Outline History of St Mary’s

The Reformation Centuries (c. 1530 to c. 1660)

The reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547) brought in the beginnings of religious change to parish churches. For Wymeswold, politically and socially, the most important change was the Dissolution of Beauchief Abbey in 1537, whose properties, including its Wymeswold holdings, passed to the Crown. Soon afterwards, Wymeswold church lands and tithes were transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge. The college took the revenues and appointed the vicar until the 20^th century when it sold its properties in the village.

Religious change came slowly. The vicar Leonard North stayed in post as vicar of Wymeswold church from the mid-1520s, before Henry’s religious changes, until early in the reign of Elizabeth I (he resigned in 1561). He therefore ministered to the parishioners of Wymeswold across many of the Reformation upheavals. Under Henry VIII, there were few changes. In Wymeswold as in the rest of England, some saints’ days were abolished; some statues were taken down from inside the church; an English Bible was placed in church; parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials were introduced in 1539; pilgrimages ended. All other religious services and decorations remained in place in the parish church. In 1540, Richard Franke left a quarter of barley to the parish church, just like parishioners of old.

Until the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553), Wymeswold had at least one chaplain in addition to the vicar, probably to serve a chantry founded in the church to celebrate masses for deceased donors. In a clerical subsidy (tax) list for 1526, two priests were listed for Wymeswold; one was the vicar Leonard North, who was paid £7 13s for his salary and received 10s 3d in oblations (dues collected for certain services), and the other was a chaplain, William Bethone, paid £4 4s 4d. In the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, Henry VIII’s survey of the resources and value of the English Church, only the vicar Leonard North is listed. We learn that he had a house and glebe land as well as his salary, bringing the value of his benefice to just over £9 a year. This was in the lowest 25% of vicars’ salaries in Leicestershire, but like most of the vicars appointed by Beauchief Abbey he was also a canon there, where he spent part of his time.

Under Edward VI, the introduction of Protestantism was rapid and sweeping. Its impact on Wymeswold would have been profound. Saints’ cults and images, chantries, and religious guilds to which parishioners left money in their wills were all abolished and all property related to them was confiscated by the Crown. Churches were stripped of statues, Catholic vestments and books, bells and other items used for worship. The Catholic Mass was abolished, and a Book of Common Prayer was introduced in 1549, then revised to make it more Protestant in 1552.

Edward VI died in 1553, and his sister Mary I (1553-1558) restored Catholicism. Churches were ordered to replace the lost statues, vestments, books and holy vessels that had been removed or destroyed, at considerable expense. We know from records of the Visitation of Archbishop Pole in 1555, that the churchwardens of Wymeswold under Edward VI, William Cockin and William Lacer, took away many goods from the church and refused to restore them in Mary’s reign (a common practice). They probably used or sold them for their own benefit. But many parishioners were happy to see Catholicism restored. In a later trial of 1606 involving a Mr Ballard from Wymeswold, a witness stated that two lights (lamps or candles) were maintained in church in Queen Mary’s reign ‘by the charitable devotion of men then living by way of collection of the householders from time to time’. In 1559, Leonard Barrett’s will had a typical late medieval Catholic preamble (introduction), in which he left his soul to ‘Almighty God, Our Lady and all the Saints in Heaven’. He was generous in his bequests, for he gave four ewes to Wymeswold church, where he was to be buried, and to the poor of Prestwold, Burton, Rempstone and Wymeswold, 12 pence to each village.

Mary’s reign was short and in 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the throne (1558-1603). She rapidly restored the Protestantism of her brother Edward VI. Churches now had to use a revised version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, and priests had to take an Oath of Supremacy to the Crown. The vicar Leonard North, who had been in post since the 1520s, resigned soon afterwards. Whether because he was fundamentally Catholic and could not take the Oath, or because he was elderly and infirm, we do not know. He died in 1564, still resident in Wymeswold, and was buried there. In the early decades of Elizabeth’s reign, at least one other pre-Reformation priest, possibly a former chaplain, William Leeke, was still living in the parish. In 1576, Leeke, described as clerk (priest) and unmarried, made his will, with a Protestant preamble and with the current vicar, Peter Rathbone, as a witness.

Other people took time to change their practices. For example, in his will of 1566, John Buckerfeld of Wymeswold still bequeathed his soul to Almighty God and the Holy Company of Heaven. Also in 1566, Thomas Thompson left 3 shillings and 4 pence for church repairs. These were more typical of late medieval Catholic bequests.

In the first decade of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, images were once again taken down again, and walls were whitewashed. Boards painted with the Ten Commandments and the Creed were erected in the chancel. Elaborate vestments and altar hangings were sold off, and priests wore gowns and surplices, although the latter were rejected by the stricter Protestants sometimes known as Puritans. Baptism, weekly church services, and funerals, all changed in format and new traditions of sermons and Psalm singing were introduced. By the time of the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, a new religious culture of Protestantism was established.

The vicar of Wymeswold, Peter Rathbone, was hugely influential locally in this religious change. He was appointed vicar in 1574 and remained in the parish until his death in 1618. He was described in a Visitation (inspection visit) as ‘indifferently learned in Scripture and the Latin tongue’, and as ‘no graduate’, he was not licenced to preach. But evidence suggests that he was a diligent vicar. He married and had a family, kept parish registers assiduously, and attended the will-making and probably the deathbeds of many of his parishioners. Rathbone’s will, drawn up a few days before his death, has a strongly Protestant flavour. The preamble takes up half of the space of his will and is a statement of faith.

I bequeath my soul into the hands of Almighty God my maker, and unto Jesus Christ his son, my only redeemer and saviour, trusting and assuredly believing that my good and gracious God will be merciful unto me, forgive me all my sins, and receive my soul into his merciful hands and place it among the number of his holy angels and blessed saints, not for any worthiness that is in me a most vile and wretched sinner but for the worthiness of Christ Jesus his son my only redeemer and saviour who has bought me through his most precious blood by one oblation once offered sufficient for all those that faithfully believe in him, who did make intercession for sins, as for my body I do commend it unto the ground from whence it came assuredly also believing that my most loving and gracious God will raise it up in the last day, that great joyful day of the resurrection of the dead, joyful to the godly but fearful and terrible to the wicked and to the ungodly, not as it is now, vile, corruptible and earthy, but that he will make it like in all points unto his glorified body, for as many shall be saved shall shine in the kingdom of God as bright as the son, willing that it may be buried in the church of Wymeswold.

The church services taken by the Rev Rathbone (and his successors) through to the first part of the reign of Charles I (1625-1649), would normally be Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer from the Elizabethan version of the Book of Common Prayer of 1559, with a sermon either in the morning or the afternoon, or both. Given Vicar Rathbone’s lack of a licence to preach, he may instead have read homilies from the pulpit instead of giving sermons – although he may just have given unauthorised sermons. There would be Holy Communion perhaps four times a year, and many days of special prayers ordained by the local Bishop of Lincoln, or the Crown. Rathbone’s successor, Nicholas Fisher, held a Masters degree from Cambridge University and his probate inventory of 1637 records that he had a library of books in the parlour worth £7. Fisher’s successor George Chamberlaine also had a Masters degree from Cambridge University. Both were therefore licenced to preach, as they were university graduates.

The reign of Charles I brought some changes to churches. The King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, wanted more beauty and dignity in churches and worship. They ordered the restoration of some traditional furnishings such as altars against the east wall of the church, with wooden railings around them. The stricter Protestants or Puritans considered such changes to be ‘Romish’ (Catholic) and disagreed intensely with the king’s religious policy. We do not know how ‘Laudian’ Wymeswold church was, for a Visitation of 1636 does not comment on the position of the altar, although it described the presence of reading and clerk’s desks in the nave, probably a Jacobean ‘triple decker’ pulpit. Preaching rather than Holy Communion may therefore have been the focus of weekly services. 

The English Civil Wars and Commonwealth Period 1642-1660

The English Civil Wars which started in 1642 were in large part a conflict over the way worship should be conducted in churches. Parliament abolished bishops, disestablished the Church of England, forbade the use of the Book of Common Prayer and introduced freedom of worship. Along with a third of parishes in Leicestershire, Wymeswold’s vicar Richard Palmer, appointed in 1638, was ejected by the county’s Parliamentary Committee in 1646. It was claimed that he:

…observed ceremonies, put parish to expense of new surplices, carpets etc, took the old ones for his own use: profaned Sabbath by going to wakes, returned so drunk ‘that he hath not knowne the water from the bridge’: a swearer and malignant: after administering sacrament went hunting, in such pastimes spent 2 or 3 days a week: troubled neighbours with lawsuits.

It was also noted that he:

refused Covenant: deserted cure for royal garrison at Worton (possibly Oxon): convicted in spiritual court of attempting chastity of a woman: neglected fasts for 4 years past.  

In practice, the Rev Palmer seems to have been an adequate vicar, but he made enemies in the parish and they had him removed. He was described by a village servant Elena Mason as ‘diligent and painful in his calling’, but ‘somewhat troublesome.’ By 1639, after only two years in the parish, he was involved in two defamation cases. One was against Joseph Wingfield for verbally accusing local clergy, and a second was against his churchwarden Mr Pywell and his wife, for ‘defamation’ following an altercation during a late-night drinking episode at their house. The vicar lost the second case; the grievances that arose from it being the basis for Parliament’s case against him in 1646. After ejection in 1647, Palmer went to live in Burton on the Wolds and died in 1651. Puritan ministers were placed in the parish for the next eleven years.

The Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries

In 1658, Edward Hathaway M.A. was appointed vicar at Wymeswold. In 1662, after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II (1660-1685), and the re-establishment of the Church of England, Hathaway was confirmed in his post. He was willing to swear the oath of allegiance to the king and to use the Book of Common Prayer again, unlike a quarter of Leicestershire clergy, who refused. They were ejected from their livings. Hathaway stayed in post until he died in 1681.

Wymeswold emerged from the Commonwealth period with religious divisions among the villagers that would persist into the 20th century. From the 1660s, there were Baptist and Quaker groups, and after the Act of Toleration of 1689, which allowed freedom of worship to Protestant non-conformists. They opened their own buildings for public worship. Methodists added to the number of ‘Dissenters’, groups not attending worship in the Church of England, from the 1780s. The history of Baptists, Quakers and Methodists in Wymeswold is detailed in the Methodist and Chapels page of this website.

We do not know much about church life during the 18th century. In terms of services, in 1712, there was a service – probably morning prayer with a sermon once a fortnight, as the vicar was helping out a disabled neighbour on alternate Sundays. Four Holy Communions were held a year, which was standard for the times. Nearly everyone – except Baptists and Quakers – were baptised, but only a few were confirmed. During Lent, religious knowledge classes took place, but it was reported that people were ‘backward’ in sending their children along. There were not many charitable or religious amenities in the village at this time, for example no lecture or endowed (funded) annual sermon. The village did not have a public or charity school, hospital, alms house or income from property rents to support the repair of the church. There was, however, a small Wymeswold Charities fund with some property to support the poor of the parish.

Descriptions of St Mary’s church in the 18th century suggest it was quite plainly decorated. In 1706, an episcopal Visitation noted that there were no monuments of note in the church or antiquities in the parish. In the 1790s, a detailed description was published by the antiquarian John Nichols in his history of Leicestershire. He reported the church as being in good order. The chancel was separated from the nave by ‘a neat screen’, which presumably was the original medieval rood screen. There were porches to the north and south, the latter having been newly rebuilt along with a vestry. There was a Jacobean triple decker pulpit of wood, with a sounding board and a modern i.e. not medieval font with a wooden cover. There were boards painted with text on the church walls including the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) on the chancel wall in black and white lettering, and a range of pews. A west gallery for musicians had been added in the previous few years. Nichols comments: ‘the church having been lately cleaned, whitewashed, and beautified, and a gallery built for the singers, it is remarkably decent; and the inhabitants have of late years laid out considerable sums for these purposes.’ He also noted the demolition of the spire following a lightning strike in 1783.