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The Residentiary Canons of York the Fifteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Barrie Dobson
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Extract

No doubt the metropolitan church of St Peter of York, which celebrated its 1350th anniversary two years ago, has always been a difficult institution for the outsider to comprehend; but in the later middle ages its organisation was at its most formidably complex. The reasons for that complexity need no particular urging nor indeed explanation. Even more than other major medieval cathedrals York. Minster fulfilled a wide variety of very different and at times conflicting purposes. As the single largest church within the pre-Reformation ecclesia Anglicana it was inevitably committed to an especially elaborate series of acts of worship in choir, in nave and at the many subsidiary altars with which the cathedral literally abounded. As a house of God deliberately rebuilt and refurnished as magnificently as possible during the later middle ages, it provided a focus of spiritual allegiance for the inhabitants of York and Yorkshire as well as courting the attention of pilgrims and visitors from other parts of England. As the largest religious corporation in the region, York Minster was especially familiar to popes and kings as the most important agency through which the surplus wealth of northern churches and their parishes could be diverted to the professional ‘permanent civil service’ which administered the detailed operations of the English church and state. Most important of all, and despite the personal absence of the archbishop himself, the cathedral of York was still performing its original function as the administrative and judicial head-quarters of thenorthernprovinceinanage when ‘if wecome, therefore, to a general conclusion with regard to the organization of English dioceses in the fifteenth century, we find that it has become highly centralized’.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , April 1979 , pp. 145 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 See the survey, with fuller bibliographical references than can be provided here, in chapter II of A History of York Minster, ed. Aylmer, G. E. and Cant, R., Oxford 1977, 44–108Google Scholar(‘The Later Middle Ages, 1215–1500’). This present paper is an attempt to develop and extend some of the suggestions made towards the end of that chapter.

2 Thompson, A. H., The English Clergy and their Organization in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford 1947, 70Google Scholar; cf. Storey, R. L., Diocesan Administration in the Fifteenth Century (St. Anthony's Hall Publications no. 16, 1959), 23–6Google Scholar.

3 York Minster Library (hereafter cited as YML), H 2/3 (Chapter Acts, 1427–1504.), fol. 75.

4 The standard guide to the careers of all the fifteenth-century York residentiary canons known to have attended a university (with the exceptions of Henry Gillow and Thomas Portyngton) is of course provided by the relevant entries in Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500, Oxford 1957-1979Google Scholar, and A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500, Cambridge 1963Google Scholar, hereafter cited as B.R.U.O. and B.R.U.C. respectively. Additional information is often provided by Neve, Le, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglkanae 1300–1541, vi (Northern Province), compiled by Jones, B., London 1963Google Scholar. Of the various notes on York canons to be found in numerous volumes of the Surtees Society, much the most comprehensive and scholarly are those appended to ‘Documents relating to Visitations of the Diocese and Province of York’, in Miscellanea ii (Surtees Society, cxxvii, 1916)Google Scholar, ed. A. H. Thompson, 291–302 (hereafter cited as Visitations of York).

5 Hugh the Chantor, The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. Johnson, C., London 1961, 11Google Scholar; cf. History of York Minster 20–43.

6 Register of Walter Gray (Surtees Society, lvi, 1872), 155Google Scholar; Calendar of Papal Letters i. 115.

7 YML, E 1/1–59 passim.

8 A short account of the somewhat complex series of York chapter act and memoranda books will shortly be published in Miss Katherine Longley's new guide to the muniments of the dean and chapter of York. It should be added that a highly abbreviated calendar compiled by James Torre in the late seventeenth century (now YML, L 1/2) helps to compensate for the loss of a chapter act book which dated from the beginning of the fifteenth century.

9 E.g. the will of John Wodham, made on 7 March 1435, was proved nineteen days later before Dean Robert Booth, John Barnyngham, John Selowe and Thomas Morton, all residentiaries of the cathedral (YML, L 2/4, Reg. Test. i. fol. 240). Only occasionally does the York chapter seem to have delegated the probate of the wills of its own members to the auditor causarum (ibid., fol. 285V).

10 The Statutes etc. of the Cathedral Church of York, ed. Raine, J., Leeds 1900, 10–11Google Scholar. For a particularly well-documented instance of the various procedural forms (as fulfilled by Dean Robert Booth in 1479–80) see YML, H 2/3, fols. 166–9; and for a general discussion of the methods adopted elsewhere, see Edwards, K., The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn., Manchester 1967, 50–67Google Scholar.

11 YML, H 2/3, fol. 198.

12 York Statutes 11; see the exceptional case of William de Waltham who received no commons from the chamberlain between Whitsuntide and Martinmas 1402 ‘quia perfecit residenciam suam termino precedente’ (YML, E 1/36).

15 York Statutes 11.

14 The Fabric Rolls of York Minster, ed. Raine, J. (Surtees Society, xxxv, 1859), 200Google Scholar; Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Society, 1836-1902), iii. 1060Google Scholar.

15 YML, E 1/33, 40, 50–7; cf. York Statutes 14; Neve, Le, Fasti vi. 21, 23Google Scholar.

16 Thus William de Waltham made his will at Dunnington and William Pelleson his at Copmanthorpe, in 1416 and 1434, respectively (YML, Reg. Test. i. fol. 238; Testamenta Eboracmsia iii. 55).

17 Acts of the Chapter of Ripon (Surtees Society, lxiv, 1875), 148–247Google Scholar;Memorials of Ripon ii (Surtees Society, lxxxi, 1888), 196–7Google Scholar; Memorials of Beverley Minster ii (Surtees Society, cviii, 1957), 338–9Google Scholar; A History of St Paul's Cathedral, ed. Matthews, W. R. and Atkins, W. M., London 1957, 91Google Scholar.

18 Col. PapalLetters v. 79; cf. Visitations of York 301.

19 For a brief description of the rewards of residence at York, too complex a topic to be easily summarised here, see History of York Minster (above note 1), 52–62.

20 York Statutes 43; Cross, C., ‘From the Reformation to the Restoration’, in History of York Minster 197–8Google Scholar.

21 When Archbishop John Kempe visited the cathedral in 1440 complaint was made ‘de nimiis expensis in corwiviis in introitu faciendum residencias, ad quod nullum statutum artat: per quod multi impediuntur a residencia, qui alias vellent earn ad honorem Deifacere’ [Visitations of York 240). It was certainly required of canons in their major residence that they should spend considerable sums on meat and drink ‘tarn extraneis quam de civitate Ebor’ et ecdesia' (YML, H 2/3, fol. 198).

22 Neve, Le, Fasti vi. 7–8.Google Scholar

25 A quite representative example is John Marchall who was acting as a notary public at Oxford in 1424 and graduated there as a Bachelor of Canon and Civil Law by 1428 but was only admitted to minor residence at York in August 1448 (B.R.U.O. ii, 1228).

24 For these and similar references to the tenure of York residentiary canons see the details provided in the appendix to this paper.

25 YML, M 2(4) g, fols. 12, 16, 26; Memorials of Beverley Minster i (Surtees Society, xcviii, 1898), 62; YML, E 1/1–6.

26 YML, E 1/29–391 and see below, p. 174.

27 YML, H 2/3, fol. 213V; , Torre's ‘York Minster’, 174Google Scholar; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 11911.

28 Of the seven fifteenth-century archbishops of York, only Lawrence Booth (1476–80) was translated from a diocese in the northern province: he had been bishop of Durham from 1457 to 1476.

29 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 267, 327, 355; Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 232n., 236.

30 B.R.U.O. i. 601; Col. Pat. Rolls, 1476–85, 207. William de Waltham was a membe r of a large clerical affinity associated with Waltham near Grimsby an d related to Archbishop Thoresby of York (1352–73): see Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 55–9; B.R.U.C 614.

31 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 154, 246–7; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 78–83; and the relevant entries in B.R.U.O. and B.R.U.C. It appears from their respective wills that Joh n Selowe's parents were buried in the parish church of Beeford in Holderness and that William Poteman had been baptised at Water or Ferry Fryston in Yorkshire.

32 Testamenta Eboracensia i. 385-g; cf. B.R.U.C 515.

33 Cat. Papal Letters vii. 283; viii. 378–9.

34 Col. Pat. Rolls, 1476–85 207; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 118; B.R.U.C. 521; cf. D.N.B. sub ‘Sheffield’.

35 Visitations of York 295–7; Cal. Close Rolls, 1413–19 368–9, 384; 1433–29 27, 99–100.

36 This possibility, currently being investigated by Professor R. L. Storey, would seem the most obvious solution to the problem of ‘the pronounced decline in the success rate of Oxford's secular alumni’ at this period revealed by the statistics collected in Aston, T. H., ‘Oxford's Medieval Alumni’, Past and Present, 74 (1977), 27–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 43; B.R.U.O. i. 367–8; ii. 766; B.R.U.C. 595.

38 The total number of all York canons (34) with a recorded higher degree in theology rose from 1 in 1400 to 5 in 1500 and 11 in 1540–41.

39 Cf. Dobson, R. B., Durham Priory, 1400–1450, Cambridge 1973, 357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 See e.g., the inventory of Thomas Grenewod's library in 1421 (Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 76–7); an d that o f Martin Colyns's library in 1509 (YML, L 1(17), no. 18; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 279–82). Similarly, book s of cano n an d civil law are more often mentioned as bequests in the wills of York fifteenth-century residentiaries than any other type of volume.

41 For general confirmation of this dominance of Oxford over Cambridge in the middle years of the fifteenth century see Aston, ‘Oxford's Medieval Alumni’, 27–8.

42 Trotter and Colyns had both been at Cambridge in the 147 os, a decade during which Rotherham had been chancellor of the university (B.R.U.C 489).

43 B.R.U.O. i. 34, 367, 601; ii. 766.

44 B.R.U.O. iii. 1419; B.R.U.C 152.

45 History of York Minster 69–73. Alone among the dignities of the cathedral the chancellorship was never held by a residentiary canon during the course of the fifteenth century (Neve, Le, Fasti vi. 9–10).Google Scholar

46 Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 234; iv. 220; B.R.U.O. i. 35.

47 B.R.U.O. i. 602; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 81.

48 See the legacies in the will (4 September 1432) of Treasurer Robert Wolveden, not himself a graduate, to ‘aliis generosis qui mihi committuntur causa eruditionis’ (YML. Reg. Test, i. fol. 235; Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 92).

49 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 284–5.

50 Testamenta Eboracensia, iv. 82.

51 YML, Reg. Test. ii. fol. 4V.

52 Thus (of many possible examples) the nephew of William de Kexby, precentor of the cathedral from 1379 to 1410, eventually became non-resident chancellor there from 1427 to 1452 (Visitations of York 296); while Thomas Grenewod's younger brother Robert became an advocate of the York ecclesiastical courts in the 1430s (Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 62).

53 Testamenta Eboracensia, iv. 278.

54 B.R.U.O., iii. 1506.

54 Cat. Pat. Rolls, 1452–61, 116; B.R.U.O., i. 34–5.

55 Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York (hereafter cited as Bo. IHR), Reg. Rotherham (Reg. 23), fols. 100–1; Documents relating to the Foundation and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Middleham (Carnden Society, xxxviii, 1847), 64–5Google Scholar; Col. Pat. Rolls, 1485–94 24, 39, 126. 141; 1494–1509, 7.

57 Storey (above note 2), 5–6, 21–2.

58 Aston, M., Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the reign of Richard II, Oxford 1967, 304–19.Google Scholar

59 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 172, 185; Testamenta Eboracensia i. 385.

60 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1436–41 36; cf. Cal. Papal Letters vii. 544; ix. 10.

61 Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 126; and cf. YML, Reg. Test. i. fol. 267.

61 Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 84n.; B.R.U.O. iii. 1506–7; B.R.U.C. 79–80; Fasti Dunelmenses (Surtees Society, cxxxix, 1926), 51.

63 B.R.U.C. 152, 521–2, 595–6. For Trotter's arduous role as executor of Archbishop Rotherham's will see Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 146–7.

64 See, e.g.,The Register of Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, i (Canterbur y and York Society, lxix, 1976), 65Google Scholar. In the early 1480s, when Archbishop Rotherham's vicar-general, William Poteman regularly conducted archdiocesan business in his prebendal house at Strensall as well as at his mansion in the Minster close (ibid., i. si, etseg.).

65 Visitations of York 295; Storey (above note 2), 23; Register Rotherham i. 1, 187; B.R.U.O. iii. 1507.

66 Register Rotherham i. 84, 89, 210, 236; cf. A. H. Thompson (above note 2), 194.

67 York Civic Records (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series 1939-1953), i. 71, 82.Google Scholar

68 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York (Surtees Society, lvii, 1871), vii-viii, 255–8Google Scholar; cf. ibid., 35, 40,45,52, 64, 74, 108, 109, 111.

69 York Civic Records ii. 157; cf. ibid., i. 61, 92, 178–9. Treasurer William ShefFeld actually sat with the city council in the Guildhall when helping to resolve particularly violent craft disputes within the city in 1490 (ibid., ii. 56–8).

70 York Civic Records i. 70.

71 See especially Prior Wessington's letter of 10 March 1432 addressed to Selowe as ‘reverende domine et amice singularissime’ (Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, Reg. Parv'. ii. fol. 58); cf. Bo.IHR, Reg. Bowet ii (Reg. 17), fol. 15V, and Dobson (above note 39), 137–8.

72 Dean and Chapter of Durham Muniments, Loc. I. 51; Reg. Parv. ii. fob. 100, 103, 107, 127–8, 132; , Dobson, op. cit., 230.Google Scholar

75 Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 281–2.

74 Cat. Pat. Rolls, 1476–85 579; 1485–94 506; 1494–1509 667.

75 Cat. Pat. Rolls, 1485–94 103; Rotuli Scotiae (Record Commission, 1814–19), ii. 496; Rymer, T., Foedera (1704-1735), xi. 851Google Scholar.

76 Col. Pat. Rolls, 1429–36 528–30; 1441–46 68, 430.

77 Most of the references are collected in B.R.U.O. i. 35; iii. 2160. Cf.Dunlop, A. I., The Life and Times of Janus Kennedy, Edinburgh 1950, 163Google Scholar.

78 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland (Scottish Record Office, 1881–8), iv. 238; Foedera xi. 748, 776; xii. 483; Rot. Scot. ii. 482, 496, 507.

79 Foedera xi. 525–7; for Edward IV's personal share in these negotiations see Ross, C., Edward IV London 1974, 61–2.Google Scholar

80 Of these 34 wills, 12 (those of John Nottingham, Thomas Haxey, Richard Pittes, William Pelleson, Thomas Parker, John Selowe, John Wodham, John Marchall, Stephen Wilton, John Gysburgh, Thomas Portyngton and William Beverley) are still unpublished; the remaining 22 have been printed, with very varying degrees of accuracy and comprehensiveness, in the first four volumes of Testamenta Eboracensia.

81 YML, L 1 (17), nos. 18, 37, 44; and cf. Bo.IHR, D.C. Probate Records, 1410 (the inventory of William de Kexby); Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 64–5, 107–15, 129–52; iv. 279–307.

82 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 215–16; ii, fol. 4V; but cf. Drake, F., Eboracum, York 1736, 504.Google Scholar

83 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 179, 284, 355.

84 Testamenta Eboracensia, i. 385.

85 YML, Reg. Test i. fols. 246v, 281; cf. , Drake, Eboracum, 500–5.Google Scholar

86 Testamenta Eboracensia iii. 153–4.

87 YML, Reg. Test. i. fol. 239V.

88 YML, Reg. Test. i. fols. 239V, 281; History of York Minster 107 (Plate 11).

89 YML, Reg. Test. i. fol. 299. In the widest sense of the term, funeral expenses seem always to have been a heavy charge on the executors of deceased canons: they amounted to nearly £70, for example, even in the case of the comparatively unwealthy William de Kexby when he died in March 1410 (Bo.IHR. D.C. Probate Records, 1410; and cf. YML, Reg. Test. i. 154).

90 York City Archives, C. 82, 4; C. 1; 3–4:4; York Fabric Rolls (above not e 14), 304. Cf.Dobson, R. B., ‘The Foundation of Perpetual Chantries by the Citizens of Medieval York’, Studies in Church History, ed. Cuming, G. J., iv (1967), 25–7Google Scholar.

91 YML, L 2(2)a (‘Domesday Book’), fol. 150; York Fabric Rolls 287, 301.

92 YML, Reg. Test. i. fol. 355; Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 31. Quite apart from his perpetual chantry at York, Richard Andrew had benefited from royal licences to found chantries at Deddington in Oxfordshire and Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire (Col. Pat. Rolls, 1441–46 407–8; 1446–52 566).

93 ‘The Medieval Chapter’, York Minster Historical Tracts, 627–1927 ed. Thompson, A. H. (1927). 11.Google Scholar

94 To the references collected in History of York Minster 97–8, add the allusion to the timber ‘quod fuit de domo constructa per regent Ricardum Tertium pro cantaristis per eundem fundandis’ (Testamenta Eboracensia iv. 79).

95 The largest bequests to the fabric of York Minster recorded in the 34 wills of York residentiaries were those of William de Waltham (£40 in 1416) and Thomas Haxey (100 marks in 1424).

96 Benson, G., The Ancient Painted Glass in the Minster and Churches of the City of York, York 1915, 92–7Google Scholar; History of York Minster 373.

97 Cat. Pat. Rolls, 1405–8, 383; York Fabric Rolls, 51n.

98 Perhaps the most remarkable example of solidarity among the York residentiaries in the fifteenth century was the attempt of John Barnyngham, John Castell, William Duffeld, John Marchall and Stephen Wilton to prevent the intrusion of Richard Andrew as their dean in 1451–2, an opposition which led them into direct confrontation with both pope and king (Cal. Papal Letters, x, 112, 239–40). For important new evidence relating to the possible involvement of York residentiary canons in Archbishop Scrope's rebellion of 1405, see ‘Clergy and Common Law in the reign of Henry iv’, ed. Storey, R. L., in Medieval Legal Records, ed. Hunnisett, R. F. and Post, J. B., London 1978, 394–401Google Scholar.

99 Aston (above note 36), 35.

100 I am grateful to Dr David Smith for his advice on several of the issues discussed in this article; and I am also indebted to the comments of two ex-graduate students of York University, Mr Gregory Unwin and Mr David Dasef.