Chichester Cathedral
Lambert Barnard and his World
Lecture One: Chichester at the time of the Reformation
by Dr Andrew Foster (University of Kent)
Tuesday 18 January 2011 at 6.30pm
I must say that I am honoured and delighted to have been asked to give this first
lecture in the series on ‘Lambert Barnard and his World’. I am the local boy
made good, for I find myself in distinguished company with Rupert
Featherstone (from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) and Stephen Gunn
(from Merton College, Oxford). And the series of talks is for a very worthy
cause which I wholeheartedly support.
I have been asked to act as a scene-setter, or curtain-raiser for the series, and I
have taken my remit quite literally: my aim is to give a relatively brief talk,
establish a few names and topics that my colleagues will no doubt elaborate
upon in their talks - and allow you time for a few questions. I am the prologue
for the big guns that come later, here to set a few ‘starters for ten’.
My text for the day is the cathedral itself, and I want to say a few words about
how it would have worked in the early sixteenth century. In good medieval
sermon fashion, I have only really three things to talk about – and rather than
this being God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost – it is Bishop
Robert Sherborne, this cathedral, and the city in which it is located - as it was in
the early sixteenth century. And then I shall proffer one or two general remarks
at the end.
If I may give you your homework in advance for this series: you should
certainly consult the excellent History of this Cathedral edited by the late Dr
Mary Hobbs (our longstanding Cathedral Librarian and wife of Archdeacon
Keith), published locally by Phillimore in 1994. It contains crisp, illustrated
and authoritative articles of relevance by the late Professor John Fines, Trevor
Brighton and Tim Tatton-Brown – to name but a few. You will also find useful
articles in Studies in Sussex Church History edited by Malcolm Kitch of Sussex
University in 1981. And while the work of the Rev. W. Stephens may be dated
now, he wrote the classic books on this diocese in the late nineteenth century.
His Memorials of the South Saxon See and Cathedral Church of Chichester
came out in 1876, which he summarised for the SPCK Diocesan Histories
series in 1881.
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One plug for the future, though, look out for a book on the bishops of
Chichester currently under preparation by my namesake and friend, Professor
Paul Foster, and our own Rachel Moriarty, for the well-known series of Bishop
Otter Memorial Papers – which should be out later this year.
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One of the heroes of this series of talks will undoubtedly be Bishop Robert
Sherborne, (note various spellings – this the one favoured by ODNB) whose
funeral monument is behind me in a recess of the south aisle of the Choir –
much restored in 1847 and since. Sherborne was Bishop of Chichester between
1508 and his resignation in 1536; he died soon after at the grand old age of 82.
He was really the last great bishop in the medieval tradition: a convinced
Roman Catholic, a scholar of Winchester and New College, Oxford, a royal
ambassador – he was the diplomat who went to Rome in 1504 to gain
dispensation for Henry to marry his brother Arthur’s ‘widow’, Katherine of
Aragon. As you can imagine, Sherborne was scarcely in favour of the divorce
that came later.
Sherborne was a great administrator, and a diligent, pastoral bishop who was a
great patron of the arts. In 1524 he founded in the cathedral, four new
‘Wiccamical’ prebends, so called because they were reserved for former
scholars of Winchester and New College, Oxford. He was concerned to raise
the standards of his clergy, whether within parishes, monasteries or convents –
an example to us all in modern times. He was the patron of Lambert Barnard,
the (Flemish?/English?/? – questions for next time) artist whose work we are
celebrating in this lecture series; he was the bishop who commissioned the
panels we see today (or would without the scaffolding) in the north and south
transepts.
You may find out more about Sherborne from the relatively recent biography
by Professor Christopher Harper-Bill published in the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, available in text and on-line – and available free to all of
us courtesy of a West Sussex Library Reader’s card number – a product of
enlightened times in our library service. ODNB as it is usually referred to is
one of the great publishing projects of our time – over 9,000 contributors
worldwide updating the original DNB published in 1900 – a marvellous
resource.
But that biography draws on a very important unpublished PhD thesis produced
for Cambridge University in 1974 by Dr Stephen Lander. And Stephen Lander
may be more famous to some of you as one of our erstwhile distinguished
Heads of MI5. This is important to any members in the audience considering
the value of a History degree; for it just shows what you can get out of studying
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medieval bishops! It also makes you think, however, about what medieval
bishops might have to tell us about combating El Qaeda?!
Sherborne served as Bishop of Chichester for longer than any other bishop in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – some 28 years; he thus got to know
the diocese quite well. He resided at his palace and residences of Chichester,
Amberley Castle, Aldingbourne and Cakeham, as well as in London at property
off Chancery Lane in an area known to this day as ‘Chichester Rents’. And he
spent money lavishly on each of these properties and entertained gentry and
royalty well. It is thought that he entertained Henry VIII at Amberley in 1526,
which has caused some recent writers to speculate that this was when these
panels were erected in case Henry should visit Chichester at that date.
On the other hand - just to set you up with some key questions and dates for
this series – and sow confusion early on - there is a debate about exactly when
the panels were produced. The famous art historian of the eighteenth century,
George Vertue, thought it was early in Sherborne’s term of office around 1519;
Jonathan Woolfson and Debbie Lush are the two writers who opt for 1526, one
occasion on which Henry VIII came to this area. But Edward Croft Murray
argued for the later date of around 1535-6, when Henry’s commissioners
visiting the diocese were treated to a famous fish supper along with around 700
guests in the palace. Each of the dates has its merits, but I won’t spoil the fun
by pitching in to this debate here – that is definitely one for the specialists!
It is thanks to Sherborne that we have the gateway at the west end of Canon
Lane. And some of you may have had the privilege of seeing the marvellous
heraldic ceiling, also painted by Barnard, in the old dining hall of the bishop’s
palace. Sherborne was responsible for the tower still visible at Cakeham, and
he commissioned the panels from Lambert Barnard that were hung in
Amberley Castle and may be seen today at our Pallant House Gallery. Barnard
was also responsible for the painted vaulting of the Lady Chapel in the
Cathedral, and likewise for much of the heraldic painting at Boxgrove for the
de la Warr family, great friends of Bishop Sherborne.
Sherborne was old by the 1530s and knew that his days were numbered in more
ways than one. He commissioned the panels for the cathedral partly to bow to
royal supremacy, while also cocking a snoot at Cardinal Wolsey, the Papal
Legate with whom he did not get on – Sherborne successfully resisted
Wolsey’s efforts to exercise his Papal authority in the diocese of Chichester,
albeit stooping to the customary bribery to do so. And you will note there is no
reference to the Papacy at all in these panels, a clear mark of changing relations
– and an argument for pushing the dating of the panels later.
But Sherborne could see the writing on the wall, hence his resignation in 1536.
These were dangerous times for the Church. Aided by Thomas Cromwell,
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Henry VIII had just embarked on the process of the dissolution of the
monasteries that was to rob the Church of about a third of the property of
England and Wales – the biggest asset stripping exercise of all time in this
country, carried out in two main phases between 1536 and 1539.
The now famous Lambert Barnard panels were designed to celebrate the
confirmation of the grant of the property of the diocese of Chichester to Bishop
Sherborne by King Henry VIII, and echo a supposed earlier grant of the
original see of Selsey by Cadwalla to Wilfred. It is an amazing statement of the
close relationship between church and state, akin, as some have remarked, to
the intrusion of royal coats of arms in each and every church that followed soon
after in the reign of Edward VI. It was also a wonderful piece of flattery in
acknowledging the claims of the Tudors to stretch back to Arthurian legend and
Cadwalla, and included in the portrait, Henry VII, who had been Sherborne’s
first royal patron and was the apparent heir of the Arthurian prophecies.
To sum up about Bishop Sherborne: he seems to have been a remarkable man,
very able, good with people, someone who built around him a very strong team
of clergy and officials in the cathedral and diocese – people like Dean William
Fleshmonger, John Worthiall (diocesan Chancellor) and John Stillman
(cathedral and diocesan registrar) – a new breed of educated administrators the other heroes of Stephen Lander’s account of this diocese at this time.
Sherborne seems to have commanded respect and loyalty, and many figures,
once drawn to the cathedral and diocese, carried on working here long after his
death, including of course, Lambert Barnard.
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Having established one of our key people, bearing in mind that you will hear
much more about King Henry VIII and Lambert Barnard anon, let me turn now
to our location: this cathedral. I think it is important to remember just how
many functions this cathedral fulfilled in the early sixteenth century – just as
the Dean may tell us it does today.
It was a major centre of worship that set the standard for churches and chapels
throughout the diocese; and there would be a constant round of services
augmented we are told by the celebration of over 50 anniversaries and 7 special
feasts – all worth quite a lot of money to the Dean & Chapter. Problems were
reported with keeping the choir in order, but maybe choirboys are always prone
to pranks and disobedience? And it was also a relatively large choir to keep in
order - 18 vicars choral and 8 choristers.
It was a major centre for education, the Prebendal school nearby having only
relatively recently been established courtesy of Bishop Storey in 1497 – famous
also for the city cross of course - whose funeral memorial is here in the
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cathedral on the north side of the sanctuary. It had a modest cathedral library –
not yet augmented by that of Bishop Henry King that Mary Hobbs used to wax
lyrical about – but still one that was being used mainly by the clergy of course,
and also by a growing band of administrators and civil lawyers.
The worship was augmented at that time by the work of over 22 chantry priests
offering services in memory of the dead, who serviced 24 chapels in the
cathedral and also in the town where a further 77 obits were funded. This
accounted for approximately one third of the cathedral’s income, all lost at the
Reformation when chantry chapels were disbanded and some 18 priests were
pensioned off. As this was apparently work that was often given to older
priests, their average age at this time was apparently around 50.
The cathedral has always been a tourist centre - and was certainly such in the
1520s and ‘30s. And visitors would have milled around and created a noise
much like now, regardless of services! And Colin Clark and his colleagues will
be delighted to know that they probably also had people acting as cathedral
guides in those days! The key attraction at that time, of course, would have
been the shrine of St Richard, (Bishop between 1245 and 1253, canonised in
1262). Pilgrims would have travelled from far and wide, and here was another
major source of income lost when the shrine was destroyed by order of King
Henry VIII in 1538 – to avoid practices now considered superstitious.
Offsetting that loss partly, we should remember that the cathedral was also a
major legal and administrative centre of the diocese, the place where church
courts, notably the Bishop’s Consistory Court, met fairly regularly – probably
fortnightly at least. Business fluctuated and also went into temporary decline on
the Reformation, before picking up in the late sixteenth century. Some of you
may be familiar with the only surviving example of such a court which is at the
north-west end of Chester Cathedral. I suspect that the Chichester court may
have met in one of the transepts, and indeed, if it was in the south transept,
what a backdrop the Barnard panels would have created? What a way of
cowing people into a sense of the importance of law and order and tradition?
The work of the church courts should not be under-estimated, for it accounted
for much of what we would see covered by civil law today. Large numbers of
the population would have been affected by these courts whose work spanned
licences, rites of passage, property, work patterns, behaviour and morals. It
included extensive probate work dealing with wills, administration bonds, and
inheritance matters for all those not wealthy enough to have their business
transacted in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury – the majority in other words.
All neighbourhood disputes would come to these courts; likewise cases of
slander. They would deal with any matters concerning repairs to churches,
tithes, glebe land, care of churchyards, and infringements of church property.
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Other church officials would be dealing with routine matters concerning the
clergy: ordinations, licences, grants, dispensations and appointments.
It is a great pity that he is not with us today, for one of the great historians of
ecclesiastical law in all its guises, was our own, late, Bishop Eric Kemp. (He
was the author of An Introduction to Canon Law in the Church of England, the
Lichfield Divinity Lectures of 1956, published in 1957) In some ways it is
lucky for me, for Bishop Eric was a distinguished medievalist who certainly
knew a lot more about the problems that Bishop Sherborne encountered than I
do. And it was Bishop Eric - along with Stephen Lander - who impressed upon
me just how important Bishop Sherborne was to the major reorganisation and
revival of the work of the church courts in the diocese of Chichester. It was
thanks to Sherborne that they were flourishing, particularly in the 1520s, if not
doing quite so well in the 1530s. And these courts gave employment to an
whole army of officials: lawyers, registrars, commissaries, proctors, apparators
and clerks. And it is no accident that a Muniment Room to store official records
and documents was created over the south door in 1522, while the role of
Registrar of both the Cathedral and diocese seems to have been undergoing an
important transition at this time.
I could say much more about the role of the cathedral at this date, the work of
its Dean & Chapter, and its finances - and we have not touched upon its artistic
and cultural contribution to life in this region, which obviously relates to people
like Lambert Barnard. But these are again matters for you to consider
throughout this series…
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Let me turn now to make a few remarks to set the cathedral in context within its
own location: the city of Chichester. It has probably become apparent from
what I have said so far that the cathedral dominated the city and was vital to its
economy. The Bishop’s Palace was the largest household by far in the city, and
the Dean and Chapter as landlords controlled a vast amount of Chichester
property. It has been calculated from rentals (1533-4) that they controlled some
88 tenements and 36 separately let gardens within the walls, together with
others outside – all together worth over £40 pa – a lot of money in those days.
And John Fines argued that, although he could find a few cases of
skulduggery,(much to his amusement of course) - when the Dean & Chapter
got gangs to harass their tenants and evict some - they were on the whole, very
good landlords! Off their own bat, they carried out major repairs to some 26
properties in 1534 and a further 14 in 1535. Whilst the Cathedral brought a lot
of income to the city with pilgrims and visitors on legal business, their
ownership of a large number of inns and taverns in the city ensured that the
Dean & Chapter creamed off yet more of the benefits! I am not sure if the
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current Dean & Chapter still make a good income from any pubs in
Chichester?!
The city was relatively small in those days with a population no larger than a
village in our terms, so the Cathedral easily dominated landownership,
employment, cultural life and business within the city. Yet it was also a very
confusing place with competing jurisdictions. All bar one of the city’s ten
churches were controlled by the Dean’s Peculiar. All Saints, at the heart of the
Pallants was in the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury, part of the exempt
deanery of Pagham and Tarring – connected with the ruins of Beckett’s old
summer, seaside palace. What this meant was a tangle of medieval
jurisdictions whereby if you were a criminal, you could rush around different
quadrants of the city claiming sanctuary or exemption from the jurisdiction of
whoever was chasing you! By bringing in his own friends as key officials,
people like John Worthiall, his diocesan chancellor, and William Fleshmonger
as his Dean, Sherborne did much to bring some order to this chaotic
bureaucracy and to lay the foundations for a more modern world.
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Perhaps I might conclude with a few general remarks about the English
Reformation unfolding slowly at this time. Chichester affords us wonderful
examples of the tensions, complexity and critical factors affecting the pace of
that Reformation. Sherborne himself was caught in the process that affected so
many: of going along with some of the reforms called for by his royal master,
accepting the break with Rome in 1534, preaching in favour of the royal
supremacy in this cathedral in 1535, and then obediently tendering his
resignation in June 1536, when it was clear he would go no further. He died
two months later and must have been heartbroken at what he saw starting to
happen to the monasteries. His life thus illustrates how difficult it was for
those in local power once the stages of reformation were unleashed under
Henry VIII, facilitated by the two Thomas’s – Cromwell and Cranmer.
Sherborne was an honest man caught between a rock and a hard place –
likewise the more famous Thomas More or Bishop Fisher of Rochester.
But we can deduce more than this from Sherborne’s career and close study of
events in Chichester in the 1520s and ‘30s. Examination of his work sheds
light from this locality on some of the big questions that we face about this
period: Was the Reformation necessary? Was it popular? Was it inevitable?
And was the Catholic Church in such an enfeebled state at this time that it
needed such wholesale reform? Or was it all down to Henry VIII and the
divorce?
And the answer from Chichester on the first key questions – much to the joy of
Eamon Duffy no doubt – is surely no! Sherborne’s efforts had revitalised the
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Church on the eve of the Reformation and it was in a flourishing condition in
Chichester and Sussex. Hence, no doubt, the maintenance of a strong
conservative tradition in this area, the continued presence of so many Roman
Catholics, and the effective break the local gentry put upon the further
development of the Protestant Reformation for many years to come. It was not
until after Bishop Curteys in the 1570s that we can safely say that Chichester
diocese was firmly Protestant.
Bishop Sherborne’s long episcopate marks a watershed in the history of the
Church and this country. He was a conservative reformer who shows what life
there was in the Catholic tradition - and what Mary had to build on - hence
Duffy’s optimism about the real legacy of her reign for the Catholic Church.
But for all his efforts, Sherborne could not save his Church. Massive changes
were unleashed during his time: within a matter of years the shrine of St
Richard was gone, the chantry priests were gone, English bibles were
introduced into all churches in 1536, a new liturgy came with Edward VI in
1549, revised in 1552. And the role of the Cathedral within the community
was challenged and subtly altered. Bishop Sherborne was also the last bishop to
enjoy the real perquisites of power as a bishop of Chichester, for his successors
inherited a steadily denuded and impoverished diocese.
This was the backdrop against which Lambert Barnard continued to work in
this diocese for many more years until his death around 1567. He witnessed
the fall of the rood screen and its re-erection, then fall again; he painted both
images and sentences of scripture to order. And he was probably the last artist
of any real distinction to work for the cathedral for many a year after his death
– one sad result of the Protestant Reformation.
I hope this brief talk has set the scene for our series, prompted thought,
supplied useful context and whetted your appetites for more to come…
Andrew Foster still lives in this area in Barnham and may be contacted via
andrew@awfoster.com or on 01243 553987
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