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Abstract
The Corpus Christi procession in the City was a highlight of London’s annual spiritual calendar before the Reformation. Extraordinarily, the procession was organised not by the civic authorities, as it was in both York and Coventry, but by one Company, the Skinners’ of London, whose fraternity was dedicated to the cult. The event was a source of pride for the brethren who remembered the fraternity in their wills and who contributed to the torch-lit parade with significant bequests to highlight their status and wealth. The London parish celebrations for Corpus Christi were of a different order, focused on the coming together of a community within a neighbourhood and not on rank. A study of the Skinners’ London procession has, hitherto, not been undertaken. Set in the context of the cult’s first appearance in England in the fourteenth century, and the development of fraternities, the research is based on a study of the Skinners’ Corpus Christi Fraternity register, a selection of Skinners’ wills, and the Skinners’ Company accounts.
Acknowledgments
This article and my interest in the Skinners’ stems from Professor Caroline Barron’s inspiration. Her support and guidance have been invaluable, as has her Medieval Zoom Group who offered helpful feedback on an early draft of the article. Also, thanks to Professor Clive Burgess for his enthusiasm, advice, and expertise, and in addition I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of The London Journal for their detailed and constructive feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 John Stow, A Survey of London, Reprinted from the Text of 1603, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 2:230–231.
2 Stow, Survey, 2:247.
3 Stow was a Merchant Taylor and his sourness may reflect rivalry with the Skinners’ over which guild took precedence in the ‘Great Twelve’. The Billsedon Judgement of 1484 settled the matter by stipulating that they took it in turns to be sixth and seventh each year. Records of the Skinners of London, Edward I to James I, ed. John James Lambert (London: The Worshipful Company of Skinners, 1933), 115–117.
4 The National Archives, Kew, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Registers, TNA PROB 11, listed in Appendix 1; London Guildhall Library, CLC/L/SE/D/007MS30727/001-003, Receipts and Payments Books 1491–1564.
5 Guildhall Library, CLC/L/SE/A/004B/MS31693, Skinners’ Company Book of the Fraternity of Corpus Christi, fol. 2r, records Peter of Newcastle who died in 1340/1.
6 The Merchant Taylors had two, one for the yeomen or bachelors, for the majority who were not members of the senior fraternity, but both fraternities were associated with St John the Baptist.
7 Guildhall Library, CLC/L/SE/A/004A/MS31692, Skinners’ Company Book of the Fraternity of the Assumption of Our Lady.
8 This is clear from the will of William Kent, registered in Commissary Court in 1425 when he left 40s. to the fraternity of the masters and 40s. to the fraternity of journeyman. London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/03 fol.131v.
9 Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 288.
10 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 243–246; Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 117–118.
11 H. F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919), 137–238.
12 Westlake, Parish Gilds, 175.
13 These eighteen were out of 123 guilds recorded for Lincolnshire. Norfolk had a higher number of chantries, but fewer for Corpus Christi, just six out of 160. The figures are, of course, dependent on a range of factors: their survival and the thoroughness of the local commissioners.
14 Claire Kennan, ‘Power, Piety and Presence: The Cult of Corpus Christi and the 1389 Guild Enquiry in Lincolnshire’, in Creativity, Contradictions and Commemoration in the Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of Nigel Saul, ed. Jessica Lutkin and J. S. Hamilton (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022), 216.
15 Westlake, Parish Gilds, 220.
16 Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York, ed. Robert H. Skaife (London, 1872), v–vi.
17 Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’, in The City and the Parish: Drama in York and Beyond, ed. David N. Klausner (London: Routledge, 2017), 88–93.
18 Records of Early English Drama: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), xxiii.
19 The Guild was founded between 1340 and 1364.
20 Charles Phythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450–1550’, in The Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, ed. Richard Holt and Gervase Rosser (London: Longman, 1990), 243.
21 Mary Dormer Harris, The Story of Coventry Illustrated by Albert Chanler (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1911), 287.
22 Westlake, Parish Gilds, 237.
23 Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England, 296n255.
24 Lawrence Blair, ‘A Note on the Relation of Corpus Christi Procession to the Corpus Christi Play’, Modern Languages Notes, 55 (February 1940), 83–95, continuing the work of Merle Pierson, ‘The Relation of the Corpus Christi Procession to the Corpus Christi Play in England’, Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, 18 (October 1915), 110–165; Thomas Milbourn, ‘The Church of St Stephen Walbrook’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 5 (1881), 327–402; Accounts of the Churchwardens of St Michael Cornhill, 1456–1608, ed. W. H. Overall (London, 1869).
25 This can be seen for example at St Margaret’s Southwark (1450), St Martin Outwich (1524), St Mary Magdalene, Milk Street (1545), St Mary Woolnoth (1539), St Peter Cheap (1534), and St Michael Cornhill (1459, 1467, 1468).
26 The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard Eastcheap, c.1450–c.1570, ed. Clive Burgess (London: London Record Society, 1999), paragraph 7.
27 The Medieval Records of a London City Church: St Mary at Hill, 1420–1559, ed. Henry Littlehales, 2 vols. (London: Early English Text Society, 1904–1905), 1:131.
28 Milbourn, ‘The Church of St Stephen Walbrook’, 358, 360.
29 Skinners named in the accounts as laying foundation stones for the new church on 11 May 1429 included Henry Barton, his brother Ralph, John Penne, John Lemman, and John Hurst. Milbourn, ‘The Church of St Stephen Walbrook’, 330–331.
30 Medieval Records of a London City Church, 264. Parishes also held regular processions during Rogationtide, when they beat the bounds, led by a priest, to ensure the protection of the parish by the church. This seems to have been a feature especially of urban areas. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 34–36.
31 Medieval Records of a London City Church, 305. The Rector was William Atclyff. George Hennessy, Novum Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense or London Diocesan Clergy Succession from the Earliest Times to the Year 1898 (London, 1898), 305.
32 Burgess, St Andrew Hubbard, paragraphs 43, 54, 65, 43–162.
33 Barney Sloane, The Black Death in London (Stroud: History Press, 2011), 153–154, puts the loss in 1348–1349 at 55–60% and the net reduction in population between 1348 and 1380 in the region of 40–45%.
34 Caroline M. Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. DuBoulay, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985), 13–15.
35 Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 207.
36 Barron, ‘Parish Fraternities’, 14–17. Caroline M. Barron, ‘“The Whole Company of Heaven”: The Saints of Medieval London’, in European Religious Cultures, ed. Miri Rubin (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2008), 145, describes twelve altars and fraternities dedicated to Corpus Christi between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
37 Elspeth M. Veale, ‘“The Great Twelve”: Mistery and Fraternity in Thirteenth Century London’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), 239.
38 Alfred B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, Temp. Henry III–1912, 2 vols (London: Eden Fisher, 1908-1913), 2:329–361; Milbourn, ‘The Church of St Stephen Walbrook’, 327–402.
39 Sarah Lennard-Brown, ‘Henry Barton’, ODNB, doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.111038.
40 Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 214.
41 The charter, translated into English, was copied and given pride of place in the Corpus Christi Fraternity Register, CLC/L/SE/A/004B/MS3163, fol. 2r.
42 Mark Callingham, Historic Salters’ Documents, 1200–1500 (published by the author, 2020), 6–19.
43 Each year a similarly worded note was recorded in the Payments Book: ‘Item for the p[ro]cession and other expenses done at the Feste of Corpus Christi as appereth Particulerly in a Boke of the same’ (MS30727/001, fol. 8r, 1492-3).
44 It is not possible to ascertain whether members of the Assumption Fraternity marched with them. They had a hood rather than the full livery of hood and gown. Given the nature of the procession, which advertised the status of the Fraternity and with it the Company, it is unlikely that they paraded.
45 These are all the Skinners’ identified for the period, listed in Appendix 1. They cover a reasonable spread of time, however until about 1450 many Skinners’ enrolled their wills in Commissary and so from 1435 to 1450 the sample is just four. There are eighty-five between 1471 and 1550 with the highest number (sixteen) in the 1520s.
46 ‘Acts of Court’, fol. 263, in E. M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers (London: Methuen & Co., 1954), 175.
47 TNA PROB 11/16/463.
48 See Appendix 1.
49 Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 206–207. The post holders were Henry Barton (1405), Christopher Warter (1452), John Cole (1461), Thomas Cole (1483), Nicholas Barley (1485), Thomas Jenyn (1511), Nicholas Jenyn (1518), and Thomas Addington (1533). The exception was William Staundon, who served from 1433–1442.
50 In addition to the seventy-one, nine were recorded as members of the Assumption Fraternity (Appendix 1).
51 For instance, John Forster (1476) instructed the wardens of Corpus Christi to take over his obit if the parson and wardens of Stephen Walbrook proved negligent. The Chantry Certificate records that the obit was, in fact, taken over by the Skinners’. London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate, 1548, ed. C. J. Kitching (London: London Record Society 1980), para. 192.
52 John Russell (1524) provided him ‘a gown of my own wearing’; Roger Bedyl left him a russet gown with fox fur and pardoned him a debt of 13s. 4d. (1527); Robert Penson bequeathed 4 yard of black at 5s. a yard (1520); Roger Haklet (1517), William Dalton (1517), and John Josson (1524) all left him money 3s. 4d., 40s. and 6s. 8d. respectively. On four occasions he is listed as a witness, possibly the scribe for the will of: Mirfyn (1510), Clerke (1512), Dalton (1517), and Penson (1520).
53 Anne Lancashire, London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), xviii.
54 Mervyn James, ‘Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Later Medieval English Town’, Past and Present, no. 98 (February 1983), 8–12.
55 1516-17, MS30727/002, fol. 108r.
56 See Appendix 2 for a chart showing the annual expenditure. One year of the accounts, 1544–1545, has not survived.
57 MS30727/002 fols 209v, 274r, 247v.
58 Richard Swan (1493), Robert Frende (1509), William Dalton (1517), John Fawdington (1521), Thomas Aleyn, and John Josson (1524).
59 John Dummelow, The Wax Chandlers of London (London: Phillimore & Co., 1973), 10–12.
60 10s. each year was authorised by the sixteen in the Receipts and Payments Books, for example 1491 01, fol.8r. The sixteen, together with the master and wardens, made up the Skinners’ executive body and were a forerunner to the Court of the Company of later years.
61 The arms were first recorded in 1503 in the Skinners’ Assumption Fraternity Register MS31692, fol. 44r.
62 For example, in 1504–1505, £7 11s. was collected. It is not possible to separate the amounts as it stated that the sum was provided in a ‘bill of there names and somes’. MS30727/001, fol. 208r.
63 MS31693, fol. 16r. The Fraternity of the Assumption of Our Lady also paid torch money (as in 30727/002, fol.175r).
64 MS30727/001, fol. 84v. She is referred to as a wax chandler when her tenement was ‘dawbed’ the same year (fol. 86r).
65 MS30727/002, fol. 56v.
66 Dummelow, Wax Chandlers, 142, 147, from reproduced accounts.
67 MS30727/002, fol. 367v.
68 MS30727/003, fol. 24r; Edward Salisbury, ‘List of Liverymen and Freemen of the City Companies, A.D. 1538’, Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, 3 (1895), 187.
69 TNA PROB 11/21/217.
70 Waste was wax that was reused to form the base of new torches to lessen the cost.
71 Named as the Master of the Fraternity of Corpus Christi in John Clyff’s will of 1455, CLC/L/SE/G/252/MS30836/273, Calendar of Records of the Skinners’ Company (1965).
72 TNA PROB 11/7/13.
73 1517-18, MS30727/002, fol. 127r.
74 TNA PROB 11/22/407.
75 MS30727/002, fol. 210v.
76 MS30727/001, fol. 209v.
77 White lilies are a symbol associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, to denote her purity. Scenes of the Annunciation often included a vase or pot of lilies placed between the Archangel and Mary. See, for instance, the panel of the Annunciation painted by Fra Fillipp Lippi (c.1450–1453), in The National Gallery, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/fra-filippo-lippi-the-annunciation.
78 MS30727/002, fol. 127r.
79 Catherine Reynolds and Jenny Stratford, ‘Le manuscrit dit “Le Pontifical de Poitiers”’, Revue de l'Art, no. 84 (1989), 61–80.
80 MS30727/003, fol. 15r. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. fane/vane: a metal plate having the form of a flag or banner bearing a coat of arms.
81 Repairs 1504–1505: MS30727/001, fol. 209v; 1517–1518: fol. 127r, 1544–1545: MS30727/003, fol. 95v.
82 MS37027/001, fol. 91r; MS31693, fol.15r.
83 MS30727/001, fol. 28v. The priest was paid an annual salary of £6. Robert Smyth held this position by 1491(MS30727/001, fols 6r, 15v, 28v), followed by Patrick More in 1510 (fol. 14r), Edward Ely in 1517 (MS30727/002, fol.120r), and Thomas Castpole from 1527 (fol. 282v). Sir Thomas Castpole, as well as being a member of Corpus Christi, became a warden of St Augustine Pappey in 1534. Thomas Hugo, ‘The Hospital of le Pappey in the City of London’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 5 (1881), 202.
84 Stow, Survey, 1:230.
85 MS30727/001-003. Confirmed in the Chantry Certificate. London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate, paragraph 192.
86 MS30727/002, fol. 72r and 212r. To maintain the chantry priest and his elaborate obit at the Charnel House of St Paul’s, Barton left considerable land to be managed by the Skinners’. The details of his lands were recorded at the start of every year in the Accounts. The income was usually about £35 a year and the remainder left for the Company about £20. As we have seen, this priest was Walter Basset until his death in 1497–1498, followed by Thomas Jay to 1502 and then Robert Tennet until 1526. The last priest, until 1547–1548, was Robert Fox who in 1540 was also master of the Hospital of St Augustine Pappey. Hugo, ‘Hospital of le Pappey in the City of London’, 199.
87 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 229–232; Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 124–126; and Records of Early English Drama: Civic London to 1558, ed. Anne Lancashire (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2015), 880.
88 The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1911), 35–43.
89 MS30727/001-3 (1491–1510, 1510–1535, 1535–1564). Held over two nights, the eves of 24 and 29 June, the expenditure for events that covered ‘bothe the nyghtes’ are made clear, not the single day of the Corpus Christi procession.
90 Johnston, ‘Guild of Corpus Christi’, 89, Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘The Processions and Play of Corpus Christi in York After 1426’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 7 (1974), 58–59.
91 Thomas Sharpe, A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries in Coventry (Coventry, 1825), 160.
92 The Skinners’ Hall was originally called Copped Hall. In a deed dated 2 May 1409 it was assigned to the ‘Master and Wardens and Brothers and Sisters of the Gild or Fraternity in honour of God and the body of our Lord Jesus Christ held by the Skinners of London’. Lambert, Records, 65. It became the centre for administration and provided a base for the beadle and clerk to keep the records.
93 See: MS30727/003, fols 24r (1536–1537), 32v (1537–1538), 52r (1539–1540).
94 MS30727/003, fols. 60v, 69v, 78v, 114r.
95 Arrangements were made for it to be swept and the walls ‘whited’. MS30727/002, fols 222v, 135v, 80v, 121r.
96 TNA PROB 11/22/407.
97 Records of Early English Drama: Ecclesiastical London, ed. Mary C. Erler (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), x; REED: Civic London, 46–50.
98 MS30727/001, fols 60v, 92v, 109v, 138v, and 156r. In addition, the 1472 Articles of the Fraternity of the Assumption stated that every brother who was a Skinner holding any shop or chamber had to take a hood each year and come with his hood on his shoulder on Assumption Day to St Thomas Acon and wait for the wardens of Our Lady’s Fellowship and process to St John Walbrook for high mass. MS31692, fol.1r.
99 This is clear from the fine incurred by Richard Garnam in 1516–1517, for not just missing the procession but ‘he being wardeyn and made no debite for the ellecion and other besynes that he ought to a done.’ MS30727/002, fol. 108r.
100 MS30727/002, fols. 142r, 145v. To this was added £4 13s. 5d. from the box. The box was where ready money from any annual roll over (from quarterages, fines, and donations) was stored.
101 TNA PROB 11/11/16; MS30727/001, fol. 69r.
102 Gervase Rosser highlights that the patronal feast associated in most fraternities provided a ‘tangible expression of companionship’ that promoted good relationships. Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33.4 (1994), 431.
103 John Laurence the cook was paid 12s. a year for ‘dressing’ the Corpus Christi dinner and Hervy the butler received 10s. MS30727/002, fol. 327r
104 MS30727/002, fol. 289v. Three of these were specifically mentioned in wills—Thomas Mirfyn, Richard Hanchett, and Oliver Danyell.
105 Rosser, ‘Feast’, 435–437. William Cockayne, in his will of 1599 (TNA PROB 11/94/461), left £130 to provide five silver gilt cups in the fashion of a cock, a reminder of his name. The heads of the cocks remove to allow for drinking. By 1606 it was decided that they should be used on Election, i.e. Corpus Christi Day. (Lambert, Records, 345).
106 Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. W. H. Frerer and W. P. M. Kennedy, 3 vols (London: Longman Green & Co., 1910), 2:126.
107 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols (London: Camden Society 1852), 56.
108 MS30727/003, fol. 122v.
109 MS31393 fol. 30r.
110 MS31693, fol. 30v.
111 Mirfyn and Frende 1492, MS31693, fol. 18v; Josson and Bedyl 1494, fol. 19r. Alice Mirfyn, Jane Frende, and Alice Josson, fol. 19v. Bedyl’s wife is not recorded in the register. Bedyl names two wives in his will, Anne was named an executor so she was alive in 1527. All the men had earlier joined the Fraternity of Our Lady and acted as wardens.
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Maggie Bolton
Maggie Bolton read History at Bedford College and after a career in teaching returned to university for an MA in Medieval Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, 2018–2019. She was awarded the Caroline Barron Prize for the best performance in History that year. Since then she has continued to research the Skinners’ Company. She presented a paper at the Kalamazoo Conference in May 2021, ‘The Skinners’ Company of London and its Religious Fraternities, 1400–1550’. She is currently honorary History editor of Transactions of the London and Medieval Archaeological Society.