The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker (2 page)

When I first began writing, I read
Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England
by Compton Reeves, and was struck by the insights it gave. One in particular caught my fancy: his description of a medieval Christmas. I was fascinated by it, and decided there and then that one day, I would write a mystery story set at Christmas-time.

The aspect which intrigued me most was the curious detail of the boy-Bishop. Only later did I realise that Exeter Cathedral annually elected a boy-Bishop – and as soon as I realised that, I knew I had to incorporate one into my story. At last, five years later, here he is.

There appears to be a direct link between the boy-Bishops of the Middle Ages and the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. This was a strange feast during which everything became topsy-turvy; social and moral constraints went by-the-by.

Boy-Bishops existed all over the country. Cathedrals, canonical churches and colleges had their own customs but were generally consistent: the boy would have been elected by his fellow Choristers on 21 December, Feast Day of St Thomas the Apostle, and would come into his bishopric at some time after Christmas, usually ending with the last service on Holy Innocents’ Day, 28 December.

In Exeter the boy-Bishop took control at the last service on 27 December, and held power for twenty-four hours. During his reign he would have a fabulous time compared with normal: a Chorister in those days normally spent long hours singing in a draughty, cold cathedral, and even longer hours sitting learning Latin or writing. There would have been few breaks, and none designed for play.

Instead, on this one day, he would take breakfast with his Canon – a meal to which he could invite his friends – afterwards marching in procession to St Nicholas’s Priory near the river, where the Prior would give him a sum of money and more food. Following this, he would be able to wander about the city with his friends and participate in all sorts of mayhem. As Nicholas Orme says in his excellent book
Exeter Cathedral As It Was 1050-1550
, 28 December was one day when the clergy could relax. Sometimes things went a bit too far – or at least, Bishop Grandisson certainly thought so because he wrote scathingly of Canons whose minds were off in the marketplace, the street or even still in bed while their bodies were present in church. Orme points out that, just as modern-day office workers enjoy Christmas parties with the associated revelry, drinking and (if only in the minds of the hopeful) casual sex, clerical staff in the early 1300s could also let their hair down for a short period each year.

In the middle of all this, there would be a gift of gloves to leading members of the city’s institutions. The precise significance of these gloves has eluded me. Clearly, though, they were considered recognition for acts of kindness or patronage, and thus I feel justified in awarding them to my friends in this story.

As an entity, the Church was wholly separate from the state. The Church had its own lands and was self-sufficient, producing stores of food and drink. Sometimes it bought in goods from outside such as wines, but these were exempt from customs and duties. The Church was not under the King’s rule.

For example, if a cleric was thought guilty of a crime, he could not be convicted in one of the King’s courts; instead, he enjoyed
Benefit of Clergy
. This meant that he could walk free from the city’s courts and could only be tried in a clerical one. This system had wonderful advantages for the culprit. For a start, penalties were more lenient. Priests and clerics could hope to escape with a severe penance, a restricted diet and a lengthy period on their knees begging for forgiveness, while a secular criminal could anticipate a stay in gaol waiting for the King’s Justices to arrive, followed by a hanging. Clerical folk had protection – no matter what their crime.

I should digress here to point out that there was a difference between a clergyman demanding Benefit of Clergy and being tried in a church court, and a secular felon being tried in the Bishop’s court; the Bishop’s court wasn’t a cushy number. A felon would be hanged as quickly by, for example, the Abbot of Tavistock’s court as he would by the King’s own; indeed, it is recorded that a thief was hanged by the Abbot of Tavistock in 1322.

Yet while the clergy were theoretically living a separate life, they mixed continually with people from the city.

The Church was the social service of the age. Members of the clergy nagged and exhorted congregations to look after those less well off, using the teachings of Christ to show how men ought to behave. Throughout society, in every wealthy household, alms-dishes were circulated to collect food from diners. These would later be deposited at the door, or an almoner would distribute it among the poor.

There was no state aid for those who were hardest off, only occasional tax exemptions, but the Church ensured that all those who needed it would receive food. Theologically the Church had problems with the idea of rich people being morally acceptable – after all, Jesus had said something about a camel and a needle’s eye – but after a while it was decided that wealth in itself wasn’t bad, provided that the wealthy man concerned was pious and generous. If he displayed the courtly attribute of ‘largesse’, giving away freely from his wealth, he could go to Heaven – but woe-betide the grasping lord who gave little. At a time when the people largely believed in the reality of Heaven and the life to come, this was a powerful incentive.

Everyone had to pay tithes to the local parish church. From the total, one third was redistributed to the local poor and needy. The Church taught that surplus – any profit over and above what was actually needed for the family – should be given away. This was not charity, it was
justice
. In the flawed world which had been formed from Original Sin and the Fall of Man, there was no fair allocation of the nation’s resources. Wealth was inequitably shared out and it was the duty of men to balance the availability of necessities. True charity was giving up
more
than one’s surplus and depriving oneself. That was real Christian love and mercy.

All poor relief was in the hands of the clergy, who looked after widows, orphans, lepers and cripples with more concern to the means of the individuals than a specific disability. Thus a widowed woman who had plenty of money would not receive much, while a crippled man with no means of earning a living would be helped a great deal.

Religious organisations gave away food, money, clothing, and shelter. They maintained leper hospitals, homes for the injured and even looked after the aged in their retirement. Some may think they did a better job serving the needy than we do today.

I have often been asked what happened to convicted felons once they had been found guilty. Some have questioned my descriptions of hangings.

The worst excesses of judicial brutality had not yet occurred in Britain. Refined tortures were the invention of future generations, especially the Tudors. Under the Plantagenets there was only one punishment – hanging – although drawing and quartering were used occasionally for treason and peculiarly heinous crimes, and lords could be honoured by beheading instead.

This may not sound much of a concession, but these hangings took place in the days prior to scientific (-ish) executions: the victim would be turned off a ladder or a cart, or sometimes simply lifted off his or her feet by a rope. Invariably they died slowly, throttled as all air was cut off. Friends and relatives would pull on the victim’s legs or thump the chest to try to end the suffering, because the process could take anything from five minutes to three-quarters of an hour, according to Reverend Samuel Haughton, a Victorian polymath who tried to use scientific principles to end villains’ lives more efficiently. Later, the British developed the ‘long drop’ method of execution which broke the neck and killed almost instantaneously, but the medieval age was not so inventive.

So it’s easy to understand that a lord would prefer to have his head removed, rather than ‘dance the Tyburn jig’. A good, strong arm with a battle-axe could take off a head with one quick sweep. Sadly, life – or death, in this case – isn’t always that easy and executioners were often incompetent. Take the example of Jack Ketch. During his attempt to execute Lord William Russell in 1683, it took him four blows of his axe to remove the head; the Duke of Monmouth in 1685 had to endure five attempts, before Ketch resorted to his knife.

Of course, many people who were accused and convicted of crimes never made it to the gallows. All too often the poor devils died in gaol. Naturally the English have always had a sense of fair play, and if a gaoler caused the death of his inmates by too harsh a regime, he could be arrested as a homicide himself. Every death in prison resulted in an inquest, we are assured. So, for example, when we look at a two-month period in Wallingford Gaol in 1316, during which time twenty-eight people died as a result of cold, disease, hunger, thirst or
peine fort et dure
– literally ‘severe and hard punishment’ (
OED
), which meant, among other things, a starvation diet – one is reassured to read that the gaoler was attached and an inquest held.

It is less reassuring to see the conclusion that all the deaths were from ‘natural causes’ and that the gaoler himself was exonerated!