Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 1 (2018), p. 153

This is an ambitious and informative piece of scholarship. Nigel Saul’s latest monograph is sure to become a touchstone for scholars of medieval lay piety. To achieve his full-length study of the relationship between the gentry and the parish church, Saul has scoured the English countryside and collated archival research with antiquarian reports to produce an analytical and dynamic account of gentry faith between the late Anglo-Saxon period and the early sixteenth century. The result is a comprehensive monograph, which makes a valuable and important contribution to the flourishing field of parish church studies.

The book’s overarching argument is that throughout the middle ages, the English gentry were an active and visible presence in the physical and social space of the parish church. Since the emergence of scholarly interest in the medieval gentry during the 1980s, the question of how far they were involved in parochial life has been prominent in the field. In a seminal article, Colin Richmond argued for the individualistic and self-centred nature of gentry piety, made tangible through the proliferation of books of hours, oratories and household chapels. In some respects, Lordship and faith might be read as a response to Richmond’s argument. This is most clearly seen in ‘Chapel and Household’ (chapter six), where Saul presents domestic chapels and parish churches as complementary entities. Saul argues that while the domestic chapel provided a forum for the lord’s daily devotions, the parish church nevertheless remained a centrepiece for events associated with key stages of the lifecycle, including baptisms, marriages and funerals. The observations in this chapter are representative of the book’s broader conclusion that relations between the gentry and wider parish community were, on the whole, harmonious rather than antagonistic.

To present Lordship and faith as a mere refutation of Richmond’s thesis, however, would be to understate grossly the book’s wider significance and contribution to the field. Impressive for both its breadth and level of detail, the monograph contextualizes the parish church as part of broader corpus of religious institutions, from monasteries and mendicant houses, to household chapels and collegiate foundations. The volume’s structure is at once thematic and chronological, enabling Saul to chart the gentry’s growing involvement in the parish church over time, whilst also avoiding the trap of becoming overly descriptive. Gentry interest in the parish church is traced back to the late Anglo-Saxon period when thegns – referred to as ‘proto-gentry’ – began to take an interest in building the modest chapels that prefigured the later parish churches. The book’s main focus, however, is the period after the Black Death, when what Saul refers to as the ‘gentry church’ really came into its own. Saul presents the fourteenth century as a watershed moment when the gentry shifted their resources from the monasteries to parish churches, a transition compounded (and no doubt also facilitated) by diocesan legislation, which saw the laity – and the gentry in particular – increasingly encouraged to shoulder the responsibility for the upkeep of parish churches. It is at this point that we begin to see the gentry really staking a claim to the fabric of parish churches, evidenced by their commission of funerary monuments, chantry chapels and heraldic decoration.

This rosy picture of increased gentry involvement in parish life is, of course, partly determined by the greater amount of surviving source material for the later part of the period. Saul acknowledges that the rebuilding of many parish churches in the fifteenth century, coupled with the systematic preservation of wills from the later fourteenth century onwards, throw a spanner in the works when trying to access the activities of the earlier medieval gentry. Saul is skilful in his navigation of the holes and pitfalls of his sources, although his chapter conclusions occasionally go beyond what we can say on the basis of the evidence available. In chapter eleven, ‘Lordship and Patronage’, he states that ‘sometimes the presence of gentry lordship could become overbearing and oppressive, as when the church was turned into a family mausoleum; rarely, however, did it become wholly intolerable’ (p. 274). While the evidence presented in the book suggests that internal disputes between members of the gentry were more common than those between the gentry and other social groups, the more sceptical reader might still wonder how we can know the thoughts of so many parishioners whose voices are either lost to us or mediated through those of their social superiors.

Saul asks ‘How far, if at all, did the “gentry” church have a distinct look?’ (p. 201). Given that only two dozen end-to-end gentry churches survive from the middle ages, Saul poses a question which is difficult to answer. We learn that the gentry church was a cocktail of variables, impacted by factors such as geography, the master mason’s skills and the patron’s preferences and wealth. Where they did not embark upon the wholesale rebuilding of the church, gentry patrons usually took an interest in features such as towers, porches and clerestories, and – most characteristically – the chantry chapels where they chose to be buried. Saul concludes that while gentry churches came in all shapes and sizes, they were characteristically grander and more ornate than their humbler neighbours.

Women feature prominently in the book as commissioners of architecture, commemorators of the dead and as advocates for the interests of their fellow parishioners. The monograph notably opens with the example of Isabel de Pembridge, a Shropshire widow whose foundation of a chantry college at Tong was designed to commemorate her three former husbands. An active and innovative patron, Isabel is one of many gentlewomen who repeatedly surface in the book’s pages as leading lights of parish life. Of domestic piety in particular, he suggests that gentlewomen may have similarly set the pace when it came to household devotions, providing exemplary models for their peers to follow (p. 120). Although he frequently highlights women’s importance, however, Saul’s conclusions as to the nature and significance of their roles remain underdeveloped. Did women make a distinctive contribution to the physical and social fabric of the gentry church? Perhaps this is a question for another monograph.

The book’s argument is helpfully supplemented by fifty black and white illustrations, which are generously distributed throughout the text. These are essential to the monograph’s argument, although colour images would have been a more fitting tribute to the lively and vibrant picture of gentry life painted by Saul’s prose. In chapter two, ‘Churching the Landscape’, a subsection is also confusingly given the same title as the chapter. These, however, are minor issues, which should not detract from the overall achievement of this impressive monograph. A well-researched and clearly written volume, the work is sure to appeal not only to scholars of medieval religion, but also to those wanting a broader understanding of the everyday workings of life in the medieval parish.