History of England 1-6

The 9,000 parish churches of England were the centres of all communal activity, where the living were organized and the dead were commemorated. This was the place where the parishioners were baptized, married and buried. Royal proclamations were issued from the church; local elections were held, and local accounts audited, in the nave. The prized possessions of the community were held there in chests, under lock and key. Disputes were settled and negotiations undertaken, within the walls painted with images of the saints and the apostles. The sculpted forms of angels and saints looked down on the throng from the hammerbeam roof. Assignations, and trysts, were kept by the church porch. Each church had its own brewhouse, to make ‘church ale’. Many of the parishioners joined religious guilds, by means of which an altar or a side chapel was maintained with voluntary contributions. On the days of procession the members of the parish would walk in harmony around the church, sometimes showered with flowers and unconsecrated hosts known as singing cakes. The churchyard was used for Sunday markets, and for games such as wrestling and football. But it was also a sacred and even fearful place. The key to the church door was prized as a sovereign remedy against mad dogs, and the ringing of church bells exorcized demons riding in thunder and lightning. Church liturgy itself was deemed to be a form of magical incantation, and sometimes the eucharist was preserved by those who had taken communion; the holy bread could be used to cure ailments or to ward off witches.

The Mass was part of village life; as it was performed before the altar in the chancel, behind the rood screen, the people would gossip and yawn and whisper. The chancel was maintained by the priest, while the nave was the responsibility of the parishioners. The rood screen itself, between the nave and the chancel, was a highly decorated wooden panel on which were painted or sculpted images of the Crucifixion or of the Day of Doom. The service was accompanied by a continual murmur of voices, except at the holy time of the consecration of the eucharist, and by occasional laughter. There was little, if any, preaching and very few pulpits.

Dogs and chickens wandered among the people, who stood or kneeled on the rushes or straw strewn over the earth floor. Sometimes the churchgoers just walked around, staring at the statues of the Virgin or the saints. Some attempt was made at seating in the thirteenth century, but pews did not become a familiar aspect of the church interior until the fifteenth century. Disputes over status were frequent. Who should first go forward for communion? Some of the congregation played chess, or even gambled with dice. Women brought in their needlework. Arguments might erupt, and fights might break out, in the course of the Mass. A bargain might be sealed with a handshake. Thus proceeded the vigorous and ebullient religious life of the fourteenth century, in which earth and heaven were inseparable.

25

The commotion

Richard of Bordeaux was ten years old at the time of his coronation as Richard II. He was the son of the Black Prince and thus closest in blood to the dead king. In the summer of 1377 he was led to Westminster Abbey under a canopy of blue silk borne on spears of silver, and he lay prostrate before the altar as the choir sang the litany. By the end of the long ceremony the boy was exhausted, and was taken to a private apartment in Westminster where he might rest. On the following morning the prelates and the magnates met in a great assembly to choose twenty-four of their number to form a minority council. It might have been thought that the young king’s eldest surviving uncle, John of Gaunt, would have taken precedence; but, having ensured that some of his supporters were part of the council, he withdrew with his followers to Kenilworth Castle. He may have been awaiting events.

The boy king assumed the crown at a time of murmuring and dissatisfaction. The shortage of labour, as a result of the pestilence, meant that the great landlords were trying to exact as much work as they could from their unfree tenants; the legislation prohibiting any rise in wages, although only intermittently effective, was still the cause of much complaint. General discontent had also been aroused at the heavy burden of taxation; war supplies were always needed as a result of unsettled business with the French. Only a few days before the coronation, the forces of King Charles V had plundered Rye and burnt down Hastings.