Personnel

Much of the impact of the church depended on its personnel, the clergy. Answers to questions about who the medieval clergy were, their origins and how they lived are difficult to find before the mid-thirteenth century. Most are invisible or just names until the late medieval period, when sources become more numerous. Even so there are considerable gaps and problems; most statistics should be regarded as estimates. For this reason much of the detail of the following discussion focuses on the period after 1250.

The clergy had a separate status from the rest of medieval society. This separateness was immediately visible in their appearance: their tonsures and their dress, sober for seculars and a habit for regulars. Appearance, however, was an unreliable guide. The higher clergy were inclined to dress ostentatiously and the tonsure was worn by all who had started the process of ordination but not necessarily completed it. Ordination, a seven-stage process culminating in the priesthood, was the most important distinction between the clergy and laity. The first four stages, minor orders, did not require a commitment to a clerical career and were undertaken by many who went no further. Major orders, subdeacon, deacon and priest, marked full membership of the clergy and from the mid-twelfth century required celibacy, another distinguishing feature. The separateness of the clerical estate was also recognized in the legal privilege of benefit of clergy and their own parliamentary representation. The clergy were divided into two groups, the regular clergy, monks, nuns and friars, who lived according to a rule, and the secular clergy, parish clergy, chantry priests and cathedral canons, who lived in the world.

The size of the clerical population is difficult to measure, especially for the early medieval period. In some respects it is an impossible task given all the variables and problems with the evidence. However, from the thirteenth century rough estimates can be made based on the number of parishes and religious houses and more precise surviving evidence, clerical poll taxes and ordination and visitation records. There was a remarkable and rapid expansion of the regular clergy in the twelfth century; numbers rose from about 4,500 in 1100 to over 12,000 by the early thirteenth century, a 250 per cent increase. The best estimates for the secular clergy in the thirteenth century suggest a total of 33,000, using an average of 3.5 clergy per parish. Around 1300 there were about 50,000 male clergy, of whom 15,000 were regulars; together they formed roughly 1 per cent of the population. The number of regulars peaked at around 15,000 in the early fourteenth century. The Black Death had a catastrophic impact on clerical numbers with an average mortality rate of 45 per cent among beneficed clergy and 50 per cent in religious houses. Despite this, numbers picked up in the immediate aftermath until the 1370s and 1380s. The poll-tax figures of 1377-81, though inexact, give a figure of 33,500 male clerics, added to which there were some 3,000 friars not subject to the tax. By the early fifteenth century there were about 12,000 regulars, two-thirds of their pre-Black Death numbers, after which numbers remained stable until 1500. Ordination records show a serious decline among the secular clergy from the end of the fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth century followed by a recovery, especially from the 1470s and 1480s to the Reformation. Around 1500 there were some 26,500 secular clergy and 12,000 regulars, a total of 38,500, who formed nearly 2 per cent of the population.

The 18,000 regular clergy around 1320 were made up of roughly 3,500 Benedictines, 2,000 Cistercians, 3,900 Augustinian and other canons, 5,300 friars and 3,300 nuns. With the exception of the friars who formed 30 per cent and the Cistercians 11 per cent, the remaining orders and nuns formed roughly 20 per cent each. These proportions hardly changed during the late medieval period; although in the fifteenth century Augustinians rose to 25 per cent and friars fell to 25 per cent. Each order went through a period of expansion followed by consolidation at a slightly lower level. The Benedictines peaked in the mid-twelfth century, the Cistercians and Augustinians in the early thirteenth and the friars a century later. Nuns were always a minority in the monastic community, about a fifth.2 A typical large house had between thirty and fifty monks, sometimes more, and a small house about a dozen.

The origins of the regular clergy, whether geographical, social or educational, are often obscure. Evidence before 1300 is scarce. Even so, a broad pattern can be discerned at least for the Benedictines, though much less clearly for other orders. The vibrancy of twelfth - and early thirteenth-century monasticism attracted members of baronial and knightly families and the upper levels of urban society. By the later medieval period recruitment was narrower, partly because of the smaller number of sons born to these families. Fifteenth-century monks of Durham were typically drawn from a thirty-five-mile radius of the city and from the middle and lower ranks of landed society, from the yeomanry rather than gentry.3 A similar pattern has been found among East Anglian nuns from 1350 to 1540 where parish rather than upper gentry predominated, and most came from within a ten-mile radius of the house they entered.4 The absence of aristocratic monks from sixteenth-century cloisters helps explain the relative ease with which the Dissolution was carried out: there were few from the upper levels of society to defend them from royal attacks. All monasteries were supposed to make local provision for the education of their monks, especially their novices who were usually admitted in their late teens. For friars academic training was also desirable because of their role in preaching. The friars developed a hierarchy of schools leading to advanced theological study at the universities. From the late thirteenth century other orders encouraged university study. Study in monasteries, however, was less important than prayer. Gluttonous monks quickly became a satirical stereotype and, as we have seen, by the later middle ages some conformed to this image, at least in the larger Benedictine houses. With such a standard of living, late medieval monks could expect a relatively long life; fifteenth-century Durham monks lived until their late fifties, longer than most of the rest of the population. A monastic career may seem a contradiction in terms, but one certainly existed. At its apex were bishoprics and abbacies, below an extensive range of administrative offices, fifteen or twenty in a large abbey, whose holders were known as obedientiaries.

Modern discussions of the secular clergy still largely follow the agenda set by medieval papal and episcopal reformers with its emphasis on clerical faults, the ignorance of the parish clergy and the pluralism and absenteeism of the higher clergy. This has tended to generate critical stereotypes, which historians are only now beginning to challenge as the contributions of the parish and higher clergy are reassessed more positively. In a very real sense there were ‘two nations’ in the secular clergy, the beneficed and the unbeneficed. The beneficed minority enjoyed the security and income, however modest, of an ecclesiastical living. Appointment to a benefice was made by a patron, usually either a bishop, religious house, the crown or a lay magnate. The unbeneficed majority had no living or security and were hired like servants, usually with low wages. The beneficed can in turn be divided into two groups: the higher clergy and the rest. The higher clergy, the sublimes et litterati to use a contemporary definition, were the elite of the medieval church and comprised bishops, archdeacons and canons. Apart from a handful who rose to be cardinals, the episcopate was the pinnacle of this elite. With only seventeen sees in England, its members formed a very small group, though they had much in common with the rest of the higher clergy from which most bishops were drawn. Royal service was the surest route to a bishopric throughout the middle ages; between 1070 and 1225 45 per cent were royal clerks. Ecclesiastical service, noble birth, scholarship and holiness, in roughly that order of priority, were the other less important routes; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a university education was increasingly a prerequisite. Though high birth eased the path, nobly born bishops were always a minority of the episcopate. The episcopate enjoyed wealth on a similar scale to the nobility and played a central role in governing the kingdom.

The rest of the higher clergy numbered perhaps 500 in the later middle ages. Their origins and careers were very similar to those of the episcopate. As well as occupying the senior and middle ranks of royal administration they were a vital part of diocesan administration serving as its workhorses; canonries and other benefices were their remuneration. By the fifteenth century they too were overwhelmingly drawn from the university educated. Unlike the majority of clergy they were often highly mobile in their careers. Most were drawn from the middle ranks of landed society, from the county and parish gentry, the yeomanry and the merchants and ruling oligarchy in towns. Few came from humbler backgrounds. With incomes from benefices worth from ?20 to ?100 (using the 1291 valuation) and rising to several hundred pounds for the richest, these often ambitious careerist clergy lived comfortably and expansively like the gentry. Of the three faults most commonly attributed to them, pluralism, the holding of several benefices simultaneously, absenteeism and financial irregularities, the latter was the most serious. Though the church condemned pluralism, it recognized the need for talented administrators who would be absent from their benefices and tried to regulate the practice by licensing it. The financial irregularities of the higher clergy were less effectively confronted. Simony, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices, had been largely eradicated by the end of the twelfth century. However, the rapid exchange of benefices, sometimes of widely differing values, and the practice of resigning a benefice with a generous pension were widespread among ambitious clergy and suggest something close to simony.

The remaining beneficed clergy consisted of rectors, vicars, chantry priests of perpetual chantries and the minor clergy of cathedrals and collegiate churches. What distinguished them from the higher clergy was the lack of a career or a small-scale one below diocesan level. They were less likely to be graduates or pluralists and had smaller incomes, below ?10 for most rectories and vicarages, and around ?5 for chantry priests. Most were recruited from the dioceses where they were beneficed but their social background is less clear. The little surviving evidence suggests yeoman, rich peasant, merchant and craftsman origins, though some gentry occupied rectories in the patronage of their families. They lived more modestly, according to their income, but even the two priests of Munden’s chantry in Bridport, Dorset, with an annual expenditure of ?10-?12 in the 1450s, employed a servant and entertained two or three guests a week.5

The unbeneficed were in a real sense the most important of the medieval clergy: not only were they the majority, they did most of the pastoral work and had most contact with the laity. The typical medieval priest was unbeneficed. Generally the unbeneficed outnumbered the beneficed by two to one or more. Diocesan studies of Hereford, Lincoln and Worcester in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show they formed between 55 per cent and 83 per cent of the clerical population, findings confirmed by a recent study of Lichfield in the early sixteenth century.6 Three broad types of employment were open to them: parochial, intercessory and private. From the early thirteenth century it was usual for there to be assistant clergy in parishes; between two and five seem to have been widely achieved. These clergy, usually called chaplains, undertook a variety of functions, serving as chaplains for absentee incumbents, assistant clergy, and in the dependent chapels found in many parishes. The high demand for intercessory prayers for the dead brought considerable opportunities for employment both on a long-term basis and casually from funerals, prayers and masses, particularly in towns. Though some chantry priests had a reputation for laziness, forsaking the burdens of parish work for the ease of the chantry, many made important contributions to parish life, especially to the liturgy. Chaplains were widely employed in the households of the nobility and gentry, higher clergy, religious houses and the growing number of parish and town guilds. Only about 15 per cent, however, could eventually expect to find a benefice. Employment was uncertain for the unbeneficed and they led insecure lives.

The vast majority of the unbeneficed had their origins in the communities they served, often the same archdeaconry. Their social background, such as it is known, was similar to the beneficed. The minimum educational standards required for ordination make it unlikely that they came from the lowest levels of society, though there is some evidence of serfs being freed to enter the church. Their incomes were fixed in 1414 at eight or nine marks (?5.33-?6) for parish chaplains and seven marks (?4.66) for other chaplains. By 1500 seven marks was typical for all, but there would have been some opportunities to supplement these wages with casual earnings.

Historians have tended to underestimate both the role and contribution of the unbeneficed. The pessimists dismiss them as an unfit clerical proletariat. Echoing Sir Thomas More’s criticisms, they emphasize their ignorance and failings at a time when the increasingly educated laity were demanding more from the clergy. The optimists stress their basic education, pastoral strengths, their closeness to the lives of the people they ministered to and ability to perform the essential pastoral duties, saying the mass, hearing confessions and visiting the sick. Though not highly educated, they carried out their duties well enough to earn the respect of their communities, as many wills demonstrate. The success of the late medieval church in broadly satisfying the needs of the laity owes a good deal to them; they bore the brunt of pastoral work in the parishes.

This survey raises the question of to what extent the church was a career open to talent. While far from being a meritocracy, the church had significant meritocratic elements. Birth was not a prerequisite for high office; Thomas Beckington (d. 1465), the son of a weaver, rose to be bishop of Wells. Education provided a route for the able from humble families to reach the higher clergy. The late medieval records of Winchester College show the sons of college tenants being educated there, from where they went on to Oxford University and the prospect of a successful career; Beckington himself followed this route. However, education was expensive and access to it required either family resources or patronage. The church had substantial educational patronage and operated as a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Patronage was a vital factor in a successful career, giving access to benefices, education and service, and often distinguished the higher clergy from the beneficed and unbeneficed. Birth certainly eased access to it, but not exclusively, and it was partly chance that enabled connections to be made and a successful career to be launched.