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various forms of contribution in different places; as, for example, special payments for "the holy loaf," or blessed bread. An examination of the various extant churchwardens' accounts will show that these officials were never at a loss to obtain money from their fellow-parishioners when they needed it for any special purpose. One great resource, which apparently never failed them, took the form of social meetings at the Church House, or elsewhere; but as to these gatherings more will have to be said in a subsequent chapter.

CHAPTER VII

THE PARISH CHURCH SERVICES

S the church was from the earliest times the centre

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of the parish, and the priest the head of his flock and the chief person-the parson-of the district, it is natural to look for the first indications of all parochial life in the church itself. From the cradle to the grave, as it has often been said, through the clergy, religion extended its care to every soul, and exerted its influence over man, woman, and child in every parochial district, mainly by means of the Church services and the administration of the Christian Sacraments. In this and the following chapter it is proposed to examine the nature and extent of these influences in pre-Reformation parochial life.

Daily Mass.-In the first place it is proper to speak of the perpetual round of prayer and Eucharistic sacrifice known as the daily Mass. Archbishop Cranmer, in his works on the "Supper," testifies to the devotion of the people generally to their morning Mass. He represents them as "saying, 'This day have I seen my Maker;' and 'I cannot be quiet except I see my Maker once a day.' The Mass was regarded, as the author of Dives and Pauper says, as "the highest prayer that holy church can devise for the salvation of the quick and

the dead," in which "the priest offereth up the highest sacrifice and the best offering that any heart can devise, that is Christ, God's Son in Heaven, under the form of bread and wine."

According to Lyndwood's gloss on Archbishop Peckham's Constitution, every priest in those days was supposed to offer up his Mass as frequently as possible, unless he was prevented by some bodily infirmity, or some personal and adequate reason made him abstain from daily celebration. In that case, very frequently, the parishioners would themselves provide for the morning Mass to be said by some paid chaplain. In one case, in the diocese of London, in the fourteenth century, the people seriously complain to their bishop that their vicar will not secure the services of a chaplain and a clerk, for whom they had agreed to pay, to give them Mass "every day."

At Henley-on-Thames, in 1482, "the Mayor and Commonalty" arranged that the priest of the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary should say Mass every day at 6 a.m., and the chantry priest of St. Katherine's at 8 o'clock. In large churches, where there were many chaplains and chantry priests, the Masses followed one another continuously: thus, for example, at Lincoln Cathedral the early morning Mass was said at 5 o'clock each day in St. Chad's Chapel, but the chaplain, whose duty it was to say it, was not bound to be at midnight Matins. The same may be said of Lichfield. The other daily Masses were to be each hour, from 6 a.m. till 10, when the High Mass was begun. After the consecration of this sung Mass, the last daily Mass, intended for travellers, was to be begun.

These early morning Masses were called by various names, of which "Morrow Mass" and "Jesu Mass" were the most common. In the Chantry Certificates a great number of entries of parcels of lands, etc., for the support of some daily Mass in the early morning, show how popular this service was in pre-Reformation days. In one place, in the county of Nottingham, the chantry suppressed is declared to have been founded for a priest "to say Mass every morning before sonne rysing, for such as be travellers by the way, and to maintain God's service there; which town is also a thoroughfare towne." At Barnards' Castle, the Guild of Holy Trinity paid for a priest "to say Mass daily at six o'clock in the morning, and to be resident at Matins, Mass, and Evensong, and to keep a free grammar school and a song school for all the children of the town." At Ipswich, "Mr. Alfrey's chantry was founded for a priest to sing the Morowe Mass,' in the parish church at St. Matthew;" whilst at Newark the chantry priest of St. Mary Magdalene's had to say Mass for the people at 4 o'clock in the morning. Most of the instances recorded show that the "Morrow Mass," whether at daybreak or at 4 or 5 or 6 o'clock, was endowed by benefactors with the revenues of lands or tenements. Sometimes, however, the stipend of the priest was paid by money collected for the purpose from the parishioners. At Bury St. Edmunds, for instance, the greater part of the necessary money for the early-mass priest was "gathered wekely of the devotion of the parishioners." The churchwardens' accounts of St. Edmund's and St. Thomas's, Salisbury, show that a certain "fraternity" paid for a priest to say "the Morrow Masse of Jesus," they also paid

for a torch and 6 lbs. of tallow candles for "the said Morrowe Masse prest in Wynter." In the parish of St. Peter-Cheap, London, the Wardens paid the stipend for a curate to say Mass every morning at six o'clock, and the wages of a clerk to serve him.

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At St. Martin's Outwich, London, the sum of 33s. 4d. was found each half-year as the reward of the priest who said the Morrow Mass. In 1472, one of the parishioners of St. Mary-at-Hill, London, left to the churchwardens of the church certain lands and houses to find a priest to say Mass daily, "immediately after the morowe masse, in the said church of St. Mary, to be sung, yf the morowe masse in the same chirche be continued as heretofore it was wont to be and now is used, or ellse in defaute of the same morowe masse, that my said Prieste syng daily reasonable tymely his masse in stede and tyme of the morrowe masse. after saying that this chaplain will, of course, assist at all the church services, the donor adds: "also that the said Priest say every werkeday in the said Chirch of Seynt Mary atte hill, his matens, pryme and hours, evensong and complene and all his other prayers and services, by hymself or with his felowes preestes of the same chirch." In this church also the accounts show that the wardens paid one of the priests an extra fee of 5s. a quarter for taking the "Morowe Masse."

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At St. Mary Woolnoth, to take but one more example, Symonde Eyre, sometime Mayor of London, and draper, established a fraternity of our Blessed Lady St. Mary the Virgin. There was to be a "Mass by note" and also "two psalms by note," one in honour of Our Lady, the other in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, to be sung by a priest,

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