In the middle ages however the townspeople were connected with their parish church after a fashion which has long been unknown among us. They were frequently the lay rectors; they appointed the wardens and churchwardens; they had control of the funds, and the administration of lands left for maintaining its services and fabric; sometimes they laid claim to the fees paid for masses.[294] The popular interest might even extend to the criticism and discipline of the rector; so that in Bridport an enquiry of the bishop as to whether his chaplain, “a foreigner from Britanny,” was “drunk every day” was held in presence of “a copious multitude of the parishioners,” and twelve townsmen acted as witnesses.[295] If a religious guild had become identified with the corporation, the town body and the Church were united by a yet closer tie. The corporation of Plymouth, which on its other side was the Guild of our Lady and St. George, issued its instructions even as to the use of vestments in St. Andrews, ruling when “the best copes and vestments” should be used at funerals, and how “the second blue copes” only might be displayed at the burial of any man who died without leaving to the Church an offering of twenty shillings.[296]
The people on their side were taxed, and heavily taxed, for the various expenses of the Church.[297] Sergeants sent by the Town Council collected under severe penalties the dues for the blessed bread and “trendilles” of wax, or “light-silver” for the lights burned beside dead bodies laid in the church; and the town treasury paid for “coals for the new fire on Easter Eve.”[298] If a church had to be repaired or rebuilt the pressure of spiritual hopes or fears, the habit of public duty, the boastfulness of local pride, all the influences that might stimulate the common effort, were raised to their highest efficiency by the watchful care of the corporation. All necessary orders were sent out by the mayor, who with the Town Council determined the share which the inhabitants were to take in the work; and in small and destitute parishes where the principle of self-help and independence was quite as fully recognized as it was in bigger and richer towns, real sacrifices were demanded. Men gave their money or their labour or the work of their horse and cart, or they offered a sheep or fowls, or perhaps rings and personal ornaments.[299] In the pride of their growing municipal life the poorest boroughs built new towers and hung new chimes worthy of the latest popular ideals. The inhabitants of Totnes were so poor that in 1449 there were only three people in the town who paid as much as twentypence for the tax of half-tenths and fifteenths for the King. But since Totnes had four new bells which had been anointed and consecrated in 1442, it decided that the old wooden belfry of the parish church should be replaced by a new stone tower. A master mason was appointed in 1448, and “supervisors” were chosen to visit the bell towers of all the country round and to make that at Totnes “according to the best model.” The proctors of the church provided shovels and pick-axes, and the parishioners were called out to dig stones from the quarry; every one who had a horse was to help in carrying the stones, “but without coercion,” while “those who have no horses of their own are to work with the horses of other persons, but at their own cost.” Last of all an ordinance was made that the mayor, vicar, and proctors of the church should go round to each parishioner and see how much he would give to the collection on Sundays for the bell tower, and those who contributed nothing were to have their names entered on a roll and sent to the Archdeacon’s Court.[300] When St. Andrews at Plymouth was enlarged the town authorities decided that the money should be collected by means of a yearly “church-ale.” Taverns were closed by order of the council on a certain day, and every ward of the town made for itself a “hale” or booth in the cemetery of the parish church. All inhabitants of the wards were commanded to come with as many friends and acquaintances as possible “for the increasing of the said ale,” and to bring with them “except bread and drink such victual as they like best”; but they must buy at the “hale” “bread and ale as it cometh thereto for their dinners and suppers the same day.” After ten years of these picnics in the churchyard the new aisle of St. Andrews was finished at a cost of £44 14_s._ 6_d._[301]