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The Fifteenth‐Century Accounts of the Churchwardens of the City of London

2004; Wiley; Volume: 17; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-6443.2004.00234.x

1467-6443

Colin Richmond,

Scottish History and National Identity

This is a piece that will not start- No change there some will say: starting is invariably troublesome. Except that recently I have not had difficulty in making a beginning. So I am a little perturbed- Even a title is elusive. Meanwhile I am thinking of the purple light streaming in through the painted glass of the aisle window at the Parish Eucharist this morning- Throughout the singing of the Gloria I attempt to see that reflected light with someone else's eyes- In falling on the grey heads in the pews in front of us it turns the grey into silver (an ice-blue silver) and the oak seat of the pew itself it strikes obliquely becoming a richer a more ecclesiastical (almost an imperial) purple than that which it has left behind in the window- The green coat of the lady immediately before me becomes partly enamelled in blue (as in the current advertisement for Crown Paints: the purple turning the green into azure) and her old face turns from a brown pigmented parchment into a ghostly hue seen mainly on the risen dead in Horror Movies- The eyes I am seeing with are not difficult to determine: only think of a church in the French countryside with a precociously observant boy in his family pew one Sunday sometime in the second half of the century before last- THINK PROUST in other words- To do so (and I am thinking like him more and more) is not however to get this piece begun. He is diverting. (Soon it seems to me I shall be walking like him too). Another attempt gets me nowhere too the entries in my red note book bringing me straight back to square one- The Way By Swann's pp 325–30 says the first entry: what a marvellous passage about servants and monocles- And there are others: the truly horrifying things are the ones you can’t imagine says one of them. It is the perfect epigraph for an essay on the Holocaust not a means of getting into the present piece. Alas. It is from The Way By Swann's p 367- Here is the next one- The Way By Swann's still: pp 399–400 this time. It is about the sun starting to break through on the balcony of the family flat and this is what I say about it- Another passage so exquisitely and exactly truthful as to make me laugh out loud at ten o clock in the morning of Saturday 3 May in St Mary's churchyard Woodbridge seated on the bench inscribed In Memory of Billy Norris 1962–1986 (was he only 24 when he died: how little one knows of the world). Here it is the clouds coming up (though as yet they do not yet entirely obscure the sun) that I am seeing with different eyes. And I tell myself: these days (I shall be 66 in under a month) that laugh is the nearest I am going to get to a mystical experience. Like the other day when listening to the CARLA BLEY BAND I found myself in Denmark Square in Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon finding and buying a tape of her recording SEXTET in a little stationers shop I had never been in before. It was not May 2003. It was July 1990. Now it is eleven a m and the clouds that were expected to blow up to make the day cold have passed. The sun is hot. I think how sad it is to recognise in oneself a failing sensibility (I shall be 66 in less than a month) so that I am unable to appreciate the beauty of this place despite trying to use the eyes of someone else. Or (it is my next thought) shall I in ten days time consider that I did? Are we therefore always bound to be happier than we believe we are? And the next on p 428- When a belief disappears there survives it an attachment to the old things which our belief once animated as if it were in them and not in us that the divine resided and as if our present lack of belief had a contingent cause: the death of the Gods. Or finally the following passage p 406 on the postmarked envelope of the express letter sent by the narrator to G and which she shows him- Only this has to be the start I need for the next piece about stamps or rather postal stationary I promise myself I shall write: the one that has to wait until I hear from Rita what she thinks of the returned letter sent from MILIEC in January 1942 that is if she thinks anything at all which can be communicated to me without tears (and the gnashing of teeth). And then there is Wittgenstein in Ireland by Richard Wall a book bought second hand for five pounds and worth every penny. I could use this- W at Cambridge amidst what he called the disintegrating and putrefying English civilization (see Monk p 546)- Along with what JP said to me on a January afternoon in the Princess Louise Holborn namely that Cambridge was a murderous place- And possibly also W's comment in a letter to his sister Helene of 10 January 1948 from Ireland: I feel much better here than in Cambridge. The letter is quoted as an epigraph to Richard Wall's book- Except that I shall use both those wise men's judgements to start my anti-CC paper for the fifteenth-century history conference in September so they cannot be deployed now- Nor can I begin a piece on the accounts of the churchwardens of London with the list that features in Richard Wall p 140 in footnote 17 of those who were the beneficiaries of generosity in the summer of 1914 to the tune of 100,000 crowns. I shall send the book (rather a rare one published first in Austria in 1999) to Adrian in Cork not only because the book itself is delightful but particularly because it has pictures of BEWLEY's p 110 where at lunchtime daily W would go to eat an omelette and drink a coffee. It is Adrian's favourite café too. Here fifty years after W commended the waitress and the management because after a few visits his omelette and coffee were brought without him having to order them we met Adrian's mother and father: there is a photograph of the occasion- Among the beneficiaries was GEORG TRAKL with 20,000 crowns: knowing this makes me want to read that extraordinary young poet again- Some of these might be closer to the mark- Our Lady of PRADELLES who performed many miracles though she was of wood writes R L Stevenson in Travels With A Donkey p 131- Hamlet Act Three Scene Two: Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year But by our lady he must build churches then- And (as ever) Henry James in this case A Little Tour of France p 61: because things very ancient never for some mysterious reason appear vulgar- Or you know who again bending to unlace his boots and discovering that he has both lost and found his grandmother: she is dead yet exists in him (the TK edition volume two pp 783–5). As in the objects treasured by our London churchwardens the dead continued to exist until at the Reformation both objects and the dead were thrown out- So (it seems) we are getting warmer and with the next even hot enough to think seriously of starting- O sir I will not be so hard-hearted. I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried. And every particle and utensil labelled to my will as: item two lips indifferent red: item two grey eyes with lids to them: item one neck one chin: and so forth- Is Olivia Twelfth Night Act One Scene Five (there being a quotation from Shakespeare to suit as well as every occasion any essay: a truth discovered when as an undergraduate writing my fortnightly essay in the college library and near to ending it I would reach down a Collected Shakespeare and hunt through it a quotation with which to conclude a discussion of Bismarck or Benito Mussolini)- Unless and this I think will be the case Olivia's cod inventory will be the epigraph to the piece and therefore not the start at all: thus leaving me searching still- So it is possible to start with the inventory of the MARSHALSEA of 28 June 1483 namely BL Add Ch 5835 [abstracted as appendix one]: shackles manacles collars of iron etc not forgetting the two images of our lady nor the basin with a candlestick therein to set a light before one of them at night time or the chain for the beggar at the gate- It might be an acceptable subject of an oblique opening paragraph that approaches the subject along the lines of: momentous events are elsewhere- For the simple truth is that the only theme I have been able to think of while combing through the parochial churchwardens accounts in the Guildhall Record Office the summer before last was that one: while kings collide and thrones are tumbling only to be set up again in what seems to be the twinkling of an eye in 1469–1471 or when princes are exterminated and politicians liquidated in 1483 and a horseless king is unseated in 1485 the churchwardens of London go about their legitimate business of honouring the devout dead and serving the pious living- For example (and hereabouts the body of the work has its beginning) take the following items- Here I think the reader must make his own selection from the dossier itself [appendix two]: a selection made by me over the years but mainly during the summer of 2001 a dossier that can begin anywhere I mean with any of the city churches featuring in it. I will list them- St Andrew Hubbard beside East Cheap (oh and I should say at this juncture that it is essential for any serious student to have to hand a good map and gazetteer of fifteenth-century London)- Or do I need to? Any serious student can turn the pages and see for herself whether or not the simple point being made is made substantially enough. Moreover all the relevant information is provided if she wishes to consult the originals in that best of all record offices: the London Guildhall. I hope she decides to do so. There is no substitute for the originals. I am sure she will have just as much pleasure out of them as I have had- A special case are the accounts of St Nicholas Shambles [appendix three] for they were not only a pleasure to read in the milieu of Smithfield and the Charterhouse (one of my favourite city venues) they were also an especially telling example of another aspect of a familiar theme: the disappearance of what was central to an all but vanished culture and its replacement by what was if not peripheral then certainly secondary: business has vanquished religion in the City of London and the places of religion have been swept away by the palaces of commerce. Culture (in the original sense and usage of the word) has been the victim. For whatever the business ethic pretends to (funding cultural activity wherever financial advantage is to be gained by so doing) it is itself philistine- The predominance of one over the other (most clearly to be seen in the area of the Barbican and Guildhall in the City of London where those churches that have survived are dwarfed by bank and insurance company buildings) has been a long time arriving- In what sort of structures were Jewish financial transactions undertaken in the twelfth-century streets comprising the London Jewry? When Christians took to commercial undertakings on any scale it was a long time before Market Halls and Exchanges rivalled Churches as buildings of note. For centuries church porches served the purpose. As for the likes of the Medici and all the rest religion seems to have meant as much (or almost as much) to them as business. Sometimes it meant more. By the sixteenth-century in southern England especially in London business meant more to those who formed the magistracy than did religion. Not in every case and not in all cases overwhelmingly but Reform meant Progress and Progress meant Development is bad news for Religion and Culture- Hence St Nicholas Shambles was (for no good religious reason) pulled down in 1547 and by 1552 houses had been built where it had stood- And thus to read the pre-Reformation accounts of the churchwardens of St Nicholas is to discover a lost world. I read them angrily (not nostalgically) because of the robbery perpetrated on the people by the state: the plunder not only of the living but also and above all of the dead. Examine closely the list of the gifts given by the devout which as the churchwardens phrased it remain still in the church used in the their proper place as those who gave these precious items would that they should- Over twenty years ago I called this a fraud undertaken by the state against its subjects no less damaging (and no less immoral) than that undertaken by the Bolsheviks against the citizens of the USSR both in general and in particular against Christians Moslems and Jews: churches mosques and synagogues were ransacked- Nowadays another comparison might be made: with the Holocaust. It is easily forgotten in the slaughter that a whole people was robbed lock stock and barrel and that an entire culture (arguably Europe's oldest) was destroyed- When your bus turns into King Edward Street look left and remember St Nicholas Shambles (and all of the men and women whose names appear in these accounts which must serve in remembrance of them: and make your prayers against despair as someone once wisely counselled)- Inventories [appendix four] are a special though not a separate category: like the one mentioned above from St Nicholas Shambles they often although not always commemorate the dead. The three offered here (one of them in the form of my original pencilled notes) do not. They are more business-like we are tempted to say. They are presented with only a single comment- That comment relates to the third of them: the very summary abstract of Westminister Abbey WAM 6644, the 1449 inventory of St. James Garlickhythe. It is simply to indicate what the reader will see at a glance namely how richly was worship in the church provided for. Was that degree of wealth typical of the churches of London? One suspects it was. Therefore the further comment that the state made a real killing in the 1530s and 1540s is superfluous. Equally uncalled for might be the response WHAT A WASTE were that not what many reformers themselves were saying about the very objects the state's agents so thoroughly rifled- There is such a blatant irony here that a commentary couched in ironic terms is also unnecessary- To give the reader an impression of what a fifteenth-century church inventory looks like I have included a copy of one for St Margaret's Church Southwark (not London but as good as). It is appendix five. St Margaret's Southwark is another demolished medieval church. The inventory as can be seen from its heading is of 16 November 1485. There are later additions (the new books of the first page) and deletions (the worn out vestments of page three and the old diaper towel of page five). Such updating of inventories is commonplace although there are often rather more corrections than those made to this particular inventory. Everything else speaks for itself. It is nonetheless worth mentioning that the more than seven pages of the St Margaret's Southwark inventory bear out the conclusion reached in the previous section of this paper- There are also fifteenth-century churchwardens’ accounts for St Margaret’s: my notes on them seem to have disappeared. Both inventory and accounts are to be found at the Greater London Record Office. Here I spent a happy day examining them a decade or more ago. The archivists were unfailingly courteous and helpful- They invariably are. Even the fierce ones of the old days were kind to tyros. The great and the very good of those distant days took time to attend to the young. Felix Hull of the Kent Record Office at Maidstone had me sitting at his own desk when (still an undergraduate) I arrived to look at seventeenth-century probate inventories in the summer of 1958- It is different nowadays. There are fewer archivists and they are seldom to be seen in the search room. The untrained assistants who see to one's requests and enquiries are earnestly polite and normally ignorant of the collections in their charge- If that is a harsh judgement it is because the world has changed and I have not. But I am digressing: getting dangerously close to platitudinous remarks about ageing. Time to stop therefore- The 1477 petition of the members of the Fraternity of Our Lady in the parish of St Martin LUDGATE [appendix six] is included to show what practical devotion meant in fifteenth-century England- Agnes Forster and her late husband's executors were unwilling to implement a promise to rebuild the chapel of Our Lady over the gate at LUDGATE demolished in 1463 during the making of an extension to the prison (for which her late husband Stephen Forster had left money in his will). If Agnes and the executors would not build a new chapel said the members of the Fraternity then they would. They would do so (they said) at their own cost and charge: out of the alms of well-disposed people. The chapel had been much resorted to by those coming and going through the gate- No further comment or emphasis is required. If the LUDGATE chapel was not replaced it was no fault of the fraternity. Put it down to progress (sic: urban development): the idea of chapels having to make way for prisons has a modernising ring to it- A conclusion is never as hard to find as an introduction. This one ought to involve a brief discussion of the ideas of the architect George Pace. His son Peter Pace's book The Architecture of George Pace 1915–75 published in 1990 is a remarkable work of filial piety. It is a splendid introduction to the ideas of a singularly thoughtful modern architect who had to practice as well as preach- His ideas about an organic culture that gets overtaken and then overwhelmed by industrialisation and individualism seem to hit the nail on the head: a dehumanisation in all parts of life and abjuring of God and even of man. Subsequently (in a frantic nineteenth-century) what he calls an historical conscience begins its domination of the arts in particular architecture. That domination which Modernism sought to challenge has been reasserted in the later twentieth-century. Now (in the early twenty-first century) an eclectic historicism prevails- It is however the fifteenth not the twenty-first century that concerns us here. The churches and their treasures the churchwardens of London cared for (apparently with care and diligence) were always in a condition of renewal. The number of newly built and rebuilt churches of fifteenth-century London is revealing as well as remarkable: even a cursory reading of John Stow leaves the casual reader with an impression of a city confidently recreating itself- London (unlike Paris) is always re-inventing itself. But we should note once again what sort of new building was taking place in the fifteenth-century city. It was public buildings that were going up or being drastically remodelled: LEADENHALL market and the Guildhall as well as churches. No doubt the point can be pressed too far: private houses (or inns) and private warehouses were no doubt being put up apace also. I defer to others on what Hoskins might have called the Great Rebuilding of London- And I am meandering around the point again. That point is simply this. The churchwardens of London were in charge of up to date buildings stuffed with ultra modern liturgical equipment. It is not an old culture (let alone a dying one) that they represent. It was the organic one that George Pace thought it was- For the Fifteenth-Century Accounts of the Churchwardens of London- For us of the steam and the gas-light, the lost generation, The new white cliffs of the City are built in vain. John Betjeman: Monody on the death of Aldersgate Street Station