publicly excommunicated, and absolved after penance. One of his friends was dismissed with a warning.[1]
What effect this course of procedure might have had if steadily continued for some years it is impossible to say ; for the king's death early in 1547 let loose upon the country reformers of a very different type. For the first important measure of the new reign, viz., the suppression of the chantries, Henry VIII. was however entirely responsible. It was not without good reason that fears had been expressed at the time of the dissolution of monasteries that the king would not stop there ; that his heavy hand would fall next upon the parish churches.[2] The suppression of the chantries, colleges, gilds and hospitals was ostensibly a part of the effort to correct popular notions as to the state of the faithful departed, and to check superstitious practices connected with these ideas ; but it had really quite another effect. This may best be seen by a simple summary of the results of the Act in one county. In Buckinghamshire it disendowed and destroyed only three chapels which had clearly no other use except to perpetuate chantries in the later and narrower sense of the word : at Eythrope, Ditton and Buckingham. [3] But with these it swept away four others [4] which were strictly parochial, and served for the devotion of good-sized hamlets, where even the able-bodied inhabitants could seldom in winter get to the parish church ; and it also deprived eleven [5] churches of an assistant priest whose services had cost the incumbent nothing, as well as of the plate and ornaments assigned to the use of the particular altar where the chantry was endowed ; while almost every parish in the county lost some small endowment for lamps and obits, bequeathed by those who could not afford to found a perpetual chantry. The commissioners who furnished materials for the first certificate
- ↑ James Barkeley, examined at the same time, confessed that on that Ember Day (Wednesday after Pentecost) he was at Harmesworth at the court there kept : that he first dined there at the church houses then went home and began a dinner of ' butterde peases,' and in the midst of it was invited to go and partake of Allen's flounders, which he did. The fact that he was only warned, after this bold breach of custom, shows the difference of treatment in a case where there was no suspicion of heresy.
- ↑ See L. and P. Henry VIII. xiii. (2) 986 (Confession of John Colyns), and records of the Lincolnshire rising.
- ↑ The chapel at Eythrope, founded by the will of Sir Roger Dynham, was said by the Commissioners to be ' of no great necessity except for the household of Sir Robert Dormer.' For the subsequent history of this chapel, see Records of Bucks, vii. 258-261. The chantry at Ditton founded by Sir John Colyns was ' abused,' by the non-residence of the incumbent ; the Matthew Stratton Chantry in the chapel of St. John Baptist, Buckingham, had probably not been served since the dissolution of the Hospital of St. Thomas Aeon, London, to which it belonged (Chantry Cert. 4, Nos. 2, 5, 9).
- ↑ At Colnbrook, where a priest said divine service every Sunday and festival for the hamlet, and performed other ministrations in time of need (Ibid. No. l) ; Dagnall, which did ' great ease to the most part of the said parish (Edlesborough) because many dwell four miles from the church, and do resort to the chapel of Dagnall to hear their divine service ' (Ibid. No. 6) ; Aston in Ivinghoe, where there was ' daily resort of many people who could not come to their parish church in winter,' and so was ' right necessary ' ; Fenny Stratford, where the gild maintained two priests, who ministered to a village of 220 people (Ibid. No. 13).
- ↑ Stoke Poges, Dorney, High Wycombe, Edlesborough, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckingham, Thornton, Newport Pagnel, Hanslope, Aylesbury, Olney. The chantries at High Wycombe and Olney were attached to chapels in the churchyard, but it is expressly stated that the chantry priests helped the vicar : and one of the chaplains at High Wycombe said a mass at 10 o'clock ' for the easement of people of the town and labourers by the way.' Ibid. Nos. 4, 15.
306
