In the same parish church, the chantry of St. Mary Magdalene was “founded by William Evers, late vicar of Leeds, to pray for the soul of the founder and all Christian souls, to minister at the altar of St. Mary Magdalene, to keep one yearly obit, with seven shillings to be distributed, and to serve in the choir at divine service all holy days and festival days, as appears by the foundation deed thereof, dated A.D. 1524.”[386]
One more example may be taken out of the hundreds in these volumes: “The chantry, or donative, within the chapel of Holbecke in the parish of Leeds, ‘the incumbent is used to say daily mass there and is taken for a stipendiary priest paying tithes. And there is a great river between the said parish church and the chapel, whereby they can by no means often pass to the said church.… The said chantry is distant from the said parish church one mile. The necessity thereof is to do divine service according to the foundation.’”[387]
A few words enforcing the lesson to be learned from these extracts taken from the preface to the second part of these interesting Yorkshire records may be here given. Mr. Page, the editor, says: “Up to the time of the Reformation nearly all education was maintained by the church, and when the chantries were dissolved practically the whole of the secondary education of the country would have been swept away, had not some provision for the instruction of the middle and lower classes been made by continuing, under new ordinances, some of the educational endowments which pious founders had previously provided.”[388]
“The next most important class of foundations, some of which were continued under the commission … consisted of the chapels of ease, which were much required in extensive parishes with a scattered population, and had been generally founded by the parishioners for their own convenience. It seems, therefore, that the dissolution of these chapels was a peculiar hardship. As early as 1233, the Pope granted licence to the archbishop of York to build oratories or chapels and to appoint to them priests, in places so distant from the parish churches that the people could with difficulty attend divine service, and the sick died before the priest could get to them to administer the last sacraments. The necessity for these chapels of ease was especially felt in Yorkshire, where the inhabitants of so many outlying hamlets were cut off from their parish churches in winter time by impassable roads and flooded rivers, which is the reason time after time assigned by the commissioners, for the necessity of the existence of such chapels; and yet comparatively few of them were recommended for continuance by Sir Walter Mildmay and Robert Kelway in the returns to the commission. Possibly, it was the loss of the endowments of Ayton chapel which occasioned the insurrection at Leamer … which chapel the inhabitants so piously kept up afterwards at their own expense.”[389]