Chapter XXXI: Discipline

The average Englishman of the present day has hardly an idea of what is meant by ecclesiastical discipline, and is quite ignorant of the large part which it played in the practical religious life of people in ancient times. Yet its principles are laid down in the New Testament; the right and duty of the Church to hear and determine causes between Christian men is contained in our Lord’s command, “If thy brother trespass against thee ... tell it to the Church; and if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican” (Matt. xviii. 17). The general recognition and exercise of this jurisdiction is alluded to in the apostolic writings (1 Cor. vi. 4; x. 32); and St. Paul gives several actual examples of its enforcement (1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20). The Church in all times and places has maintained this power of spiritual discipline to be one of its fundamental principles.

The special jurisdiction which the decree of William the Conqueror gave to the Ecclesiastical Courts over ecclesiastical persons, and over lay persons in ecclesiastical cases, was perhaps an encroachment upon the province of the civil law, but the spiritual jurisdiction involved in our Lord’s Command is independent of the sanction of the civil magistrate.

This spiritual discipline is an important aid to the power of the civil magistrate in the Christian community. Where the magistrate’s power stops, that of the pastorate steps in. The magistrate can only take cognizance of crimes, and punish a man for offences against another; the Church takes cognizance of sins, and deals with a man _pro salute animæ_. If the sin has not caused scandal, the penance inflicted may be of a private nature; but if it has caused scandal, the punishment is public, “that others may learn not to offend.”

The penitential system in the Saxon Church, as we learn it from the penitential known by the name of Archbishop Theodore, was a very elaborate system, classifying sins and assigning penalties to them; it was confirmed in some particulars by the ecclesiastical enactments of kings. In greater matters the case came before the sheriff and bishop at the Shiremote or Hundredmote, and the sentence was enforced by the same power which executed the civil sentences of the same court. In the Ecclesiastical Courts after the Norman Conquest, the bishop, and in some matters the archdeacons under his authority, tried the cause, and in case of resistance to the sentence applied for a royal writ to be sent to the sheriff to enforce it. In most cases the knowledge that the Bishop’s Court had the civil power at its back was enough to lead men to submit to its authority. In the last resort the spiritual authority had the sentence of excommunication to fall back upon.[610]

The discipline of the clergy was specially in the hands of the bishop and his archdeacons, who dealt with moral offences and ecclesiastical irregularities in their courts. The famous Constitutions of Otho (1237), followed up by those of Archbishop Stephen Langton, enacted, that in every rural deanery one rector should be appointed to hear the confessions of the clergy. Archbishop Peckham, in 1281, complains that it had not been done, and renews the ordinance. This was not to prevent the clergy from going to other penitentiaries appointed by the bishop.

Archbishop Greenfield of York (1310) issued an injunction, engrossed by a public notary, ordering a certain Ralph de Grave, Canon of Worksop, who had proved contumacious, to betake himself within three days to the monastery of Bridlington, and there to do penance for his rebellious behaviour.[611]

Among Grostete’s letters is one to a cleric, in which he rebukes his luxurious and licentious life, and tells him roundly that he is “a blot on the clergy, a shame to theologians, a delight to the enemies of religion, a derision and song and story to the vulgar.”[612]

Robert Coton, for a sermon preached at Atcham, near Shrewsbury,
containing heretical teaching, was sentenced to carry a faggot in
procession round the cathedral, and afterwards round Atcham
Church.[613]

Robert Segefeld, chaplain, in 1455, confessing immorality, is
sentenced to public penance in his chapel and in the cathedral, and to
pay 6_s._ 8_d._ to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. This penance consisted in
walking barefoot, in linen vestments (_pannis lineis_), carrying a
candle before the procession, on a Sunday.[614]

Thomas Ferby, December 7, 1456, prayed to be released from the
excommunication he had incurred for procuring the celebration of a
clandestine marriage in St. Paul’s Cray Church. As a penance, he was
ordered to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury on Easter Day,
and there offer a wax taper of one pound weight. The like offering was
to be made to St. Blaize at Bromley and in Chislehurst Church. In
addition, he was to allow exhibitions to two scholars at Oxford for
two years. Ferby afterwards came to an understanding with his
diocesan, and was dismissed from the suit. In the next February, John,
chaplain of Paul’s Cray, doubtless the priest who had officiated on
the occasion, swore before the bishop, in the cathedral, not to offend
again, and was absolved.[615] He redeemed his penance by taking an
oath to pay a mark at Lady Day in that and the two ensuing years.[616]

The bishops had to deal, not only with the moral offences of the clergy, but also with the occasional crimes committed by members of this privileged class. Degradation from Orders, and imprisonment with penitential discipline, seems to have been the usual mode of punishment. We have seen that a Constitution of Archbishop Boniface, 1260, directed every bishop to have in his diocese one or two prisons for confining clerics flagitious in crime, or convicted by canonical censure, and that any cleric committing a crime such that if he were a layman he would, according to the secular law, suffer the extreme penalty, should be adjudged to perpetual imprisonment.

This spiritual power was strong enough to cope with the most powerful
offenders. We all remember how Henry II., able and powerful king as he
was, submitted to discipline at the hands of the monks of Canterbury
Cathedral, before the shrine of St. Thomas.

The turbulent Fulke de Breauté, in the reign of Henry III., had
plundered St. Alban’s Abbey and taken some refugees out of its
sanctuary. Being warned by the saint in a dream, he offered himself at
the monastery to suffer penance; and there despoiled of his clothes,
with his knights similarly stripped, bearing in hand a rod, “which is
vulgarly called baleis,” and confessing his fault, he received the
discipline from each of the brothers on his naked flesh.[617] He
refused, however, to make restitution.

When Thomas of Cantilupe was Bishop of Hereford (1275-1283), Lord
Clifford plundered his cattle and ill-treated his tenants. When
summoned by the bishop to make amends for his misconduct, he offered
to do so by a money payment; but the bishop compelled him to walk
barefoot as a penitent to the altar, while the bishop himself
inflicted chastisement upon him as he walked.[618]

John Langton, Bishop of Chichester, c. 1314, excommunicated Earl
Warren for adultery. The earl came to Chichester and endeavoured to
seize the bishop; but Langton and his servants not only repelled the
attack, but captured the earl and his retinue and put them all in
prison.

The accompanying plate is from Lydgate’s “Life of Edmund VI.” (Harl. 2278, f. 108 and f. 108 v.). Preceding it is a picture of five knights issuing from the gate of the abbey laden with plunder, and keeping the monks at bay at the sword’s point; next this picture of the knights stripped to their drawers, making their submission to the abbot and his clerks at the shrine of the saint. Between the two pictures the story is told thus:

Knightes of yoe of malice and ravyne,
Agen the fredom of Edmund ful confiable,
Habergowned and in platis fyne,
Entered his court, took hors out yf his stable,
With swerdes drawe to shewe hemself vengable,
Lyst any man wolde make resistence,
Hadde forth the pray beytort violence.

But sodenly thus with hem it stood,
Or they passyd the boūdes of the gate,
Travayled with furye and echon was wood,
Repented, after offered up mayl and plate,
Confessed, assoiled, in cronycle set the date,
Ever after off hool affeccion,
Hadde to the martyr gret devocion.

We must bear in mind that these were the days when civil penalties included the stocks and the pillory and whipping through the streets at a cart’s tail.

In 1344, a sheriff’s officer, who slew a rector, resisting the attempt
to arrest him, was, with his followers, condemned to walk, stripped to
their breeches, like the knights at St. Edmund’s, round the principal
churches of the district, and to be whipped at the door of each
church.[619] And such instances might be indefinitely multiplied.

About 1284, Archbishop Peckham made a provincial visitation, in which
he exercised severe discipline on both clergy and laity. For example,
in Lichfield Diocese, the bishop being a foreigner and non-resident,
the archbishop sent a public summons to him to reside, on penalty of
deprivation, telling him that since he could not preach to his people,
he was the rather bound to reside among them, and to spend his revenue
in hospitality and relieving the poor. In Chichester Diocese, he
inflicted upon one John Ham, a priest, convicted of immorality, a
three years’ penance of fasting, prayers, and pilgrimage, during which
time the profits of his living were sequestrated to the poor. In
Wilts, being informed that Sir Osborn Gyfford had carried off two nuns
from the Monastery of Wilton, he proceeded to excommunication against
him, and only consented to remit the censure on these conditions: that
he should be stripped to the waist on three Sundays in Wilton Parish
Church and beaten with rods; the discipline to be publicly repeated
both in the market-place and parish church of Shaftesbury; should fast
for three months, and go on a three years’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem;
should not wear a sword, or appear in the habit of a gentleman.

Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, instituted an inquiry into the morals of
the laity as well as clergy in his diocese, but the king, Henry III.,
interposed, and obliged him to desist.

But to come to a different class of offenders, and to various kinds of misdoing. It will be enough to select a few examples.

1253. Hugo de Berewyk found surety of ten marks to behave properly to
his wife, and he was sentenced, for “that he had long been
excommunicate, that without shoes or girdle or [sword ?] he should
receive the discipline in the porch of the Church of Gysele, before
the whole procession, once on the day of the Holy Trinity, a second
time on the day of St. John Baptist, and the third time on the day of
SS. Peter and Paul.”[620]

When Bishop Ralph, of Bath and Wells, in 1348, visited Ilchester, the
people of the place made a riot, attacked the bishop and his people,
and shut them up in the church for some hours, till they were rescued
by the well-affected. The riot was punished by excommunication of the
offenders, and interdict of the Church. One of the ringleaders, Roger
Warmville, was tried at Taunton by the Commissary, and sentenced to
penance. He was to walk on three several occasions, bareheaded and
barefoot, round Ilchester Church, in front of the procession made on
Sundays and feast days, holding a candle, which he was to present at
the altar during mass, while a chaplain declared his sin to the
congregation in the vulgar tongue. Moreover, he was to be flogged
thrice on market days at Ilchester, Wells, Bath, Glastonbury, and
Somerton; he was to pay a fine of £20, and make a pilgrimage to
Canterbury in honour of St. Thomas the Martyr.[621]

In 1474, a case of homicide between the Lamberts and the Knolls, by
the award of Wm. Blackburn, Canon of Bolton, it was awarded and
ordained that Thomas, Henry, Richard, Stephen and Thomas Knoll of
Floder, “come to the parish church of Preston, and there in tyme of
service, kneling on their knees, loose gerded, ask God forgivenes of
ye dethe of Henrie Lambert, and ask forgivenes of his fader John
Lambert, and pay xl marks to ye behofe of Jo. Lambert and his
children, unto Ric. Pilkinton, Esq., on the awter of St. Nicholas, in
the parish church of Skypton.”[622]

All kinds of offences were dealt with by similar penalties. Richard
Ram confessing that he had not paid the tithe of his corn to his
rector of Cliffe, in 1363, was sentenced to carry a sheaf of corn on
his shoulder to the altar of Cliffe Church, and there to offer it and
the value of the tithe withheld.[623]

Among the cases recorded in the “Proceedings of the Courts of Durham,”
p. 26, we find, in a case of immorality, the man sentenced to receive
four “fustigations” round the church, and the woman two.

For non-attendance at church on Sundays, we have already quoted
several cases (p. 201).

In 1480, nine parishioners of Halling and Snodland[624] were summoned
to the court for playing tennis on Thursday in Whitsun-week in time of
matins and mass. They pleaded guilty, and took an oath to perform
whatever penance the bishop might impose. The sentence was that those
of Snodland should walk barefoot after the procession on the following
Sunday, each carrying a taper worth a halfpenny, which they should
offer at the Holy Cross. The Halling men were to do the like, with
this difference, that they were each to offer two tapers at the high
altar and two at the altar of St. John.

William Bek, of Cooling, was cited into the court of John Alcock
(1476-1486), Bishop of Rochester, in consequence of having been
detected by his wife and neighbours in eating meat on Fridays and
other fasts. Bek confessed his guilt, though he doubted if he had
offended in Lent, but pleaded that he was not responsible for his
actions, since his mind had been so much disturbed for three years
that he only knew Sunday because his wife on that day offered him the
consecrated bread. The plea did not avail. It was ordered that as a
penance he should be thrice whipped round Cooling Church, before the
procession, clad in a white cloth, with bare head and feet, and
carrying a taper of the value of one penny. Further, that on Friday he
should be whipped in Rochester market in like manner, and should offer
a taper at the shrine of St. William.[625]

Margaret Reed, in 1469, is brought before the Court for using ill
language to Martha Howkett, in that she told her she was a “horse
godmother and waterwitch.” So, in 1560, Wm. Lee is reported to have
said to Bayle, who was reported to be a deacon at Durham, “Methenketh
ye goeth not lyk a man of the church, but lyk a ruffing.” To whom the
said Bayle answered, “What hast thou to do with my apparell or my
going? Thou art a slave and a knave to find fault with me.”[626]

There are many other instances of defamation, at p. 90, etc. Here is an example of a little later date than our period, which shows exactly what was the way of making amends for the offence of defamation:--

A confession to be made by Charles Shawe for slandering Bar. Mitforth
in St. Nicoles Church, in lynen apparell, after the reading of the
third chapter of St. James’ Epistle--

“Beloved neighbours, I am now comen hither to shewe myself sory for
slannderinge one Bartram Midforde, namely in that I called him openly
‘beggerly harlot and cutthrote,’ saying that he ‘was a covitous
snowge, and such as he by Godd’s worde aught to be weded out of the
Coomenwelthe.’ I acknowledge that thus to slannder my Xtian brother is
an heynouse offence, first towardes God, who hathe straightly
forbydden it in his holy lawes, accountyng it to be a kind of
murderinge my neighbour, and threatninge to punyshe it with hell fire
and the losse of the kyngdome of heavene. Also the Queen’s lawes,
against which I have stubbornely stande, doth grevously punyshe all
slannderers, backbiters, and sowers of discorde, debate, hatred, and
disquietnes, to the shame of the offenders and feare of others.
Agayne, my unruly tongue, if it were not punished, it wolde not only
set mo of you on fire, but also it wolde bolden others to do the like.
Wherefore, as I am now called back frome myne inordinate doinges by
this correction, with my coste and shame, so I beseche yow all to be
witnesses with me that I am sory frome the verrey bottome of my harte
for this and my other like offences against God, the Quene’s majestie,
and the said Bertram Mydforde; promysinge before God and you here
present, that I fully intende to amende my outerageous tonge and
wilfull behaviour, as maye please Almightie God, satisfye the Quene’s
lawes, and towrne to yur good example and myne owne sowle’s health;
for the obteyninge and performinge thereof I humbly beseche yow all,
with me and for me, to pray unto God as our Saviour Jesus Xt. himself,
beinge on earth, taught us, sayinge ‘Our Father,’ etc. A.D.
1570.”[627]

A suit was begun in 1458 against John Andrew of Cobham and Margery
Allyn, late of Shorne, for having clandestinely married while a
matrimonial cause was pending between her and Richard Coke. They were
sentenced, December 20, to be whipped “after the manner of penitents”
once in Rochester market and thrice round their parish church. Walter
Crepehogg, who had promoted the marriage, was thought the worst
offender, for besides _six_ whippings he was condemned to carry a
torch worth 6_s._ 8_d._ to the altar of the cathedral, and to make a
similar offering to St. Blaize at Bromley.[628]

Occasionally a contumacious person resisted the sentence. For example--

In 1315, Lady Plokenet [Plucknet] directed by will that she should be
buried in Sherborne Church. Her son, Sir Alan, probably to save
expense, buried her “in a less dignified place.” The bishop sent him
orders by the Rector of Dowlish Wake, who was the Rural Dean of
Crewkerne, to obey his mother’s request. Falling into a rage at this,
the knight rushed on the dean, caught him by the throat, and choaked
him by twisting his hood, and even caused him to bleed. The dean got
away, and fled. At Haslebury, however, Sir Alan and his men caught
him, and there the knight made him eat the bishop’s letter, and chew
and swallow the wax seals. For this he was excommunicated, but made
due submission.[629]

In the “Proceedings of the Durham Court” we read that--

John Doffenby, being a person excommunicate, did come into Mitfourth
Church in tyme of service, and being admonished to depart thrice,
would not, but gave evil language, saying that he cared not for the
commissary and his laws, nor for the curate, and bade them come who
durst and carry him out of the church; whereupon the curate was driven
to leave off service at the gospel. It does not appear what was the
end of the case.

Agnes Hebburne, 1454, having been sentenced to do penance in _pannis
lineis_, impudently pleaded that she had not a fit smock, and was not
able to buy one; whereupon the judge ordered her to do her penance in
a “tunica habens unam vestem vocatur le napron.”

There are some pictorial illustrations of the subject in the illuminated MSS. The scourging of Henry II. before the shrine of Becket is often portrayed. In the Omne Bonum (Royal, 6 Ed. VI., f. 218 v.) is a very curious picture of a priest giving the discipline to a penitent kneeling before him;[630] and at f. 443 (6 E. VII.), a man scourging himself on the bare back in his bedroom. In a Pontifical printed at Venice, 1520, f. 155, penitents in their shirts are kneeling before the bishop; a man kneeling to a priest who lays the rod of absolution on his shoulder, at 203 v., and Reconciliation of Penitents at the end of Lent, f. 177.

There are two sides to most questions, and what a man will say upon any question depends upon his point of view. What we are told of clergy and laity of those ages by courts of discipline which dealt exclusively with their peccadilloes, and by the satirists whose motive was the scourging of the peccators, gives us one side of the subject. Nobody took the trouble to tell the obvious, uninteresting story of the ruck of parsons of respectable character who were doing their daily round of duty, Sunday and workaday, fairly well, except Chaucer, and he--great student of human life and manners that he was--while scourging with a whip of scorpions the faults of monks and friars, and pardoners and “sompnours,” completes his gallery of ecclesiastical characters with the loveliest portrait of the typical parish priest.

The inquisitorial meddling of the courts of spiritual discipline, their pecuniary exactions and shameful penances, were by no means the least of the abuses which made men cry out for a reformation.

* * * * *

In connection with this system of discipline was the custom of pronouncing a general sentence of excommunication in church several times a year which is mentioned by John Myrc (p. 238). We may add here that it was not at all uncommon to try to bring an unknown thief to make restitution by the threat of a sentence of excommunication; thus Bishop Thomas, in 1376, at the request of Philip de Nevile, directs all the clergy to give notice that some persons unknown have knowingly detained a very valuable hawk, and they are to restore it within ten days on pain of the greater excommunication.[631] Two years afterwards (1378), the same bishop excommunicates certain persons who have stolen some “merlions” from his forest of Wesdale, and destroyed their nests.[632] On the other hand, the old Saxon system of purgation of oath still continued, _e.g._ in 1458, William Godthank, accused of theft, appeared in Gnosall Church, Lichfield, with eight of his neighbours, and standing before the altar he swore that he was innocent, and his neighbours that they believed him, whereupon the bishop threatened excommunication against any one who should in future slander him.[633]

Archbishop Peckham’s third constitution at Reading (1279) orders the General Excommunications to be explained to the people on the Sundays after every Rural Chapter, and the archdeacons to see that it is done.[634]