The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

The magnate, for all his great wealth and power, depended upon the goodwill and intercession of his
fellow parishioners, just as they depended upon his charity and protection. But perhaps his spiritual
need was greater, for had not Christ pointed out the special difficulties for the rich in entering the
kingdom of heaven? Any comtradiction between the pursuit of wealth and honour in this world, and
hopes for salvation in the next, might be reconciled by making restitution and by works of charity.
Alms-giving could aid the soul of the donor in the afterlife as it relieved the plight of the poor in this.
Doles to the poor were called 'devotions', crumbs from the rich man's table 'Our Lady's bread', for
such gifts were believed to lay up treasure in heaven. Doles were given at funerals in exchange for
the grateful prayers of the poor, which were believed to impart a special blessing. A bequest of £20
for a penny dole for the poor provided no fewer than 4,800 mourners for the needy soul. In their
last wills and testaments the lifelong devout and the belatedly repentant made the same testimonies
of devotion. In every church, every day, masses were sung for the souls of the dead. The requiem
mass was first sung at the funeral, but masses continued long after death; for the wealthy sometimes
for ever, or so they intended. Perpetual chantries were founded in the late middle ages to provide for
a priest and his successors to celebrate requiem mass daily for the repose of the founder's soul, and
for the well-being of the living. The multitude of masses celebrated in a parish church - even hourly
in some - brought not only intercessory prayers for the souls of the departed but intercession for
the salvation of many. The rich endowed prayers for ever; the poor, too, needed and asked for prayers,
as many as they could afford. Sharing the same spiritual aspirations and hopes for intercession as
their lords, poor craftsmen left a few pence to the high altar in restitution for forgotten tithes or to
the fabric of their church; they hoped to share in the benefit of perpetual chantries by joining guilds
which would bury them and pray for them; they bade their kin, friends and neighbours to funeral
feasts as lavish as they could offer. Feasting was important in binding the community fractured by
the death of a member and as a way of keeping the friend in memory. But some had no memorial,
and a pauper's grave. Peasants and great nobles alike were born into a family; the tiny society of
the nuclear family - a husband, a wife and their children. No bonds in society were stronger than
these; no love greater, but no quarrels more bitter, than among those tied by blood. On earth, as in
heaven, the society of the family was patriarchal, headed by the father, who was to be feared as
well as loved; who ruled and judges his family, as well as caring for it. The figure of the father was
central to all authority: monarchical, papal, clerical. Society was strongly patrilineal, defined by
the father. When a woman married she took her husband's surname. She left her own patrilineage,
her father's family, and entered another family, another patrilineage. The children of the marriage
were, in most essential matters - before the law and to her friends and family - his children rather
than hers. In the family, founded upon the monogamous marriage, the wife was the necessary,
cherished, but subordinate partner. A woman, even a wife, was always inferior, second best. As a
sister she was inferior to her brothers, as a wife inferior to her husband. Only as a widow could she,
sometimes, escape this depressed condition. Rich or poor, the legal definition of the family was
the same. Then as now, English kinship was bilateral: that is, individuals traced their descent from
both father and mother and were equally related to female as to male cousins, to nieces as to nephews.
There was kinship by blood (consanguinity) and kinship created by marriage (affinity), for marriage
made the in-law's family kin also. When a family chose godparents, spiritual affinity was established,
for through baptism not only the child but the child's family became related to the godparents.
Children were usually named after their principal godparent, and this - not parental carelessness -
was why two children in a family might share the same Christian name. The Church had introduced
elaborate canonical prohibitions on marriage by degree of kinship. Those whom one could not marry
were one's kin, and vice-versa. Marriage was forbidden between men and women related in the
fourth degree of kinship - that is, descended from the same great-great-grandfather - nor could a
widow marry the brother of her former husband. Affinity was a bar to marriage.
Adulterous alliance created kinship also, as Henry VIII would forget, when it suited him to forget,
and remember when it suited him to remember. Yet the Church rarely intervened to annul the marriages of those married within the forbidden degrees. In small and insular societies the rules
had to be suspended or ignored if women were to find husbands and men wives. It was said that
'all Cornish gentleman are cousins'. The citizens of Cork, according to the chronicler Richard Stanihurst, 'trust not the country adjoining but match in wedlock among themselves only'. In 1537
complaints came from Dublin that no jury could be empanelled because of 'challenging of consanguinity and affinity within the ninth degree'. At that degree, all of Anglo-Irish society was
related.