Churchwardens' Accounts.—Methley. BY E. KITSON CLARK. INTRODUCTION. THE Methley parish churchwardens' accounts, of which unfortunately but little survive, are the first records of the kind which the Thoresby Society has undertaken, and it seems natural not only to annotate them as far as possible, but to preface them with a general introduction to the subject. So much have churchwardens suffered from the careless appreciation of their unremunerated work, that most people are content to accept their existence as a matter of course, to remember their failings, and to take note of their philistine actions, and so to forget the value of that lay executive which has carried out such important duties for many centuries. Any analysis, however slight, of the items of such accounts presents to the enquirer at the outset many and complicated problems. He feels warned at once that the task of dealing with the origin, growth, and work of the warden's office is one which should claim the full attention of a devoted historian, and that it is too ambitious for an isolated article in a miscellaneous publication of a local archæological society. At the same time there are to be found in reprints of constitutional documents, etc., allusions to the duties of churchwardens sufficient to provide an intelligible commentary upon the questions which arise in connection with the accounts here printed. Some such passages have been extracted for this purpose, and it is hoped that they may suggest explanations or provide illustrations in connection with this important subject. But in the extracts to be quoted below there appears no solution to the first problem which naturally suggests itself, namely: When and how did the office of churchwarden originate? And when we turn to the History of English Law,' by Pollock & Maitland, we find no more. definite statement than opinions begun with such careful words as, "We are not persuaded," and "We suspect." 1 History of English Law (1895), i, 602-3. 1127. Not so diffident are the dictionary makers. In the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities the reader is referred back to an official' of Fifth the fifth century, who received from the Bishop certain keys and century. the guardianship of certain goods-to the 'seniores' addressed by S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, at the beginning of that century; and to the seniores ecclesiastici of a later time. In another work a reference is made to the Canon of 1127 (Synod of Westminster), in recording which Johnson" makes a suggestion, a suggestion merely, that "other ministers" there mentioned may mean the "reeves of the church, such laymen as, by the bishop's appointment, took care of the secular affairs of the diocese." All, it is explained, were officials who would now be described as churchwardens. They may have been; but, unfortunately, there is such a gap in ecclesiastical records on this subject that it appears profitless to consider even the probabilities. The earlier sacred writers were more concerned with the picturesque details of a saint's life, and the miracles associated with his bones, than with the ordinary business details of church expenses; and when official documents appear, in which we can read to a certain extent the history of the times, the dramatic struggles for power and jurisdiction between church and king, and king and pope, are written therein so large as to obscure the descriptions of the humbler machinery. Nineteenth century. If we, on the other hand, begin at the end of the story, we find that in the nineteenth century churchwardens form an executive council of laymen popularly elected in each parish, with certain duties in connection with the repair of the church and the property of the Seventeenth church. And in the seventeenth century at Methley the state of affairs appear to have been much the same; only then the duties embraced a still wider field, approximating to those so fully described in Lambard's Duties of Constables, . . . . Churchwardens, etc. (see page 255 below); in fact, almost to those of a modern parish or even county council, with ecclesiastical functions added. century. 1606. Is this, we ask, an indication of the history of this office? Did the wardens represent the people, and act as the unit of local selfgovernment, with powers still wider at earlier periods? Should the 1 Perhaps the Θυρωρός. 2 Aug. Ep., 137 (Paris edition, 1679), 3 Laws and Canons of the Church of England (Oxford, 1851), vol. ii, p. 40. 4 Probably misreading Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, Book III, 13, 2, and Book II, 19, 9. The writer there says that the functions were in some respects similar to those of churchwardens. 325. 312. 813. 1066. 1066-87. 1073-85. 1164. 1382. 1414. enquirer incline to answer in the affirmative, he will find that he has arrived at the position taken up by Mr. Toulmin Smith in his book on The Parish (1857). In that thoughtful and most interesting work, the author states his opinion that in the beginning the parish was a lay unit, that the wardens were officials of the people popularly elected to carry out lay work, and he treats with some vehemence the unwarrantable encroachments of ecclesiastical authority. But Dr. Stubbs,' on the other hand, in no uncertain voice states that the parish is the township treated ecclesiastically, and describes it as "a fact that the two systems, the parish and township, have existed for more than a thousand years side by side, identical in area and administered by the same persons, and yet separate in character and machinery." And the deduction from his view is that the wardens are officials in an ecclesiastical sphere. 1 Constitutional History of England, vol. i, p. 247. 2 The position of the laity in the Church forms the subject of a report delivered at the Convocation of Canterbury in 1902 (sold at the National Society's Depository, Sanctuary, Westminster, No. 367, 1902); and it might have been expected that the description of the development of the lay position would have included a notice of the lay officials, such as wardens, &c. This is not the case, however. These officials are only mentioned when the writers turn in the last chapters to record the assumption by the State of functions carried out up to a certain date under ecclesiastical supervision. But in the course of this pamphlet there are sentences which would seem to be worth a reference, and in all of them the evidence tends to make us look for an ecclesiastical system in parish work. Pages 7-17. As long as the Church was small enough, and a corporate selfgovernment was possible, the traditions of the first period were adhered to as in the time when the apostles and elders were gathered in council. This lasted approximately up to the date of the Council of Nicaea (325). Pages 18-31. But when Constantine the Great was converted in 312 A.D., the powers previously enjoyed by Christian laymen were transferred to the Emperor, Christianity became official, and the State interfered with the ecclesiastical executive. As instances of this the authors quote a number of councils in which laymen participated as persons of authority, and present a fairly continuous series in the western Christian countries up to the ninth century (Synod of Arles). Pages 31-38. Further, in the Anglo-Saxon Church the relations of State and Church were peculiarly close, for when Christianity came into England the faith was adopted at the first by the kings and leaders, and the Church element being thus at the outset in a position of power, had a share in all State business. This held until 1066. Pages 39-43. Shortly after his accession in that year, William the Conqueror separated ecclesiastical from secular councils, Church courts from civil courts; and this led to the introduction of Roman canon law and to a system of appeals to Rome. To quote the exact words: "The reign of William the Conqueror, 10661087, and the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085, constitute a marked epoch in the history of the separation of the clergy from the laity." The king, however, retained certain extensive though ill-defined powers. In order, therefore, to mark the boundary lines, the mutual relations of Church and State were reduced to writing under Henry II, in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164). From this time onward the Crown and State exercised authority in varying degrees, until it came about that the civil courts interfered against the Lollards (1382), that the statute of 1414 empowered Justices to enquire after heretics, and that the same statute was that under which From 1349. So there is here a grave divergence of opinion upon a question which must be solved before the history of warders can be rendered complete. Unfortunately, as far as these officials are concerned, "there are no records of a sufficiently early date to prove the existence of an ecclesiastical parish machinery in the time to which Dr. Stubbs alludes, while the earliest records' which are in our hands undoubtedly point to inferences entirely opposed to the arguments of Mr. Toulmin Smith. A far less positive solution than either of these has been arrived at in the History of English Law. There the sub-division of England, through Counties, Hundreds, and Wapentakes, is brought down to the Township or Vill as the smallest unit; and at this point, where it would seem that the earliest indications of popular parish work should appear, it has to be confessed that the authors Fifteenth the executions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took place. And so the and clergy secured assistance in spiritual matters, and a certain extension of freedom; sixteenth but by invoking the civil power against heresy they revived a parliamentary centuries. interference which bore full effect after the Reformation in the Revolution. Pages 44-48. And as in the events which then took place the churchwardens are called upon to play their part in the relations of laity and Church we reach at last a recognition of these officials, about whom we have been seeking information. We therefore have no cause in this place to proceed further, but rather to note that as in all these movements the Church was strong enough to dispute with the king and the State for the supremacy in highest affairs, it is wellnigh certain that the Church worked its subsidiary organizations such as the parish under its own constitution. It may be even stated positively that in that period the Church must have managed its own business without reference to a popular vote. The pages also from which the following sentences are taken seem to refer to a system which was ecclesiastical. (Cf. Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England, p. 264: "Tithes and oblations were brought into the common fund, and administered for the bishop as the unit of the British Church, and afterwards of the Saxon. "The parishes were largely made because the great lords built for their tenants, and for this reason the parish and the manor were often coterminous." Fourth to eleventh century. Tenth and eleventh centuries. 1349. A perusal of an interesting book by Imbart de la Tour, entitled Les Paroisses Rurales du IVe au XIe Siècle (Paris: A. Picard et Fils, 1900), tends to confirm the impression that in these centuries indeed the popular element had some representation in church management. This is the view underlying the whole book, as the passages quoted below would indicate : Page 137. "L'electio (du clerc) se faisait sans doute dans une assemblée composée des villageois et du clergé de la paroisse . . Page 164. Toute la vie civile venait y (sc. à l'église) affluer, car il n'y avait pas d'autre organization rurale un peu complète que celle de la paroisse.' But a change came later. Under the heading, "Les églises privées au Xe et au XIe Siècle." Page 255. "Ce que nous devons retenir, c'est qu'à côté d'une investiture ecclésiastique faite par l'évêque, nous remarquons une investiture séculière faite par le seigneur. Page 299. "Il ne reste plus au prêtre qu'à devenir 'l'homme' du seigneur." And the last sentence of the book destroys our hopes that we may find in France an instance of local church government continuous from early times. Page 351. "C'est par le patronage des églises que la société religieuse a perdu son caractère des premiers siècles et est entrée peu à peu dans la feodalité." 1e.g. St. Michael's, Bath, A.D. 1349-1575, etc. have searched in vain for such an organisation' as might by any stretch be called the counterpart of the modern vestry. All organisation is manorial, is feudal, and though the township has to make payments, to send four good men to Court, and the rest, it can only be suggested that the Executive is not appointed by periodical election, but that the work is done by permanent arrangement, and has become, in fact, a charge upon definite portions of the land. And yet, when the reader has accepted an apparently definite denial that any connection can be traced between the earlier and later systems, to his dismay he finds that in apparent contradiction our authors say that "in general the vill of the thirteenth century has become the civil parish of the nineteenth." If this is not contradictory, what is the process by which the burdens of the manorially managed vill came to be undertaken by the popularly elected vestry? For It is possible that Churchwardens' accounts supply the answer. upon examination they appear to indicate that the 'vehicle' of this great change was the office of warden, and the quotation which follows, taken from the last-mentioned work, gives the explanation :—— "The parish' has in modern law supplanted the vill or township, owing to causes which did not come into play until the Tudor time, when the rate for the relief of the poor was imposed. The law then began to enforce a duty which had hitherto been enforced by religion, and very naturally it adopted for this purpose the geography of the Church. In course of time other rates were imposed by Parliament, and the poor's rate was taken as their model. Thus the parish became the important district for most purposes of local government and taxation." The transformation from vill to parish may have begun indeed before the Tudor time, but certainly it was Tudor legislation which threw secular duties on an ecclesiastical organization. A more lengthy passage a few pages further on gives additional insight into this difficult subject, and by the great kindness of the 1 History of English Law, Pollock & Maitland, vol. i, p. 599. 2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 548. 3 Ibid., vol. i, p. 548. |