were appropriated to monasteries:
St Mary Redcliffe was merely a chapel of Bedminster, appropriated,
like Grantham, to a stall in Salisbury cathedral. At Cirencester and
Coventry the churches were close to the religious houses to which
they belonged. But the growth of the churches was the result of lay
devotion: the founders of chantries of whom we hear, like the famous
William Canynge at St Mary Redcliffe, were men who had made money in
business. The part of the monasteries in church-building was never,
so far as parish churches were concerned, very active. As the middle
ages went on, their connexion with the fabrics became still slighter;
and their interest in the church, apart from the profits which they
received from it, and from an occasional litigation about the advowson,
was probably confined to the periodical presentation of a vicar. The
highest state of development which the parish church attained, in
such buildings as have just been described, or in the great churches
of Norfolk and Somerset, was the consequence of a long series of
beautifications and improvements, in which at first, no doubt, the lay
lords of manors took the leading part, but afterwards were joined by
wealthy parishioners, who could find no more fitting employment for
their wealth than the enlargement and decoration of the house of God.
And it should not be forgotten that not merely the rich, but the poor,
shared in this work of benefaction. In some places, at Oswestry, for
example, chantry priests were supported by the devotion of servants
or husbandmen, each of whom paid his yearly share of the endowment.
Here and there in East Anglia, inscriptions remaining on beautiful
pieces of church furniture, bear witness to the generosity of members
of the parish in humble positions. The churches of London, Bristol,
York, and Norwich, and of countless towns and villages, are memorials
of the brightest aspect of medieval religion--the spontaneous devotion
which it excited, for motives often mingled with superstition, but
never selfish or unworthy, in the most hard-headed and least emotional
section, then as now, of English society.

THE TOWER, THE PORCH, AND THE CHANCEL

§ 27. In another volume of this series, the development of the ground
plan of the parish church has been treated with some detail. The
importance of the central tower in connexion with the transeptal or
cruciform plan has there been explained; and it has been seen that
English builders generally preferred a tower at the west end of the
nave. In the present chapter, something will be said of the development
and use of the western tower, and of the closely related subject of the
entrances to the church. The nave and its aisles demand, in this space,
little more attention than can be given to them in the discussion
of the ground plan and in what has been said already with regard to
chantry chapels; and of their furniture more will be said in the next
chapter. But some further consideration of the chancel, the enlargement
of which forms so important a part of the history of the medieval
plan, is necessary; and some account of its architectural and ritual
development is given here, following the description of the tower and
porch.

[Illustration: Fig. 6. Norton, Co. Durham: Saxon central tower, with
transept.]

§ 28. There is evidence that, in certain churches of unquestionably
Saxon origin, the western tower was formed, probably at a time
considerably subsequent to their foundation, by the heightening of
the western porch or main entrance to the church. Brixworth and
Monkwearmouth are cases in point. At Brixworth the original western
doorway of the porch was blocked up when the stair-turret of the tower
was built on that side. At Monkwearmouth the line of the gabled roof
of the porch is still visible. Western towers, whether heightened or
built from the ground, were certainly not common until, at any rate,
the epoch of the Danish wars. No existing church can be assigned
positively to that epoch; and those who contend that the church tower
then came into existence as a place of defence and refuge from the
invaders probably argue from analogies of a later period. The thin
walls and undefended ground-floor doorways of Saxon towers forbid us
to entertain this theory seriously. But it is certainly the case that
these towers, primarily intended as bell-towers, were sometimes planned
to afford more accommodation than was necessary for a man whose sole
duty was to ring the bell. The ground-floor area of towers like Earl's
Barton and Barnack in Northants, and Hough-on-the-Hill in Lincolnshire,
which, in their present state, may be assigned tentatively to the
later part of the tenth century, takes its place in the history of
the development of the plan; and, just as at Barton-on-Humber, the
dimensions of the upper part of such towers were conditioned by the
space allotted to the lowest stage. But there are indications that,
in cases where the ground floor of the tower was simply the porch of
the church, one or more of the upper stages had their special use.
A doorway occasionally has been made in the east wall of the tower,
above the arch leading into the nave. This may be explained by the fact
that such towers were small in area, and that their angles contained
no room for staircases. Some access from the interior of the church
to their upper stories was necessary, and would be easily provided by
a ladder from the ground floor to the doorway on the first floor. The
doorway is usually slightly on one side of the centre of the wall,
so that the ladder would not interfere with the archway below. But
the case is different, when, as at Brixworth, a large circular turret
has been built against the west wall of the tower, and from the first
floor chamber there is a large triple window-opening looking out into
the body of the church. At Deerhurst, there is not only a doorway in
the first floor of the tower; but, close by it, near the centre of the
wall, there is a small window-opening or squint; while, on the second
floor, there is a double window-opening of unusual form, and, on the
third floor, another doorway in the centre of the wall, which seems
to have opened into a wooden gallery. More than this, the lower part
of the tower is partitioned by a transverse wall into an eastern and
western porch and upper chamber. It is therefore indisputable that
the tower at Deerhurst was more than a bell-tower. Deerhurst was an
important monastery: the size and plan of the church were exceptional;
and the upper floors of the tower may have been used for special
purposes in connexion with the monastic services. One may hazard the
suggestion that the room on the east side of the first floor was used
by the monk whose turn it was to keep night-watch in the church: the
spy-hole in the east wall seems to afford ground for this. It has been
suggested that the second floor chamber--and, like it, the first floor
chamber at Brixworth--was used as an oratory by the lord of the manor
and protector of the monastery; and this is possible, if the importance
of the lord of the manor in connexion with early parish churches is
taken into account. Almery-like recesses in the wall are found in
this chamber at Deerhurst: such recesses, where they are found by
themselves, as in the tower of Skipwith in Yorkshire, suggest little
and prove nothing, and at Deerhurst no positive reason for their use
can be given. In some medieval churches there are traces of altars on
the upper floors of towers; and it is possible that such altars may
have existed at Deerhurst and Brixworth, and the windows pierced in the
wall behind them may have been given special decorative treatment.
The western stair-turret at Brixworth was probably constructed for the
sake of the important first floor chamber. Three other examples of a
circular stair-turret projecting from the western face of a tower are
found, one in Northamptonshire, two in Lincolnshire; but in none of
these are there any indications of a particular use for the first floor
of the tower. The only example of a spiral stair or vice built in an
angle of a pre-Conquest tower is at Great Hale in Lincolnshire, and is
a rude piece of work. Until the introduction of buttresses, the newel
stair in the angle of the tower was uncommon. A ladder from the floor
of the tower served for access to the upper stages. In rare instances,
as at Kirkburn in the east riding of Yorkshire, a stone stair was built
against the inner walls of the tower as far as the level of the first
floor. Where angle-staircases have been added to early Norman towers,
as at Tansor in Northants or in the central tower at Coln St Denis in
Gloucestershire, the abutments have been seriously weakened.

§ 29. In the eleventh century, the western bell-tower, the ground
floor of which served as the main porch of the church, became common.
The tower of the so-called 'Lincolnshire' type, with its stages
separated by off-sets, and its double belfry window openings divided
by a 'mid-wall' shaft, is found not infrequently in other parts of
England, and survived, with some change in proportion and detail, for
some time after the Norman Conquest. Some sixty western towers of the
ordinary late Saxon type remain in England, exclusive of heightened
porches, and of a few round towers in the eastern counties, where the
absence of stone suitable for quoins made this shape desirable. It is
probable that portions of many more exist beneath later additions. We
have seen that in the tower at Branston, built more than a quarter
of a century at earliest after the Conquest, the old type was
retained--the slender tower, lofty in proportion to its area. The tower
of Weaverthorpe in the east riding of Yorkshire, obviously Norman in
its details, keeps the old proportions. Many towers, on the contrary,
which, at first sight, might be associated with the Saxon group, shew
Norman influence in the thickness of their walls and stoutness of their
proportions. While the normal thickness of wall in the late Saxon
towers of Lincolnshire is about three and a half feet, the thickness
at Caistor is increased to nearly six feet. The normal area is from
ten to twelve feet square: the area at Caistor is 15½ feet east to
west by 17½ north to south. The normal width of the arch between
tower and nave is about 5¾ feet: at Caistor it is nearly four feet
more. At Tugby, between Leicester and Uppingham, there is a remarkable
tower, built in a primitive fashion which shews distinct traces of
Saxon kinship, but with proportions and with the introduction of
detail which as clearly bear witness to its post-Conquest date. Hooton
Pagnell, near Doncaster, has a large western tower which follows the
Saxon tradition of the simple rubble tower with small stone quoins and
without buttresses; but the character of the arch leading into the
nave is distinctly Norman, and the tower is not merely of unusually
large area, but is the full breadth of the spacious nave beyond it.
While the western tower increases in area, it does not at first acquire
buttresses at the angles: these, in their flat pilaster-like form,
begin to appear in the course of the twelfth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 7. Carlton-in-Lindrick, Notts.: west tower, of late
Saxon type, with later additions.]

§ 30. The magnificent architectural development of the tower and spire,
in which, as in perhaps no other part of the church, the individual
characteristics of local schools of masoncraft can be traced, becomes
noticeable in the thirteenth century, at a time when the use of the
ground floor of the tower as the principal porch of the church had
been discontinued. In the fen country round Wisbech and Spalding, a
series of thirteenth century towers, covering the period from 1200 to
1280, bears witness to the work of a school of tower builders, hardly
less distinguished than the great Somerset masons of later days, which
probably derived its inspiration from the arcaded western tower of Ely
cathedral. Elm, Leverington, Walsoken, West Walton, Tilney All Saints,
Long Sutton, Gedney, and Whaplode, are the principal evidence of
their work. Not all these towers are western, and four of the number,
including Gedney, the belfry stage of which belongs to a later date,
are without the spires which their builders doubtless intended; but
all are instances of the treatment of the bell-tower as an independent
architectural composition, quite irrespective of its part in the plan
of the church. In the twelfth century, however, when the side doorway
was superseding the tower porch, the western tower was by no means
so handsome or invariable a feature as it became in later days. Many
smaller churches were content with a bell-cot over the western gable.
There are several excellent examples of stone bell-cots in Rutland.
In Essex and other districts where good building timber was easily
procured, it is not uncommon to find square towers of timber, with
conical caps or even spires, above the western gable, often supported
on an elaborate framework within the west end of the church. A few
timber towers, like Margaretting in Essex, are built up against the old
west end of the church.

§ 31. There can be no doubt that, in the earlier part of the middle
ages, while the high pitched roof prevailed in the main body of the
building, the spire was considered the proper termination of a tower.
Its chief development naturally took place in districts where good
roofing stone was plentiful; and the finest English spires, with a few
exceptions, are to be found in south Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire,
Leicestershire, and Rutland. In less favoured districts, timber spires,
covered with lead or shingles, were placed upon towers. Many of these
remain in Surrey and Sussex. The spire may be regarded as the natural
development of the conical roofs with which the towers of the eleventh
and early twelfth centuries were usually crowned--an invaluable, if
exceptional, example of which remains at Sompting, near Worthing. These
must generally have been of wood with leaden coverings. The earliest
general development of the stone spire is probably to be traced to
south Lincolnshire, where the low broach spires of Sleaford, Rauceby,
Frampton, and a few other churches, appear to belong to the last years
of the twelfth, or earliest years of the thirteenth century. The spire
continued to be fashionable in this and the neighbouring districts,
long after it had become unusual in other parts of England. Grantham
spire exercised an enduring influence upon its neighbourhood. It was
the model upon which the builders of the spire of Oakham endeavoured to
improve, with less striving after height and more coherence of design.
From Oakham was closely derived the tower of Exton in Rutland, where
the builders raised their spire upon an octagonal base. The octagon
at Exton was probably the parent of those octagons which, rising on
the summit of towers, reach their climax in the lantern at Boston, and
in the octagonal frame which surrounds the lower part of the spire at
Patrington. Other details at Exton bore fruit in the spires of Oundle
and Kettering. At the very end of the middle ages, the feeling for the
spire in Lincolnshire was still so strong that the tower of Louth was
designed for a spire in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the
spire itself was brought to completion in 1515.

§ 32. While, in the districts to which allusion has just been made,
towers were designed, as a rule, with a view to the spires which were
to cover them, the tower, in other parts of England, was designed
simply as a tower, and the spire was regarded merely as a roof for
it. In the chalk country north of the Thames, towers are often found
crowned by small timber spirelets with a leaden covering, which are
merely insignificant additions. Towards the middle of the fourteenth
century, an important development in the elevation of the main fabric
led to a general disuse of the spire, especially in districts where
stone spires had formed no part of architectural design. Clerestories
with broad windows were built above the arcades of the nave. With
this increase of height the old high pitched roofs were abandoned
in favour of roofs of a flatter pitch. Very often, this was due to
the rotting of the old roof-timber at the ends next the wall-plates.
These ends were sawn off, and the roof re-laid at a lower pitch. At the
same time, the clerestory dwarfed the western tower. At Oadby, near
Leicester, where there is a beautiful tower and spire, designed in
perfect harmony with a fourteenth century nave, the fifteenth century
clerestory actually raises the height of the nave to that of the tower,
with incongruous effect. During the fifteenth century, therefore, it is
common to find that towers were rebuilt, or an upper story was added
to them, in proportion to the increase of height in the nave. Thus, at
Immingham in north Lincolnshire, the clerestory and upper part of the
tower are of one date, and were built as part of one connected work.
The roof of the clerestory being, in most cases, nearly flat, the roof
of the tower followed suit; and although, where traditions of spire
design had a hardy existence, spires were still built, towers without
spires, surmounted by parapets like the parapets which hid the roof
of the clerestories, became the order of the day. In certain parts of
England, and especially in Somerset, where the art of designing towers
was pursued with extraordinary success, towers were rebuilt from the
ground. But the proportion of towers, with or without spires, which
have been heightened to meet the requirements of a clerestory, is
probably in excess of the proportion of towers entirely rebuilt. In the
case of heightened towers, the pitch of the older roof of the nave can
generally be made out by the retention of its housing slot or weather
course in the east wall of the tower. At Gedney, in south Lincolnshire,
where the lower part of the tower is of the thirteenth century, the
line of the contemporary roof may be traced above the tower arch.
Above this is another line, marking the pitch of a new roof, made when
the arcades were rebuilt in the fourteenth century. The clerestory
and the upper story of the tower belong to the fifteenth century. In
many instances, however, the flattening of the roof has followed the
rebuilding of the tower; and in these the old weather course will be
found on the east face of the tower, above the present roof, as in
the south aisle at St Mary's, Leicester. Here the roof was probably
flattened in the fifteenth century, when the tower and spire were
completed.

[Illustration: Fig. 8. Tickhill, Yorkshire: general view from S.E.,
showing clerestory, western tower and projecting eastern chapel.]

§ 33. West doorways are frequently found in towers; and often, as at
Grantham and Newark, they are of some importance in the design. They
are a general feature of the larger towers, although sometimes, as
at St Michael's, Coventry, where the nave has a west porch north of
the tower, they are insignificant, and were probably intended to be
little more than a convenient entrance for building materials. In
Northamptonshire, some of the towers of the churches of the Nene valley
have doorways covered by shallow porches. The beautiful porch at Higham
Ferrers and that at Raunds are the earliest: later porches occur at
Oundle, Rushden, and Keyston, the last place being just across the
border of Huntingdonshire. These western doorways were sometimes used
as principal entrances to the church, and were provided with holy-water
stoups. But habitually they were kept closed, and used only on special
occasions for ritual purposes, as in the Palm Sunday procession,
when the clergy and choir entered the church by the west door. Such
entrances would be a natural feature of large churches, like Kettering,
and are found in the west walls of churches like Stratford-on-Avon,
St Mary Redcliffe's at Bristol, or Ketton in Rutland, where the tower
is central or in a situation not at the west end of the nave. Where
the west doorway is covered by a projecting porch, as mentioned
above, the design possibly recalls the western porches or Galilees,
found in some of our larger churches, and on an imposing scale, in
certain districts of France. The word Galilee arises from the fact
that the west porch was the last stage in the Sunday procession, and
the celebrant, entering it first, symbolised our Lord preceding His
disciples into Galilee after the Resurrection, of which Sunday was
the festival. A regular western building of the Galilee type is a
somewhat rare feature in an English parish church; but there is one at
Melton Mowbray, and at Snettisham in Norfolk there is an open porch,
projecting beyond the west wall of the church. In both cases the church
has a central tower. At King's Sutton in Northamptonshire, there is a
vaulted porch in front of the western tower.

§ 34. It has been said that there are churches of the twelfth century
in which the tower was omitted, and a bell-cot above the western gable
took its place. Quenington in Gloucestershire, and Barton-le-Street
in the north riding of Yorkshire, are good examples. In both cases, a
north as well as a south doorway were provided to the aisleless nave,
although, at Barton-le-Street, this circumstance has been obscured
by a modern restoration. In neither case was there a western door;
and in both the north doorway, which stands on the side nearest the
village, has probably been always the main entrance. The reason of the
two doorways may have been the exigencies of processions, in which
the litany was sung, and the altars of the church sprinkled with
holy water. Such processions took place, at any rate in the greater
churches, every Sunday, and in monastic churches were partly external,
to include the buildings of the cloister. In smaller churches,
however, external processions would be of rare occurrence, and two
doorways would hardly be provided for this reason alone. As a rule,
the ordinary entrance would lie on the side of the church nearest the
approach from the village, which was generally on the south. But this
is not invariable; and the favourite entrance, even where a village lay
to the north of the church, was on the south side. There are sometimes
signs that one of the doorways may have been appropriated traditionally
to the use of the tenants of one of the manors in a parish, or to
the parishioners of a chapelry who were bound to attend the mother
church on certain feasts in the year. Thus at Barton-le-Street, the
south doorway, lying on the side of the church towards the hamlet
of Coneysthorpe, is called the Coneysthorpe doorway. At Easingwold,
in Yorkshire, the north doorway is called the Raskelf door, and was
doubtless used by the inhabitants of the chapelry of Raskelf on these
special occasions. At Hungerton, near Leicester, the tenants of each
of the four manors in the parish still occupy their own quarter of the
nave; and at Churchdown, near Gloucester, the names of the various
chapelries of the medieval parish are still applied to divisions of
the churchyard. In cases like this, the doorway nearest to the part
of the church appropriated to one or more of these separate bodies of
parishioners would naturally be used as well as the main doorway.

§ 35. In its simplest form, the porch is simply a protection to the
doorway which it covers. The timber porches, often beautiful works
of art, which are common in Essex and other timber-growing parts
of England and Wales, can hardly have served any very practical
use, although, like stone porches, they have side-benches, on which
worshippers could rest. But, from the days when the south porch of
Canterbury cathedral was resorted to by litigants from every part of
the kingdom, the church porch was a common place for the transaction
of much secular business. Hence, no doubt, it became a permanent stone
structure, usually roofed with wood, but sometimes vaulted, as at
Barnack, or covered, as in some of the churches round Doncaster, by a
high pitched roof of stone slabs. In many later medieval churches, the
size of the porch increased, and it was vaulted with elaborate ribbed
ceilings, or, as at Lavenham in Suffolk, with fan vaulting. There
may sometimes have been, as there was at Canterbury and possibly at
Bradford on Avon, an altar in the porch. At South Pool in Devon, the
bench which runs along the east wall is raised in the middle, and forms
an altar table. A broad south aisle was built in the fifteenth century,
but was stopped at the east wall of the porch. A small window, now
filled in, directly above the altar, commanded a view of the aisle and
the south altar of the chancel from the porch, and was closed on the
side of the aisle by an iron grille. Such altars, however, must have
been very rare. One may suggest that the altar at South Pool contained
relics, on which oaths were taken by those who came to the porch
to settle business or disputes which might be terminated by mutual
agreement, without being brought before the regular courts.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. St Mary's, Beverley: south porch.]

§ 36. From the fourteenth century onwards, porches with an upper story
became common, and it is certain that much miscellaneous business may
have been transacted in the chamber on the upper floor. This chamber,
so frequently called a 'priest's room,' was used for several purposes.
It was sometimes a chapel of the church. The north porch at Grantham
was either rebuilt or extended northward in the fourteenth century: the
lower story was vaulted, and the long upper chamber became the chapel
in which the principal relics belonging to the church were preserved.
Stairways were provided in each of the outer corner-turrets, one for
those ascending to venerate the relics, the other for those descending,
so that a free circulation was assured for devotees who visited the
chapel on feast days. In addition, a window was made in the wall
above the north door, through which the relics could be exhibited to
worshippers inside the church. The vaulting was broken down at a later
period, and the two stages combined into one. The south porch also has
an upper chamber, which in later days, like so many similar chambers,
contained the library of the church. It was probably appropriated to
the church-watcher, sometimes the deacon attached to the church, who
slept there, and, from a small inner window which projects slightly
from the wall, could gain a view of most of the interior of the
building. In such a case the watcher's room would probably also be
used as the treasury of the church. The magnificent south porch at
Cirencester, in three stages, has fan vaulting in the ground story: the
upper rooms were used by the trade guilds of the town, and still form
the Guildhall. The close connexion of the guilds with the religious
life of the place made the church their natural meeting-place;
and their annual meetings were very generally held in the chapels
where they maintained services in their parish church. The porch at
Cirencester is called the Vice, a corruption of the word parvise (the
Latin _parvisus_ = _paradisus_) which is commonly, though inaccurately,
applied to these storied porches. Among the splendid storied porches
of the later middle ages may be mentioned those at Thaxted in Essex,
Beccles in Suffolk, and Sall in Norfolk. The upper story of one of the
porches at Sall contains a piscina, and was probably a chapel.

[Illustration: Fig. 10. Cirencester: south porch.]

§ 37. It has been noted that there was occasionally an altar on the
first floor of a tower. One still remains in place at St Michael
Penkivel, near Truro, where the church was appropriated to a college
of four chantry priests, and was rebuilt early in the fourteenth
century. Certain indications have lately been found of another at
Tansor, near Oundle: the conversion of this tower chamber into a
chapel explains the otherwise pointless addition of a stair at the
south-east angle of the tower, which seriously weakened the fabric.
While the term 'priest's chamber,' as applied to the room over the
porch, is by no means accurate, it is probable that such a room may
sometimes have been used by a chantry priest, or as has been said, by
the deacon who occasionally assisted the incumbent of a church. The
most curious instance of a habitation in connexion with a church is
at Terrington St John's, in the Norfolk marshland, where the tower
stands at some distance west of the south aisle, and is connected
with it by a two-storied building, divided into chambers. There seems
little reason to doubt that this dark and uncomfortable, but moderately
roomy structure, with the first floor of the adjoining tower, was
occupied by the curate who served the church. It is well, however, to
look askance on the usual traditions which have led, for example, to
the confident statement that the porch chambers at Grantham were the
vicarages of the two rectorial portions of the church. Statements,
also, with regard to the defensive use of church towers must carefully
be guarded against, with the proviso that, in certain districts, there
are indications that such an use was made of them. In some of the
churches of north-west Yorkshire, from the end of the twelfth century
onwards, towers were built with a strength which indicates that they
might become strongholds in time of warfare; and there is positive
evidence that the tower of Bedale church, in a district much exposed to
the inroads of Scottish invaders, was intended to receive on occasion
a body of defenders. The same thing is true of fortified towers, like
that at Newton Nottage, on the coast of South Wales. In towers, again,
like those of Llywel and Llanfihangel-Cwm-Du in Breconshire, and
Llanfair-ar-y-Bryn in Carmarthenshire, the external construction speaks
clearly of the uses to which such towers might be put in time of war,
while the strong barrel vaults of the ground floors, the ample planning
of the turret stairs, and the presence in one case, till recent times,
of a fire-place on the first floor, are further indications which
support the idea.

§ 38. It should not be forgotten that a porch was occasionally used as
the foundation of a tower. There is a good example of a northern porch
tower at Cromhall in Gloucestershire and of a southern porch tower at
Norbury in Derbyshire; but the finest instance is probably the south
tower and spire of Donington in south Lincolnshire. The south tower at
Fowey in Cornwall is another striking example. It was merely custom and
tradition which made the west tower a nearly invariable feature in most
districts of England during the greater part of the middle ages. It is
obvious that the position of the tower in the plan is elastic, and we
find it, not merely over the crossing of the transepts, or over a side
porch, or at the extremity of a transept, or as an upward extension of
a transeptal chapel, but also in a position detached from the church.
The beautiful tower of West Walton in Norfolk is at the entrance to
the churchyard, its ground story forming the gateway. In examples like
this--Fleet and Tydd St Giles, in the same neighbourhood, stand apart
in their churchyards--the insecure nature of the soil probably made the
building of a bell-tower in direct attachment to the church unsafe,
and therefore undesirable.

§ 39. The Norman chancel in England was rectangular in the majority of
cases. It was also narrower than the nave, from which it was divided
by an arch. Such arches are almost invariably, until the middle of the
twelfth century, round-headed, and are usually low in elevation. Their
character and width, however, vary greatly. At North Witham the archway
is low and narrow, and the arch is unmoulded; decoration is confined
to the impost-blocks from which it springs. A wide space of wall is
left on either side of the opening. When in the thirteenth century
the chancel was enlarged, these spaces were pierced with wide pointed
openings, presumably in order to give a better view of the altar from
the body of the church. In north Yorkshire there are a large number
of similar chancel arches, the narrowness and plainness of which have
sometimes induced antiquaries to class them as Saxon. Saxon in affinity
they may well be; but at Scawton on the Hambleton hills, where one of
them occurs, and the wall on either side is pierced with late Norman
openings, we know that the church was built in 1146. At Bracebridge,
near Lincoln, where there is a fairly lofty and narrow chancel arch
of early character and uncertain date, there are openings, apparently
later than the rest of the work, at the sides. These openings are not
carried down to the ground in any of the cases mentioned; and there
were probably altars against the wall below them, as was certainly the
case at Castle Rising in Norfolk, and Avening in Gloucestershire, where
towers occur between nave and chancel. Were such openings invariable,
or were they even contemporary with the chancel arch, we might see in
them a survival of the triple-arched screen wall of early Saxon times.
But they are quite exceptional; and at North Witham both, and at Castle
Rising one, are much later than the chancel arch. More frequently the
chancel arch is given elaborate architectural treatment, with moulded
orders and jamb-shafts, and occupies most of the width, and practically
the whole height of the chancel behind. Early Saxon chancel arches were
very narrow, as is the case at Escomb and Bradford on Avon--so narrow
as to shut off the chancel from the nave. This may have been a survival
of the primitive practice which kept, by means of curtains drawn round
the canopy of the altar, the consecration of the sacred elements in
the Eucharist from the public eye. All through the middle ages, it
was customary during Lent to hang a curtain or Lenten veil across the
chancel arch; and in many English churches hooks for its support may
still be seen. A narrow chancel arch would be much more serviceable for
this purpose than a wide one; and its persistent continuance through
the twelfth century may perhaps be attributed to this usage.

§ 40. While, in the enlargement of a church, the nave was usually
widened by the addition of aisles, the chancel was in most cases
lengthened, and was often rebuilt entirely, in order to provide more
room for the stalls of the quire. Thus, at Sandiacre in Derbyshire,
the twelfth century nave and chancel arch were left untouched, but
a splendid chancel was built in place of the old one during the
fourteenth century. The screen which divided chancel from nave is gone;
but nowhere can we appreciate better the practical separation between
the parishioners' portion of the church, and that devoted to the clergy
and quire, which, in churches like this, became almost as marked as in
the monastic and larger collegiate churches. The lengthened chancel,
forming a deep aisleless projection to the east of the building, was
often treated with great architectural dignity. Nothing could be more
beautiful, from their very simplicity of design, than the chancels of
Mitford in Northumberland, or Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk, with their
row of lancet windows in the side walls, and the marked projection of
their string-courses and buttresses. Later in the thirteenth century,
the chancel of Houghton-le-Spring church, near Durham, gives us
another example from the north of England of spacious planning, with
light admitted through a row of splayed lancets. The chancel of the
collegiate church of St Andrew, Bishop Auckland, enlarged about 1250
or rather later, underwent further alteration not long after, by the
substitution of broader two-light openings for the narrower lancets,
and of a large mullioned east window for a group of lancets at the east
end. In Yorkshire, the chancel of West Heslerton, a simple aisleless
church, was lengthened and lightened by a row of lancets not unlike
those at Houghton-le-Spring. Further south, the nobility which long
lancet windows in bays divided by projecting buttresses, and marked
by the strong horizontal lines of string-courses, can give to an
architectural composition, is shewn by the chancel of the cruciform
church of Hedon, near Hull. Less elaborate, but even more striking
by virtue of the height, narrowness, and wide internal splay of the
lancet openings, is the chancel of Bottesford in north Lincolnshire.
Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge, possibly reaches the high water mark
of chancel building which depends for its effect on the arrangement
of lancet windows. Acton Burnell in Shropshire, recalls Cherry Hinton
in the piercing of its side walls by rows of lancets, with trefoiled
rere-arches; but its east window is a composition of four lights,
with geometrical tracery, and marks the transition to an even more
imposing type of chancel, in which the side walls are pierced with
large traceried windows, and the outside and inside of the building
alike are marked by architectural treatment of great beauty, and even
splendour. Some of the earliest of these fourteenth century chancels
may be found in the east of England. Great Sampford in Essex stands
on the border-line between the two centuries. Dennington in Suffolk,
a chancel of unequalled beauty, comes within the first quarter of the
fourteenth century. Somewhat later is Stebbing in Essex, and a little
later still is Great Bardfield. In both of these churches, close to one
another, nave and chancel alike were rebuilt, and the arch between them
filled with a screen of open tracery in stone. The chancel of Lawford,
near Colchester, followed about the middle of the fourteenth century:
its chief feature is the licence given to the curvilinear tracery of
its windows. Impulse may have been given to this outbreak of energy
in the east of England by the great building works undertaken at old
St Paul's during the latter part of the thirteenth century: all the
examples cited, with the exception of Dennington, are within the bounds
of the ancient diocese of London. Further examples which give colour
to this view might be cited, such as the chancel which the Cistercians
of Tilty, near Dunmow, added to their church, as the beginning of a
complete rebuilding, about the beginning of the fourteenth century.

§ 41. But even more conspicuous than these are the chancels which are
found with some frequency in the ancient and widespread dioceses
of York, Lincoln, and Lichfield. The chief features of these are,
traceried windows of great beauty of proportion and variety of design,
with carefully moulded arches and jambs, boldly projecting buttresses
with gables or pinnacles, strings and base courses carried right round
the building, often with much elaboration. The internal furniture
includes stone piscinae and sedilia, canopied niches on each side of
the east window, founders' tombs, and, in some cases, stone Easter
sepulchres in the north wall. In almost every case, the masonry is
composed of large dressed stones; and the building capacity of the
masons reaches a high level of architectural skill. The probable source
of the development of masonry and sculpture shewn in these structures
is to be found in the architectural work which was going on at York
during the last quarter of the thirteenth and first quarter of the
fourteenth century. It can be shewn that the York school of masoncraft
had some influence at Lincoln. Its influence at Southwell, the southern
_matrix ecclesia_ of the diocese of York, is undoubted. That it had
some influence as far south as the lady chapel of Ely, begun in 1321,
is very probable; and the work done there may have reacted in a
northward direction. Its influence at Lichfield, during the episcopate
of Walter Langton (1296-1321), is more than probable, as Langton was
intimately connected with York from his early years till his death.
In Yorkshire, the rebuilding of the cruciform church at Patrington was
completed, with the chancel, towards 1350. Earlier than this, probably
between 1320 and 1330, the chancels of Patrick Brompton, Kirkby Wiske,
and Ainderby Steeple had been built: Croft, near Darlington, and
Romaldkirk in Teesdale, belong to much the same period and sphere of
influence. Round Southwell and Lincoln, and probably during the same
decade, the greatest triumphs of the period were achieved. The founder
of the chancel of Hawton, near Newark, died in 1330. The rector who
was the founder of the chancel of Heckington, near Sleaford, was
presented by the crown in 1308-9, and had licence to found a chantry
in the church, probably at the high altar of the rebuilt chancel, in
1328. The chancel of Navenby, near Lincoln, belongs to the same period.
At Sibthorpe, near Newark, a college of chantry priests was founded
by stages during the first half of the fourteenth century, and the
present chancel seems to have been built about 1330: the founder, as
already noted, rebuilt the aisles of his church at Beckingham, a few
miles away, before 1347. The architectural likeness between his work
at Beckingham and the chancel of Boothby Pagnell, near Grantham, built
about 1350, cannot be mistaken. The whole church of Fledborough, north
of Newark, was rebuilt, probably about 1343, when a chantry was founded
in the lady chapel.

[Illustration: Fig. 11. Patrington, Yorkshire: north side of chancel
and vestry.]

Other Nottinghamshire chancels, the probable date of which is 1330-40,
are Arnold (much rebuilt), Car Colston, and Woodborough. A certain
number of chancels in Leicestershire, such as that of East Langton,
approximate to the type, without actually reproducing it; but at
Cotterstock, in Northamptonshire, where John Giffard, canon of York,
founded a college of chantry priests in 1337, its familiar features
reappear. It reached the diocese of Lichfield--or, at any rate,
Derbyshire--rather later than the period of its general diffusion in
the dioceses of York and Lincoln. The chancel of Sandiacre belongs to
the decade between 1330 and 1340: Dronfield, which, in proportions
and parapet and pinnacle-work, is closely akin to Sandiacre, is later
than 1340; Norbury and the handsome chancel of Tideswell are later
still, probably 1350-60. The chantry college of Chaddesden, founded in
1355, adds another church, with a smaller and less ambitious chancel,
to the group. In the north-western part of Lichfield diocese, the
fine vaulted chancel of the collegiate church of Nantwich (1327-33)
is probably independent of the general type. There can be no mistake,
however, about Halsall in south Lancashire. Here the date, although the
later window tracery seems to contradict it, appears to be at latest
1340-50; and the likeness of the internal arrangements to those of the
north Yorkshire churches is quite remarkable. In a few instances, the
type persisted till much later. The chancel at Claypole, near Newark,
was rebuilt about 1400: the fourteenth century nave has a noticeable
affinity, in the sculpture of its capitals, to the nave of Patrington.
Between 1380 and 1400, the chancel of Burneston, in north Yorkshire,
shews distinct traces of the influence of Patrick Brompton and the
other neighbouring buildings already mentioned. Burneston, Patrick
Brompton, and Croft, were all connected with St Mary's abbey at York.
The convent, as rector of Burneston, may have been responsible for the
chancel, when the whole church was rebuilt. But it must be repeated
that the spread of architecture in parish churches is due to local
piety rather than to the desire of religious houses to found churches
in places from which they derived their income. The founder of the
chancel of Heckington was not the impropriating abbey of Bardney,
but a well-to-do king's clerk, who was presented to the vicarage by
Edward II during a voidance of the abbey. Further, the spread of this
particular type of chancel cannot be referred to St Mary's abbey or
any other monastery, but to the growth of a school of lay masoncraft
which learned its earliest lessons among the new buildings of St Mary's
abbey and York minster. As we should expect in a period which was so
fruitful in good work, isolated types of almost equal beauty, the
result of original local skill, constantly make their appearance. Such
are the chancels of North Luffenham in Rutland, or of Hodgeston in
Pembrokeshire--the latter, no doubt, one of the fruits of that movement
in the diocese of St David's, to which bishop Henry Gower (1328-47)
gave a powerful impulse.

§ 42. The aisleless chancel survived as a favourite feature of the
plan all through the middle ages. The aisled nave, with the deep
aisleless chancel beyond, is beautiful in plan and elevation alike;
and hardly any of the great Norfolk churches is so satisfactory in
effect as the fourteenth century church at Tunstead, or the great
fifteenth century church of Walpole St Peter, where the rebuilding of
the chancel followed that of the nave. The wealthy lay folk of East
Anglia naturally took charge of the repair of the nave as their own
part of the church. The rectors, monastic or otherwise, were less
active about the chancel. The result is that the uniform magnificence
of Walpole St Peter is by no means found everywhere. The small vaulted
thirteenth century chancel at Blakeney in north-east Norfolk, is quite
out of proportion to the large fifteenth century nave and west tower.
The magnificent church of Sall, near Aylsham, was entirely rebuilt in
the fifteenth century; but the proportions of the chancel are very
modest compared with the gigantic nave. Lavenham in Suffolk has one of
the most ornate naves of the later part of the fifteenth century, and
a tower of great height. The fourteenth century chancel, however, was
kept, and, although chapels were added to it on the north and south,
the eastern bay is insignificant in proportion and rough in masonry
when contrasted with the nave. A similar disparity, not of style but
of design, exists between the nave and tower of Stoke-by-Nayland and
the less carefully rebuilt chancel. The rebuilding of a chancel may
occasionally indicate that monastic impropriators neglected their
duties, until they were compelled to repair. The hastily rebuilt
chancel at Harringworth in Northamptonshire, where Elstow abbey was
rector, is in striking contrast to the earlier nave, and may perhaps be
explained in this way. Croyland abbey had to attend to its duties at
Wellingborough in 1383, and the present aisled chancel is the result.
At Walpole St Peter the church was evidently lengthened eastwards. The
parishioners were probably allowed to pull down the old chancel when
they built their new nave, and to encroach on its site: they naturally
would contribute towards the new chancel, and this may account for the
unusual splendour of the whole design.

[Illustration: Fig. 12. Walpole St Peter: from N.E.]

§ 43. Medieval sacristies attached to chancels, and especially to
aisleless chancels, are common, and are in most cases on the north
side, with a door in the north wall close to the altar. Good examples
of an ordinary kind are at Islip and Aldwinkle St Peter in Northants.
There is a fourteenth century sacristy at Willingham, near Cambridge,
with a vaulted ceiling. The vaulted vestry at Burford is of the
fifteenth century. Sometimes the sacristy contained an altar, as at
Claypole and Westborough, between Newark and Grantham; and it is
probable that the sacristies of several of the beautiful chancels
already alluded to, as at Hawton, had their altars, which might be
used occasionally for mass, but would in any case be useful for
laying out and folding up vestments before and after service. The
sacristy at Heckington is of two stories, the lower probably intended
to be a bone-hole. At Halsall there is a handsome doorway, west of
the founder's tomb, through which a chantry chapel is entered: this
may have been a sacristy in the first instance. Large sacristies of
two, and even three stories are found. The upper room or solar, as at
Raunds in Northants, Wath, near Ripon, and other places, was sometimes
provided with a window opening into the chancel, and may have served,
like the solar of the south porch at Grantham, as the treasury of the
church and a room for the deacon or church watcher. But that these
upper rooms may have been provided as extra chantry chapels is also
probable. The very interesting vestry building between Peterhouse
and its appropriated church of Little St Mary's at Cambridge seems
to have contained the chantry chapel of John Warkworth, master of
Peterhouse, on its upper floor: there is also a piscina in the small
lower sacristy, which stands above a bone-hole. The originally very
similar building between St Benet's church and Corpus appears to have
had chantry chapels on both floors. Perhaps the best example of a
two-storied sacristy is the semi-octagonal building, vaulted on both
floors, at the east end of the north chancel aisle at Long Sutton,
Lincolnshire. This is an exceptional situation; but there was no fixed
place for the sacristy. Often, as at Darlington or as the vaulted
vestry at Rushton, Northants, it is on the south side of the chancel.
In certain places, as at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and Lavenham
in Suffolk, it projects from the east wall of the church, below the
east window, and is entered by a doorway at one or both sides of the
altar. Sometimes, again, as at Sawley and Tideswell in Derbyshire,
the altar was brought forward from the east wall, and provided with
a stone screen wall or reredos, the space between which and the east
wall became the sacristy. A similar screening off of the east end of an
aisle is found, for example, at Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northants:
in these cases, it has been effected without interfering, as at
Tansor, with the proper spacing of the aisle.

§ 44. Three features which are specially noticeable in the planning
of the aisleless chancel may be mentioned here. The first is the very
usual provision of squints, or oblique piercings, through the backs of
the responds of the chancel arch. One object of these was to enable
the priest, celebrating at the aisle altar, to see what was going on
at the high altar, if his mass happened to coincide with or overlap
another service. They would also be of use to the ringer of the sanctus
bell, when the bell-cote was above the chancel arch, and the rope hung
down at the side, out of sight of the altar. The second point is the
occurrence of a separate door, for the use of the priest, in the south
wall of the chancel: this was provided in a very large number of cases,
and, though usually small, was often treated with some architectural
dignity. At Trunch in Norfolk it is covered by a small porch. The third
point, which has been the cause of much controversy, is the presence of
a window, usually in the south wall of the chancel, and near its west
end, the level of which is generally just above the back of the chancel
stalls. This is known as a 'low side' window. These windows are not
confined to chancels, nor to one side of the chancel only: sometimes,
as at Acaster Malbis, near York, and Burton Lazars in Leicestershire,
they are on both sides of the chancel; here and there, as at Gretton,
Northants, on the north side only. Their design also varies. Not
infrequently separate windows, they are formed quite as often by
lowering the sill of a single-light or two-light window, and cutting
off the lower from the upper part by a transom or cross mullion. Where
this arrangement was adopted, the upper part of the window was glazed,
but the lower portion seems generally to have been closed by shutters.
Many fanciful explanations, which have little foundation in common
sense, have been given for the use of these windows. Most popular has
been the idea that they were used by lepers, who could not take part in
the common services of the church, but could assist at mass and even be
communicated through these windows. This fancy disregards the sanitary
precautions of the middle ages, which were excellent and plentiful.
We may well believe that the people of Burton Lazars would have been
horrified, if they had seen, one Sunday morning at mass, their two
low side windows darkened by sufferers from the dreadful disease, for
whom a hospital with its chapel was carefully provided in their own
village. A very widely accepted theory is that low side windows were
used in connexion with the consecration of the elements at mass: a
small hand-bell may have been rung at the window, so as to be heard
outside the church, especially where the village lay on the south side.
Churches are comparatively few in which, as at March or Walpole St
Peter, a special cot was provided for a sanctus bell above the chancel
arch. At Hawstead in Suffolk a sanctus bell remains in position on the
inner side of the chancel screen. In the aisleless church of Preen in
Shropshire, where the chancel, belonging to a small cell of monks, a
colony from Wenlock, was divided by a screen from the parochial nave,
there is a low side window in the north wall, just west of the place
where the screen originally stood with an altar against it. The window
has a lowered sill, with a stone seat on either side; and its position
suggests that it may have been used for the above purpose. A seat at
the window, as at Morpeth, would have been useful for the server who
rang the bell; but some think that it may have been used by the priest
in hearing confessions. The common explanation of any unfamiliar object
in a church is that it had to do with confession; and one therefore
hesitates to adopt a solution of the difficulty which is so open to
suspicion. But there are certainly windows which are recessed too
deeply to allow of the sanctus bell being audible through them, and
no existing example affords any real convenience for confessions. It
is difficult, moreover, to explain, on the sanctus bell or confession
hypotheses, why, at Othery in Somerset, there should be not merely a
low side window in the south chancel wall, but a corresponding opening
through the south-east buttress of the central tower, evidently planned
in relation to the window. Also why, in some examples, is there a
hook, as though for a hanging lamp, in the soffit of the window-head?
Cases of this kind have been explained, with much learning, by the
possible use of the 'low side' window as a place for a lamp, which was
hung there to frighten evil spirits from the churchyard, and could be
trimmed from the outside by merely opening the shutters. To those who
know anything of medieval thought, this is not unlikely. No explanation
yet advanced is wholly satisfactory. The difference of opinion leads
to the conclusion that the use of the low side window was not one
and invariable, and that it may have been intended for more than