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An Appropriate Anomaly: Topcliffe Parish and the Fabric Fund of York Minster in the Later Middle Ages*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
Money provides the sinews of religion no less than of war. Since their emergence, parishes have been and remain fundamental to many ecclesiastical financial regimes. In pre-Reformation England, their revenues not only supported the incumbent, but might be diverted to many other purposes. The process of appropriation transformed a monastery, collegiate church, or other institution or office into the perpetual rector, entitled to receive the revenues in full. The ordination of a vicarage would then normally divide the income, the rector usually taking the lion’s share of the spoils, while the vicar received a small portion. Parishioners then found their parochial payments being used not in the locality, but perhaps hundreds - occasionally thousands - of miles away, for purposes over which they had no influence. At the same time, the perception of the parish as milch cow might lead the appropriators to ignore the cure of souls, whilst exploiting the finances to the full.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 12: Life and Thought in the Northern Church , 1999 , pp. 105 - 121
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to the British Academy for financial support for the research for this paper, and to Mrs Louise Hampson, archivist at York Minster, for access to material. Unless otherwise indicated, all manuscripts cited are located in the York Minster Archives.
References
1 Hartridge, R. A. R., A History of Vicarages in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1930)Google Scholar; Thompson, A. H., The English Clergy and their Organisation in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947), pp. 109–22Google Scholar; Rodes, R. E. Jr, Ecclesiastical Administration in Medieval England: the Anglo-Saxons to the Reformation (Notre Dame, IA, and London, 1977), pp. 163–6.Google Scholar
2 For the parish, , see VCH, Yorkshire: North Riding, 2 (London, 1923), pp. 70–80.Google Scholar
3 The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, with an Appendix of Illustrative Documents, ed. J. Raine, SS, 35 (1859). pp. 142-3.
4 For the ordination of the vicarage, H1/2, fol. 56r, its value set at 20 marks and more. As the vicarial tithes included wool, lambs, and hay, which later appear among the dean and chapter receipts, the ordination must have been renegotiated later. In 1535 the vicarage was valued at £20 6s. 8d.: Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, 6 vols (London, 1810-34), 5, p. 101.
5 Class E3/. Raine’s edition (Fabric Rolls, pp. 1-120) is incomplete, with one exception (pp. 28-33) omitting the revenues, and thus not reproducing the Topcliffe material.
6 For such possibilities, Swanson, R. N., ‘Economic change and spiritual profits: receipts from the peculiar jurisdiction of the Peak District in the fourteenth century’, in Rogers, N., ed., Harlaxton Medieval Studies, III: England in the Fourteenth Century, Proceedings of the 1991 Colloquium (Stamford, 1993), pp. 177–85.Google Scholar
7 There are also problems caused by accounting practice, with the nominal accounting year changing twice in the period under review. In fact, however, little was altered: despite the dates in the headings to the accounts, notes on the statements (e.g., E3/23, 45) show that for most practical purposes the accounts run from the Michaelmas to Michaelmas. The catalogue of the York Minster Archives suggests dates for accounts which now lack a heading, but I am not always convinced of their reliability. In this paper I place a question mark before the date in such cases.
8 The Topcliffe material is not among the medieval parish accounts discussed in Heath, P., Medieval Clerical Accounts, St Anthony’s Hall Publications, 26 (York, 1964)Google Scholar. It is clear that considerably more such material survives than Heath was aware of. This essay adds to my other studies of similar records: Swanson, R. N., ‘Standards of livings: parochial revenues in pre-Reformation England’, in Harper-Bill, C., ed., Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 151–96Google Scholar; ‘Economic change and spiritual profits’, pp. 171-95; ‘Urban rectories and urban fortunes in late medieval England: the evidence from King’s Lynn’, in T. R. Slater and G. Rosser, eds, The Church in the Medieval Town (Aldcrshot and Brookfield, Vt, 1998), pp. 100-30.
9 Reg. Wa., fols 150r-v.
10 E.g., BI, CP.E.178. For the division between archdeaconries, and the impact of the creation of the diocese of Chester, M2/2C, fol. 36v; for the eighteenth century, The Archdeaconry of Richmond in the Eighteenth Century: Bishop Gastrell’s ‘Notitia’; the Yorkshire Parishes, 1714-1725, ed. L. A. S. Butler, YASRS, 149 (1990, for 1986), pp. 52, 147.
11 E.g., M2(1)c, fols 13v-14v, 15r, 16r, 20r [sede vacante cases begun under the vacancy administration organized by the dean and chapter, but which reverted to archicpiscopal jurisdiction when Archbishop Neville took over]; H1/3, fols 128v-129r, BI, Cons.AB1, fols 172r, 173v, 176v.
12 H/12, fol. 53r (protest). For the chantry ordination, Raine, Fabric Rolls, p. 145. On jurisdiction, M2/2C, fol. 36v. (The Valor ealesiasticus, 5, p. 101, gives the chantry income as £10, but this must be a mistake.)
13 M2/4g, fol. 30r.
14 E3/47.
15 Postles, D., ‘Problems in the administration of small manors: three Oxfordshire glebedemesnes, 1278-1345’, Midland History, 4 (1978), pp. 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, offers roughly analogous instances, but without tenements and (he says) ‘non-manorial’ (p. 1). The prebendal manor at Alrewas, Staffordshire, based on the church glebe, has left a series of court rolls: Stafford, Staffordshire Record Office, D783/5/1-.
16 E3/6-8, 10-11.
17 E3/5-8.
18 E3/12, 15-16.
19 E3/26.
20 E3/9-10.
21 H1/2, fol. 38v.
22 H1/2, fol. 38v.
23 H1/2, fol. 38v. While the entry does not refer explicitly to tithes, the surname is the dialect word for ‘tithe’.
24 H1/2, fol. 40r.
25 H1/2, fols 52v-53r.
26 M2/4f, fol. 36v.
27 It is unclear whether these early references relate only to grain and hay tithes, or cover the receipts for wool and lambs as well (which seems unlikely). Accordingly, these figures cannot be used to hazard even a guess at the impact of the plague on tithe receipts in the long run.
28 H1/2, fol. 118r.
29 E3/12, 17-19.
30 The Fountains Abbey Lease Book, ed. D.J. A. Michelmore, YASRS, 140 (1981, for 1979-80), no. 123.
31 E3/6, 7.
32 The relevant accounts are E3/8-12; that for 1422-3 is E3/11.
33 E3/12.
34 E3/13.
35 E3/13.
36 E3/13.
37 E3/14.
38 E3/15. Several leases from the 1540s are in Reg. Wa, fols 150r-v, 150v, 160v, 163v, 167r-v, 176r-178r.
39 E3/28-47.
40 E3/15.
41 E3/23.
42 Bean, J. M. W., The Estates of the Percy Family, 1416-1537 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 38–40.Google Scholar
43 Ibid, pp. 47-8.
44 E3/6-12, 15-17.
45 E3/28.
46 E3/31-2, 34.
47 E3/45-7.
48 For changes in grain prices, see the index in Bowden, P., ‘Statistical appendix’, in Thirsk, J., ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV: 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 816–18.Google Scholar
49 M2(1)c, fols 13v-14v.
50 E3/10, 11.
51 Swanson, ‘Economic change and spiritual profits’, p. 188.
52 E3/27-44.
53 E3/31, 34-5.
54 E3/28.
55 Swanson, ‘Economic change and spiritual profits’, pp. 188-90.
56 E3/15.
57 E3/16.
58 E3/23.
59 E3/24.
60 E3/26.
61 E3/27.
62 E3/28.
63 E3/29.
64 E3/32.
65 E3/38.
66 E3/39-41.
67 E3/43.
68 E3/45.
69 E3/46 records payment to a ‘brevitor’ of lambs at Topcliffe.
70 The figures are unlikely to be increased substantially by making allowance for ‘decimis fractis’.
71 E3/29, 30.
72 E3/15. These prices can be compared with the national indices in Bowden, ‘Statistical appendix’, pp. 839-42 (from 1450), and Farmer, D. L., ‘Prices and wages, 1350-1500’, in Miller, E., ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, III: 1348-1500 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 514–16 (to 1500 only).Google Scholar
73 E3/18.
74 E3/22(a).
75 E3/24, 26.
76 E3/28, 29.
77 E3/31.
78 E3/33.
79 E3/35.
80 E3/36.
81 E3/38, see also E3/45.
82 E3/46-7.
83 Outhwaite, R. B., Inflation in Tudor and Early Stuart England, 2nd edn (London and Basingstoke, 1982), esp. index and graph at pp. 12, 14.Google Scholar
84 E.g., E3/21, 22(a), 26.
85 E3/12, 13, 26.
86 E3/33, 35.
87 E3/22(b), 34.
88 Entries appear on almost every account for which this heading is legible, although the sixteenth-century leases transferred some of these costs to the tenants (Reg. Wa. fols 150r-v, 159v, 160v, 163v, 176r-v, 177v-178r).
89 Swanson, ‘Standards of livings’, pp. 176-7, 196.
90 E3/24.
91 E3/29. How the Catton lease fits into the chronology is unclear. The defaulter is not named as a farmer elsewhere. In the accounts for 1479-9 and 1481-2, Catton was let for £6 to Richard Grene of Boroughbridge (E3/28, 29).
92 E3/8.
93 E3/15.
94 E3/23.
95 With the accounts actually running from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, the autumn tithe receipts probably relate to one calendar year, and the harvest costs to the next.
96 E3/2.
97 E3/38, 42-3.
98 E3/46-9.
99 Swanson, R. N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), p. 242.Google Scholar
100 E3/22-34. Investigation of other sources might lead to closer identification, but is beyond the scope of this paper.
101 E3/28.
102 E3/33, 34.
103 E3/25-34.
104 E3/22-5, 31-4.
105 E3/22(b) [Thomas Molton, gent.], 29 [Richard Grene of Boroughbridge].
106 E3/15-23.
107 E3/25-6.
108 E3/31-3.
109 E3/22(b), 23.
110 Reg. Wa., fols 163v, 167r-v.
111 E3/47-50.
112 E3/6-18.
113 E3/28-9.
114 E3/34.
115 E3/46.
116 These ‘perquisites’ had been an important source of income (see, e.g., Raine, Fabric Rolls, p. 30). In 1535-6 the record was incomplete; in 1537-8 they disappeared: E3/43-4.
117 H3/1, fol. 253v.
118 E3/46.