There are records which are more distasteful even than those which tell of taking dogs to church. When we read of card-playing and cock-fighting in church, we are really compelled to regard these as acts of wanton impiety which marked a period of deadness in religion. The records are certainly sporadic. Again, there is good reason to believe the tradition, met with at Chislehurst and elsewhere, that parishioners left the house of prayer and walked across the green to the cockpit. At Hayes, in Middlesex, it is said that the uncouth and brutal custom of throwing at cocks in the churchyard was kept up so late as A.D. 1754[449].
It has been a difficult feat to disentangle the secular use of the nave from that of the churchyard. The reason is simple: the play of social and administrative forces was rarely quite balanced and continuously uniform for any considerable length of time. Alternately, the church and the graveyard were utilized for parochial purposes, as ecclesiastical power and public opinion rose and fell. In addition, before the final severance was made, there was a period when assemblies were allowed to be held in the churchyard, on sufferance only. We have seen that, when fairs and markets were impending, the clergy sometimes permitted the church to be used as a warehouse or exchange. Contemporaneously with, as well as subsequently to, this use of the church, we find the traders being pushed into the churchyard, and thence to the village green, or a pasture field.
The village fair was commonly held on the day which was dedicated to the patron saint of the church. This coincidence often proves helpful to the investigator, for when the original dedication of a church has been lost, it may perhaps be recovered by noticing the date of the fair, which gives the anniversary of the saint[450]. (The saint’s day and the dedication festival are not now always coincident, but the divergence may not be a primitive feature.) The agreement of dates doubtless takes us back to the days when Christianity had not yet become supreme, and when the leaders took advantage of any casual support, such as would be obtained by holding the patronal festival on a day devoted to the affairs of popular assemblies or the pleasures of a general holiday. Naturally, there long remained a close connection between the feast and the church fabric which was the centre of much of the activity of the community. When fairs, in the strict sense, began to be held, the old date of the feast would still be retained. For many a century, too, no serious attempt was made to deprive the merry-makers of the right to meet within the sacred enclosure. Farmers came to buy or sell stock, labourers stood for hire, merchants arrived from distant towns to trade in wool or grain, pedlars spread their wares on the tombstones in the churchyard, while the populace gave itself over to pastime and refreshment.