Felicity Heal

The Archbishops of Canterbury and the Practice of Hospitality

One dinnertime in the early 1540s Thomas Seymour, brother to the future Lord Protector, arrived at Lambeth Palace with an urgent message from the king to the archbishop of Canterbury. He found Cranmers household at their meal in the great hall, the company sitting in due order under the watchful eyes of the senior officials of the establishment. Seymour was warmly received by the archbishop in his chamber and a meal was pressed upon him; then he was sent on his way with the appropriate response for the monarch. The occasion was more than a routine one for an exchange of messages: indeed it may have been deliberately contrived by Henry vm, with or without the connivance of the archbishop, to force the courtier literally to eat his words. Seymour had been busy denouncing Cranmer for keeping no hospitality ‘or house correspondent with his revenues and dignities’, but, instead, for wasting his income on the purchase of lands for the benefit of his family. When the king enquired of him about the adequacy of the Canterbury household he was, grudgingly, forced to admit ‘he be not in the realm of none estate or degree that hath such a hall furnished, or that fareth more honourably at his own table’. Henry seized the opportunity to lecture the assembled company on the dangers of seeking after episcopal wealth. So long as the prelates continued to dispense hospitality he would not, he asserted, allow them to be despoiled by laymen who had already dispersed the wealth of the monasteries. As for the archbishop he was above reproach and a model to all his fellows ‘for he spendeth (ah, good man) all that he hath in housekeeping’.

The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500-1700.

Preface and Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - Illustrations - Introduction - Lineage - The Family - Wealth: Income - Wealth: Spending - Administration - Politics - Education - Civility, Sociability and the Maintenance of Hegemony - The Gentry and the Church - Piety and Belief - Conclusion

The Gentry and the Church

Sir Henry Spelman, the great legal historian, was in some ways a characteristic learned gentleman of the early seventeenth century. He exchanged notes and writings on heraldry with his fellow antiquaries, participated efficiently, if not vigorously, in the political affairs of his county of Norfolk, and sat as an MP in the Parliaments of 1597 and 1625. Like many of his contemporaries, Spelman was also involved in much litigation for the preservation of his estate, including long and bitter conflicts about his claim to property formerly held by the abbeys of Blackborough and Wormegay. The dispute ground through Chancery for two decades until it was finally compromised by Lord Keeper Coventry. And there the matter would probably have ended had the antiquary not been in other ways a very untypical gentleman. Instead he expressed relief to be ‘out of the briars’, but drew from his experiences the unusual conclusion that he had been taught ‘the Infelicity of meddling with consecrated places’. From this beginning Spelman began to accumulate evidence of the disastrous effect that possession of former Church property had had on the families of his native county, evidence that was published long after his death in The History and Fate of Sacrilege. An interim statement of his views on sacrilege did, however, appear in 1613 in De non temerandis Ecclesiae.1

Piety and Belief

Sir Henry Slingsby, the first baronet and Royalist martyr, modelled his Diary on ‘the advise of Michael de Montaigne’, setting down such ‘accidents as befall me’ without method or order. Like Montaigne, however, Slingsby in practice gave considerable thought to his scribbling; weaving a philosophy of living out of the apparently insignificant doings of a gentry household in Yorkshire in the 1630s. On matters of religion Sir Henry divided his attention between the practical and the theological, and built into his observations a clear vision of the pious life of the Christian gentleman. An encounter with Timothy Thurscross, a prebendary of York, caused him to reflect on the dangers of simony in the contemporary Church, for Thurscross had resigned a benefice which he had gained by simonaical means. Since the cleric was now a man of reformed and exemplary behaviour, Slingsby was puzzled by his commitment to Laudian ceremonial which ‘I thought came too near idolatory to adore a place with rich cloaths and other furniture and to command to use towards it bodily worship’. But, like the moderate man he was, Slingsby refused to condemn the prebendary: instead the qualities of his Christian witness prompted his admiration, as well as the observation that it was ‘a hard thing to be a good christian’.1

Civility, Sociability and the Maintenance of Hegemony

John Aubrey believed that the education of a young gentleman must be completed by the age of 25 at the latest. Thereafter ‘the management of his estates will take up most of his time, besides visits and returns of visits’. The construction of the gentleman might have been an arduous and costly process, but the result at best was an individual who could combine political leadership and intelligent financial management with courtesy, magnanimity and cultural sophistication in daily living. The ideal varied with time, place and circumstance: in the hands of John Kaye in Elizabethan Yorkshire, for example, it was a very externalised image of the prosperous householder, providing for his ‘friend, He hath his desyer’, serving the king with ready armour and the Deity with daily prayer. He then conceded a little to civility by adding to his portrait ‘wisdom, aptnes and curtesey, are the nursses of all gentry’. William Vaughan agreed that the gentleman must be affable, courteous and liberal, but added courage and willingness to forgive injury to his list of necessary qualities. At the other extreme Richard Brathwait’s gentleman is constructed from inner qualities of mind, afforced by good training, so that ‘he admires nothing more than a constant spirit’ and ‘amongst men he hates no less to be uncivill, than in his feare to God-ward to be servile’.

Hospitality in Early Modern England.

List of figures Abbreviations The language and symbolism of hospitality Hospitality in the great household The changing vision of hospitality The elite and household entertainment: from the Elizabethan Age to the Restoration Visitors and voyagers The duties of the pre-Reformation clergy The clergy after the Reformation Urban hospitality Hospitality among the populace Conclusion Bibliography Index

Of Prelates and Princes. A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate.

The Tudor bishops were men of power and influence within the English realm, both because they possessed spiritual authority and because they exercised lordship over great estates. This book examines their activities as temporal lords: it seeks to discover how wealthy they were and to what uses their revenues were put. Dr Heal draws upon much research undertaken by other scholars in particular dioceses and for particular prelates. The bishops possessed considerable wealth, but they had little security, for the crown effectively controlled their economic destiny, especially after the break with Rome in 1534. No study of the episcopate can therefore ignore the effects of royal policy, and this book combines an investigation into the attitudes and behaviour of the Tudor monarchs with its close examination of the fortunes of the bishops.

Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680-1540.

If you ally obsession such a referred lords and peasants in a changing society the estates of the bishopric of worcester 68