Church and manor a study in English economic history

Preface

Of late years various books relating to the unit of English territorial organisation known as the manor have appeared. Two or three of these deal with short periods, such as the eleventh or the thirteenth century, and the late Mr. Seebohm, in a masterly investigation, has surveyed a considerable part of the field. Notwithstanding the good work that has been done, an essential part of the subject has been omitted, or misunderstood. The manor and the ecclesiastical bene¬ fice have been regarded as entirely independent things. But the economic history of mediaeval England will gain much in simplicity if it can be shown that lord and priest were once the same person ; that the hall cannot at an early time be distinguished from the church ; and that ecclesiastical benefices were themselves manors, with all the privileges which belonged to feudal lordship.

No treatment of the economic history of these islands can be satisfactory unless it includes the church-building and the benefice within its scope. To describe the scattered acres of the open fields, with all the complicated belongings of the village community, and yet leave out the building near which the frail and mud-built houses of the inhabi¬ tants were gathered, is to omit the chief point of interest, for the church was not only the place of worship but also the seat of local government.

It has been thought desirable to treat the evidence from architecture, as found in existing remains or referred to in documents, in considerable detail, because, if it can be proved that the church-fabric was evolved from the hall or lord's dwelling, a strong presumption arises, on that ground alone, that the benefice was the manor.

The writer has received help and suggestions from

vii viii CHURCH AND MANOR

friends which are here and there acknowledged in the text or notes. But there are others whose assistance he now desires specially to recognis4e. Mr. Joseph Kenworthy has supplied from his miscellaneous reading a variety of impor¬ tant facts. Mr. C. F. Innocent, A.R.I.B.A., Mr. Skill, of the Duke of Norfolk’s office in Sheffield, and Mr. Willis Eadon, have made drawings and plans. Miss Mary Dormer Harris, whose scholarly edition of the Coventry Leet Book for the Early English Text Society has been of much service, has helped in some points of difficulty. Mr. C. J. Battersby, M.A., has advised on several points of Old English scholarship. Miss Ethel Lega-Weekes from her know¬ ledge of Devonshire antiquities has communicated useful information about church-houses and other matters. Mr. Harold Armitage, of Letchworth, has kindly made some searches in the British Museum. The late Herr Rhamm, of Gratz, drew the writer’s attention to numerous fortified churchyards in Germany. Mr. William Keeling has kindly made four of the drawings. The Rev. G. W. Hall, Vicar of Norton, has presented the writer with a set of the publica¬ tions of the Canterbury and York Society, which have been very helpful.

The present volume was in the publishers’ hands when Mr. Walter Johnson's Byways in British Archoeology , 1912, appeared. The chapters in that valuable work which deal with “Churches on Pagan Sites” and “The Secular Uses of the Church Fabric ” contain some pieces of evidence which had already been set down here. These have not all been excised.

Sheffield,

November 1912.

Chapter I

A Norfolk manor-house resembling a church— An Irish inhabited chapel compared — Upper rooms in Steetley chapel — Men’s doorand women’s door— Kilpeck church— Church at Broughton in the form of hall and chamber— Tower of the lord’s hall— The bipartite houses of ancient Ireland— Royal halls and chambers of the ninth century — The consecrated royal hall (and chamber) at Deerhurst — Other royal halls — Aidan’s church and chamber an occupied dwelling — The so-called chapel at Ebbs Nook — Columba’s church and chamber in Iona — Dwellings of kings and chiefs before the eleventh cen¬ tury consisted of hall and chamber only — Hall and chamber still the typical house of the fourteenth century — Prehistoric dwelling at Gunner Peak in the form of hall and chamber with a round hut appended — Cave-dwelling in form of hall and chamber .

Chapter II

Halls and chambers with a loft over the inner room — No internal communication between the hall and the loft— Church at Tickencote with room over chancel — A similar church at Elkstone — The rood-loft stair — The same type of building in Scottish churches— Chamber over chancel at Compton separ¬ ated from the church by a screen, and approached by an out¬ side stair — Lavatories in its chancel and loft— Chamber over the east end of Darenth church — Churches resembling another type of dwelling having aisles on each side of the great hall, upper rooms, and a master’s house, in three divisions, at one end of the hall — Church at Deerhurst in this form — Chamber formerly over its apsidal end — Chambers in the tower — Cham¬ ber formerly over the nave — Gallery once projecting from the tower into the nave — Rooms formerly above the aisles — A

PAGE

I

X

PAGE tower of a church occupied as a dwelling in the sixth century — Church at Bury St. Edmunds in 1095 built “after the fashion of Solomon’s temple,” which had upper rooms — Inhabited upper aisles in Coptic churches ; also in Rome and Spain — Cubicula formerly surrounding the basilica of St. Peter at Rome- — Pastophoria — Hillen, or dormitories, over the aisles of old German farm-houses — Legends of a stable made out of a church, and of a church founded on the site of a stable — Upper aisles in Coptic churches compared with those at Deerhurst — Upper aisles extending over the choirs and vestibules of churches — Melbourne church described — Houses described by Galen — The great roofed hall, with smaller rooms all round it, and a dwelling-house at the far end divided into three parts, a common type of Aryan habitations — This type probably in England in the thirteenth century, and earlier — Description of a house at Rendsburg resembling in form the nave and aisles of a church, with the harvest stored in the roof, and a flet, in three divisions, at the far end of the great hall — This type common in Lower Saxony — The men’s door and the women’s door — Screen of lattice-work separating the hall from the flet and suggesting the chancel screen of a church — The flet in Great Britain — Conclusions from etymology — The Jewish temple an inhabited dwelling — Triforia of churches — Documentary proof of evolution of church from hall — Corn stored in churches, and in the hall {sal) of the Heliand — In¬ stances of ancient churches called “ barns ” — Church built on a threshing-floor in sixth century — Legend of a church filled with rye — Stealing corn from a church in 1242 — Harvest stored over house-place in Schleswig-Holstein- — Plaster floors of upper rooms of Anglo-Saxon churches — Corn stored in churches by husbandmen — The German kornhtis — Chamber or corn-house at Einhausen made into a church — Cows in churches — Ever-burning fire in Irish chiefs’ houses continued by churches — Holy fire in English churches . 28

I

Chapter III Upper Rooms In Churches— Wells In Houses And Churches

Inhabited Irish churches — Living-rooms in Anglo-Saxon churches — The inhabitation of church towers continued to the fourteenth century, or later — Historical proof of the use of churches as xi

PAGE

dwellings or sleeping places— Intermediate floors in English, Scottish, and German churches— St. Peter’s, Westminster, in the Bayeux “ Tapestry ’’—Wells in houses and churches— Wells at their doors — Stream flowing through house or chapel . . 63

Chapter IV

TOWERS WITH ADJUNCTS— FORTIFIED CHURCHES— CHURCHES BUILT ON THE SITES OF HALLS AND CASTLES

Development of some churches from tower-houses — Original form of church at Barton-on-Humber — It had three rooms on the ground-floor and other rooms above — Ancient unendowed chapel near this church — It was probably the manor-house — Dwelling between tower and nave at Terrington St. John — Wooden adjunct on west side of the tower of Laindon church — Other adjuncts of church towers — Scottish tower inhabited in 1590 — Fortified French churches — Towers with chimneys, bakers’ ovens, and wells — Churches attacked and defended like castles — Churches used as places of refuge for the neigh¬ bours and their goods — Cattle taken into churchyard to avoid distress — Huts or tents in churchyards as shelters — German fortified churches — Fortifications of Walldorf church — Little rooms called gaden in the walls of churchyards into which the inhabitants fled in panic — Payments to the church for the use of these rooms — -The berchfrit or watch-tower — Other gaden described — German churches surrounded by moats — German church-castles — Barns and sheds in German churchyards in the fourteenth century — Houses in English churchyards — Underground passages communicating with churches— Irish churches built on sites of chiefs’ dwellings — Danish halls converted into churches— Castles adapted to monastic uses — English traditions about churches built on steep or lofty sites — Theories that churches are developments of basilicas or of scholce — Some of the larger British churches were develop¬ ments of the basilica — But many others were developed from native chiefs’ halls, or from tower-houses— Bede’s “Scottish” churches . . 79 xii chapter V

Churches in entrenchments and near conical mounds— Earls Barton church abutting on a mound called Berry Mount Hill — Other Berry Mount Hills near churches — Meaning of “berry” — Ramparts and moats surrounding churches — Churches in Roman castra — Churches in earthworks described by old Irish writers — Palet Hill at Catterick — Churches close to raths — King’s Hill, Congar Hill, Conygarth, &c. — The Hills at Meppershall — Mound called Hall Garth Hill near chapel at Cropton — Mounds near Irish churches — Hall Tower Hill near church of Barwick-in-Elmet— Maypole there — Ash pole fixed on Wayting Hill — Other mounds near churches — Great mound near Bradfield church, Yorks — Prehistoric remains in mound near Worcester cathedral — As proved by their names, these earthworks were associated with halls — A moated hall with two circular mounds — Kingerby Hall — Mounds near churches which have been proved to be barrows— Maypole on barrow near St. Weonard’s church — Churches built near barrows— Keeils in the Isle of Man — Prehistoric remains and burials under churches at Fimber and Kildale — Burial in the house — Mound and court the site of a Welsh church in the sixth cen¬ tury — Barrow containing important remains near church at Taplow — “ Wilmslow ” in Cheshire the name of the church and churchyard only — Removal of barrow at west end of Ludlow church in 1199 in order to extend the church— Tombs found in it— Mounds near the halls of old Norse chiefs— Such mounds were “horgs” or high places where ancestors were worshipped— Swedish family burial-mounds near the main door of the big house — Barrows as places of judgment and tribal meetings— Toot Hills— The Tinwald Hill and the ad¬ jacent chapel— The court due east of the hill— The Rock of Laws in Iceland and the adjacent church— Mound called King’s Chair near the church on Tara Hill— Our Lady’s

Mount on which a court was held near a German church _

Flail Yard and mound at Laughton — A hall there mentioned

m Domesday The Saxon” portion of the adjacent church _

Evidence that the rampart which surrounded the manor-house

was identical with that which surrounded the church _ A

burh was the fortress of a tribe — The ordeal in the king’s “ burh ”— A “ burh ” at Worcester erected for Christian worship and for the protection of the people in 886 xm

Chapter VI

Churches and manors valued together in Domesday— Demesnes and villanage lands of churches— Maners belonging to rectories The deans of Whalley — Patrons of manors — Property of ancient German churches — Grants of English churches with

manorial rights — Manors appendant to parish churches _

Grants of churches “with their appurtenances ”— To claim the advowson at law was to claim the manor — Meaning of “advowson”— Instances in which grants of parish churches included manors— “ Manors of rectories ’’—The “benefice of the parsonage of Prestbury “ The manor, lordship, or rectory of Dewsbury ’’—Accounts of this manor in the four¬ teenth century— Rectorial manors of Wigan, Halifax, and Hitchin— Glebe lands of rectories not distinguishable from lands of manors — Severance of churches and “ parsonages ” from manors in the thirteenth century— Portions of manors assigned for the use of vicars .

CHAPTER VII The identity of lord and priest in ancient Germany and France _

Church-scot payable to the lord— Tithe payable to the thane or lord, who retained nine-tenths and paid one-tenth to the Pope or Crown — Edgar’s instruction to thanes to pay a third of their nine-tenths to their stipendiary priests — Tithe was paid at the mother church of a manor — This was not a cathe¬ dral but the principal church of a manor — The tenth payable by the thane corresponds to the tenth payable by the rector in the thirteenth century — The lord of the manor was a thane — Tithes of manors^or of mansiones — The ceorl who thrived and became worthy of the privilege of a thane — His five hides, church and kitchen, &c. — He was a king’s thane — The “church and kitchen ” probably a dwelling-house — The “ great house ” and kitchen in Ireland — St. Kevin’s Kitchen- — description of an early church-like building at Bradford-on-Avon — This building compared with a manorial hall of 1141 — List of early bipartite buildings from A.D. 650 corresponding to “church and kitchen ”— Suggestion that the privilege conferred by the

XIV

PAGE king on a thane was a grant of manorial rights — Example of a royal grant to a king’s thane — The priest paid by Edgar’s thane compared to the “annual priest” of the rector in 1253 — The thane the predecessor of the rector — Opinion of Dr. Stubbs that thanes were succeeded after the Conquest by knights — No evidence of this — About 1280 we read of the thane and the knight — The thane was the hereditary potential priest — The distinction between secular thane and altar-thane or mass-thane — Married and hereditary priests — A king’s thane holding an ecclesiastical benefice in the eighth century — His twenty hides reckoned as eighteen — The thane essenti¬ ally a military leader and judge, but a priest, or potential priest, also — Bishops were king’s thanes in the ninth century — “A priest and three other thanes” in Domesday Book- — King’s thane or king’s priest — The gesith, who was the predecessor of the thane, and his church — Manors and churches in 1181 not to be held by the same man, but “a distinction of persons ” to be made — Lease by a monastery in 1152 of a manor, hall, and church to the same man — Lease by a monastery in the twelfth century to a priest ( sacerdos ) who was succeeded by his son— “Clerks not in holy orders,” otherwise priests, in the eighth century — Rectors who were not in holy orders — They were sub-deacons — A parson was a man who personated another — Division of revenue between lord and parson — At the Conquest numerous churches with their manors and tithes passed into the hands of the great barons — But they were still estates of inheritance — Gifts of such properties to monasteries in soul-alms — -Instances of the disposal of manors and tithes by Norman lords — The rector or head of a parish was a ruler of the people — His resemblance to the Norse gode — The “advocate”— Clergy sent to battle in the fifteenth century— Their weapons and military dress .

Chapter VIII I

Possibility that the manorial court was an extension of the domestic tribunal in which the paterfamilias was judge — The ordeal, or king’s justice, administered in Anglo-Saxon churches— Manorial courts in churches in the twelfth and thirteenth cen¬ turies— Disputes settled there at that period— Later courts in churches — The town meeting in church in the fifteenth cen¬ tury— Proof of kinship in Welsh churches before the judge and elders — Roll stolen from manorial court held in church

U3 xv in 1524 — Tradition in 1703 that the manorial jury sat in the stalls of Ravenstonedale church — The jury of twenty-four — The “four angles” of this parish — Landowners bound to serve on the jury — Their extensive powers — Town meetings in church in the seventeenth century— Meetings in a vestry or annexe of the church .

Chapter IX Courts Held, And Things Done, In Church Courts Held In The Hall

Parish meetings in church — Conveyance of land in church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — Money paid at the altar — Rents paid in church — Mortgage money repaid there — Mortgages redeemed on the altar — Sales of land in church — Tithes paid in church — Charters read there — Ceremony in church to maintain the title to an estate — Rents payable on Sunday — Other instances of rents paid in church — Ownership of goods proved at the altar — Surrender of land in churchyard — Rents paid on Whitsunday — Conveyance of land by “ church gift ” — Dower assigned at the church door — Proclamation in church before granting letters of administration — Costs of actions paid in church— Notices of holding manorial courts and penalties inflicted by such courts proclaimed in church— Assize courts and others in cathedrals and abbey churches — Itinerant justices sitting in church — Ecclesiastical prohibitions of secular courts in churches — Futility of such prohibitions — Claim to Scottish Crown decided in church — Chancery courts in church — Courts held at the church door — Door-dooms — Courts and meetings in church porch — Court-house erected at church door — Marriages in the porch — Freedom purchased at church door — Exposure of infants there — Oaths at the church door and on the door sill of a house — Oaths taken at the altar — Moot-hills — Court-house in the middle of a village — Probate, divorce, and matrifnonial causes in church — Usurpation by the clergy of the royal prerogative — Degrees conferred and Uni¬ versity business done in St. Mary's church, Oxford — The Cam¬ bridge Commencement in Great St. Mary’s church — Small Debtors’ Court in church at Southwark — Ordeals in church — The ordeal as a civil process — The ordeal of battle — The ordeal in the Norse hall — Trial of Edward the Confessor’s mother by ordeal in church — The ordeal by lot in church — Excepting the ordeal Anglo-Saxon courts were probably held

PAG*.

XVI in the open air— The halimote not the lord’s court— Instances of courts held in the lord’s hajl, or in a building which was not the church — Judicial inquiries in the oriel of the lord’s hall The “squint” — Secular business in chapels — Manor rolls in churches .

Chapter X

Absence of early municipal buildings in England and France— English municipal buildings not older than the fourteenth century— Burgesses of Ipswich holding their courts in church in 1200— Order about selling oats made in a church in 1281 — The commonalty of Hedon meeting in church in the fourteenth century— The Hall of Pleas— Town council of Northampton sitting in church in the fourteenth century — Jurats of New Romney meeting in church during service time— Peculiar arrangement of this building — The mayor still elected in the church of New Romney by the jurats, who assemble round a tomb — Deputy-mayor elected in a church tower — Election of mayors in chancels after summons by the horn — Common Assembly in St. Peter’s church, Dover, in the fourteenth century summoned by a horn — Subsequent election of mayor in St. Mary’s church — The mayor sitting at the east end of the chancel in 1813, with the magistrates on either side of him — The aldermen sitting in the chancel of this church in 1552 — Analogy to the tribunal of a basilica — Protracted and costly attempts to remove the corporation from the chancel — Mayor of Sandwich elected in St. Clement’s church in 1301 — The ceremony on that occasion, and the consequence of refusing to be mayor — The common business of the corporation in St. Peter’s church in this town — The estates of orphans super¬ vised by the mayor in St. Peter’s church — Acknowledgments of married women taken by the mayor and jurats in this church — Their jurisdiction over the estates of intestates — The Hundred Court, otherwise the chief municipal court, met ex¬ clusively in St. Clement’s church — But inferior municipal business was transacted in St. Peter’s — Peculiarities in the architecture of St. Peter’s — The Abbot of St. Augustine’s and the town alternate patrons of this church — In 1532 the mayor and jurats committed the curate, chantry priests, and church¬ wardens of St. Peter’s to prison for neglecting their duty in

XVII

PAGE

church — Deputy-mayor elected in Stonar church in 1301 — Mayor of Fordwich elected in church in the fifteenth century — Ceremony on the occasion — Powers of the mayor and jurats — Mayor of Salisbury elected in church in the sixteenth cen¬ tury— Fugitives to a church as a refuge controlled by the mayor, bailiffs, and coroners — Administration of estates of intestates before the mayor — The chancery of the Lord Mayor of York — The Lord Mayor and Aldermen in the choir stalls of the cathedral — The swords or ensigns of mayors carried into cathedrals with the point upwards — Objections of Deans and Chapters to this — The Mayor of Derby elected in All Saints’ church — The burgesses paid the stipends of two priests — The “ town vault ” under the chancel — The corporation of Great Yarmouth in the chancel of the parish church — The burgesses governed the church — Parsonage erected by the corporation in 1718 — Church at Aberdeen belonging to the burgesses — Town council in the chancel before the Reforma¬ tion — Culprits appearing before the alderman and council in the chancel- — The choristers servants of the town council —

Laity in the chancels of English churches in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — Purgation by oath in church — Head Court of burgh of Elgin in the chancel of the parish church — High Steward elected before the mayor in the chancel of Doncaster church in 1590 — Aldermen elected in vestry at Doncaster in 1804 — The “town house” at the east end of the church there — The king’s justiciar sitting in the chapel of St.

Mary Magdalen, Doncaster, in 1154 — The building fitted up as a court of justice and town-hall — Norman church discovered in this town-hall in 1846 — Municipal courts in annexes of churches — The Pentice, or town-hall, annexed to St. Peter’s church, Chester— The church belonged to the burgesses when Domesday was made — Evidence that the church was on the site of the Roman prsetorium — The Tolsey, or town-hall, at Gloucester annexed to All Saints’ church — Roman and other antiquities discovered in its foundations — Tolsey at Bristol annexed to a church— The tollbooth at Edinburgh adjoining a church— The city church of St. Martin’s at Oxford— Portman-mote Hall in the churchyard— St. Martin’s church the “ town church ” of Leicester— Roman remains there— Pleading in the “ town church ” in the twelfth century— The church governed by the town-council — Carvings in stalls of chancels represent¬ ing the various occupations of burgesses and members of governing bodies . . 223

Chapter XI Page

The earlier form of local government not autocratic — Leases of manors effect little change in self-government — Analogy of the priest, reeve, and chief men to the rector, churchwardens, and governing body of later times- — Manors farmed by the villans jointly — Continuity between the earlier manorial court and the vestry — The Twenty-four Sidesmen of Cartmel in the sixteenth century — The “ questhouse ” in the church — Control by the sidesmen of the church and manor — Meaning of the word “sidesman” — Sidesmen’s and churchwardens’ divisions — The sidesmen co-opted— The manor of Cartmel, formerly belonging to a monastery, granted to the landowners in 1640 — Other instances of purchase of manors by bodies of landowners — The men of Coventry and their common lands in 1534 — The burgesses of Sheffield claiming the waste lands, and holding their meetings in church — New town-hall in a corner of the churchyard in 1700 — Common lands managed by manorial courts and later by vestries — The Twenty-four Headboroughs of Braintree — Their meetings in church and their renewal by co-option — Their duties — Governing bodies of twelve and twenty-four — Their members held office for life and were renewed by co-option — Evidence of the office being connected with the ownership of land — Land set apart for village officials — Cities governed by Twenty-fours — The Twenty-four Keys of the Isle of Man — Governing bodies called the Sixteen — The sixteen folding seats in the parochial part of Swine church — The Sixteen Men of Holme Cultram appointed by the Leet — -Their powers and duties — Their meetings held in church — Bodies called the Forty-eight meet¬ ing in church — The Twenty-four of Wymondham in 1408 — Vestries — Manorial juries controlling ecclesiastical affairs and fixing the amount of tithe . . . . 254

CHAPTER Xlb

Churchwardens as manorial officers— Their election— Their ac¬ counts audited by municipal councils — Their various names— They were agents of the community — Evidence that the reeve xix

PAGE

of the manor and the churchwarden were identical — Points of resemblance between them — Rent of assize payable to church¬ wardens — The reeve when first mentioned was a secretary — Exemption of the reeve of the manor from services compared to payment of salaries to churchwardens — Fine for refusing to be reeve analogous to fine for refusing to be churchwarden —

The reeve’s scot-ale and the churchwarden’s church-ale — The number of churchwardens depended on the number of quarters or divisions in a parish — Wardens of the byrlaw — Secular duties of churchwardens — The reeve who held reeve-land and was lord of a manor — Continuance of reeve-land to modern times — The four chief reeves or “ posts ” at Stockport — They were lords of sub-manors, paid no rates, and appointed the churchwardens— Their chapels in the parish church— The eight “ posts ” at Astbury — Churchwardens appointed by lords of sub-manors . . 272

Chapter XIII The Lord’s Bakehouse— The Holy Cake

Common bakehouse repaired by churchwardens as agents of the community— Subject to a chief rent the bakehouse belonged to the community — Chief rents issuing from churches A bakehouse and a brewhouse appurtenances of a lord’s dwelling

_ Bakehouses very near churches — Ovens for baking bread

in Coptic churches— The sale of bread a monopoly— The bakehouse a source of profit to the church — A holy cake was provided by each house in its turn and the oven heated by each tenant of the manor in his turn— Large size of this cake —It was distributed to the people on Sunday— The portions distributed known as cantles — Collection of bread and wine from house to house at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-

tury _ The payments for the holy cake finally commuted into

“communion money,” or “communion bread money”— The sale of holy cake a source of income to the clergy Altar bread and pence received for holy cake part of a vicar’s en¬ dowment — Communion bread a monopoly Endowments to provide the holy cake— The ancient Irish Sunday gift— The holy cake brought in a towel on the donor’s breast, and laid on the altar— The holy cake contributed pursuant to manorial orders— Its possible origin .

XX

Chapter XIV

v

Common brewhouse repaired by churchwardens — Its alternative names — Its contents and its garden— It was usually known as the church-house — Its proximity to the church — A church-house under the same roof as the church — Taverns in foreign churches — Brewing for the profit of the church — Loan of brewing vessels by churchwardens — The scot-ale house or tap-ale house in Salisbury — The great brewings at Easter and Whitsuntide — Ale given to mass-folk on Easter Tuesday — Ale supplied to churches at Easter by St. Brigit — Ale drunk “ at the Lord’s Supper within the church” at Salisbury in the fifteenth century — The “masters of the parish” drank the leavings of ale at the maundy in Easter week — Meaning of “Lord’s Supper” — Maundy of the lord of a manor in 1512- — Wine for Easter communion bought by the corporation of Newcastle in the sixteenth century — Great number of Easter communicants at Bradfield — The King-ale the great source of income at St. Edmund’s, Salisbury, in fifteenth century — The play of the King and Queen — The feast continued for three weeks at Whitsuntide and resumed in October — Obliga¬ tion to take the part of King and Queen — Object of the feast The amount drunk excessive — Absence of private alehouses in fourteenth century— Ale for sale must be bought at the common brewhouse— Brewing a monopoly in the hands of village communities— No ale to be brewed or sold until the church-ale was all sold— The brewhouse an alehouse— Opinion that the church-house was the village inn — Leases of church-houses by churchwardens and others— Description of a church-house at South Tawton — A church-house leased to Gypsies in 1522— Instances of chief rents paid for the church-house— The lord’s brewhouse in German villages— Identity of the church-ale with the earlier scot-ale— The origin of these customs The lord or “bread-keeper” and the servant or “ bread-eater ” .