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by Richenda Fairhurst, historyfish.net. January 2009.
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XIV. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Ther was an Ancres with hom I had not a lytyll besynes to have her
grauntt to com owte, but owte she is.—Commissioners’ Report, Worchester.
in the sixteenth century
recluses were not so numerous as formerly, they were still to be found
churches and religious houses ; e.g. at Wakefield, York, Lincoln,
London (Bishopsgate), Westminster, and other places. Elizabeth,
queen of Henry VII, made gifts to
women enclosed at St. Albans and at Gloucester ; Katherine of Aragon
to the anchoress of Stamford and to the anchorite of Marlborough ; and
pensioners of Henry VIII included “ancres”.1 Many other
instances are found in wills. A
To such benefactions there was usually added a request for intercessory prayer ; e.g. at Faversham (1519) : “To the Ancres in the churchyard to the intent she shall pray for my soul and all Christian souls, 4d.” ; and at Sandwich (1523) : “To the Ancras being at Our Lady Church in Sandwich to pray for my soul, 6s. 8d.”. Sums of money were bequeathed
to the priest
enclosed in the
Austin Friary at
The cell, as a
recognized part of
the chantry system, was doomed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The inmates were quickly disposed of. In vain the nuns of Polesworth, with their
abbess and an “ancress”—reported by the commissioners as women of a
religious sort—intimated their desire to continue there or to be
other houses (1536). They were allowed,
indeed, to buy a brief respite, but in 1539 they were forced to
surrender. One of the nuns, possibly the
herself, was close upon 100 years old, and the commissioners themselves
the Court of Augmentations to ratify pensions to all : “for most of
aged, impotent, or friendless”.3 The solitary Dominican sister at
“And where as that the lady Ankeres of the blak freres is put in grete trouble and surmised that she shuld be a heretike and that I shuld teche and instructe her with heresyes as well by bookes as otherwise. Good cristen people here I take my deth upon it that I doo knowe her but for a good and vertuous woman. I beseeche god to preserue her in goodnes. And I know non heresy in her nor I neuer taught her heresy. I wold god there were many more so good lyvyng in vertue as she is both men and women.”4
probability she was the
“Kateryn Man late recluse in the house of the late Blak Freres” to whom
a pension of 20s. was granted by the
Corporation for life, on condition that she relinquish such right as
she had in
the “ancresse-house”. Two years later
the civic assembly passed another resolution : “It is agreed and
Katheryn Manne syngle-woman shall have fre libertye to occupie within
cittie so long as she shall kepe her shoppe and be soole and unmarryed”. Some recluses, old and feeble, were dependent
upon the alms of those who had known them in the old days ; this in
parson of All Saints’,
disposed of in
various ways. The “Ankeresse House” at
There were hermits, too, scattered up and down the country during these years preceding the Dissolution of Religious Houses. Road and bridge hermits were still doing useful work, and were popular objects of charity. The private accounts of Sir Henry Willoughby in 1561 show “rewards” paid to the “armytts” called Egerton and Mytton, and to the “armytts” of Bindon and Polesworth ; and as late as 1542 he
gave twopence to a poor hermit at the gates.8 Persons travelling would give alms to hermits on the highway. Henry VIII on a journey “paied in almes to an heremyte upon the waye” 4s. 8d. He also allowed £3 6s. 8d. to the hermit of Deptford towards the repair of his chapel.9
The enterprising hermit of Lydd seems to have made himself indispensable to the town, and to have remained on at the hermitage from 1520 to 1558 in the capacity of agent in connexion with church restoration.10 John Bate supplied loads of gravel, and even lead for the roofing of the chancel, e.g. :—
Itm receuyd of father armyte for Half a C and
20 lb. of Lede, 4s. 8d.
But whilst some
hard-working men, others were idle and greedy of gain (pp. 61-2). William Thorpe, the Lollard, had spoken in
his Testament (1460) of “heremites
and pardoners, ankers and straunge beggers” who had leave to defraud
the poor.11 There
was some truth in his complaint, for
the system of indulgences was frequently applied to their support, and
undoubtedly held position which were connected with superstitious uses. In 1443, for example, the pope offered an
indulgence to penitents who should visit and give alms to a chapel12 in the parish of Stalham,
dedicated to St. Andrew “at which John Kylburn, a hermit, has long
whither resorts a great multitude out of reverence for the said saint,
merits divers of those who visit it have been delivered from diseases”. Pilgrims to Bawburge were wont to resort to
the orator of the hermit near the bridge, and after mass he “attended
the town, sprinkling them with hyssop and holy water”.
Another instance of such service occurs at
Hinxton, in the neighboring
“We find lykwise that
an Ermite .
. . dwellinge there did cast hollywater on them that came to him fortye
sithence and tooke the proffitts thereof. . . . But whether the sayd
close were given or used to anye other superstitious use before or
tyme we knowe not.”
commission held in the
The hermit of
The chapel of
Court at Street in
Aldington sprang into fame about the year 1525 through its connexion
“Holy Maid of Kent”. Before becoming a
to believe herself inspired, and spread exaggerated reports, with intent to increase the number of pilgrims to the chapel “for hys own lucre and advauntage”. Instigated to play the prophetess, she predicted that if the King’s marriage with Anne Boleyn took place, she should be burnt and he would die a villain’s death. An immense crowd gathered at the chapel, in whose presence the nun became rapt :—
“At her next voyage to our Lady of Court of Strete, she entred the Chappell with Ave Regina Coelorum in pricksong. . . . Thre fell she eftsoones into a marveilous passion before the Image of our Lady, much like a bodie diseased of the falling Evill, in the which she uttered sundry metricall and ryming speeches, tending to the worship of our Lady of Court of Strete, whose Chappell there shee wished to be better mainteined, and to be furnished with a daily singing Priest.”
“To the herymete of Curte of Strete vjs. viiid. To our Lady Chapel . . . a yard and two nails and a half cloth of gold, for a vestment.”14
Elizabeth Barton herself may have been the victim of hallucinations, but her aiders and abetters who compiled the rolls of prophecies, were certainly guilty of fraud. Bidden by an angel, she visited Henry VIII himself : possibly she told him the story repeated by Chapuys in a letter to Charles V, namely, that she had seen the seat prepared for him in hell (cf. p. 160). She confessed many mad follies to the archbishop, but desired permission to go again to Court at Street,
and “there have
a trance, and
then know perfectly”. At length she
admitted her treason against God and the King, and publicly confessed
falsehoods at Paul’s Cross. Cranmer
in 1533, that the feigned revelations of the false nun were had in
; and Sir Thomas More—who had once thought her pious, albeit strange
childish—now regarded her as “the wicked woman of
1534) : “This
day the nun of
One of the last
of the Kentish
hermits, an intelligent and hard-working man who dwelt by
The last tenant of the hermitage near Southwick was Prior
who took refuge
there from the sweating sickness (1534).
Writing to Lady Lisle he says that the visitation of God
is very sore,
and that his letter is “scribbled with a comfortless heart in the
solitary of Sherborne
died a few months before the expulsion of the monks from the abbey. One of the earliest entries in the parish
the burial of William Howell, hermit of
There were a
few survivors of the
old days, in places not easily accessible to state officials. About the time of the suppression of Holme
Cultram Abbey, in
“There ys a chapell in
the sayd parishe,
covered with stone, which in tyme past hath ben an hermitage, wherein a
impotent man, sometyme heremyte thereof, doth dwel not able to pay the
which chappell with th’ appertenances ys worth to be letten by yere as
by the rental, vj s. viij d.”.
In the case of the last chaplain of Warkworth hermitage, the grant made by the Earl of Northumberland to Sir George Lancastre (p. 48) was ratified by the Court of Augmentations in 1537, save that in lieu of twenty marks, he was to receive ten marks yearly, with the profits of the Rood chapel, and of St. Leonard’s hospital at Wigton. Before 1567, the place had ceased to be occupied. Clarkson’s Survey observes that :—
“Ther is in the parke also one howse hewyn within one cragge, which is called the hermitage chapel : in the same ther haith bene on preast keaped, which such godlye services as that tyme was used and celebrated. The mancion howse ys nowe in decay : the closes
--blank page, not numbered--
that apperteined to
chantrie is occupied to his lordship’s use.”15
If, indeed, any solitary remained in his cell after the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-9), he was almost inevitably homeless after the Suppression of the Chantries in 1546. It was reported in 1548 that the chapel of Horteley in Batheaston “wherein an Armyte sometyme dwelled” had for the last twelve years been inhabited by another tenant.
The solitary now belonged to a bygone age—the true solitary, that is, for the “ornamental hermits” of the pseudo-gothic revival belong to a wholly different category. Recluses were swept away by the flood which carred off all that was in any way connected with monasticism. They had, however, fulfilled their purpose and justified their existence. They were not a class composed wholly of eccentric and fanatical, or selfish and morbid persons who shirked the duties of life. They were often men and women of strong and saintly character
whose life commanded respect and won gratitude from their fellow-men, who recognized them as workers. At its best, the contemplative life was a career and a noble one. There were of course some whose conduct brought discredit on their profession, but there were others who lived up to the highest ideals set for them by one of themselves :—
“Righteous hermits also have a single aim : in charity of God and of their neighbour they live : worldly praise they despise ; as much as they may, man’s sight they flee ; each man more worthy than themselves they hold ; to devotion continually their minds they give ; idleness they hate ; fleshly lusts they manfully withstand ; heavenly things they taste and eagerly seek ; and earthly they covet not but forsake ; in sweetness of prayer they are delighted.”16
The passionate earnestness of purpose in such a life commands the admiration said to have been expressed in an outburst of enthusiasm by a Protestant moralist, Dr. Johnson : “I never read of a hermit but in imagination I kiss his feet”. Even the most cautious critic of the twentieth century, fearful of idealizing the “Dark Ages,” may well echo the words of the hermit of Hampole :—
“Hermetis lyffe therefore is grett, if it gretely be done”.
1. Nicolas, Privy
Purse Exp., I, 67, 102 ; L. and P. Hen. VIII, IV., pt. iii., p.
III., pt. ii., p. 1545.
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