3

Saint Stephen Coleman Street: Living on the margins¹

Measuring devotion

The records from Saint Stephen Coleman Street reveal an intensely religious culture where the material requirements of worship were assiduously maintained by the local elite and where local expressions of piety not only appealed spiritually and emotionally to the poorer members of the parish, but also supported the social significance of the local elite since they helped make it all possible. The categories of records are the same as those consulted in other chapters—churchwardens’ accounts, parish registers, etc., but their information is slightly different because the parish was so distinctive. Saint Stephen contained many poor people, a significant number of whom were unmarried women, and the records afford an opportunity to learn more about them. Therefore, this chapter will maintain a loosely chronological organization while also examining the demographic parameters of parish society, the spiritual and gendered landscape of the church, the process by which the Elizabethan parish purchased their church’s benefice from the queen, and the foundations of a puritan parish, which truly represents a tremendous transformation.

There are no simple correlations that explain how social and economic factors might influence a parish’s culture, but, as we have seen, they did so in different ways. Saint Stephen was situated on the periphery of the city, with a small group of merchants who provided the parish officials. Fundraising was based almost entirely upon rent collection in the early Tudor era and upon tithe payments in the later Elizabethan age. Such institutionalized sources of income did not appear to encourage churchwardens to seek income from sources such as church ales, parish collections, or from guilds. Thus, what emerges is a different approach to the social dynamic of parish culture and religion, especially concerning the depth and breadth of parish spirituality. The churchwardens’ accounts from Saint Stephen Coleman Street allows for a functional reconstruction of parish-funded aspects of religion.² Its religious expressions were always abundant, which suggests fervent belief, and as the religious belief system changed, the fervent religious expression simply found new avenues of expression.

To the extent that Saint Stephen Coleman Street already has a specific reputation in the historiography of London, it deals with the early Stuart era through the work of mid-twentieth-century scholars such as Christopher Hill and Valerie Pearl; Hill referred to Saint Stephen as the most “radical puritan” parish in the city, and Pearl concurred with that judgment.³ These scholars saw the ardent religious nature of the Protestant era leading up to the Civil Wars, but missed, or ignored the ardent religious practices from the pre-Reformation world. Their subject was not really the parish after all, but rather the seventeenth-century troubles, so if there was something about the parish that engendered passionate religious expression, Hill and Pearl never addressed the issue—or, at least, not completely. They missed, therefore, an important context: a strong pattern of continuity within the parish’s religious and social history. They missed the fact that religion might operate as a social and cultural structure in the longue durée, even if the specific beliefs changed from medieval Christian to Calvinist.

The parish and its records

The unique economic and social situation mattered tremendously. Coleman Street bisected the parish, creating the main neighborhood thoroughfare fronted “‘with divers faire houses,’ the homes of wealthy merchants and tradesmen from whom the … vestrymen were largely recruited.”⁴ The Armourers and Brasiers’ Hall was in the parish and, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, their fraternity of Saint George supported a light in front of an image of Saint George located in the church’s Lady chapel.⁵ Situated around both the hall and the church, opening off Coleman Street, were numerous alleyways filled with tenements and increasingly overpopulated with mostly the poorer sort.⁶ That appears to have always been the socio-economic pattern for the parish, which had only been established in 1456. Prior to parochial establishment, Saint Stephen had operated as a chapel associated with Saint Olave Jewry and it is mentioned in records dating to the end of the twelfth century (Figure 3.1).⁷ The church edifice burned in 1666, was replaced with a new one designed by Wren, which was destroyed in World War II, after which the parish merged with Saint Margaret Lothbury. There has never been an archeological survey conducted at the site, which is currently occupied by modern office buildings. Therefore, the extant written records offer our only insight into the Tudor-era parish.

Figure 3.1 St Stephen Coleman Street parish, 1520

The churchwardens’ accounts survive from 1486 to 1507 and from 1586 to 1640, but they lapse for the crucial years of the mid-Tudor century. Of course, the world changed in that void. Comparative analysis reveals insights concerning the differences in parish culture and religion that occurred during the Tudor Reformations, but shows little about the process and points to continuities in basic parish social and economic structures. Beside the churchwardens’ accounts, other records also survive: a fifteenth-century calendar marking saints’ days; three inventories of parish goods (1466, 1542, and 1552); and the parish registers beginning in 1538. No bound vestry minutes survive until the Stuart period, but wills do, as do subsidy rolls.

Parish society

As already indicated, the early run of churchwardens’ accounts is filled with the names of numerous parishioners, many of them people with little social significance; then, later, the Elizabethan-era accounts are also filled with the names of parishioners paying their tithe. The vast information from the rent collection and tithe collection allows for the creation of social models to gauge issues of population transience or stability within the parish. The process involved rent collectors and tithe collectors who gathered the money owed and then delivered it to the churchwardens. The evidence suggests that gender and marriage status mattered greatly, but that most people came and went quickly. For example, on Chimney Alley, which appears to have been one of the cheaper areas of the parish, churchwardens recorded rent from seventy-two tenants between 1486 and 1507. Most tenants paid 4 s. annually, but some paid 5 s., and a few paid 10 s. or higher. Morris Walsh lived there between 1486 and 1499, paying 5 s. for a “little” tenement.⁸ His neighbor for eight years was a man named John Clerk who paid 10 s. annually prior to disappearing from the records in 1494.⁹ Dennis White paid 5 s. between 1488 and 1492; William Paris paid 4 s. for his chamber for the same years.¹⁰ Also between 1486 and 1495, twenty-two women rented chambers or houses in Chimney Alley; fourteen stayed only one year, eight stayed for two years, and none stayed longer. One, identified as “the cobbler’s wife,” paid 4 s. to stay from 1488–89 to 1490–91, as did Elizabeth Marchall. Margaret Bassey, Maude Bays, Johane Rocheford, and Alice Skinner all appear when the records begin in 1486–87 and disappear from them in 1488–89.¹¹ Maude Ferrers and Emma French each stayed from 1490–91 to 1491–92. Most women, ca. 63 percent, stayed for one year. With five exceptions, all female renters paid 4 s. for their accommodations. However, Johane Shene paid 15 s. for a house in 1486–87; Agnes Marchall paid 9 s. for a house in 1493–4, the same year that the widow of William Bowles paid 9 s. for her tenement; Johan Peter, widow, paid 5 s. for a chamber in 1488–89; and Alice Skinner paid 5 s. for a house during her first year on Chimney Alley, moving to a chamber worth 4 s. for her last year.¹² Alice Skinner exemplified the situation that all of the women appear to have experienced: marginalization probably exacerbated by downward social mobility.

There were forty-nine men who rented property in the same alley, with forty-two staying for one year. If the average durations of tenancies at the end of the fifteenth century for male and female renters are compared—1.29 years for men; 1.36 years for women—then it appears that (1) the population in the alley was rather fluid and (2) that the men did not have discernible advantage unless escaping the alleyways was advantageous. The evidence indicates that most people were poor and stayed about fifteen months, but that those who remained the longest were those men who had the means to pay more rent. That general pattern is reflected in all the alleys in the parish.

Edithes Alley became known as Nuneley Alley after Robert Nuneley, a merchant who rented “a great place” there for £3 6 s. 8 d. annually between 1486 and 1496.¹³ The parish collected rent from about fifteen tenements on the alley, with a few long-term tenants—William Byrchfield stayed for thirteen years (1486–99)—while most came and went more quickly. Of thirty-eight tenants identified in twelve years between 1486 and 1498, eleven (ca. 29 percent) left after only a year’s occupancy; six (ca. 16 percent) stayed for two years; and two tenants (ca. 5 percent) stayed for three years. Thus, more than half of the renters vacated the premises in less than three years.

On Gleane Alley, Saint Stephen collected rent from seventeen tenements at the end of the fifteenth century. Long-term residents did exist (one stayed for thirteen years, one for twelve years, and one each for eleven and ten years) and these renters formed the most stable group on the alley. Between 1486 and 1499, those seventeen tenements had a total of seventy-five tenants: twenty-seven (ca. 36 percent) stayed for less than one year, and another thirteen (ca. 17 percent) stayed for two years. Thus, most of these tenants, 53 percent, lived on Gleane Alley for under two years. While others stayed longer, the overall pattern is clear: at no time in the closing decade of the fifteenth century had half of the residents of the church property on Gleane Alley lived there the previous year. Even if some of these people were moving to new locations within the parish, the evidence suggests a very fluid population of poor people living in the early Tudor parish. Most probably moved, but for those who died, there was a “great tomb” (documented in 1524) in the churchyard, on the north side of the church, along with a churchyard cross and an outdoor image of the Passion.¹⁴

Other tenement lists also appear in the accounts, including one for a brew house named the Cock on the Hoop, a parish property that did support a mortuary endowment. John Sokelyng (also known as Sydyngbourne), left his brewery to the vicar of Saint Olave Jewry and the chapel of Saint Stephen in 1431 to fund an obit “on the anniversary of his death and those of his two wives.”¹⁵ The property connected to that brewery was under parish control throughout the reign of Henry VII and it included several tenements and one garden spot. John Corbett was the brewer in 1490; a priest named Sir Richard lived there between 1488 and 1491; John Slaughter stayed from 1486 to 1491; and two men, Lawrence Howlet and Thomas Mody, shared a tenement for several years at £2 6 s. 8 d. ¹⁶ The Cock on the Hoop appears to have created a small place for seven to eight people to live around a tavern, and the parish collected the proceeds while observing the obit of its benefactor. Between 1507, when the early run of churchwardens’ accounts end, and 1548, when the Edwardian commissioners came to account for mortuary endowments, the arrangement had disappeared.

The evidence presents a more nuanced social model than that of merchants on Coleman Street and the poorer sort in the alleyways. Individuals with varying degrees of wealth and status merged into the mostly poor and marginalized population of the alleyways. There were typically a few individuals who paid more money, perhaps implying a better tenement, and who stayed for longer periods than did their neighbors, and among their neighbors were poorer folks who occasionally did jobs for the parish. It was, therefore, a blended social model within the parish, more prosperous on Coleman Street and poorer in the alleyways, and a gradation of people possessed of some degree of wealth and standing within the parish filling in the better alley tenements and providing some oversight of the poor. The rent collectors ventured through the alleys when required. In 1491–92, the parish paid for their (the rent collectors) drink, 2 s. 4 d., and similar entries appear in some other years.¹⁷ The relationships appear to have been a bit distant and mediated.

There is no population estimate available for the parish for the early Tudor period, but it undoubtedly experienced the general demographic pattern that characterized the late Tudor era in the population growth that occurred throughout the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. The Edwardian royal commissioners placed 880 communicants there in 1548, which translates into a parish population estimated at 1,170.¹⁸ There were 1,400 communicants by 1631 and more than about 400 families by 1642.¹⁹ The Poll Tax of 1641 listed 278 houses in the parish, while one social historian, Tai Liu, has estimated an additional 100 tenements there as well.²⁰ With a parish of this size, the parish officials faced many difficulties in working toward any viable form of cultural and social cohesion.

These general residential patterns were still visible a century later. In the 1590s, the parish collected rent from five tenants in “the side street,” which suggests a location next to the church. While five units is a statistically meaningless sample, the information still allows some comparison to the pattern from the 1490s. Of the five people who paid rent in 1592–93, only two were still paying rent in 1597–98, and one of those was the widow of the original tenant. These properties possessed commercial and residential functions, and the rapid turnover might have been caused in some part by the economic problems that plagued the city in the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign. More interesting for gauging a sense of the stability of parish society are three lists of tithe payments from 1592–93 (177 names), 1593–94 (188 names), and 1600–01 (215 names). Slightly more than one-third of the parishioners who paid their tithe in 1592–93 do not appear on the 1593–94 list. Six years later, 119 parishioners appear on the list from 1600–01 who did not appear on either of the earlier ones, or slightly more than 54 percent.²¹ Considering those who paid individual tithes were economically better off than their poorer neighbors who would have made their tithe contributions on the offering days, the evidence still suggests a parish population struggling with a rapid turnover. The social impact of such a change would be exacerbated if many of the names listed in the tithe collections represented heads of households and when they disappear, some part of their households went as well. Yet there was a stable core: John Allen appeared on all three tithe lists, as did Gregory Atkinson, John Bonner, William Brown, John Collins, and numerous others.

The evidence demonstrates a particularly transitory area. Throughout the Tudor era, a large sector of Saint Stephen’s parishioners faced a more transient, rather than stable existence. Lena Cowen Orlin has argued that characteristics such as “interim, makeshift, and exigent” are crucial to identifying transience in a population.²² These factors could influence Londoners regardless of social status, and, as Cowen Orlin has stated, even a wealthy aristocrat could be shifting temporary quarters while looking for suitable housing. But the alleyways around Coleman Street represent a geographic area that consistently manifested the qualities of a transient population. The first quality is readily identifiable if “interim” may be taken to mean about fourteen months’ residency and qualities of “makeshift” and “exigent” might be suggested in modifiers such as “poor” or “mother”—an age indicator—both of which were frequently applied to the inhabitants of Coleman Street. The constant notations concerning arrearage, citing those parishioners who were incapable of paying their full rent, offer some degree of support for the desperate nature of some of these lives. For example, in 1495–96, eight men were listed as owing debts to the parish, such as Lancelot Corvyen, a card maker, who owed 2 s.²³ The public humiliation of having one’s name and debt read in public came with the threat of falling farther into debt or of losing a place to live.

Widows and maids

Statistics regarding widows also adds further evidence that many inhabitants of the tenements were improvising living arrangements in a city known to be short on housing. Beginning in November 1550, Sir Richard Kettell (or Kettyll), who served as vicar without interruption from 1530 until 1562, noted occupations of bridegrooms recorded in the registers, while also noting whether brides were maids or widows.²⁴ For example,

1551 Oct. 18 John Gambyll, Bower & Helen Isat, widow

25 Wyllyam Draykys, carpenter & Alyce Wodd, widow.

This extra information ends in April 1562 without explanation, but it affords some interesting insight into the parish population. For example, the evidence points to a diversity of occupations and pursuits, and a wide range of occupations with potentially vast differences in wealth and status, but most of the men were in the lesser crafts (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Bridegrooms and their listed occupations in the marriage register of Saint Stephen, Coleman Street, 1550–62

Number of bridegrooms each	Occupations/status
11	Curriers
7	Laborers
5	Bakers, brewers, gentlemen, tailors
4	Cooks, fletchers, gardeners, hackney men, plasterers, water-bearers
3	Bowers, fruiters, grocers, point-makers, salters, tallow chandlers
2	Freemasons, haberdasher, hosiers, in-holders, merchants, painters, pewterers, plumbers, poulters, saddlers, smith ferriers, stationers, watermen, weavers
1	Armorer, bowstring maker, bricklayer, cap maker, carpenter, clothworker, cobbler, colther(?), cordyner, corse weaver, couper, draper, dychere(?), farrar, fellmonger, glassier, goldsmith, hat maker, ironmonger, joiner, krydeler, leather-seller, mariner, mercer, peddler, “potyecarye” (apothecary), pinner, “sergeant of the mace,” serving man, shoemaker, skinner, tapster, vintner, upholster, warden, wool-packer

Source: PR of Saint Stephen, Coleman Street, 1539–1598; cf. “Transcription of Marriages, 1538–1754 of St. Stephen Coleman Street, London,” transcribed by W.H. Challen, April 1932, n.p.; Wakefield, England: Microfilm, 1969.

A pattern of dispersed craft is apparent in 1550–62 and remained the pattern for the parish as confirmed by a London subsidy roll in 1582.²⁵ The christening and burial records provide further, but similar, evidence for occupations.

The marriage registers for 1550 to 1562 also categorize brides as maids or widows. Of the 164 weddings performed in the parish, almost 49.5 percent (81/164) of the brides were widows. Twenty-four of the weddings involved either gentlemen or men for whom no occupations were listed, or men who lived outside the parish. If these twenty-four marriages are excluded, then, of the 140 weddings left, ca. 50.5 percent (71/140) involved widows. Widows were a prevalent feature of London’s society, and the merchant culture and economy defined remarriage as a desirable choice for all concerned.²⁶ Some widows could be relatively well-off. The will of William, water bearer, 1556, left his annuity of 25 s. to his widow Elizabeth, which would have left her economically comfortable in the area.²⁷ The poorer widows in the alleyways off of Coleman Street probably did not participate directly in merchant culture, although they might have at one time; remarriage would have presented them with a much needed social and economic lifeline (while the bridegroom gained a wife who possessed some degree of personal property and experience operating a household).

The marriage ratio of widows to maids was significantly higher in London than elsewhere. The ratio around Coleman Street (50.5 percent) was higher than that for London (35 percent) in general.²⁸ This pattern raises the possibility that larger social forces were pushing widows into the marginal parish of Saint Stephen and that the local approach to marriage as an economic and social stratagem emphasized its potential as an avenue of economic and social advancement.²⁹ The information from the marriage registers is later than the rental information, but all the evidence—rental information, marriage register, and Elizabethan-era tithe-payment evidence—combines to indicate the economic and social distress of the Coleman Street area—an area with a large population of widows. Despite their limited economic means, most of those widows managed to save their coins to pay their rent to the parish.

The material basis of devotion

Property as a source of parish income was not unusual, but the situation at Saint Stephen Coleman Street was different because of the sheer number of rental units and the fundamental way that income supported the parish. Yet, many parishes in London collected rents from property: Saint Mary at Hill collected rent from seven houses in Saint Leonard Foster Lane between 1477 and 1495;³⁰ Allhallows Staining possessed a church house between 1499 and 1583.³¹ In the early Tudor era, Saint Botolph Aldersgate collected rent from ca. sixteen tenements on Black Horse Alley.³² Saint Andrew Hubbard had a house with a stable; Saint Benet Gracechurch Street registered ca. thirty-five lines of rental income between 1548 and 1613; and Saint Mary Magdalen Milk Street had a number of rental income sources that varied as well, but five was a typical number; and, Saint Martin Orgar collected rent from gardens.³³ None affords the insights into Tudor alleyways like the records from Saint Stephen.

Of course, the information was written by the churchwardens, which means the information is presented from their perspective. When the accounts begin in 1486, the senior churchwarden was Thomas Mower, who rented a tenement located against London Wall for £3 annually.³⁴ Comparing Mower’s rent with the salaries of parish officials, such as the clerk (£1 per annum) and the sexton (4 s. per annum), and the cost of housing in the parish, one may conclude that Thomas Mower mattered a great deal in local society. One parish ornament, a silver cross, gilded, with a crucifixion and Mary and John, possessed an engraved message requesting a prayer for Richard and Helene Mower.³⁵ If Richard and Helene were his parents, or even grandparents, then Thomas may have lived in the parish for decades and may have been born there. Furthermore, that ornament would have meant more to the Mower family and its descendants than it could possibly have meant to any of the tenants coming and going in and out of the alleyways. Those with wealth and stability helped anchor the parish’s emotional attachment to liturgical items, leaving other parishioners to develop whatever responses they might in the time they resided in or near Coleman Street. Ecclesiastical fabric, furniture, and ornaments existed on spectrums of meaning influenced by the social and economic situation of the parishioners, but liturgical function would have established the potential for a connection open to all.

Sometime after the creation of the 1466 inventory and before the writing of the 1542 inventory and, in fact, probably before the 1536 ecclesiastical changes effected under Henry VIII, the parish possessed a Lady altar which had a particular appeal to the unmarried women of the parish. This point may be argued based on several kinds of information, the most significant being the line in the 1542 inventory acknowledging ownership of “iiij cots for owr ladye one of tauney vellet enbroderid, an other blw vellet and golde, an other whit satten brigge enbroderid. An other whit Chamlet enbroderid.”³⁶ These coats were expensive items and not likely to have had their origins from the poorer folk, but, more likely, represented merchant patronage. Velvet and satin were forms of silk in the Tudor era, and camlet was silk probably woven with mohair or linen.³⁷ The coats were sold in 1549–50 to a John Nichols, who paid 8 s. 4 d., undoubtedly at a bargain.³⁸ They were ritual articles for the ceremonial dressing of a statue of the Virgin, and the parish held on to them for years after they would have been able to use them legally, perhaps indicating the degree of importance attached to them.

Several London churches possessed ritual coats. Allhallows Bread Street (1552–53) had a green satin coat for Mary and her son; Saint Margaret Lothbury (1548) possessed a Lady coat; Saint Mary Somerset (1550) “grene silke and red damaske.”³⁹ Saint Mary Axe possessed a coat for Saint Ursula (1550).⁴⁰ Saint Mary Colechurch also possessed two coats for Saint Katherine (1552), and Saint Olave Silver Street dressed the figure of Christ on their rood screen.⁴¹ Conversely, most London parishes left no indication that they possessed any such articles of ritual clothing, suggesting that the devotion appears to have been a local initiative, which brings attention to a unique aspect of pre-Reformation local religion.

The parish inventories offer evidence as to where these four coats were used. The church contained multiple points of Marian devotion, including a Lady chapel with a Lady altar, an image or statute of Our Lady of Pity, a Lady light, and, in addition to the altar in the Lady chapel, another Lady altar—in the church—framed by images of Sains Nicholas and Katherine. Those images of Saint Katherine and Saint Nicholas were on the rood screen, which means that the Lady altar in the church was an altar placed against the rood screen. Both the 1466 and the 1542 inventories made distinctions between a Lady altar in the Lady chapel and a Lady altar in the body of the church, although the language of the later inventory is less precise. The total number of altars may have changed over time, of course. In 1466, there were altars dedicated to Saint James and the Holy Trinity, making five altars in total (high altar, Lady altar in the Lady chapel, Lady altar framed by Saints Katherine and Nicholas, Saint James altar, and Holy Trinity altar). The 1517 will of John Catterick left money to the Saint John altar (making six altars) and the “Mary altar.”⁴²

Seeking to envision the interior is difficult, but the church was rather modest in size, trapezoidal in shape (Figure 3.2), with (prior to 1547–48) a rood screen most probably cutting a transverse axis across the church at the place where the chancel met the nave, and the rood screen displayed a crucifix flanked by statues of Mary and John the Baptist. The church’s Lady chapel cannot be located with precision, but there was a high altar in the eastern end of the chancel, of course, and a Lady altar against the rood. It was that altar, framed by the images of Saint Katherine and Saint Nicholas that was the site for the ritual cloaking of a statue of Mary.⁴³

Figure 3.2 Plan of St Stephen Coleman Street in 1848 by John Clayton (Wren Society, vol. 9)

This plan also appeared in Gibbs, “Four Coats for Our Lady,” Reformation 13 (2008), 1–49, and is reproduced here with permission, copyright © The Tyndale Society reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com on behalf of The Tyndale Society.

Source: courtesy of John Schofield.

The argument that the coats formed a devotion that especially appealed to unmarried women rests first and foremost upon the location of the Lady altar and its associated saints. As already stated, the Lady altar was next to the rood and flanked by images of Saint Nicholas and Saint Katherine. Among other things, Saint Nicholas protected property from theft, was a patron of children and foundlings, and helped women to obtain dowries.⁴⁴ Saint Katherine of Alexandria aided women who sought husbands.⁴⁵ These themes would have resonated powerfully with the poor, unmarried women existing in precarious circumstances in the parish and the ritual operated in two ways: (1) to help alleviate potential distress at being single in a society that privileged married couples; and, (2) as a means, ultimately, of social control, since the parish was providing these marginalized women a ritual method of seeking assistance. The ritual addressed the spiritual and emotional needs of the parishioners and, by doing so, aided in maintaining social organization.

The argument that the Lady altar against the rood screen was a locus for mostly women’s devotion—a gendered space—conforms with evidence from other parishes. An altar cloth with images of women saints (Saint Mary, Saint Katherine, Saint Helen, and Saint Margaret) was employed at a rood altar at Saint Peter Westcheap.⁴⁶ Additionally, the localization of women saints in one area of the nave, on one side of the rood, was documented decades ago by Eamon Duffy. In a comparison of saints on rood screens in East Anglia and Devon, Duffy found that many rood images were segregated by gender. Granted, the “long screen at Eye,” in Suffolk, alternated male and female saintly images, but he judged that to be an outlier.⁴⁷ More important than gender groupings, however, was “the homogeneity of type,” meaning, obviously, similar saints, such as virgin martyrs, were grouped together. Christine Peters agrees that

[s]ometimes the relationship of the figures on the rood screen to the laity in the congregation was made even more explicit by the division of the saints into male and female groups, corresponding both to male and female sides of the congregation and to the figures of Mary and John in the rood group.⁴⁸

Thus, evidence both from the parish records and beyond supports the premise that a side of the rood images tended to be gendered and supports a gendered analysis of this particular rood altar at Saint Stephen Coleman Street.

Furthermore, Katherine French has documented the practice of draping saints’ statues beyond London as a devotional practice associated with women in several ways, including that women (1) left objects to adorn statutes in their churches; and (2) also left directions regarding the practice.⁴⁹ As French observes, “Their instructions underscore the ways in which women merged their own notions of home economy and domesticity with their piety.”⁵⁰ Testators, especially wives and widows, left articles of clothing or jewelry to adorn saint’s statues, as is the case with ca. 32 percent of the wills by women analyzed by French (as opposed to ca. 23 percent of men). So, a pattern connecting women’s devotions to adorning saints’ statues has been documented and was wider than either one London parish, or unique to the city.

The dressing of Mary’s image allowed parishioners to emphasize the theme(s) they desired or those that were pertinent to the liturgical lesson. Both the laity and clergy employed ritual to interpret theology, express their piety, define an aspect of collective identity, and communicate it to all. The 1540 will of parishioner Richard Lany refers to Jesus’ “glorious mother the Immaculat[e] virgin our blessed Lady Saint Mary,” which is not a typical line to be found in London wills, but which suggests further evidence that the parish possessed an active religious culture focused on Marian devotion.⁵¹ “Our Lady’s four coats” not only represented the parish participating actively in the complex liturgies and theology of their day, but that participation focuses attention on their understanding of some complex theological propositions; the practice ultimately worked to answer the social and psychological needs of parishioners. The ritual of veiling Mary probably would have meant many things to the men, women, and children of the parish, but the clearest messages were aimed at the poorer widows and maids.

The Lady altar most likely offered a space for women’s devotion, especially for the more marginal women: poor widows and maids.⁵² Wills from this parish demonstrate that numerous men left money to “the Lady altar” and to the Fraternity of Our Lady, but the will of Agnes Philcock, widow (1520), requested burial “before the pycture off St Katheryn att our Lady ault[ar]” and bequeathed to the “Brotherhood of Our Lady, St Nicholas and St Katheryn a whyte standyng cuppe … with cov[er].”⁵³ Saint Katherine and Saint Nicholas would have had a unique appeal to widows and maids alike.⁵⁴

Thus, if the Marian coats came from a place of wealth, their devotional use resonated among the poorer widows and maids who desperately clung to their tenements in the alleyways of the neighborhood. One is left to wonder whether the large number of widows residing in the parish helped inspire the ritual in some way, or, conversely, if the ritual helped to attract more poor women to the parish. Once they arrived, they faced less than two years before the next move. Had the parish established a local Marian shrine to help?⁵⁵

Parish saints

If so, the shrine probably attracted people from beyond the parish and it would have functioned in a holy place filled with saints’ images: Saint Stephen, the Resurrection,⁵⁶ Saint Clement, Saint Nicholas, Our Lady of Pity, and Saint John.⁵⁷ Additionally, Saint Anne, Our Lady (in the body of the church), Saint Christopher, Saint Mary Magdalen, and Saint Sitha, and “synt katherine … [and] … Synt nichūs on the frame of oure lady alt[ar] in the churche” were there as well.⁵⁸ In 1466, hangings for the high altar included the life of Saint Stephen and an image of Mary.⁵⁹ Altar cloths for the Trinity altar included an image of the “fadir · son[ne] · and holyghoste w^t a boke be twix them,” as well as images of Mary, Saint Katherine, Saint Dorothy, Saint Peter, Saint John, Saint Stephen, and Saint Alban. For the altar of Saint James, altar cloths grouped pairs of images: Saint James and Saint Anne on one side, and Mary and Saint Elizabeth on the other. A second cloth showed Saint James with Mary, John, and the crucifixion; a third, the martyrdom of Saint James; a fourth, the Passion for Lent.⁶⁰

Also associated with the church’s altars some unusual items: “the resurrection of our lord with the device in his bosom to put the sacrament in” and a “moon of silver to bear the sacrament.”⁶¹ Numerous banners associated with liturgical feasts came and went with the seasons, which served didactic as well as devotional functions and which depicted the Crucifixion, the Transfiguration, the Resurrection, Our Lady with child, and the Trinity with Our Lady. The parish also possessed banners with an image of the Assumption with Saint Stephen and Saint Lawrence on either side; an image of the Assumption in the middle of a blue cloud; and the four evangelists with the images of Saint Stephen and Saint Lawrence.⁶² Other banners included scenes of the Passion, the Transfiguration, the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the birth of Our Lord, the Annunciation, the Maundy of Our Lord, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Oblation of the Three Kings, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption of Our Lady, Saint John the Baptist, and two banners of special note: one with a lion and an oak tree, and another with a dragon.⁶³ These banners offered visual representations of the liturgy and saints’ lives and augmented the liturgy with an alternative representation of pre-Reformation Christian theology.⁶⁴ The saints and the visual expression of late medieval Christianity surrounded the parishioners in their devotions. The specific representations, while unique to the Coleman Street parish, generally conform to the overall pattern of late medieval English religion that has been identified in recent scholarship and probably resembled the ways many London churches observed the liturgical year.⁶⁵

This brief sketch, which is by no means exhaustive, identified eleven permanent saints’ images on display in what was essentially a small church, with representations of five more saints on various objects, and an assortment of other figures on fabric that came and went according to the season. For a church of such recent foundation, this was rather impressive, but most other London churches were probably just as full. There is little indication regarding the origins of the saints. The parish did buy some things, and, in 1472, churchwardens Robert Ewell and Nicholas Hinde purchased a silver sensor with three lions’ heads, but those accounts no longer exist.⁶⁶ There were donations such as a latten chrismatory “of silver and gilded” given by Thomas Riche.⁶⁷ William Leek, the parish vicar in the 1460s, donated a monstrance.⁶⁸ It has long been established that priests and parishioners with some financial substance provided numerous items to their parish churches, and that was indeed the case at Saint Stephen, meaning that people with status helped to shape the liturgical setting for the poorer members of the parish, but donations cannot explain all of the items on the 1466 inventory. Much of the church fabric and ornaments either had to be in use when Saint Stephen was a chapel, or was donated—perhaps from other institutions—upon parochial establishment. As much as the objects seem to belong to a homogeneous group of items when listed, individually they mattered differently to different parishioners. The wealthier parishioners had opportunities to develop sentimental attachment to fabric and ornaments used in the liturgy or objects donated by friends or family regardless of their use; the poorer transient population from the alleyways would have only had the chance to form attachments to items used in the liturgy.

The placement of liturgical items, the saints’ images, and their associated lights created a spiritual geography within the church. Saint Stephen, the first martyr, and Jesus as Savior (Saint Savior, the Holy Redeemer), situated near the high altar, connected the parish to the universal church and the mythic origin of the faith. It has already been noted that the images of Saint George and the Virgin Mary occupied the Lady chapel, and thus brought a national theme to that area. And, of course, the Lady altar against the rood screen was a space for the devotions of unmarried women. The construction of this liturgical space may have corresponded to a generally recognized pattern with the location of the high altar and the Lady chapel, but the selection of the other saints displayed within the church was determined by the local elites. Those saints defined spaces for special groups and both expressed and reinforced belonging and identity among the parishioners—an important function of local religion.

The ecclesiastical changes of the period 1536–48 would have changed this spiritual space and those pious practices that gave significance to the saints’ images.⁶⁹ Alexandra Walsham has written that changes under Henry VIII aimed at “[t]he most visible symbols of Roman Catholic belief,” while those changes made under Edward VI “attacked the theology of good works and intercessory prayers.”⁷⁰ Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued for the basically Zwinglian nature of the theology of the Edwardian and Elizabethan churches.⁷¹ Parish leaders and clerics had to negotiate these changes, of course. Purgatory and intercessory prayers for the dead were still acceptable, as stated in “The King’s Book” (A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for Any Christian Man [1543]); there was only an “overwhelmingly dismissive” note against special prayers for souls in purgatory because all Christians should pray for one another.⁷²

Parish religion had transformed by the end of the reign of Henry VIII and the future lay increasingly in texts. If images of the saints remained in the church by 1542, they received no mention in the parish inventory and they would have been whitewashed or somehow removed in the first years of Edward’s reign as other images typically appeared: the decalogue, company arms, or the Royal Arms. Consideration of the spiritual evolution of parish images should be done in conjunction with other items possessed by the parish: manuscripts and books, which also experienced a transformation. The 1466 parish owned forty-four books, while it possessed thirty-eight in 1542.⁷³ By 1549, the royal proclamation that introduced the new prayer book also ordered that older liturgical texts be defaced.⁷⁴ The presence of so many texts in the fifteenth-century parish church makes another point of continuity between the fifteenth-century and early seventeenth-century parish: the parishioners were accustomed to seeing books being employed in a variety of ways, including chained for public display and consultation.

The mostly liturgical texts listed on the 1466 inventory represent a vastly different canon than those proffered by mid-sixteenth-century reformers, but when the accession of Edward VI brought fundamental changes to English religion, the focus of Protestant polemics, theology, and liturgy could be found in books.⁷⁵ The Injunctions of 1547 required parishes to purchase a Bible and to make it available for the public, which reiterated an earlier requirement issued under Henry VIII; many parishes complied by having their Bible chained to a pillar and placed atop some heavy piece of furniture. They had treated books like that for years.

Further evidence of devotion

In analyzing the spiritual transformation of the parish, another salient point must be considered: the parishioners were never monolithic in their beliefs. Beyond the diverse pieties established thus far, there were others in the neighborhood. The Coleman Street area served as a home for Lollards, and a small group of them met in Bird Alley at the home of a tailor early in the reign of Henry VIII.⁷⁶ Furthermore, parishioner Henry Walton’s will, probated in London’s Consistory Court on 13 December 1539, has been cited as manifesting a Lutheran dedicatory formula, the first for London.⁷⁷ Several parishioners agitated for further reform of the Church in the Elizabethan era.⁷⁸ In the 1620s, parishioner John Etherington was accused of being a Familiarist.⁷⁹ Yet the parish continued to operate in the legally expected fashion throughout the Tudor era. As has been noted, Sir Richard Kettell served as vicar without interruption from 1530 until 1562, but Tudor-era clerics could weather such storms.⁸⁰

At first glance it might seem that little of this parish’s history foreshadows Christopher Hill’s judgment of Saint Stephen as being the most radical puritan parish in the early Stuart era except that it all did; parishioners exercised a busy, fervent parish religion in a community filled with many people who lived in insecure social situations. And, of course, the theological transformation must be analyzed against the basic social continuity. The organization of the parish, especially the changes between 1580 and 1590, witnessed the creation of a semi-Presbyterian parish structure that operated within the larger episcopal system. This structure mattered. As Murray Tolmie wrote, “Of all London parishes, St Stephen Coleman Street was the best qualified to undertake the experiment of an explicit parochial congregationalism.”⁸¹ Parishioners demanded an “emphasis on consent and consultation,” which would lessen, but not eradicate, the power of bishop and archbishop over the local church.⁸² For Saint Stephen Coleman Street, the successful move toward a more autonomous parish that controlled its own benefice can be documented. By the 1580s, the parish had established a lectureship, staffed by William Welles, who also preached at Christ Church Newgate, and he (and the parish) made a qualified subscription to Whitgift’s Visitations Articles of 1583–84, accepting royal supremacy, but not the Thirty-Nine Articles, and qualifying their use of the prayer book.⁸³ No sermons survive, but Welles had a license to preach his own sermons.

The Elizabethan parish and the purchase of the benefice

Never do the churchwardens delineate the strategy for acquiring the advowson, but the whole process required years of planning and financial arrangements. First, William Daniels, sometimes referred to as “sergeant,” a parishioner and a crucial figure in the project, received property worth £40 in 1586 “by consent of the said p[ar]ish.”⁸⁴ In 1590, the churchwardens borrowed money from several prominent parishioners (Table 3.2) and augmented it with money they took from their poor fund and pew fund:

The said accountants also charge themselves with money borrowed within the time of this account of the persons hereunder named to the use of the parish for the purchase of the tithes and impropriations of the parsonage and advowson of the vicarage from the Queen’s most excellent majesty unto the use of the said parish forever …⁸⁵

Table 3.2 Prominent lenders

Off Mr. William Daniels	£100
Off Mr. Robert Mammrell	£50
Off John Lynnen
William Poynter
William Novell	£100
Off the pooers stock	£38
Off Ann Elderidge gift	£8
Off the stock for pensons of billotts for the pews	£10
Total	£356

These were significant amounts. William Daniel already held “the rectory in fee-farm of the crown,” but the property and money exchanges of the years surrounding 1590 generated the capital that financed the transfer of the advowson to several wealthy parishioners. The Queen granted “the rectory, the parish church, and the advowson of the vicarage” to a small group, including William Daniels and Thomas Paskins.⁸⁶ Letters patent recognizing the transfer were issued at Westminster on 9 January 1589/90.⁸⁷ In 1591, the churchwardens parted with property in Chimney Alley and, subsequently, William Daniels received a payment of £100 in recompense for the loan he had made to the parish, and even the church’s poor and pew funds were repaid with a bit of interest.⁸⁸ The parish also paid Mr. Paskins £5 “for his paynes taken in crwering⁸⁹ the p[ar]ish of the p[ar]sonage.”⁹⁰ It was the parish, the churchwardens, and the vestrymen who operated as a local banking institution, financing the purchase with multiple loans, and paying interest accordingly. The parish masters remade Saint Stephen into a place they controlled more firmly and, by so doing, they continued to act as the local elites had been doing since the establishment of the parish.

The right to collect and keep the tithe transformed the parish. On the one hand, a sizable and ancient tax that had siphoned money out of the parish became a localized means of economic redistribution. Granted, parishioners still had to pay their tithe and they still had to pay their vicar, but the money stayed mostly within the parish borders and served local needs. Second, the parish gained power and independence, and grew in its ability to police its own population. The parish masters could select their own vicar, with episcopal approval. The churchwardens, like their counterparts throughout the city, had the right of presentment for parishioners found to have Catholic images and books, Anabaptist texts, and any number of other deviations from the Elizabethan standards. Controlling their own advowson meant that the elite parishioners had more freedom to direct parish affairs and had the authority to oversee the conformity of their neighbors.

Within a few years of the parish leaders purchasing the benefice from the Queen, a transformation of local religion began to occur, but the “radicalism” mentioned in so many studies would not develop until the 1630s and 1640s. By 1624, the vicar of the parish was John Davenport, a minister who eventually left England for Holland and, later, Massachusetts, taking some of his Coleman Street flock with him.⁹¹ While at Coleman Street, Davenport conformed, but he developed a reputation as a great preacher.⁹² His reputation is significant because it required the judgment of an audience, and early modern congregations actively responded to preachers, and people traveled to Saint Stephen in order to hear Davenport’s acclaimed preaching.⁹³ The atmosphere he created must have been intense and the reputation of the parish grew. Yet the developments in the local religious culture were not really connected to any one personality since it was the parish that had created an independent organization.⁹⁴ The parish’s religious positions made Davenport an attractive candidate to become vicar in 1624 where he preached against Arminianism and fled when William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.⁹⁵ Independents also lived in the parish and they would struggle with Presbyterians in the 1640s.⁹⁶

The rise of this “puritan parish” has been framed as an innovation, but it rested upon long-term devotional and organizational patterns. The parish remained demographically the same: populated with a large number of poor, many of whom were women. Puritanism held an attraction for urban elites given its emphasis on discipline; it also held an attraction for women, because it “enabled women to exercise an indirect, often public and deliberate authority.”⁹⁷ Having lost the Mary altar, the eventual emphasis of a specific form of Calvinist theology that possessed such characteristics began to fulfill similar social and psychological functions. The Reformation had occurred, but the social dynamic of local religion was essentially the same, except, perhaps, that men and women were empowered to act even more forcefully for their beliefs.

Cultural transformation

By the mid-1580s, the altered nature of the churchwardens’ office frames the beginning of the accounts for 1585–86; the entry above the accounts proclaims the churchwardens’ concern for the: “rents proffitts and comodities” of the parish,⁹⁸ as compared to the fifteenth-century phrase “goodes werkes and ornaments.”⁹⁹ Traditionally, churchwardens looked after the ornaments of the church: the various precious and semi-precious objects that were an essential aspect of the celebration of the Eucharist and that also facilitated other devotions. The maintenance of ornaments had historically been one of the oldest responsibilities of the lay community.¹⁰⁰ Its replacement in the churchwardens’ accounts by the word “commodities” is not a small editorial change, neither is the appearance of the word “profits.” The churchwardens’ raison d’être had switched to a more secular, or more market-based, orientation. In 1592 the churchwardens recorded income in excess of expenditures by £25 18 s. 1 d. “to the use of the p[ar]ish.”¹⁰¹

Financial foundation

The parish still possessed some rental property, but the churchwardens ceased to play any significant role in the upkeep of that property. Either the parish now expected the renters to keep their own tenements in repair or these expenditures were dealt with in some other fashion. The result was a further transformation in how the parish operated in local society; it was no longer a major landlord and it was no longer the source of continuing interactions and associations among parishioners of varying economic levels in the alleyways.

One historian has described the parish’s financial situation as more “desperate” than it had been in the early Tudor period.¹⁰² The amounts recorded as income in the last years of the 1580s are relatively low (ca. £39 for 1588 and ca. £42 for 1589), but they increase during the 1590s as tithe collections are recorded, eventually exceeding the levels raised a century earlier in the 1490s (of course, the economies were different).¹⁰³

As stated about Saint Michael Cornhill in Chapter 2, Saint Stephen Coleman Street operated differently in a culture that operated differently. In the twenty-one years between 1486 and 1507, most accounts begin with a reference to the previous year; sometimes this meant acknowledgment of “ready money” received from the hands of the previous churchwardens, and sometimes the accounts just list the arrears of back debts for rents owed from the previous year. Other items might then appear in the accounts; but, thereafter, according to street or alleyway, listed by name of tenant, are the collections of rental money for houses, tenements, chambers, and gardens apparently owned by the parish.¹⁰⁴ Vacancies are also noted. The 1486–87 income breaks down as shown in Table 3.3.

Table 3.3 Income for 1486–87

Income				(%)
Old debts	£1	3 s.	6 d.	3.06
Rent:
Re. to “Cok on the Hoop”	£10	2 s.	0 d.
Glene Alley	£5	9 s.	4 d.
London Wall	£3	12 s.	0 d.
Chimney Alley	£1	10 s.	0 d.
(cont.)	£4	14 s.	0 d.
w/out ch. Gate		8 s.	0 d.
Edithes Alley	£8	7 s.	4 d
Total rent	£34	2 s.	8 d.	88.86
Quit Rent		10 s.	0 d.	1.30
Pits, Knells & Burials	£2	12 s.	0 d.	6.78
Total:	£38	8 s	2 d.	100

The city’s early modern churchwardens tended to treat the payments of owed fees and rents from previous years as new income, but if one sets that amount aside to examine the actual sources of new income, then rents provide slightly more than 90 percent of the annual income in 1486–87. Saint Stephen’s rental property should have provided a more stable financial foundation than parish funding based on collections and burials, but the income did fluctuate somewhat from year to year. Until 1507, specific amounts varied but the categories of income and their general ratio to one another remained fairly consistent. Parish income fluctuated by circa £20, but the average income for the 1490s was ca. £44. Internal evidence suggests complete accounts, meaning the churchwardens consistently reported the same kinds of income sources and items of expenditure, but there were probably collection books, or notes, that have not survived.¹⁰⁵

The financial situation of the Elizabethan parish was vastly different. The account of 1592–93 was the first year to list the tithe collection, but the wardens, or the scribe, failed to total the amount received. The breakdown of income reads as follows (Table 3.4).

Table 3.4 Income for 1592–93

Income				(%)
Old account	£25	10 s.	1 d.	22.13
Tithes
Offering Days	£3	19 s.	0 d.	3.43
Chrisom for Children		29 s.	0 d.	1.26
Rent	£8	8 s.	0 d.
Lyons Alley	£11	6 s.	8 d.
Total rent:	£19	14 s.	8 d.	17.12
Dung Carriage	£7	8 s.	0 d.	6.42
Quit Rent		3 s.	4 d.	15
Knells & Burials	£8	19 s.	2 d.	7.77
Total	£115	4 s.	8 d. ob.

The tithe collection should have been a farthing more than £48 1 s. 5 d. (41.72%).

On the other side of the balance sheet, the early Tudor churchwardens paid out money for typical and mundane issues such as church upkeep and for liturgical requirements. The ringing of the great bell in observance of obits was the only mortuary rite practiced within the medieval church to appear with regularity. Obits typically acknowledged the anniversary of a death usually lasted two days and involved “the tolling of bells, the recitation of vespers, matins, and lauds for the dead on the evening of the first day, and the celebration of a requiem mass on the following morning.”¹⁰⁶ Church bells also represented an important expense for the parish and they appear here and there for repair and upkeep. At Saint Stephen Coleman Street, the clerk and the sexton rang first and second peals to Matins and to Evensong each Sunday and Holy Day, and to Compline during Lent.¹⁰⁷ The sexton’s duties also required him to ring once for curfew when required and twice for an alert in an emergency.¹⁰⁸

General repairs and expenses with the liturgy were always concerns. The church had pews as may be seen from a list of repairs in 1486–87 and the five new ones were built in 1499.¹⁰⁹ In 1494–95, 6 d. was spent for garlands for Corpus Christi Day.¹¹⁰ The feast of their patron saint, historically celebrated on August 3, was celebrated with singers from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and bread and ale.¹¹¹ Music played an important role in the pre-Reformation liturgy and, on special days, parishes augmented their clerk’s efforts with extra singers and such was the practice documented throughout the city.¹¹² These extra singers probably represented a switch from monophonic to polyphonic choral music for a special feast, but for most masses, the parish clerk had the responsibility for music and singing; he also lit the tapers and read and sang as required.¹¹³ On Sundays and holy days the sexton provided assistance with the bellows of the organ.¹¹⁴

In many ways, the parish operated like the other London parishes, supporting a liturgical space that at first glance would be open to all in an equal fashion, but that, in reality, was a complex social space ordered by status, gender, politics, and myth. They bought Easter coals, put up an Easter Sepulchre, displayed unidentified relics—one of the reliquaries was silver over gilded metal with a crystal stone.¹¹⁵ One fifteenth-century visitor to the city commented on the number of relics displayed in the churches, and London had parishes known for their extraordinarily large collections, such as Saint Stephen Walbrook and Saint Mildred the Virgin in the Poultry (which also exhibited an image of St Valentine).¹¹⁶ Others might have one or two; Saint Andrew Hubbard had a finger of Saint Andrew.¹¹⁷ These relics were also in their last days for London’s parishes, but in the early Tudor period they continued to provide a focus for parish prayers and the parish encounter with the sacred.

The benefice of the parish had once belonged to the Priory of Butley, in the fifteenth century, and the prior must have appointed a curate since the churchwardens’ consistent entries for the morrow mass priest represent the greatest clerical presence in the accounts.¹¹⁸ The history of the advowson between the dissolution and the Elizabethan age is nebulous, but with the purchase of the benefice from the queen, the parish became responsible for paying its vicar’s salary, and the first appearance of these obligations occurred in 1593: £12 10 s. for fifteen months’ wages and £17 10 s. for reading divine service, plus £7 10 s. for his weekly lecture, or a fifteenth-month total income of £37 10 s. ¹¹⁹ William Taylor, the vicar, would have been numbered among the economically privileged in the Coleman Street parish, but his salary was at least £10 below the amount collected for the tithe in a one-year period, an amount that the churchwardens could account as “profit.” The following year the vicar’s salary shrank to £32 for a partial year’s duty while the tithe collection amounted to £37 13 s. 6 d., but the parish built a study in the minister’s house.¹²⁰ In 1595, William Taylor was on partial duty, and the churchwardens paid another minister to help with divine service, and the total cost of both ministers’ salaries to the parish was £37.¹²¹ The wardens also acknowledge payment to an unnamed minister appointed by Doctor Stanhope, Archdeacon of London.¹²² Other parish officers cut less impressive figures in the local economy; the sexton tended to be paid a yearly wage of £1 6 s. 8 d., with the additional allotment of 16 d. for the purchase of brooms and an extra £1 to clean the church.¹²³ The clerk received 13 s. 4 d. for keeping the clock. He received additional money for washing the church cloth, scouring the brass, and other incidentals amounting to 7 s. 8 d. ¹²⁴ In 1599, the clerk also helped to collect the tithe.¹²⁵ Beside payments to the minister, clerk, and sexton, other typical parish expenditures included payments to a tithe collector for part of the parish, in Moorfield (38 s.). ¹²⁶

The late Elizabethan parish

In addition, the churchwardens found themselves in regular dealings with the Bishop of London, with entries attesting to answering articles and the occasional appearance of the archdeacon in the parish.¹²⁷ The Bishop came in 1595–96, causing a bit of consternation as the parish officials not only sought to answer the visitation articles, but also arranged an entertainment to the cost of about 9 s. 6 d. ¹²⁸ In 1598–99, the parish was assessed £6 2 s. 2 d. to pay to the Queen in satisfaction of the Tenths and First Fruits for the new Bishop, Richard Bancroft, an obligation they would continue to meet for the next few years.¹²⁹ They also owed a payment to the Queen in feoffment for the parsonage (10 s. 6 d.), but this payment makes irregular appearances in the accounts.¹³⁰ Other officials could also occasionally appear in the records, such as officials from the city government.¹³¹ In general, the ecclesiastical and civic officials of London appear in the later Elizabethan churchwardens’ accounts much more frequently than did their early Tudor counterparts. While dealing with these officials did not drain a great deal of parish money, the accounts suggest such dealings did drain time and effort.

The churchwardens purchased a new prayer book (1592) and a vestry book (1593).¹³² Communion bread and wine cost 46 s. 8 d. in 1593.¹³³ The parish bought a communion cup for 6 s. 8 d. (1594);¹³⁴ a new service book and Bible for 33 s. 4 d. (1599); and material to make a “carpet” for the communion table for £3 2 s. 9 d. (1599).¹³⁵ Churchyard upkeep required four loads of gravel in 1594, while repairs to the clock house cost 6 s. 8 d. ¹³⁶ Repair to the pulpit and a new pulpit cushion occurred in 1598, costing 53 s. and 10 s. 6 d., respectively.¹³⁷

The churchwardens repaired gutters, wells, paid to clean the dung from Horse Alley, conducted paving work, and cleaned the channel in the street.¹³⁸ Payments to the scavenger of Bassishaw Ward appear regularly, usually 14 s. 4 d. ¹³⁹ In 1592, the parish paid to repair “the pump in Chymney Alley.”¹⁴⁰ Throughout the 1590s, the churchwardens paid ringers to mark Elizabeth’s accession day.¹⁴¹ Beginning in 1595, the accounts record 10 s. “for walkinge the perambulacion of the p[ar]ish,” an event that continued for the rest of the century.¹⁴² The accounts of 1598 acknowledge the payment of 27 s. “for the Relief of maiymed soldiers due at vj d. the weke accordinge to a statue in that behalf made.”¹⁴³ They paid to keep a record of those parishioners who took communion, which no longer survives. The parish set up a post for the whipping of vagabonds “according to a new Act of Parliament in that behalf made … xv s. ij d. And for the lock … x d. And for a book to register the names of such as are there punished … viij d…xvj s. viij d.” ¹⁴⁴ The Elizabethan parish operated to express and define parish boundaries and identities, but the veneer of religious symbols and myths so essential to the pre-Reformation culture is absent. While occasional references to the liturgical year appeared in the early records, only the Queen’s anniversaries (accession and coronation) and communions get noted in the 1590s. The Elizabethan parish and churchwardens worked in the community more by cleaning channels, drains, grates, and alleyways.

Conclusion

The intensity of public worship allowed people to seek help from the divine while also appearing to behave appropriately in a religious culture. Piety was a way of self-presentation that signaled an individual as worthy of moving forward in that religious culture, of being acceptable, and of being saved. The parish’s fervent and imaginative religious dedication remained a constant across the long Tudor century, even as the faith experienced the Reformation. From the late fifteenth century, when multiple areas within the church addressed different identities and probably held importance for certain groups of parishioners, to the later Elizabethan parish that organized a financial scheme to buy the benefice, the parish leaders demonstrated a locally inspired sense of agency. The inspiration for the saints honored in the parish had originated in the parish; the ritual of dressing a statue of Mary had originated in the parish; and, the negotiations with Queen Elizabeth for the advowson had originated in the parish, as did the hiring of John Davenport. From the beginning to the end of the Tudor era, this parish appropriated the faith as their own.

Caroline Barron has argued that places manifesting fervency in their faith by supporting large numbers of religious fraternities in the late Middle Ages also tended to be fervent in their faith in the post-Reformation era.¹⁴⁵ Saint Stephen Coleman Street possessed several: the fraternity of Our Lady; the fraternity of the Holy Trinity; “the Presentation of Our Lady’s Brotherhood,” the fraternity of Saint John; the fraternity of Our Lady, Saint Nicholas, and Saint Katherine; and a fraternity dedicated to Saint Stephen.¹⁴⁶ If other devotional practices may be cited as well, then Saint Stephen Coleman Street would be a prime example of her thesis, and Lastly, by de-emphasizing a theological approach and focusing instead on the social dimension of religion, the remarkable continuity of spiritual practices in the parish becomes clear.¹⁴⁷

At Saint Stephen Coleman Street, parochial management was established as locally as legally possible within the late Elizabethan Church. Calvinist discipline and organization followed, and it quickly became apparent that in the seventeenth-century parish faith would not be defined by James I, Charles I, nor their bishops, and by the 1630s, the local elite and their puritan vicar, John Goodwin, who would become an Independent in the late 1630s, were negotiating their own godly path.¹⁴⁸ Yet, the parishioners at Saint Stephen’s had always, earnestly, devoutly dedicated themselves to finding a better path—out of those alleyways.

Notes

1 Some of the material in this chapter has been published previously in Gary G. Gibbs, “Saint Stephen Coleman Street, before and after the Reformation,” in Dee Dyas (ed.) The Story of the Church of England, an interactive DVD (York: Center for Christianity and Culture, the University of York, 2010); Gary G. Gibbs, “Four Coats for Our Lady: Gender, Space, and Marian Devotion in the Parish of Saint Stephen, Coleman Street, London, 1466–1542,” Reformation 13 (2008): 1–49; and Katherine L. French and Gary G. Gibbs, “The Poor, the Pious, and the Privileged: Toward a Social and Cultural Topography of Parish Participation in Late Medieval London,” in David Harry and Christian Steer (eds.), The Urban Church in Late Medieval England: Essays from the 2017 Harlaxton Symposium Held in Honour of Clive Burgess (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2019).

2 By functional, I am referring to the anthropological and sociological approaches pioneered by Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1984); A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society; Essays and Addresses (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959); 153–77; and Chandler Morse, “The Functional Imperatives,” in Max Black (ed.) The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons; A Critical Examination (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961): 100–52.

3 Christopher Hill, The Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); Adrian Johns, “Coleman Street,” HLQ 71 (2008): 33–54; David A. Kirby, “The Radicals of Saint Stephen’s, Coleman Street, London, 1624–42,” The Guildhall Miscellany 3(2) (1970): 98–119; Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); Dorothy Ann Williams, “London Puritanism: The Parish of St Stephen Coleman Street,” The Church Quarterly Review 160 (1959): 464–82.

4 John Stow, A Survey of London. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols (London: 1603; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908): 1: 284; Kirby, “The Radicals of Saint Stephen’s,” 99.

5 Stow, Survey, 1: 284.

6 Edwin Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon the Book of Records and History of the Parish of Saint Stephen, Coleman Street, in the City of London,” Archaeologia 50 (1887): 17–18.

7 Charles L. Kingsford, editor of the critical edition of Stow, corrects Stow in his notes with the year 1467. Stow, Survey, 1: 284; John Schofield, “Saxon and Medieval Parish Churches in the City of London: A Review,” TLMAS 45 (1994): 130.

8 The CWA of Saint Stephen Coleman Street, 1486–1507: LMA MS P69/STE1/B/012/MS04457/001, fo. 16v.

9 MS04457/001, fos. 8v, 23v, 30r, and 47r.

10 MS04457/001, fos. 16v, 24r, and 30r.

11 The average tenancies are artificially lessened given that the records start in 1486, but the pattern does cover the entire period.

12 MS04457/001, fos. 8r; 8v; 16v; and 47r.

13 1488–89: “Robert Noneley Merchant for a great place,” MS04457/001, fo. 17r.

14 The Commissary Court Wills, 1522–39, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/10, fos. 42v and 225r.

15 Several chantries had been established in the late Middle Ages, but they were either not perpetual or had been absorbed into other mortuary endowments. (William Crayhag) Stow, Survey, 1: 284; (John Essex, draper; William King, draper; William Vesey, bricklayer) Cal Husting, 2: 46, 312, 456–67, and 523. And Lady Joan Bradbury, in Anne Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 367; C.J. Kitching (ed.), London and Middlesex Chantry Certificates, 1548 (London: London Record Society, 1980): 50; see also Gordon Huelin, Vanished Churches of the City of London (London: Guildhall Library, 1996): 68.

16 MS04457/001, fos. 7v, 13v, 23r, and 23v.

17 MS04457/001, fo. 31r.

18 Kitching, London and Middlesex Chantry Certificates, 50. Once again, I employed the x1.33 formula suggested by the work of E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 565, and referred to by Vanessa Harding, “The Population of London, 1550–1700: A Review of the Published Evidence,” LJ 15(2) (1990): 116.

19 Kirby, “Radicals,” 98.

20 Tai Liu, Puritan London (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1986): 39; Kirby, “Radicals,” 98.

21 If it appeared likely that a family group existed, i.e., a male name followed by a widow with the same surname and tithe payment, then I did not count this as an example of a new individual in the list.

22 Lena Cowen Orlin, “Temporary Lives in London Lodgings,” HLQ 71 (2008): 224.

23 MS04457/001, fo. 66r.

24 Ida Darlington (ed.), London Consistory Court Wills, 1492–1547 (London: London Record Society, 1967): 68; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…”: 18; PR of Saint Stephen, Coleman Street, 1539–1598: LMA MS P69/STE1/A/001/MS04448; c.f., “Transcription of Marriages, 1538–1754 of Saint Stephen Coleman Street, London,” transcribed by W.H. Challen, April 1932, n.p.; Wakefield, England: Microfilm, 1969.

25 “1582 London Subsidy Roll: Coleman Street Ward,” in R.G. Lang (ed.), Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London, 1541 and 1582 (London, 1993): 194–9. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol29/pp194-199 (accessed August 5, 2018): eleven merchants, four men-in-lands, three plasterers, two gentlemen, two gentlemen-in-lands, two hackney men, an armorer, attorney, bagmaker, barber-surgeon, bricklayer, clerk, clothworker, cook, cordwainer, currier, farrier, fletcher, freemason, glassier, haberdasher, inholder, mercer, powlter, plumber, porter, sadler, vintner, woolman.

26 Eleanor Hubbard, City Women. Money, Sex, & the Social Order in Early Modern London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 239–40. For a more general discussion, see Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 104–12; and, Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 174–84.

27 Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/13, 1553–58, fo. 129.

28 Hubbard, City Women, 240–1.

29 Charles Carlton, “The Widow’s Tale: Male Myths and Female Reality in 16th and 17th Century England,” Albion 10 (1978): 122.

30 The CWA of Saint Mary at Hill, 1422–1505, LMA MS P69/MRY4/B/005/MS01239/001, pt. 1.

31 The CWA of Allhallows Staining, 1491–1550: LMA MS P69/ALH6/B/008/MS04956/001.

32 The CWA of Saint Botolph Aldersgate, 1466–1636: LMA MS P69/BOT1/B/013/MS01454.

33 The CWA of Saint Andrew Hubbard, 1454–1525, LMA MS P69/AND3/B/003/MS01279/001/002; The CWA of Saint Benet Gracechurch Street, 1548–1620, LMA MS P69/BEN2/B/012/MS01568/001/002; The CWA of Saint Mary Magdalen Milk Street, 1518–1606, LMA MS 69/MRY9/B/007/MS02596/001; The CWA of Saint Martin Orgar, 1517–1657: Lambeth Palace Library, CM 9/14.

34 “Tenement” does not really imply any difference in quality of property, and the churchwardens’ accounts flip back and forth between “house” and “tenement” as they acknowledge receipt of payment over the years. Also, re. the churchwardens’ accounts: a partial account from an undated year precedes the 1486–87 account in a volume apparently bound in 1867. MS04457/001, fos. 7r, 8r.

35 The Vellum Book or the Cartulary Book of Saint Stephen Coleman Street: LMA MS P69/STE1/B/030/MS04456, fo. 1; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…”: 34–5.

36 MS04456, fo. 17; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…” 47; cf., Charles Pendrill Old Parish Life in London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937): 16. Gibbs, “Four Coats for Our Lady”: 2, 14, 41–2.

37 For information re. camlet, see Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing Sixteenth-century Dress (Hollywood, CA: Costume and Fashion Press, 2006): 35; thanks to Gina Barret of www.soper-lane.co.uk for this information.

38 TNA E117 4/2, fo. 3; cf. H.B. Walters. London Churches at the Reformation (London: SPCK, 1939) 602–3.

39 TNA E117 4/76, fo. 7v; E117 4/25; E117 4/75, fo. 3; cf. Walters, London Churches, 91, 351, 457.

40 Walters, London Churches, 432.

41 TNA E117 4/73; cf. Walters, London Churches, 53 and 447. Other London parish inventories that mention coats include Allhallows the Less; Saint Katherine, Coleman; and Saint Mary, Woolnoth. See also, Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2004): 247.

42 The wills of Thomas Eyer and William Dyer (1519) also left money to the high altar and the Mary altar. Catterick and Eyer mention the Brotherhood of Our Lady; Eyer mentions a churchyard cross; Catterick also requested burial by the image [of the passion] in the churchyard. See the Commissary Court Wills, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/8, 1489–1502, fo. 56r; the Commissary Court Wills, 1516–21, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/9, fos. 61v and 101v.

43 Robert Bowman requested burial in “Our Lady Chapel” in his will (1520) and left 6 s. 8 d. to pay for it. See MS09171/9, fo. 164r.

44 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992): 13 and 186; Martin Ebon, Saint Nicholas: Life and Legend (New York: Harper & Row, 1975): 70; Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978): 53–8; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993): 1: 21–7.

45 Elizabethan/Jacobean author and Londoner William Camden wrote that unmarried women fasted and prayed on Saint Katherine’s day. Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contest in Western Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003): 49.

46 The CWA and VM of Saint Peter Westcheap, 1441–1601, LMA MS P69/PET4/B/006/MS00645/001, fo. 174r; W. Sparrow Simpson, “Inventory of the Vestments, Plate, and Books, Belonging to the Church of Saint Peter Cheap, in the City of London, in the Year, 1431,” JBAA 24 (1843): 157–8.

47 Eamon Duffy, “Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes: The Cult of Women Saints in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century England,” Studies in Church History 27 (1990): 181.

48 Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 106.

49 Katherine L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008): 41.

50 Ibid., 43.

51 TNA PROB 11–28–16.

52 For other examples of women’s devotional spaces, see Duffy, “Holy Maids, Holy Wyfes,” 175–96; and French, The Good Women of the Parish, 133–6.

53 MS09171/9, fo. 147r.

54 Other parishes also built and maintained special shrines, such as a particularly venerated tabernacle at Saint Mildred the Virgin in the Poultry. Thomas Milbourn, The History of the City Church of St Mildred the Virgin (London: John Russell Smith, 1872): 3–4.

55 Pascal Hervy left money for a priest to pray at the Mary altar (1489). MS09171/8, fo. 1r

56 Thomas Blysset’s will (1518) requested burial in front of this image. MS09171/9, fo. 105v.

57 Walters, London Churches, 26.

58 MS04456, fo. 2; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 2.

59 MS04456, fo. 8; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 39–40.

60 MS04456, fo. 9; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 41.

61 MS04456; Pendrill., Old Parish Life, 13.

62 MS04456, fo. 11; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 42.

63 MS04456, fos. 11–12; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 42.

64 Klaus P. Janokofsky, “National Characteristics in the Portrayal of English Saints in the South English Legendary,” in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szelle (eds.), Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991): 83.

65 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars; Katherine L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).

66 MS04456, fo. 2; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…”,:35.

67 MS04456, fo. 1; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 34.

68 Leek is identified as the vicar of the parish in the will of Robert Skrayngham, mercer, (1468). See TNA PROB 11–5-74, MS04456, fo. 2; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon …,” 35.

69 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 327–37; Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993): 128–9; Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 241.

70 Alexandra Walsham, “Recycling the Sacred: Material Culture and Cultural Memory after the English Reformation,” Church History 86(4) (2017): 1125.

71 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York: Penguin Press, 1999): 170–2.

72 Shagan, Popular Politics, 241.

73 For a similar study of other inventories, see Fiona Kisby, “Books in London Parish Churches before 1603: Some Preliminary Observations,” Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 11. In Caroline M. Barron and Jenny Stratford (eds.) Proceedings of the 1999 Symposium: “The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson” (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2002): 305–26.

74 Walsham, “Recycling the Sacred,” 1131.

75 Catherine Davies, A Religion of the Word: The Defence of the Reformation in the Reign of Edward VI (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002): ix–xix.

76 Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991): 103; Kirby, “Radicals,” 99.

77 “Jhesus: I Henry Walton, citezein of London, recommend my soule unto Almyghty God my Maker and Redemer in whom is all my truste to besaved thrugh the merites of His Preceouse Blodd, etc.” Darlington, London Consistory Court Wills, 67–8.

78 Brigden, London and the Reformation, 635.

79 Francis J. Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012): 67.

80 Darlington, London Consistory Court Wills, 68; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 18.

81 Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: The Separate Churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977): 111.

82 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Metheun, 1967): 101–4; Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982): 1, 1ff; Michael P. Winship, “Freeborn (Puritan) Englishman and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c. 1570–1606,” EHR 124(510) (2009): 1054.

83 Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships. The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970): 214.

84 The CWA of Saint Stephen Coleman Street, 1586–1640, LMA MS P69/STE1/B/012/MS04457/002, fo. 2v.

85 MS04457/002, fo. 17r.

86 Paskins, a freemason and parishioner, was listed on the Elizabethan subsidy roll of 1582. He was assessed £3. He also served as junior churchwarden in 1585–86 and senior churchwarden in 1586–87. Lang, “1582 London Subsidy Roll: Coleman Street Ward,” 194–9; John Noorthouck. “Book 2, Ch. 16: Coleman Street Ward,” in A New History of London Including Westminster and Southwark (London: R .Baldwin, 1773), 593–7. British History Online, available at: www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/new-history-london/pp593-597(accessed August 5, 2018).

87 Dorothy Ann Williams, “London Puritanism: The Parish of St Stephen Coleman Street,” The Church Quarterly Review 160(1959): 464–82, at 467.

88 MS04457/002, fos. 21r and 22r.

89 “Crauering” or “cravering,” as in to seek earnestly after, to demand with authority, etc. OED.

90 MS04457/002, fo. 27r.

91 Francis J. Bremer, “John Davenport.” In H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 15: 267–8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

92 Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem, 64–5, 70; ONDB, “John Davenport,” 267–8.

93 Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem, 64; Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 3–7.

94 Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints, 111.

95 John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in 17th Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006): 44. See also I.M. Calder (ed.) Letters of John Davenport (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937): 13–43.

96 Liu, Puritan London, 83.

97 Amanda Porterfield, “Women’s Attraction to Puritanism,” Church History 60(2) (1991): 199.

98 MS04457/002, fo. 1r.

99 Formula for 1500 reads “goods, ornaments, and rents.” A partial account from an undated year preceded this 1486–87 account in a book apparently bound in 1867. MS04457/002, fo. 7r.

100 Beat A. Kümin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c.1400–1560 (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996): 18.

101 MS04457/002, fo. 27r.

102 Dorothy Ann Williams, “London Puritanism,” 467.

103 The 1588 accounts are not even totaled. The cited figure is my addition. MS04457/002, fos. 7v and 10r-15v.

104 Rental property represented sixty-two lines in the 1486–87, and these accounts mention houses, tenements, a few chambers, and gardens, but by 1487–78 most of the “houses” were listed as “tenements.”

105 Two accounts are dated with the same years, 1498–99, the first given by churchwardens Alysander Wyat and Robrt Wyttam (begins fo. 74r), and the second by Richard Whyte and John Parre (begins fo. 84r). It seems unlikely that a scribe could write the year incorrectly, but the accounts for 1497–98 are missing and reference to previous churchwardens indicate that the set by Wyat and Wyttam should have been dated 1497–98. MS04457/001, fos. 74r and 84r.

106 Alan Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979): 8.

107 Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon …,” 49.

108 Ibid., 49.

109 MS04457/001, fos. 11r and 69r; Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 22.

110 MS04457/001, fo. 59v.

111 MS04457/001, fo. 32r.

112 Clive Burgess and Andrew Wathley, “Mapping the Soundscape: Church Music in English Towns, 1450–1550,” Early Music History 19 (2000): 16.

113 Peter Hampson Ditchfield, The Parish Clerk, 2nd edn (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1907); Freshfield, “Some Remarks on upon…,” 49.

114 Freshfield, “Some Remarks on upon…,” 49; cf., Richard Lloyd, “Music at the Parish Church of Saint Mary at Hill, London,” Early Music 25(2) (1997): 224.

115 Freshfield, “Some Remarks upon…,” 41.

116 He traveled in the suite of the brother-in-law of the King of Bohemia: Leo of Rožmital. See W.D. Robson-Scott, German Travelers in England, 1400–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953): 7. Pendrill, Old Parish Life, 21; The Commissary Court Wills, 1483–90, LMA MS DL/C/B/004/MS09171/7, fos. 108–11 will of Simon Lee of the parish of Saint Mildred Poultry; will dated 1487. Thanks to Katherine French for the information re. Saint Valentine.

117 Clive Burgess (ed.), The Church Records of Saint Andrew Hubbard EastCheap c. 1450–c.1570 (London: London Record Society, 1997): 69.

118 The morrow mass priest, of course, said the first mass of the day and the position ceased to exist in 1548. Richard Newcourt, Repertorium ecclesiasticum parochiale Londoniese, 2 vols (London: 1708): 535–7; Pendrill, Old Parish Life, 36.

119 MS04457/001, fo. 32v.

120 The tithe is not totaled in the records. MS04457/001, fos. 35r, 35v, 36r, 36v, 37r, and 38v.

121 MS04457/001, fos. 42v; cf., 45r, and 48v.

122 MS04457/001, fo. 42v.

123 MS04457/002, fos. 26v; cf., 38v, 42v, 45r, 48v, and 51v.

124 MS04457/002, fos. 26v; cf., 38v, 42v, 45r, and 48v.

125 MS04457/002, fo. 51v.

126 MS04457/002, fo. 27r.

127 MS04457/002, fos. 26v; c.f., 32v, 42v, 45r, and 52r.

128 MS04457/002, fo. 45r.

129 MS04457/002, fo. 52r.

130 MS04457/002, fo. 43r; they paid 10s. in 1597–8; see fo. 48v.

131 MS04457/002, fo. 33r.

132 MS04457/002, fos. 26v and 33r.

133 MS04457/002, fos. 26v; cf., 39r, 43r, 45r, 49r, and 52r.

134 MS04457/002, fo. 39r.

135 MS04457/002, fo. 51v.

136 MS04457/002, fo. 39r.

137 MS04457/002, fo. 49r.

138 MS04457/002, fos. 26v, 38v, 42v, 45v, 48v, and 51v.

139 MS04457/002, fos. 26v; cf., 42v, 45r, and 51v.

140 MS04457/002, fo. 27r.

141 MS04457/002, fos. 27r; cf., 45r and 48v.

142 MS04457/002, fos. 43r; cf. 6s. 8d. in 1597–98, fos. 48v and 51v.

143 MS04457/002, fo. 48v.

144 MS04457/002, fo. 52r.

145 Caroline M. Barron, “The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London,” in C.M. Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (eds.), The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. du Boulay. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985): 36–7.

146 MS09171/8, fo. 206v; MS09171/9, fos. 59v–60r, 105r, 131v, 147r, and 166v; MS09171/10, fo. 39r, 42v, and 225r; Frank Rexroth, Deviance and Power in Late Medieval London, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 171; Cal Husting, 2: 153, and 249; H.F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Mediæval England (London: SPCK, 1919): 40.

147 Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, 153–77.

148 See Liu, Puritan London, 82–4; Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships, 282.