The Last Generation of English Catholic Clergy: Parish Priests in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in the Early Sixteenth Century (review)

The Last Generation of English Catholic Clergy: Parish Priests in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in the Early Sixteenth Century. By Tim Cooper. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. XV.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydel Press. 1999. Pp. xvi, 236. $75.00.)

This book is a study of the clergy who are listed in the Ordination Register of Bishop Geoffrey Blythe of Coventry and Lichfield Diocese. Since the register covers almost the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, and since the diocese extended from Lancashire to Warwickshire and from the Welsh border to Derbyshire, a great many clergy are involved, particularly because here, as elsewhere then, the numbers of ordinands were at their peak. Of course, a number of them served well into the century, and the author traces their later careers in so far as his limited sources make this possible. Apart from the vast ordination register, which is one of the fullest for this period, the bishop's general register, and a clerical tax record for Staffordshire in 1533, other sources available to Dr. Cooper are disappointingly meagre and chiefly comprise a few churchwardens' accounts, some late probate inventories, and not many texts of wills, together with three consistory court books (but only for the years from 1524 to 1531) and some published proceedings from the Court of Star Chamber. In the light of this evidence, Cooper reviews the familiar topics of patronage, clerical titles, employment, pluralism and non-residence, prosperity or penury, discipline, status, and professionalism. His study vividly confirms the findings from other dioceses. For example, competition for benefices is underlined when only seven percent of ordinands might expect to gain a benefice subsequently, and then after an average lapse of some seven years. On titles, Cooper shares Swanson's view that they conceal arrangements for examining ordinands; yet the largest and the richest monastic houses (where a graduate was at least occasionally found) were surpassed in the granting of titles by the poorest and smallest houses, including nunneries, and by the Cistercian communities (which had few benefices at their disposal). The notion that such examining was farmed out to the monasteries needs rather more demonstration and argument than is offered here. The injurious consequences of non-residence for parishes seem to have been averted or mitigated in this diocese, as in others, by the abundance of parochial chaplains. Pensions, often more than the value of some livings, look suspiciously like mortgages paid by desperate aspirants; but here--as on other matters--the unpublished (but well-indexed) Early Chancery Proceedings in the Public Record Office might have been profitably explored. Nevertheless, Dr. Cooper has grappled commendably with an investigation made difficult by the capricious and sparse survival of source material, and he has usefully filled a gaping lacuna in the study of the pre-Reformation parish clergy.

Peter Heath
University of Hull

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