A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



publicly excommunicated, and absolved after penance. One of his 

 friends was dismissed with a warning. 1 



What effect this course of procedure might have had if steadily 

 continued for some years it is impossible to say ; for the king's death 

 early in 1547 let loose upon the country reformers of a very different 

 type. For the first important measure of the new reign, viz., the 

 suppression of the chantries, Henry VIII. was however entirely 

 responsible. It was not without good reason that fears had been 

 expressed at the time of the dissolution of monasteries that the king 

 would not stop there ; that his heavy hand would fall next upon the 

 parish churches. 3 The suppression of the chantries, colleges, gilds and 

 hospitals was ostensibly a part of the effort to correct popular notions as 

 to the state of the faithful departed, and to check superstitious practices 

 connected with these ideas ; but it had really quite another effect. 

 This may best be seen by a simple summary of the results of the Act in 

 one county. In Buckinghamshire it disendowed and destroyed only 

 three chapels which had clearly no other use except to perpetuate 

 chantries in the later and narrower sense of the word : at Eythrope, 

 Ditton and Buckingham. 3 But with these it swept away four others 4 

 which were strictly parochial, and served for the devotion of good-sized 

 hamlets, where even the able-bodied inhabitants could seldom in winter 

 get to the parish church ; and it also deprived eleven 8 churches of an 

 assistant priest whose services had cost the incumbent nothing, as well 

 as of the plate and ornaments assigned to the use of the particular altar 

 where the chantry was endowed ; while almost every parish in the 

 county lost some small endowment for lamps and obits, bequeathed by 

 those who could not afford to found a perpetual chantry. 



The commissioners who furnished materials for the first certificate 



1 James Barkeley, examined at the same time, confessed that on that Ember Day (Wednesday after 

 Pentecost) he was at Harmesworth at the court there kept : that he first dined there at the church houses 

 then went home and began a dinner of ' butterde peases,' and in the midst of it was invited to go and 

 partake of Allen's flounders, which he did. The fact that he was only warned, after this bold breach of 

 custom, shows the difference of treatment in a case where there was no suspicion of heresy. 



2 See L. and P. Henry VIII. xiii. (2) 986 (Confession of John Colyns), and records of the Lincoln- 

 shire rising. 



3 The chapel at Eythrope, founded by the will of Sir Roger Dynham, was said by the Commissioners 

 to be ' of no great necessity except for the household of Sir Robert Dormer.' For the subsequent history 

 of this chapel, see Records of Bucks, vii. 258-261. The chantry at Ditton founded by Sir John Colyns 

 was ' abused,' by the non-residence of the incumbent ; the Matthew Stratton Chantry in the chapel 

 of St. John Baptist, Buckingham, had probably not been served since the dissolution of the Hospital of 

 St. Thomas Aeon, London, to which it belonged (Chantry Cert. 4, Nos. 2, 5, 9). 



4 At Colnbrook, where a priest said divine service every Sunday and festival for the hamlet, and 

 performed other ministrations in time of need (Ibid. No. l) ; Dagnall, which did ' great ease to the most 

 part of the said parish (Edlesborough) because many dwell four miles from the church, and do resort to 

 the chapel of Dagnall to hear their divine service ' (Ibid. No. 6) ; Aston in Ivinghoe, where there was 

 ' daily resort of many people who could not come to their parish church in winter,' and so was ' right 

 necessary ' ; Fenny Stratford, where the gild maintained two priests, who ministered to a village of 

 220 people (Ibid. No. 13). 



5 Stoke Poges, Dorney, High Wycombe, Edlesborough, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckingham, Thornton, 

 Newport Pagnel, Hanslope, Aylesbury, Olney. The chantries at High Wycombe and Olney were at- 

 tached to chapels in the churchyard, but it is expressly stated that the chantry priests helped the vicar : 

 and one of the chaplains at High Wycombe said a mass at 10 o'clock ' for the easement of people of the 

 town and labourers by the way.' Ibid. Nos. 4, 15. 



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