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Superior Spirituality Versus Popular Piety in Late-Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

A. K. McHardy
A. K. McHardy*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

When K. B. McFarlane wrote his biography of John Wycliffe he was surprised to find that the hero who emerged was not Wycliffe himself but his implacable opponent, William Courtenay, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1381 to 1396. ‘Justice has never been done to Courtenay’s high qualities, above all to the skill and magnanimity with which he led his order through the crisis that now threatened it’, he wrote admiringly, adding by way of explanation that, ‘Since the reformation his has been the unpopular side.’ The impression McFarlane gave is that there were two ecclesiastical camps in late fourteenth-century England: heretical and orthodox. The fabric of English church life was fractured then, for ever, by the beliefs and work of Wycliffe and his adherents; was not McFarlane’s biography entitled John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity? Yet McFarlane’s assessment of heresy was that this was far from being a monolithic movement; indeed, in a private letter he wrote, ‘Wycliffe was merely an extremist in a widespread reform movement.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 89 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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References

1 McFarlane, K. B., John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London, 1952). 71.Google Scholar

2 To Karl Leyser, 24 July 1945: privately printed in McFarlane, K. B., Letters to Friends 1940–1966 (Oxford, 1997), 40.Google Scholar

3 Cathedral fraternities were recruiting royal and aristocratic members at this time. At Lincoln the earl of Nottingham was admitted in 1385, and the following year the king and queen, and the earl of Derby were admitted on the same day: Lincolnshire Archives Office [hereafter. LAO], D&C A/2/27, fols 8 and 13. Dr Helen Phillips draws my attention to the social snobbery of religious observance to be found in Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, for example in the Miller’s Tale and Reeve’s Tale.

4 Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. and trans. G. H. Martin (Oxford, 1995), 324; my own translation.

5 Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, RS 28, 3 vols (London, 1867–9), 2: 416–17.

6 Much of what follows is based on Russell-Smith, Joy M., ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Images’, Dominican Studies 7 (1954), 180–214 Google Scholar. I wish to record my gratitude to the late Miss Russell-Smith for her help and kindness, given many years ago, on the subject of Adam Horsley.

7 Technically, the archdeaconries of Lincoln, Stow, Leicester, and the deanery of Rutland.

8 Clerical Poll-Taxes of the Diocese of Lincoln 1377–1381, ed. McHardy, A. K., Lincoln Record Society 81 (Lincoln, 1992), no. 164.Google Scholar

9 26 June: Calendar of Patent Rolls 1367–70 [hereafter: Cal. Pat. Rolls], 280.

10 LAO, Register 12 (John Buckingham, Memoranda), fol. 79V.

11 Acolyte, 22 Dec. 1369, deacon 30 March, priest 13 April 1370, Registrum Simonis de Sudbiria, ed. R. C. Fowler, CYS 14 and 38, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1938), 2: 73, 80, 82.

12 Apposers were auditors of the sheriffs’ accounts. The post was not abolished until 1833.

13 Sainty, J. C., Officers of the Exchequer, List and Index Society, Special Series 18 (London, 1983), 73 and 81 Google Scholar. For occasions when Horsley acted with exchequer colleagues, for example, as executor, see Calendar of Close Rolls 1381–5, 605, 621, 626.

14 Emden, A. B., Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), 305–6 Google Scholar. There is, of course, a large bibliography on the author of The Scale of Refection. Miss Russell-Smith did not complete her projected edition of Walter Hilton’s letters.

15 Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark, John P. H. and Taylor, Cheryl, Analecta Cartusiana 124, 2 vols (Salzburg, 1987), 1: 119–72.Google Scholar

16 Spiritual maxim, Cross, F. L. and Livingston, E. A., eds, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1997), 1482.Google Scholar

17 ‘Credat qui velit, ego fateor me similiter credere verbis ecclesie hoc dicentis, que neminem fallit. Hiis verbis fidem adhibeo. Forsan ridere bereticus, sed hanc simplicitatem non erubesco…. Cur ergo trepidas? Quid times? Fundamentum securum est absque labe erroris vel heresis vel divine transgressionis, quia supra petram, id est Cbristum, fondata est religio; non cadet, ideo non deficiet… si flaverint venti pestiferi, doctrine scilicet et dogmata hereticorum illam verbis impugnancium, non ruet religio, set stabit secura quia fondata est supra firmam petram Christum’: Hilton’s Latin Writings, 1: 170–1, lines 887–94 (my translation).

18 Expenses were paid on Tuesday 4 Dec: Issue Roll of Thomas de Brantingham, Bishop of Exeter, Lord High Treasurer of England, A.D. 1370, ed. Frederick Devon (London, 1835), 402, 404–5.

19 Registrum Johannis de Trillek, Episcopi Herefordensis, ed. J. H. Parry, CYS 8, 2 vols (London, 1912), 2:562 and 564.

20 22 Jan. 1370 for 3 years, Cal. Pat. Rolls 1367–70, 342; 12 May 1378, for 3 years, Cal. Pat. Rolls 1377–81, 202; 30 Jan. 1395 for 2 years, Cal. Pat. Rolls 1391–96, 531.

21 Printed from Reg. Courtenay (Canterbury) in Dahmus, Joseph Henry, The Metropolitan Visitations of William Courteney Archbishop of Canterbury 1381–1396 (Urbana, IL, 1950), 144, 146–7.Google Scholar

22 Victoria History of the County of Gloucester, vol. 2, ed. Page, William (London, 1907–), 77–8 Google Scholar; Smith, David M. & London, Vera C. M., The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, II: 1216–1377 (Cambridge, 2001), 348 Google Scholar.

23 Sargent, Michael G., James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85, 2 vols (Salzburg, 1984), 2: 580–1.Google Scholar

24 Russell-Smith, ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract’, 181, n. 4.

25 Poll-Taxes of Lincoln, ed. McHardy, no. 164.

26 ‘John Buckingham’, ODNB.

27 McHardy, A. K., ‘Bishop Buckingham and the Lollards of Lincoln Diocese’, in Baker, Derek, ed., Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, SCH 9 (1972), 131–45.Google Scholar

28 For what follows see Owen, Dorothy M., ‘Bacon and Eggs: Bishop Buckingham and Superstition in Lincolnshire’, in Cuming, G. J. and Baker, Derek, eds, Popular Belief and Practice, SCH 8 (1972), 139–42.Google Scholar

29 Mitchell, Rose and Crook, David, ‘The Pinchbeck Fen Map: a Fifteenth-Century Map of the Lincolnshire Fenland’, Imago Mundi 5 (1999), 24–50, esp. 43.Google Scholar

30 The session was to be held before Master John Botsham and/or Master John Bannebury on the first juridical date after the feast of St Michael in Monte Tumba, 17 October, LAO, Register 12 (John Buckingham Memoranda), fol. 349V. Rippingale rectory was divided into two portions, one worth two thirds, and other, one.

31 Ibid., fol. 450. His prohibition of this practice was dated 16 March 1397; Easter day was 22 April.

32 Walsingham, Thomas, The St Albans Chronicle, 1:1376-1394, ed. Taylor, J., Childs, W., and Watkiss, L. (Oxford, 2003), 882–3 Google Scholar. Wymondham Priory was a cell of St Albans.

33 Calendar of Papal Registers: Papal Letters, IV (1362–1404), 368.

34 The work of the historian Clive Burgess is important here, and that by the musicologists Roger Bowers, Magnus William and David Skinner. A forthcoming volume on colleges in the later Middle Ages, edited by Clive Burgess and Martin Heale, will shed more light on this development.