Elizabethan churchwardens' accounts
Churchwardens were parish officers responsible for keeping the church and representing the people in parochial matters. They gradually took on more administrative responsibilities during the sixteenth century. Most parishes had two churchwardens who were appointed annually. They normally kept accounts of their income and expenditure on behalf of the parish.
The earliest surviving accounts for Bedfordshire parishes have been included in this volume: Clifton, 1543, 1589-1608; Northill, 1561-1612; and Shillington, I571?-1604. Income from rents for church lands and from individuals is recorded. However the main focus is on expenditure for, eg church maintenance, ecclesiastical visitations, and communion bread and wine, church ales and, in Northill, on May festivities.
The volume begins with a tribute In Memoriam for John Arnold Whitchurch, President of BHRS, 1945-1953.
About the author(s)
Reviews
‘In a year when the Coronation splendours of Elizabeth II inevitably flash the mind back to the strong and vivid days of her great predecessor, this book prepared with such scholarly and exhaustive care, comes aptly and appealingly. Though these be but homespun chronicles, remote, in the deep countryside, from the glitter and colour of the court, or the intricate councils of statesmen, they inspire the respect that one feels for men of good will sturdily resolved to see to it that their churches shall be decently maintained and administered in a perilously uncertain age, poised between the old faith and the new.’ – Beds Times and Standard, 3 July 1953.
Publication details
Elizabethan churchwardens’ accounts, edited by the Rev. J. E. Farmiloe and Rosita Nixseaman. Streatley, BHRS, 1953. xlii, 118p., illus. BHRS vol. 33
Out of print
This volume is available as an ebook from Boydell & Brewer for £19.99.
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