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Time and the Testator, 1370–1540
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
There were many ways in which the late medieval testator could acknowledge time. Behind each testator lay a lifetime of memories and experiences on which he or she drew, recalling the names of those ‘they had fared the better for’, those they wished to remember and by whom they wished to be remembered. Their present time was of limited duration, for at will making they had to assemble their thoughts and their intentions, make decisions and appoint stewards, as they prepared for their time ahead; but as they spent present time arranging the past, so they spent present time laying plans for the future. Some testators had more to bequeath, more time to spare: others had less to leave, less time to plan. Were they aware of time? How did they control the future? In an intriguing essay, A. G. Rigg asserts that ‘one of the greatest revolutions in man’s perception of the world around him was caused by the invention, sometime in the late thirteenth century, of the mechanical weight-driven clock.’ It is the intention of this paper to see how men’s (and women’s) perception of time in the late Middle Ages was reflected in their wills, the most personal papers left by ordinary men and women of the period.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 133 - 144
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
References
1 Norwich, Norfolk Record Office [hereafter NRO], Norwich Consistory Court wills [hereafter NCC], Robinson 55, John Baret, Halesworth (1519).
2 A. G. Rigg, ‘Clocks, dials and other terms’, in D. E. Gray and Stanley, E. G., eds, Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davies in Honour of his Seventieth Birthday (Oxford, 1983), p. 255 Google Scholar.
3 The wills cited here were proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the Norwich Consistory Court, and the Archdeaconry Courts of Suffolk and Sudbury, the three tiers of Church courts which represented varying levels of movable estate within the diocese of Norwich. For the historian, wills reveal family ramifications, circles of friends, trade associations, parish communities, lines of patronage, and clerical influence. They also shed light on the individual’s personal wishes and intentions for the distribution of the ‘loose change’ of the estate, but not the implementation of those desires. Wills can be full of interest or barren, and need to be used judiciously and with caution. For comment see Burgess, C., ‘Late medieval wills and pious convention: testamentary evidence reconsidered’, in Hicks, M A., ed., Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 14–33 Google Scholar. As ever, my work on East Anglian wills owes much to Peter Northeast.
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14 I owe this information to Peter Northeast, taken from his work on pre-Reformation church building projects found in Suffolk wills.
15 NRO, NCC, Harsyk, Thomas de Ryslee, Norwich (1391): Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Arundel 2, fol. 51; NRO, NCC, Surflete 78, John Herryes, Norwich (1431); F. Blomefield, Essay Towards a Topographical History of Norfolk, 11 vols (Fersfield, 1805–10), 4: 186; NRO, NCC, Spyltymbre 42, Henry Wilton, Norwich (1507).
16 F. Woodman, The rebuilding of St Peter Mancroft’, in A. Longcroft and R. Joby, eds, East Anglian Studies: Essays Presented to J. C. Barringer on his Retirement (Norwich, 1995), pp. 290–4.
17 Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Record Office [hereafter SROB], Hawlee 95, John Baret, Bury St Edmunds (1463), printed in S. Tymms, ed., Wills and Inventories from the Registers of the Commissary of Bury St Edmunds and the Archdeacon of Sudbury, Camden Society, ist ser., 49 (1850), pp. 15–44.
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19 NRO, NCC, A. Caston 139, John Noloth, Laxfield (1482).
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21 NRO, NCC, Cage 92, William Gage, clerk, Woolpit (1500).
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25 NRO, NCC, Briggs 28, Margery Howton, Mildenhall (1515).
26 Northeast, P., ed., Boxford Churchwardens’ Accounts 1530–1561), Suffolk Record Society, 23 (Ipswich, 1982 Google Scholar).
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28 Lewis, Walberswick, p. 26.
29 Salzman, English Industries, p. 150.
30 SROB, Hervye 453, Robert Camplyon, Stowmarket (1491).
31 NRO, NCC, Aubrey 113, Agnes Wrestler, Lowestoft (1479); SROI, IC/AA2/8, fol. 9, Herry Fleccher, Wissett (1513).
32 An excellent example of this can be seen at the church of St John the Baptist, Badingham, Suffolk The panel depicting extreme unction on the seven-sacrament font shows five figures which include the priest anointing the temple of a dying man, and a grieving woman standing at the foot of the bed.
33 SROl, IC/AA2/3, fol. 23, William Leveriche, Dunwich (1483); Aries, P., The Hour of Our Death (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 173 Google Scholar; C. W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers (London, 1958), p. 67.
34 Houlbrooke, R., Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480–1750 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 115, 149 Google Scholar.
35 Aries, P., Western Attitudes towards Death: from the Middle Ages to the Present (London, 1976), p. 8 Google Scholar.
36 SROI, IC/AA2/3, fol. 196, Thomas Waller, Aldeburgh (1496).
37 SROB, Hervye 349, Thomas Fuller, Mildenhall (1484); NRO, NCC, Gelour 238, Robert Hervey, priest, Lavenham (1479).
38 R. C. Finucane, ‘Sacred corpses, profane carrion: social ideals and death rituals in the later middle ages’, in Whaley, J., ed., Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death (London, 1981), pp. 40–60 Google Scholar.
39 NRO, NCC, Cooke 99–100, Margaret Doke, Henstead (1540).
40 Pfaff, R. W., New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), p. 63 Google Scholar.
41 NRO, NCC, Puntyng 162, Margaret Bumble, Wissett (1540).
42 NRO, NCC, Doke 67, John Speed, Mildenhall (1438).
43 PRO, Prob. 11/9, fols 94r-v, Joan Foote, widow, Melford (1517).
44 SROB, Hervye 10, Roger Fuller, Melford (1473).
45 NRO, NCC, Briggs 108, Edmund Jenney, knight, Knodishall (1522).
46 NRO, NCC, Briggs 138, John Garneys, Kenton (1524).
47 N. P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts, 66 (Toronto, 1984), p. 101; C. Burgess, ‘Strategies for eternity: perpetual chantry foundation in late medieval Bristol’, in Harper-Bill, C., ed., Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 3 Google Scholar.
48 SROl, IC/AA2/3, fol. 55, Herry Dixon, Aldeburgh (1487).
49 SROl, IC/AA1/2/5/14.
50 PRO, Prob. 11/7, fols 170v-172r, John Cocket, Ampton (1483); SROB, Baldwyn 287, Almeric Molows, Wattisfield (1461).
51 SROI, IC/AA2/11, fol. 120, Margaret Borhede, Henstead (15 31); Cox, J. C. C., Churchwardens’ Accounts from the Fourteenth to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1913), pp. 61, 159 Google Scholar. Donors’ names on the bede-roll were recited at Christmas, Michaelmas, and every Sunday. The bede-roll was later called the Bidding Prayer, i.e. bidding the congregation to pray for the souls of the benefactors.
52 NRO, NCC, Aubrey 72, Everard Wrestler, Lowestoft (1486). See also Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), pp. 293–4 Google Scholar; Pfaff, R., ‘The English devotion of St Gregory’s trental’, Speculum, 49 (1984), pp. 75–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The total cost of a full trental of St Gregory, called ‘le grete tremai’ should have been 12 marks (£8) or 5s. 4d. per mass, celebrated on the feasts of the Nativity, Epiphany, Purification, Annunciation, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity, Assumption, and Nativity of the Virgin Mary, repeated three times within the ten octaves. Testators, however, consistently bequeathed 10s. for St Gregory’s trental in a truncated and cheaper version.
53 ‘Church goods in Suffolk, no. VII’, East Anglian, n.s. 1 (1885-6), pp. 102–4.
54 Hutton, R., The Rise and Fall of Merry England: the Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 80, 84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, p. 266; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 452.