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in Campodono, ubi tune villa regia erat, fecit basilicam." This, therefore, and the church of York, were the only places of worship in the Northumbrian kingdom contem- porary with the ministry of Paulinus. But the place where he had preached at Whalley would probably be held sacred ; crosses l would be erected, and divine offices performed there, from the beginning ; and the climate would soon admonish the most zealous and hardy congregation, that warmth and shelter are necessary to undisturbed devotion. Such are the trifling abatements with which the testimony of our ancient chronicler is to be received.
testimony, is the appellation of White Church under the Leigh. The probability is, that, after the example of the original church of York, it had first been built of wood, which was afterwards replaced by stone. Hence the name of Candida Casa, or Whiteherne, in Galloway, a contemporary or rather prior erection, for which Bede assigns the following reason : " Vulgo vocatur ' ad Candidam Casam,' eo quod ibi ecclesiam de lapide, insolito Brittonibus more, fecerit. 2 " The ancient erections of wood were probably turned black from age, and these rare and recent edifices of stone would, for some time, exhibit a very striking contrast to the eye. 3
3l2iii)icije notoe is mato anti fullg rtufieti ; [Efje mgnster cfjurcfie tfjis fcage] of sat repagre f flastcnlmrg, toljere notoe f>e Jjatf) Jjis legre; 33ut tJjen it toas rallefc tte fclacfee GTtapeU f our ILafcg, as cfjrongcles can tell. The Ixxxiiii chapiter, Ellis Ed. 1812, p. 147. This black chapel seems to have been made of wood, but in the time of Harding it was certainly " made, and fully edified," of stone. Itgnfle attfjure tjjan in aualon so iteto, 3UElf)et t)e toas fcurtrti fiesitie a (Eljapell faire, S2af)icf) nolue is matie anti fullg rtifi'rte, JlSSeste fro tfje IWgnstre OTturcSe of arete repatte, f f oure iLatie, as Chroniclers can tell. Harl. 661, f. 55b. 1 An ancient form used in the consecration of a churchyard was the erection of a cross in the centre, accompanied with processions, singing, and sprinkling of holy water. Cough's Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii. Pref. p. 177. 2 Eccl. Hist. 1. iii. c. 4, 158. " Interea sanctum Corpus de ilia quam diximus Ecclesiola (de virgis, p. 142) in aliam translatum qu Alba Ecclesia vocahatur." Sim. Dunelm. p. 145. It is remarkable that a perpendicular rock in Cliviger, the property of the author, blanched by exposure to the weather, has immemorially been called The White Kirk.
BOOK II. CHAP. I.] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 71
But, what adds great weight to the circumstantial evidence adduced in proof of the existence of a church here at a very early period is that the place itself has already been proved to exist in the eighth century, and that it is one of the few towns which, either on their own account or of events connected with them, have obtained a place on the solitary map of the Northumbrian kingdom. Without a previous knowledge of this circumstance, the tradition of a church must have been applied to prove the existence of the place ; but now the positive evidence for that fact may be employed to confirm the tradition. Dismissing, therefore, the name only of Augustine, the particulars of our traditionary account, compared with their respective confirmations from external testimony, will stand thus :
I.
TRADITION.
The gospel was preached at Whalley in the begin- ning of the seventh century, and Whalley stands nearly at the confluence of the Kibble, the Calder, and the Hodder.
CONFIRMATION. At this precise period Paulinus employed six years in preaching and baptizing through Deira, Bernicia, and the northern part of Mercia, and usually fre- quented the banks of considerable rivers. II.
This event was recorded by the erection of three crosses. His preaching at Dewsbury was recorded by a cross, and the form and decorations of those remaining at Whalley accord with the period assigned to them. III.
A church was erected upon the same place, and called the White Church under the Leigh, from some peculiarity about its appearance.
Stone churches of that period were actually deno- minated White Churches, and they were remarked as an unusual mode of building. To all these proofs is to be added another confirmation, which contributes greatly to their force, namely, that the compiler of the Monkish record was, probably, ignorant of them all. Other particulars in this account which require to be established, are, that the incum- bents of the ancient church of Whalley were married men ; were lords of the town ; and were entitled, not parsons or rectors, but Deans.
permitted marriage in the secular clergy, will follow from the fact of the benefice having passed in hereditary succession, which remains to be proved in its place.
the manor, though unusual, is far from being singular, and it is to be accounted for thus : At the first distribution of England into dioceses, the endowment was common, and tithes and oblations constituted one general fund which was applied by the Bishop, under certain regulations, 1st, to the support of himself and bis own family or college of priests resident at the cathedral church ; and, 2ndly, to the maintenance of the country clergy, 72 HISTORY OF WHALLEY. [Boon II. CHAP. I. whether itinerant, as they originally were, or partly itinerant and partly resident, or wholly resident, as they gradually became. 1 But, in order still further to encourage the erection of churches, which were as yet very inadequate to the general diffusion of religious knowledge, and the general communi- cation of the comforts of religious worship, lords of manors were allured to these acts of munificence within their domains by a concession from the ordinary of the right of patronage, which by the primitive constitution belonged solely to himself, and by the privilege of annexing in perpetuity all tithes and oblations accruing within their own demesne to the service of that particular church. To these was uniformly added a portion of land or glebe, absolutely necessary to the accommodation of an incumbent at a time when almost all the wants of life must be supplied from the immediate produce of the earth. 2 But though, in general, parishes and manors were for this reason commensurate through the kingdom, and manors and advowsons passed together, yet in these barren Northern tracts the fact was far otherwise. Here no single person in the Saxon times was lord of more than a single vill or township ; 3 yet the original parish of Whalley must have consisted of more than 50. This is a strong collateral proof of its high antiquity ; for, if we suppose some Saxon lord of Jlpaellej to have erected his White Church under the Leigh before the existence of any other place of worship for many miles around, the people, anxious as they then were for the blessings of religious instruction, would flock thither in multitudes from every quarter, and would be willing to repay the priest for the spiritual benefits they received from him, in tithes and offerings. I mean not here to enter upon a question so much in agitation between Mr. Selden and his antagonists as that of arbitrary consecrations ; 4 it is of no importance to the present argument, and the other hypothesis will answer my purpose as well. For the bishop of the diocese, concurring with the devotion of the faithful, and seeing no tendency in the lords of neighbouring manors to erect churches upon their demesnes, might, by his own authority, allot to the incumbent all tithes and oblations accruing from the several manors and townships, however remote, whose inhabitants frequented his church.
Northern parishes, Whalley in particular, and for the number of manors and townships which they contain.
assigned to it by the author of the Status de Blackburnshire. For I do not recollect an instance of lay foundations of churches till about the year 700, when there are two mentioned by Bede, one erected by Puch, and another by Addi. II. Eccl. 1. v. c. 4 and 5. By the year 800 however, they appear to have been common, if we are to credit the charters of confirmation made by Bertulph king of Mercia, and others, to the abbey of Croyland, on the authority of Ingulphus." [These are now generally regarded as fabrications. J. G. N.] 8 " Quot fuerunt villa;, tot fuerunt Domini." Status de Blackburnshire. 4 By this term is meant the right of dedicating tithes accruing from a manor or demesne to any church within the same diocese, at the owner's discretion. BOOK II. CHAP. L]
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 73
But the extent of the parish of Whalley, and the great value of its tithes and offerings, even in those days of wretched husbandry and slender population, must now be applied to the solution of another difficulty in the constitution of this benefice.
cates of land, free from every custom. Now this was not a glebe which could ever have been set apart by the founder for the use of an incumbent, but it was in fact the whole domain of the manor itself. 1 As, therefore, it is scarcely to be conceived that a founder, even in times of the most fervid devotion, would strip himself of his whole estate for the endowment of a parish church, only one other reason of this circumstance remains to be given, namely, that, in consequence of the immense extent of the original parish, what was at first an accessory outgrew its principal ; or, in other words, that, the advowson becoming far more valuable than the manor to which it was regardant, the lords, who were also patrons, saw the convenience of qualifying themselves by inferior orders for holding so rich a benefice ; and thus the manor itself, having passed for ten descents through a suc- cession of ecclesiastics, ceased to be considered as a lay fee, and grew to be confounded with the glebe of the church.
date, but between the years 1198 and 1208, an incumbent of this church grants to Ughtred the clerk, son of Gospatric de Samlesbury, certain lands to be held de ecclesia de Whalley, et de me et de successoribus meis in feudo et h&reditate libere solute integre et quiete ab omni sceculari servitio* And another, somewhat later, grants lands in Dounum, tenend. et habend. de Deo et omnibus sanctis et de ecclesia de Whalley in feodo et h&reditate libere quiete et pacifice. I suppress the names and styles of these grantors that I may not forestall evidence which will more properly appear under the next head. But how is it to be accounted for that an incumbent should be permitted to alienate lands in fee to be held of him and of his successors, on any other supposition than that they were originally the demesnes of the manor, and had now acquired a mixed character, being treated partly as glebe and partly as a lay fee ? The account further informs us that these incumbents were styled not rectors or parsons but Deans, and that the reason of this name was, that a certain portion of eccle- siastical jurisdiction was delegated to them by the Bishops of Lichfield, on account of the remote and almost inaccessible situation of the parish. Here, in the first place, we are not to confound the office of the Deans of Whalley with that of rural deans, a dignity of high antiquity, and once of great importance in the church. For in fact rural deaneries were so far from being hereditary that they were not even offices for life ; besides that the jurisdiction of the Deans of Whalley extended merely over their own original parish, whereas that of rural deans originally comprehended ten,
not many more than one. Vide The History of Property. 2 Townley MSS. [Coucher Book, tit. 5, No. Iv. p. 286 ; No. Ixxxvii. p. 320.] VOL. I. L 74
HISTORY OF WHALLEY.
[BOOK II. CHAP. I. and afterwards an indefinite number of parishes. Besides it has never heen discovered that the Deans of Whalley used an official seal at all, whereas the rural deans had always a seal inscribed with their office, but without a name. In the same account it is stated that ten persons had held this office in succession, besides an indefinite number of others whose memories are lost in remote antiquity. Those whose names have been here preserved are Spartlingus, Liwlphus Cutwulph, Cudwolphus, Henry the elder, Robert, Henry the younger, William, Geoffry the elder, Geoffry the younger, and Roger.
narrative, it is, like most of the former, capable of confirmation from external evidence. For, though some of the former names in this catalogue rest on the single authority of our monkish record, as we have no remaining charters relating to this parish prior to the reign of Henry I. yet the following personages actually appear either as parties or witnesses to deeds of which the originals or authentic copies are still preserved. Dns. Galfr. Dec. de pwalley, Joh. frat. Galfr. Dec. ; Henr. et Gaufr. fil. Gauf. Dec. ; Dns. R. Decanus de Whalley, Ric. frat. cjus ; Galfr. fil. Robti. Decani de Whalleia. 1 After these attestations to his veracity, our old chronicler is surely entitled to credit for the earlier part of the line.
probable, and in character. It is recorded in the same narrative of Liwlphus, second in the catalogue, that he acquired the name of Cutwulph from having cut off the tail of an animal of that species, while hunting in the forest of Rossendale, 2 at a place called Leclmesgreve. 3 On this account I have to observe that the chronology of the line proves this circumstance to have happened about the reign of Canute, and a mere falsary of the reign of Edward III. would almost certainly have acquiesced in the vulgar story of the extinction of wolves by Edgar. 4 But, secondly, the Deans of Whalley, like other ancient and dignified ecclesiastics, were mighty hunters, and enjoyed the right of chace, first to a considerable extent in other manors adjoining to their own domains, and secondly within the forests themselves. The first of these facts is ascertained by the following record in the Coucher Book of Whalley : Iste sunt mete infra quas rectores ecclesie de Whalleyo ratione ecclesie sue predicte pro libito solebant omni tempore anni venari, videlicet, incipiendo apud le Holpsclogh juxta Twisilton usque Downom, et sic per totam terrain de magna Merlay et parva usque Hassclialdene supra Penhulton, et sic per altam viam que jacet infra boscum de Penhulton et forestam de Penlmll, et sic ultra le Rugg in Kruseteclogh usque aquam de Caldre." 5
names were imposed. 1 There is a place of the name of Levengreve (Leofwine-greve) not far from Whitforth, but this was never within the forest. I suspect, therefore, that the real scene of this adventure was a place called in the perambulation of Brand- wood under Roger de Lacy, about the year 1200, Senesgrene, probably corrupted from Lenesgreve.
BOOK II. CHAP. L] ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 75
But they also claimed and exercised a right of hunting in the forests ; for, the abbey and convent having succeeded to all the territorial rights of the deanery, Henry de Lacy exacted an express renunciation of this right from the first abbot on the translation of his house to "Whalley. 1 Eor the fact of the Dean's exercising spiritual jurisdiction we must (and I think may safely) take the word of our old and well-informed chronicler, for no other evidence can now be adduced on the subject.
incumbent, ordinary, and lord of the manor, an assemblage which may possibly have met in later times and in some places of exempt jurisdiction, but at that time probably an unique in the history of the English Church. 2 Yet a character almost exactly resembling this may actually be traced in the church of Ireland, which, as Mr. Selden 3 observes, bore in many respects a strong resemblance to that of our own country : this was the Corban, Plebanus, or Chorepiscopus, of whom Arch- bishop Usher communicated a learned and curious account to Sir Henry Spelniau ; 4 not however distinguishing with his usual accuracy between this ecclesiastic and the archi- presbyter or rural dean, an error into which he seems to have been led by Isidore Mosco- vius. The Plebamis of the canon law was, properly speaking, incumbent of a mother church out of which one or more dependent parishes had been taken, and of which he retained the patronage. In aa inferior sense it may be yet applied to the parochial incumbents of great benefices, who have the patronage of several dependent chapels. 5 If the Plebamis had perpetual chaplains (or a vicar and chaplain) in his own church, he was a dignitary, and always occupied the first stall in his own choir. Nearly akin to this Plebanus, if not altogether the same, was the Corba, Corban, Comorbanus, all corruptions of the word Chorepiscopus. The office, and the inferior office of Herenach, which much resembled it, was hereditary ; was held by persons sometimes only in the inferior orders, and sometimes in none, but always literate persons. The glebe of the Herenach was called honorem villce, or the lordship of the town. Both received institution from the ordinary, and exercised an inferior jurisdiction, one over the tenants of the termonland or ecclesiastical demesnes committed to him, the other over the clergy of his plebania or corbanate. All these are instances of a strong tendency to the seculariza- 1 Coucher Book of Whalley. 2 It is not here meant that the mere fact of hereditary succession in benefices was at all unusual in those early times, notwithstanding the general irregularity of the practice, and the particular canons which were directed against it, as that of the synod of Westminster, 3rd Hen. I. " Ut filii presbyterorum non sint hseredes ecclesiarum patrum suorum." But this difficulty was obviated by an investiture, which enabled an incumbent, who was also patron, to transfer, during his lifetime, all his rights in a benefice, without the intervention either of bishop or archdeacon. It appears, in particular, that St. Peter's church in Cambridge was thus conveyed. Kot. Plac. G Rich. I. rot. 1 ; and Selden, c. xii. 4.
interpretes." Syntagma juris canon. 1. xv. c. 24. Weever applies this to our side-ivasted parishes in Lancashire, and particularly to Whalley. Fun. Mon. p. 180.
76 HISTORY OF WHALLEY. [BOOK II. CHAP. I. tion of ecclesiastical property in very early times, a natural consequence of enormous landed endowments, which always lead either to violent resumptions on the part of the Crown, or, as in the instance before us, to a silent transition from patronage to property, and from the character of incumbent to that of impropriator. It is a fact little known, that fifteen persons held the archbishopric of Armagh itself in hereditary succession, and of these eight were married men without episcopal consecration, but all literate persons. 1 With what exactness do the several characters of these kindred offices in the Church of Ireland apply to the Dean of Whalley ! For, like the Herenach, he had honorem villa ; like the Plebanus (which, however, was not confined to the Irish Church), he had patronage and jurisdiction over several dependent churches, together with a vicar and chaplain in his own ; and like the Corban his function was hereditary, tenable also by persons in inferior orders and compatible with the married state.
least, of the filial churches, will be proved hereafter; that he exercised jurisdiction over all has been asserted by our author, whose veracity we have been able to confirm in many instances, and to impugn in none ; that he had a vicar and chaplain may be proved by the attestations of charters in which " Rog. Rect. or Dec., Ughtred Cler., et Gilb. Cap. de Whalley " 2 appear together, and by the stalls, three in number, which yet remain in the choir of the parish church. Lastly, that he was married and had received only the lower orders, is demonstrated by the example of the last Dean, of whom it is affirmed, in contra- distinction to his predecessors, " quod continenter vixit et ad sacerdotalem se fecit ordinem Yüklə 4,81 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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