The first thing to which attention is naturally directed is the number of parishes, and a comparison with the number in the "Taxatio" two centuries before. The enumeration is not free from difficulties, but the figures given may be taken as approximately correct.
We make out that the totals are as follows:--Total number of parishes, 8838; of vicarages, 3307; of chapels, 536; of chantries, 1733.[424]
Comparing these figures with those of the "Taxatio," it will be seen that the total number of parishes had increased very little in the interval, though the population of the country had increased from about 2,200,000 to about 4,350,000 souls.
This may be accounted for partly by the fact that the growth of population had caused the creation of few new centres of population, but only the increase of the populations of the existing centres. There were very few, if any, new towns or new parishes in the towns, but the old towns had grown larger; there were few new rural parishes, but the villages had a larger population; so that there was little increase in the number of parish priests, but each priest ministered to a larger flock; where new centres of population had sprung up, their wants were supplied by a chapel and its chaplain. The increase in the means of supplying the spiritual wants of the increased population had taken the form of the employment of Domestic Chaplains and Gild Chaplains, and the foundation of Chantries, which we shall have to deal with in subsequent chapters.
The next question to which we turn is the income of the Church as a whole, and of the parochial benefices in particular, and a comparison in this respect also between the "Taxatio" and the "Valor."
The ostentation of minute accuracy on the part of the taxers is almost ludicrous, the princely income of the Bishop of Lincoln is returned at £1962 17_s._ 4-1/2_d._ In dividing a sum of money among the minor canons of that cathedral, the accountant points out that a farthing remained over, which was indivisible; and in dividing the gross income of the benefices by ten, it was constantly recorded that there was a remainder of so much, which was "undecimable."
Very few new religious houses were founded after the thirteenth century; the cause was not so much that the Statute of Mortmain interposed a check to the free action of pious munificence, as that there was a general recognition that enough had been done in this direction. The two thousand chantries which had been founded in the two centuries probably did not average £5 a year income, and did not swell the general income by so much as £10,000 a year. The parochial benefices are seen, by actual comparison of the figures, to have increased in nominal amount of income, but the purchasing value of money had decreased, so that the real value of the benefices was probably somewhat less. The produce of the annual tenths would seem to indicate that the income of the Church had largely diminished, for whereas we have seen that by the "Taxatio" of 1291 it amounted to £20,000, we learn, from a letter of Henry VII., to the Bishop of Chichester, that it had fallen by that time to £10,000; the Bishop of Oxford[425] attributes this to the multiplication of exemptions, especially of livings under ten marks.