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Art and Identity in the Parish Communities of Late Medieval Kent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Historians have long been aware that patronage is a crucial factor in interpreting the social meaning of art. The late Middle Ages knew a variety of patrons, each employing art to communicate different sorts of concern: royal and aristocratic courts emphasized political messages, urban communes created governmental myths, cathedrals and monasteries gave expression to spiritual ideas—and all used art to convey notions of social identity. Recent investigations into the process of choosing and procuring works of art in these contexts have not only added perspective to formal art criticism, they have also deepened our understanding of the groups interested in the creation of art. One area in which questions of patronage could perhaps be better illuminated is the community of the parish. The parish served as the primary religious community for the majority of men and women for most of the Middle Ages. It was complex in composition, involving both laity and clergy, encompassing other religious associations, such as gilds, and including the devout and the indifferent, the orthodox and the dissenters.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992
References
1 I would like to thank Andrew Butcher and Dr Maryanne Kowaleski for their help and en couragement.
2 See Charles Cox, J., English Church Fittings, Furniture and Accessories (London, 1923); Charles Cox, J., Churchwardens’Accounts (London, 1919)Google Scholar; and the handbook published by the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, Inside Churches (London. 1989). For a discus sion of the medieval definition of art, see Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, tr. Hugh Bredin (New Haven and London, 1986); originally published as Sviluppo dell’estetica medievale, ed. Carlo Marzorati, in Momenti e problemi di storia dell’estetica, 1 (Milan, 1959).
3 Three of these accounts are in manuscript: Folkestone (1487–1530), in Canterbury Cathedral Library, U3/88/4/1; Wye (1515-30), in Wye Agricultural College, no reference number;and St Mary’s, Sandwich (1444–1530, with gaps), CCL, U3/11/5/1. All three accounts continue well beyond 1530, which is the terminal date of this study. The fourth account has been printed: Francis R. Mercer, ed., ‘Churchwardens accounts at Bethersden, 1515-1573’, The Kent Archaeological Society, Records Branch, 5 (1928), pp. 1-165. There are other extant church wardens’ accounts for Kent; these four have been chosen partly for their quality and partly for the diversity of their communities: Bethersden was a rural village, Wye a market town, Fol kestone a small urban seaside community, and Sandwich a Cinque Port.
4 In the Archdeaconry Court of Canterbury and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury there are 674 wills proved for the inhabitants of Bethersden, Wye, Folkestone, and Sandwich from 1459 to 1530. Thirteen of the wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury were made by testators who lived elsewhere at the time their wills were written, but who made substantial donations to one of these four communities. Three of these communities had only one parish, but the town of Sandwich included the parishes of St Mary, St Peter, and St Clement, and the hospital of St Bartholomew. Among the lists and inventories, the two most important are the bede roll of St Mary’s, Sandwich, CCL, U3/173/6/5; and the Inventories conducted during the reign of Edward VI, printed in M. E. C. Walcott, R. P. Coates, and Scott, W. A., eds, ‘Inventories of parish church goods in Kent, A.D. 1552’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 8 (1872), pp. 74–163 Google Scholar; 9 (1874), pp. 266-84; 10(1876), pp. 282-97; and 11 (1877), pp. 409-16.
5 It cannot be assumed that these findings would be equally applicable to all places. More local studies are necessary before any general conclusions may be reached. ‘
6 These sources show only one description of a stained-glass window: a design of the head of St Laurence. CCL, U3/11/5/1, 1517.
7 Sometimes the record of repair or removal allows a distinction to be made: in Folkestone an image of St George, which acquired a cap and had a sword mended, was probably in wood, CCL, U3/88/4/1, 1508-9 and 1525-6; while in Bethersden a St Christopher which was ‘blot ted out’ was certainly rendered in paint, Mercer, ‘Bethersden’, p. 85.
8 It should be remembered that die written sources probably do not offer a complete account of all goods given to the church: while living parishioners may have made donations, gifts in kind may have gone unrecorded in the churchwardens’ accounts. The only reference to such a gift in these accounts was the donation of a resurrection cloth to Folkestone, mentioned only because the wardens offered a small cash reward to the servant who delivered it. This donation is a special case since the donor, Lady Clinton, was a member of the family who held the Honour of Folkestone, CCL, U3/88/4/1, 1530-1. For a discussion of the possibility of unre corded gifts, see Clive Burgess, ‘“By Quick and by Dead”: wills and pious provision in late medieval Bristol’, EHR, 142 (1987), pp. 873-58.
9 Banners were usually painted, and it is impossible to know their significance unless the image is known.
10 Thomas Parys, PRC 17/7/51 (1495).
11 This identification was strengthened in two cases when the testators requested burial before the altar to which they had bequeathed a cloth; Harry Grandame, PRC 17/12/512(1515); and Sir Thomas Clerke, PRC 17/4/123 (1487).
12 The inventories of 1552 furnish many examples of the materials of crosses, staffs, and, in fact, all of the objects under consideration here. See Walcott, Coates, and Scott, inventories’.
13 CCL U3/11/5/1,1496, the John of the Cross was mended; CCL U3/11/5/1,1502, the St John of the Best Cross was new gilded and burnished.
14 Roger Bromley, PRC 17/2/257(1473).
15 In addition to the donations mentioned in the text, there was one bequest for painting over the high altar, one for the covering of a font, and three for gravestones, making a total of eighty-two. Gravestones are an interesting form of art, but would perhaps be better con sidered in the context of funeral rites.
16 CCL U3/11/5/1, undated account c.1497-1500.
17 The inventories of 1552 show only a few large parishes possessing a substantial collection of plate, Walcott, Coates, and Scott, ‘Inventories’.
18 St Mary’s bede roll: CCL, U3/173/6/5; the Fordwich inventory: CCL, U4, bundle 4; and an inventory in the parish of St Andrew’s, Canterbury: Charles Cotton, ed., ‘Churchwardens’ accounts of the parish of St. Andrew, Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 32 (1917), pp. 204-11.
19 William Kenett, PRC 17/3/479(1482).
20 Certainly the handbook published by the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, Inside Churches (London, 19K9), assumes that chalices were engraved, as all of its examples of chalices are engraved.
21 Joan Kenett, PRC 17/3/120 (1477); and William Kenet [sic], PRC 17/3/479 (1483).
22 Only four donations in that list were recorded as having been given by the donor ‘be hys lyf days’: U3/173/6/5.
23 1 have found no will for Master William Keynell, so it is unclear how much time elapsed between the granting of the bequest and the receipt of the money by the churchwardens. St Mary’s has no surviving accounts between 1464 and 1491, CCI, U3/11/5/1. Clergy form a very small part of the parochial community as viewed from the perspective of this documentation: only 8 of the 674 wills were for members of the clergy, and only two of these were art donors. The influence of the clergy as an independent force was probably quite weak in Kent during this time. See Zeli, M. L., ‘The personnel of the clergy in Kent in the Reformation period’, £HR, 139(1974), pp. 513–53 Google Scholar.
24 For examples see the bequests of Richard Dyar and John Stock’s wife, unpaid in the accounts of St Mary’s, Sandwich, from 1461 until the accounts break off in 1464; and the unpaid bequest of Simon Brerer’s wife in the same accounts, 1446: CO. U3/11/5/1. These church wardens’ accounts show a great many unpaid bequests for purposes other than art.
25 These were, in order mentioned: Alice Jancock, PRC 17/7/173 (1400);John Webbes, PCC 11/18/6 (1514); Elizabeth Iden. PRC 17/7/181(1499); Agnes Warref. PRC 17/11/210(1511); Laurence Blossem, PRC 17/3/244 (1479); Enswith Hall, PRC 17/14/318 (1517); William Brok. PRC 17/9/311 (1506); and Thomas Parys, PRC 17/7/51 (1495).
26 The two instances in the churchwardens’ accounts are: CCL, U3/11/5/1, undated account c.1497-1500, and 1508-11. There were other instances of parochial fund-raising, not related to works of art. Among the wills, seven relate to Bethersden’s cross: German Glover, PRC 17/9/146 (1504); John Glover, PRC 17/9/89 (1504); Laurence Bresynden, PRC 17/8/171 (1500); John Brodestrete, PRC 17/8/132 (1501);John Bresynden, PRC 17/8/22 (1500); Christopher Wederden, PRC 17/9/58 (1504); and Thomas Wersele, PRC 17/8/122 (1501). Two wills relate to Bethersden’s rood-loft: Laurence Blossom, PRC 17/3/244 (1479); and James Piers, PRC 17/4/60 (1484). Two wills relate to the gilding of St Bartholomew: Katherine Best, PRC 17/16/38 (1523) and Robert Marten, PRC 17/16/1 (1523). There are two bequests for the covering of an altar at Folkestone, but neither appears in the churchwardens’ accounts, nor is there a mention of a covering bought about that time. The two testators were Robert Davy, PRC 17/12/331 (1514) and John Pargate, PRC 17/9/292(1508).
27 See n. 26 above. The testators were John Bresynden, Christopher Wederden, Laurence Blossom, and Thomas Wersele.
28 The studies are too numerous to list here, but see especially P. W. Fleming, ‘Charity, faith, and the gentry of Kent, [422-1529’, in A. J. Pollard, cd., Property and Politics in Later Medieval English History (London, 1984), and Clive Burgess, ‘“A fond thing vainly invented”: an essay on Purgatory and pious motive in late medieval England’, in Susan Wright, ed-. Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350-1750(London, 1988), pp. 56-84.
29 Of course, there were other acts of both formal and informal religion in which personal identity could be created or transformed, particularly funeral rites.
30 William Brok, PRC 17/9/311 (1506).
31 CCL, U4, bundle 4.
32 The 82 bequests under discussion were bequeathed by 69 testators. The figures here were obtained by comparing this group of 69 with the larger group of which it forms a subset, namely the 674 wills related to the 4 communities under consideration. The forgotten tithes mentioned in wills were taken as a rough index of wealth. 30 of the 69, or 43% of the art donors paid between 15. and 55. as forgotten tithes in their wills; I have taken this to be the middling range. Among the art donors, 4% paid berween 51. and 10s. of forgotten tithes as compared with 3% of the whole group; while 7% of the art donors paid 10s. or more of forgotten tithes as compared with only 3% of the whole group.
33 These were John Payntour, PCC 11/6/12 (1473); James Goldwell, PCC 11/11/35 (1498); William Hopkyns, PCC 11/19/10 (1518); William Braybrok, PCC 11/6/7 (1472); John Pylbarough, PCC 11/20/6 (1520); John Heron, PCC 11/18/15 (1515); Christopher Hillis, PCC 11/23/7 (1528). Perhaps they had enough disposable wealth to have made such donations during their life. See the examples of Lady Clinton, n. 8 above.
34 Of the art donors, 45% mentioned no children in their wills, as compared with 33% of the larger group. For this category only male, non-clerical testators were considered.
35 Of the 69 art donors, 23 were women, that is, 3 3%, while only 15% of the larger group were women.
36 Among the art donors, 35% requested burial services, compared with 25% of the larger group; 30% requested month minds, compared with 22% of the larger group; and 50% requested Masses, compared with 30% of the larger group.