Chapter III: Part II: Constitution of the Chapter

The constitution by which the minster was governed was unique, and so remarkable as to require a special summary, excepting in so far as has been already anticipated.

Southwell was the cathedral city and mother church of the county from the time that Nottinghamshire first became a county at all--let us say, from a hundred years before the Conquest. The Whitsuntide procession merely emphasised and ratified this fact. At this festival a synod was held, which would seem to have been more for the purpose of festivity than of legislation, and the chrism or holy oil was distributed through the rural deans to the various parishes of the county. Each parish had to pay a specified tax, called the Pentecostal offering, varying from the humble sixpence of Staunton to the merk of Nottingham and Newark. Of this offering ten per cent. went to the sacrist, and forty per cent. each to the prebendary of Normanton and the residents’ common fund; altogether some fifteen or sixteen pounds. In the palmy days of pilgrimages and processions Southwell must have looked very gay at Whitsuntide. After gradually dying out, Archbishop Drummond, in the last century, on his own authority, put a stop to the little that was left of this time-honoured pageant. It is strange that no one has ever been able to fix the exact day of the week on which it was held.

=The Liberty= of Southwell and Scrooby was a civil jurisdiction of the archbishop as a great landowner, and extended over some twenty parishes. Besides his Southwell manor house or palace, he had another at Scrooby, on the famous north road near the Yorkshire border[12]; and his property was for the most part contiguous to these two seats. Within his Liberty he appears up to quite recent times to have been very much his own Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff, with sessions independent of the county, and justices of the peace of his own nomination.

=The Peculiar= of Southwell was an ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the chapter over the ancient manor or lordship of Southwell and the prebendal villages. With the exception of ordination and confirmation, the canons were their own archbishop, as they were their own archdeacon and rural dean. They had full authority over their subordinates, including the perpetual vicars of the prebendaries, and over all, clergy and laity alike, for certain matters then seemingly reckoned as ecclesiastical offences, such as slander, perjury, and immorality. They could punish by fine, suspension, penance, and ex-communication, but in later years dropped the punishment of flogging.

The court of the chapter (or rather Dr William Worseley, the one resident canon) sentenced Cristina Saynton to walk three Sunday mornings before the Cross in the processions, carrying a wax candle, and clad in a loose unfastened “tunic,” with bare feet and legs, and towel over her head. Agnes Nothorne was sentenced to walk round Edingley Churchyard on Palm Sunday, barefooted, and with a net over her head; and on Good Friday to approach the Cross with bended knees, and then crawl with bare feet and head covered as before, and kneeling before two altars in the church, say before each five times the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the Creed.

This ecclesiastical jurisdiction included the proving of wills of all persons; and the records contain many instances of probate. To this was added the civil jurisdiction of “assizes of bread and ale,” with power to punish fraud, and authority over weights and measures. In respect of their own property, the chapter had their court “views of Frank pledge,” etc., and the individual prebendaries likewise had theirs in respect of their endowments in land; and there were appeals from the prebendal courts to those of the chapter. In short, they had a complete feudal jurisdiction, both over their own lands and over those they held in trust for the service of the minster and for their subordinates. But there were in addition certain marked privileges. The lands of the prebends were free from the authority of the sheriff and all other officers of the king, unless the canon consented. The canons had “in their houses and lands Soc and Sac, Tol and Theam, and infanganthef (the right of executing a thief) and intol and utol, and all those same customs of the honour and liberty which the king has in his own lands.” Their tenants were almost, if not entirely, exempt from military service, and their taxes, when any were required, were levied by the York Convocation, to which they sent a proctor, and not, it would seem, by king and parliament; and the fines did not go to the Crown.

Although a large part of the manor had been mapped out into daughter parishes, such as Edingley and Upton, a residuary parish of considerable area always remained[13]; and from the beginning of non-residence the chapter delegated their pastoral duties to the parish vicar. There were five chapels in the town, besides chapels of ease in the more remote parts of the parish. The actual town was divided into the Burgage, between the Greet and the market-place, and the Prebendage; and the latter was chiefly ecclesiastical property of various kinds. To the church itself appertained the old tradition of sanctuary. A man charged with murder even, or an outlaw, could take sanctuary for thirty days; and if by that time he had not made his peace, some of the clergy were to escort him for thirty leagues (_leugae_), “with some sign of the Church’s peace,” and also relics, wherever the accused wanted to go, and bring him back three times. Interference involved the crime of “breaking the Church’s peace.” It is difficult to say when sanctuary was abolished or died out.

Another peculiar privilege was, that the clergy were not tried by the usual courts for the most serious crimes. There is only one such recorded, a bad case of felony[14]; and this came before “judges (or justiciaries) of our Lord the King, nominated (? deputatis) to preserve the peace,” and was tried at the south door of the church or in one of the canons’ houses. Whether these judges were the ordinary itinerant justices, or those of the Court of Eyre north of the Trent, or the archbishop’s in right of his liberty of Southwell and Scrooby, or a special commission--this is a puzzle.

=The Clergy and Staff.=--The archbishops were at first head of the chapter, and the canons their curates. They must have begun to lose touch when, in the twelfth century, the chapter became independent. Henceforth they were visitors, and at their visitations held what were in reality courts. Subsequently the statute of Premunire, by putting a stop, or at least a check, to papal bulls, and that of Provisors, by forbidding the appointment of foreigners to vacant stalls, increased somewhat their authority. They were always patrons of the sixteen stalls by right of their having endowed them (with one exception); and it is clear from what happened in Wolsey’s time, that they could by use celebrate when they pleased, and appoint the preachers. Sometimes, but not always, the statutes or decrees of the chapter read _de consensu & voluntate _ of the archbishop.

The prebendaries, addressed in chapter as “venerable,” were sixteen in number, and their prebends were:--Beckingham, Dunham, Eton, Halloughton, N. Leverton, N. Muskham, S. Muskham, Normanton (with the chancellorship), Norwell Overhall, Norwell Palishall (or Palace Hall), Norwell Tertia Pars, Oxton cum Cropwell, Oxton Secunda Pars, Rampton, Sacristaria, Woodborough.

By the valuation of 1547, Norwell Overhall was worth £50 a year, and Eton only £2. These valuations were, however, below the real profits, as the tenants paid part of their rents in a lump sum (technically called a “fine”) at the commencement of the lease. The chapter, in conjunction with the church-wardens appointed by them, controlled their common fund for the residents as well as the fabric fund or “ladie land,” and they were trustees of the endowments of the inferior clergy, and the several miscellaneous bequests for tapers, lamps, etc.

Next we may place the perpetual vicars, of whom there were twelve, Normanton (within the residuary parish) and the Sacrist prebend (the duties of which were limited to the church) not requiring them.[15] Their stipends from land, the lesser tithes, rent charges on the prebends, and other sources were small. They had no duties in the minster itself, but were subject to the chapter. Each canon appointed the vicar of his prebend. The daughter churches of the parish were also under the chapter.

Passing over the parish vicar, there were vicars-choral for all the prebends; and these performed, as deputies of the canons, the long round of daily services. They were paid £3 a year by their prebendaries, and shared in their own common fund, and lived in common in their own college. They had a common seal for their property, but were never a separate corporation, being appointed by their canons and under the control of the chapter, who made the bye-laws that governed them. In chapter meetings they often acted as proctors or proxies for their absent chiefs. One of them was appointed “hebdomodary” each week, and took the priest’s part. They had a precentor for each side of the choir; and there seems to have been as well a precentor in chief. They were always in priests’ orders, and the chapter strictly prohibited their holding any care of souls. Their use was that of York. In ancient times they were not called minor canons.

Next ranked those peculiar officers against whom Sir Walter Besant waxes so eloquent. The chantry priests or chaplains were an offshoot of the vicars-choral, who previously said or sang the appointed masses for the departed. The earliest donation was that of Prebendary and Justiciary Robert de Lexington, 9th October 1241; and the latest that of Laurence Booth (1479), who endowed two in the Vavasour Chapel: altogether thirteen priests, and nine or ten altars. They “followed the choir,” or, in addition to their specific duties, assisted in the singing; and the priest of St. Nicholas also served the parochial chapel of ease of Halam, while others performed similar outside duties, and one was usher of the Grammar School and a second “player at the organs.”

The chantry priests, besides their endowments, which averaged four or five pounds a year each, shared a small common fund, and, thanks to Canon Thomas Haxey, from the year 1415 lived together in their own house on the site of the present Grammar School, and could lodge outsiders. The chantry of St. John the Evangelist was in the gift of the vicars-choral, and to the rest the chapter appointed. The vicars-choral were generally promoted from this body. Next ranked two deacons, who, besides other duties, marshalled the processions, and two sub-deacons: the pay of the former being £3, 10s. and of the latter £2, 13s. Clerks were ordained as sub-deacons, and advanced to priests’ orders; and all four offices were sometimes combined with vicar-choralships. The six choristers were laymen, as was the incense-bearer or thuribuler. Then there were the registrar (an important official), the master of Our Lady’s works, the vergers, or wand-bearers, and others: altogether some sixty or more, not counting the wardens who were generally vicars-choral. But the list of offices is not yet exhausted; for the prebendary of Normanton, in his capacity of chancellor, was the secretary for education for the county, and appointed to such grammar schools as Nottingham, Newark, and Wollaton, as well as to Southwell.

Southwell Grammar School must be one of the very oldest educational establishments in the country, and the present headmaster (appointed by the bishop of the diocese) has a long unbroken line of predecessors going back to Norman times. The master was a vicar-choral or chantry priest, and received £2 a year out of the Normanton prebend, and his assistant half that sum. Complaints were made latterly that the master shirked his duties, was too fond of giving “remedies” or holidays, so that the boys paid their parents’ substance for nothing, and allowed English to be talked in school instead of Latin. The “Song School” was a separate establishment, of which the master was paid £1 a year, and taught other subjects besides singing. Possibly his pupils were choir boys, and the school held in the north transept chapel of the nave.

The sacrist, besides his vicar-choral, had “clerks” under him; and complaints were made that these, as well as other clerks and ministers of the church, did not attend the Grammar School. At Wollaton school, adults (_viri_) were likewise taught; and at Southwell, it would seem that these “clerks” received, or were supposed to receive, some smattering of Latin with a view to ordination, for in spite of their name they do not appear to have been already in orders.

The archbishop presented to the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene; and there was a nunnery. No trace is left of either of these institutions.

In value and importance, Southwell ranked below London and York, but quite on a level with many cathedrals.