ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY The 14th and early 15th centuries were a time of great activity in church-building in London, and the movement seems to have had some con- nexion with the fraternities. For example, St. Giles was enlarged about 1285 by the addition of a chapel of Our Lady because the church was insufficient for the people of the parish, and the fraternity of St. Giles seems to have been formed to provide services in and to beautify this chapel ; *'^ and the north aisle of St. Michael Queenhithe was called ' le Gildc.'" More than fifty parish churches are known to have been rebuilt, enlarged, or specially repaired between 1300 and 1448 ; usually the work took the form of a new aisle, chapel, or belfry, very few churches being entirely rebuilt.^- ' New work' at St. Paul's was consecrated in 1327, and later in the century the churches of St. Thomas of Aeon, the Grey, White, and Austin Friars, and St. Katharine's Hospital, were all rebuilt. °-^ Courtenay succeeded the murdered Archbishop Sudbury in the autumn of I 381.*' Since 1378 Wycliffis had begun to attack the doctrine of tran- substantiation, and a council of theologians which met at the Black Friars in May 1382, having condemned some of his opinions as heretical and censured others," summoned before it some divines suspected of holding or favouring those opinions, among them a well-known preacher named John Aston. While he was being examined a crowd of Londoners, not reverencing even the arch- bishop, broke open the doors of the room and hindered the proceedings ; but he was condemned, and forthwith caused to be distributed in the streets a statement of his belief, to which the clergy circulated a reply. The appeal on both sides to public opinion shows that the Londoners were already inter- ested in the doctrinal controversy, but it is evident that Aston claimed their support on the ground that he had been wrongfully condemned, and that they were not expected to sympathize with one who was really a heretic.*^ Their intervention on his behalf may, however, have been connected in some way with the civic revolution of i 381," and some change in their general attitude towards the ecclesiastical authorities mav be indicated by an ordinance of February 1382 limiting the amount of offerings made at special masses and at baptisms and marriages," and by an attempt made that year to improve the morals of the City. Unchaste priests were to be taken to the prison called the ' Tun ' with minstrels playing, that their disgrace might be made public, and to be banished from the City for ever if the offence were twice repeated. The Londoners thus usurped some functions of the ecclesiastical courts, saying that they detested not only the negligence of the clergy but also their avarice, shown in allowing the guilty who bribed them to go unpunished. °^ "^ Guildhall MS. 142, fol. 226. '"■ Sharpe, Cal. of IVilh, ii, 553. Information from Cal. Pat. ; Cal. of Papal Letters and Pet. ; Corporation and Parochial Records ; Epis. Reg. Canterbury and London ; Cal. of With. In three cases the authority is Stow's Survey. "' See ' Religious Houses ' and Cal. of Wills. " Diet. Nat. Biog. " Chron. Angl. 342 ; Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 57; Fasc. Z/z. 272, 283-8 ; Wilkins, Cone, iii, 158. For a procession and sermons in London that week see Knighton, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 163. " Fasc. Z/z. 289, 290, 329-33 ; Chron. Angl. 350 ; Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 65. Cf. Chron. Adae de XJsk (ed. Thompson), 4. ^ See Sharpe, Cal. Letter Bk. H, Introd. p. xxvii et seq. " Riley, Mem. of Lond. 463. " Riley, op. cit. 458 (cf the cases of sorcery in the same year ; ibid. 462,472,475); Liber Albus (Rolls Ser.), 457-60 (cf Sharpe, Cal. Letter Bk. H, 189) ; Citron. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 349-50 ; Walsingham, op. cit. ii, 65. The St. Albans chronicler represents this as a deliberate attack, encouraged by WyclifFe, on the episcopal jurisdiction, and says that Braybrook was too much afraid of the London mob to resent it. But similar proceedings took place after the fall of John of Northampton (Riley, op. cit. 484-6 [immorality], 5 1 8 [sorcery]), and the ordinances were still in force in 1419. See Sharpe, Cal. Letter Bk. H, Introd. p. xxxi. For another case of sorcery in London see Cal. Pat. 1385-9, p. 63. 215
