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The Piety of Margaret, Lady Hungerford (d. 1478)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

M. A. Hicks
M. A. Hicks
Affiliation:
King Alfred's College, Winchester SO22 4NR
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Extract

It is notoriously difficult for biographers of late-medieval people to recapture the personalities of their subjects, and consequently motives often have to be deduced from actions. This fundamental difficulty prompted the great Professor Jacob Burckhardt to date the emergence of the individual from the Renaissance and to assert that, rulers apart, there were few developed personalities in the Middle Ages. Medieval people saw their world through a sort of ‘religious mist’, perceiving things distorted rather than as they really were. In spite of some recent support, Burckhardt's theory is not really tenable, but historians still find the prevalent religious aura difficult to penetrate. We may know the official doctrine and moral teaching of the Church, but we cannot safely assume that they were understood by the laity, when both contemporary sermons and literature proclaim the contrary. Even were the Church's teaching understood, historians would still not know in what ways and to what extent religion influenced other fields of individual activity – economic, social or political. Burckhardt's problem remains of more than purely religious importance.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

BL = British Library; EETS = Early English Text Society; PRO = Public Record Office; SRO = Somerset Record Office; WAM = Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Magazine; WRO = Wiltshire Record Office. All documents are cited by their repository call-numbers. Financial support for the preparation of this article has been provided by King Alfred's College, Winchester.

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5 Huntington Library, HAP Box 3; Hoare, i (2). 100. For what follows, see Hoare, i (2). 124-33; Devizes Museum, Personal i, fos. 269-70, 278; SRO, DDX/SAS H348 fo. 320-v (Hungerford cartulary); Jackson, J. E., ‘Ancient statutes of Heytesbury almshouse’, WAM xi (1869), 291–6Google Scholar ; Winchester College MSS 10157-8, 10160a-b, 10162 (seals).

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12 PRO. C 1/28/111D.

13 PRO, C 54/312 rot. 8d; WRO, 490/1465. For what follows, see Somerset Medieval Wills, 186-93, esp. p. 186; PRO, S.C.6/1119/14 m.4,/15 m.4; Wordsworth, C., Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, Cambridge 1901, 228Google Scholar.

14 BL, Cott. MS Jul. BXII, fo. 124; Hoare, i (2). 102.

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16 Devizes Museum, Personal i, fo. 269; BL, Add. MS 22285 fo. 71 (martyrology of Syon); see below, 33.

17 Jackson, J. E., ‘Inventory of chantry furniture AD 1472, Hungerford Chapel, Salisbury Cathedral’, WAM xi (1869), 338Google Scholar ; SRO, DDX/SAS H348 fo. 324V; Devizes Museum, Personal i, fos. 26gr-70v.

18 Myroure, 3-5; Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, ed. Collins, A. J. (Henry Bradshaw Society xcvi, 1969), ixGoogle Scholar.

19 PRO, C 54/312 rot. 8d; Wordsworth, Ceremonies, 285n, citing Salisbury Cathedral Muniments, Chapter Act Book Machon, p. 72. For what follows, see SRO, DDX/SAS H348 fo. 319V; , Jackson, ‘Inventory’, 334Google Scholar ; Devizes Museum, Personal i, fos. 269, 277V-8.

20 The description of chapels and decorations is based on History and Antiquities of the Cathedral-Church of Salisbury and the Abbey Church of Bath, London 1719, 128–32Google Scholar ; Symonds, R., Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War, ed. Long, C. G. (Camden Society lxxiv, 1859), 130–2Google Scholar ; Hutchins, J., History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, ed. Shipp, W. and Hodson, J. W., London 1870, iv. 176–8Google Scholar ; Gough, R., Ancient Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, London 1796, ii (2). 186–91Google Scholar and plates 70-2; Bodleian, Oxford, Gough Map 32 fos. 43-v, 51, 53-v; Shortt, H. de S., Hungerford and Beauchamp Chantry Chapels, Salisbury 1970Google Scholar.

21 , Jackson, ‘Inventory’, 339Google Scholar ; , Wordsworth, Ceremonies, 286Google Scholar.

22 The figures used to be considered fragments of a Dance of Death: , Gough, Sepulchral Monuments, ii (2), 187–8Google Scholar ; Clark, J. M., Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Glasgow 1950, 10-nGoogle Scholar . However, this view is untenable. For the new interpretation, see Tristram, P., Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English Literature, London 1976, 162–9Google Scholar , esp. p. 168. Although no verses come from Lydgate's Dance of Death, his poem also features a ‘Gallant Squire,’ Dance of Death, ed. Warren, F. (EETS, original series lxxxi, 1931), p. xxviGoogle Scholar . Two ages of man and two stages of decomposition — a corpse and a skeleton — were depicted.

23 Devizes Museum, Personal i, fo. 274. For what follows, see Salisbury Cathedral Muniments, Chapter Act Book Machon, 89. The text' Non nobis, domine, non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam' comes from the thanksgiving after mass, Wickham-Legg, J., Missale, 217Google Scholar . In what follows, the Latin text is identified from the Syon breviary and quoted from the English translation in the Myroure.

24 Myroure, 99-100; Syon Breviary, 15.

25 Hoare, i (2). 102; , Jackson, ‘Inventory’, 334–9Google Scholar . For what follows, see ibid. 334-6.

26 Ibid. 335; Syon Breviary, 21, 73, 77n 113; Myroure, 129-30, 220, 225, 232.

27 SRO, DDX/SAS H348 fos. 323-v, partly quoted in , Wordsworth, Ceremonies, 285–6Google Scholar ; Myroure, 137-8, 257; Missale adusum insignis etpraeclarae ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Dickinson, F. H., Burntisland 1861-1863, 874Google Scholar ; Hoskins, E., Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis or Sarum and York Primers with Kindred Books, London 1901, 111–12Google Scholar ; Breviarium ad vsum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Procter, F. and Wordsworth, C., Cambridge 1886, iii. 619Google Scholar . The prayer ‘O glorious king’ also occurs in the Sarum compline on Passion Sunday, Sarum Breviary, i. dccxv, ii. 231, where it immediately follows the Nunc dimittis — itself a feature of compline at , Syon, Myroure, 171Google Scholar.

28 Myroure, 129.

29 Taken from Walter, Lord Hungerford's foundation deed for his Farleigh Hungerford chantry, printed from the Hungerford cartulary in Jackson, J. E., Guide to Farleigh Hungerford, Chippenham 1879.Google Scholar

30 , Dickinson, Sarum Missal, 735 ff.Google Scholar ; Wood-Legh, K. L., Perpetual Chantries in Britain, Cambridge 1965, 288Google Scholar ; , Lovatt, ‘John Blacman’, 444Google Scholar.

31 Pfaff, R. W., New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England, Oxford 1970, 62–91Google Scholar . For wha t follows, see , Wordsworth, Ceremonies, 286Google Scholar.

32 , Dickinson, Sarum Missal, 750Google Scholar ; Pfaff, loc. cit.

33 , Wordsworth, Ceremonies, 286Google Scholar ; for what follows, see above, 27; Devizes Museum, Personal i, fos. 269-70V.

34 , Dickinson, Sarum Missal, 760Google Scholar ; for what follows, see Myroure, 4-5.

35 Myroure, 14, 99-100, 122-3,12-30, 225, 232; Syon Breviary, 15, 21, 24, 73, 77.

36 Myroure, 220, 257; Syon Breviary, 113-14; Sarum Breviary, iii. 619.

37 Myroure, 151, 164-7.

38 , Jackson, ‘Ancient statutes’, 300.Google Scholar

39 Devizes Museum, Personal i, fos. 269, 278. The next four paragraphs are based on ibid. fos. 269-78.

40 Calendar of Papal Letters 1455-64, 297.

41 PRO, C 54/312 rot. 8d.

42 , Jackson, ‘Ancient statutes’, 299Google Scholar ; for what follows, see , Hicks, ‘St Katherine's Hospital’, 68–9Google Scholar.

43 Myroure, 137-8.

44 , Jackson, ‘Ancient statutes’, 298, 308.Google Scholar

45 PRO, C 1/28/iii.

46 Museum, Devizes, Personal i, fo. 276.Google Scholar

47 Lander, J. R., Government and Community 1405-1509, London 1980, 113–14.Google Scholar

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49 PRO, C 1/28/in ; , Hoare, Modern Wiltshire, i (2). 102Google Scholar.

50 , Jackson, ‘Ancient statutes’, 299–300.Google Scholar

51 , Hicks, ‘St Katherine's Hospital’, 68.Google Scholar

52 , Dickinson, Sarum Missal, 742.Google Scholar

53 Devizes Museum, Personal i, fo. 270.

54 , Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, 133.Google Scholar

55 I will discuss the application of Margaret's piety to her politics elsewhere.