The Use of the Church: Blisworth, Northamptonshire,
on the Eve of the Reformation

© English Heritage

P. S. Barnwell

Dr Paul Barnwell is Head of Rural Research Policy at English Heritage, and is based in York.

This paper is as delivered at The Ecclesiological Society’s Annual Conference, Oct 2004.
and is published in the September 2005 issue (vol. 35) of "Ecclesiology Today".
The Society's website is  http://www.ecclsoc.org/

The paper is reproduced here by kind permission of
the author, the Ecclesiological Society and English Heritage.
The illustrations are the work of Allan Adams and are © English Heritage.


AS FAR AS CAN BE KNOWN, there was nothing exceptional about Blisworth in the later middle ages. An agricultural parish of nearly 2,000 acres, some five miles south west of Northampton, it was, in 1548, home to 200 houseling folk, people who might receive Communion. [1] As for most such rural parishes, there is little documentary evidence to reveal the religious life of the place: a handful of early sixteenth-century wills and, in 1505, a royal licence to the executors of Roger Wake, late lord of the manor, to found a school and a perpetual chantry in the parish church. [2] That church, which stands on rising ground across the road from the site of the manor, is as unexceptional as the rest of Blisworth both in terms of its architectural qualities and of the survival of pre-Reformation furnishings, fixtures and fittings. A combination of the evidence of bequests to the church with physical evidence contained within the building itself does, however, make it possible to create an impression of how the church was arranged shortly before the Reformation and, from that understanding, to pose some questions concerning the way in which it was used, and the kind of religious practice and experience of those who worshipped there.
      As it now stands, the church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, is, like almost every parish church in Northamptonshire, which lay in the medieval diocese of Lincoln, almost certainly the product of gradual evolution from a core built in the twelfth century or earlier. [3] It is slightly irregular in plan (Fig. 1), for its position to the south of the road means that the main entrance, facing the street, is to the north rather than in the more usual position at the south. In addition, the south aisle does not extend the full length of the nave, ending two bays short at the west. With the possible exception of the north porch, which is dated 1607 and may or may not have had a predecessor, the basic plan of the building has not changed since the Reformation, though there have been some other alterations to the fabric. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, two sets of works were carried out, leading to the raising of the sanctuary on three steps in line with prevailing ecclesiological fashion, accounting for the uncomfortable lowness of the thirteenth-century piscina to the south of the altar, and to the rebuilding of the nave roof at a steeper pitch than that of the roof erected in the fifteenth century when the clerestory was added; in 1926, the south aisle was restored and re-faced. [4]
     Several fixtures have survived both the destruction of the Reformation and what are likely to have been several subsequent re-orderings, including one which saw the creation of a gallery at the west of the nave, and some other fittings can be understood from clues in the fabric. Starting in the chancel, the piscina, already noted, is of thirteenth-century date. The north windows contain stained glass of the early fifteenth century which depicts the twelve apostles, [5] and the carved mouldings of the rear portions of the choir stalls indicate that they were installed later in the same century, suggesting that, by the end of the middle ages, there may have been a small male choir. The same mouldings are found on the chancel screen, which is an adapted version of the medieval rood screen, from which the loft has been removed, though the elaborate stairs to it are still open at the north side of the nave. Behind the stairs, at the east end of the north aisle, was a chapel, indicated by a piscina and by a blocked squint which enabled the priest to see the high altar. There is a similar squint opposite, at the east end of the south aisle, serving the Lady Chapel, identifiable both because it contains the tomb of Roger Wake, whose will specified that his chantry, and therefore his burial, should be in the chapel of Our Lady, [6] and because of the iconography of the now-lost medieval glazing of the principal window, of which there is a seventeenth-century description. [7] The tomb, which is large enough considerably to cramp the space within the chapel, was until recently aligned east-west, placed in front of the recess of an earlier wall monument, but offset to the west to allow sufficient room for a priest to move around the altar. Set into the Purbeck marble top is a brass comprising effigies of Roger Wake, his seven sons and three daughters, and his wife, Elizabeth Catesby, as well as a border inscription asking Jesus to have mercy on his soul. [8] The chapel may once have been modestly elaborate: there is no east window, suggesting that there may have been a wooden or perhaps alabaster reredos, what appears to be a much restored carved roof boss with symbols of the four evangelists now hangs on the east wall, and there are some fragments of late-medieval decorated floor tiles. By contrast, the font, which is tucked in behind the west side of the western pier of the north nave arcade, is a plain cylinder.
     Almost all medieval wills, which were made shortly before death, contain bequests to the testator’s parish church. Not everyone made a written will, poorer folk not finding it worthwhile, and not all those that were made have survived. Nevertheless, the few documents which exist for Blisworth show that there were many images and lights in the church by the start of the sixteenth century, and to them, in this agricultural parish, people typically left a sheep or a measure (a strike) of barley, in one case a pound of beeswax, or occasionally small sums of money ranging from a penny or two to a noble (3s. 4d.). In 1526, for example, William Water requested that after he had been buried the tapers which burned at his funeral should be set before four of the images, those of the Holy Trinity, St Margaret, Our Lady in the Chapel, and Our Lady on a pillar off the north side of the church, and that his wife should, for the rest of her life, ensure that a light burned before the last during services on Sundays and feast days. [9] Other wills show that there were further images: of Our Lady and St John the Baptist, which would have flanked the high altar in accordance with canon law, of Saints Christopher, Francis, Katherine, Michael the Archangel, Roch, Sith and Sunday (a figure of Christ assailed by the tools of weekday work), as well as of the Father of Heaven. There were, in addition, lights at the foot of the rood, in honour of the reserved Sacrament and, at Easter, for the Easter Sepulchre in which the Sacrament was symbolically buried during Passiontide. [10] The location of most of the images apart from those of Saints Mary and John can only be conjectured: scars in the two eastern piers of the south nave arcade suggest that they once supported images, and two corbels above the western arch of the Lady chapel bear the heads of Roman-looking women, suggesting that they carried figures of the Roman virgin martyrs Katherine and Margaret, who were often venerated together and might, perhaps, have been joint patrons of the altar in the north aisle.  A 1913 publication lists known pre-reformation bequests to the church and is reproduced on this website.
     While the evidence does not permit an accurate reconstruction of the interior of the church in the early sixteenth century, a combination of what can be learned from the building itself with the written sources may make it possible to create a notion of the appearance of the interior and to begin to understand its atmosphere (Fig.2). An initial impression might be of quite a constricted and potentially dark, or shadowy, space in the nave, particularly as all the windows other than those of the clerestory would have had coloured glass, while the presence of wall paintings, colourful statues and pricks of candle light would have given a feeling of clutter perhaps greater than warranted given that the nave may not have been fully pewed: bequests to other churches in the county indicate that pews were being introduced, sometimes piecemeal, into rural churches in the early sixteenth century, a pattern known from other parts of the country. [11] The rood, with its flanking figures of Mary and John, set against a depiction of the Last Judgement, provides a dominating image from which there is no escape: Judgement was both inevitable and terrible, and the only hope lay in the crucified Christ, seen above his actual bodily presence in the reserved Sacrament, which hung in the pyx above the altar and could be see through the rood screen. More subtle but, at least in this church, visible from wherever one stood, were the four images of Mary - five if the figure at the foot of the rood is counted - who, with Christ, was the most powerful intercessor with God the Father, so that St John’s at Blisworth well illustrates the statement in a fourteenth-century text that a church was ‘that house [ ... ] for prayer 'To Jesu and his mother dear'. [12] That did not mean that the other saints whose images filled it and adorned the panels of the lower section of the rood screen were unimportant: they all had powers of intercession and protection, often against specific eventualities, and it was for that reason, combined with their exhortatory role as examples of virtue, that the church was so full of their presence and that people desired to be buried in close proximity to their images if they did not have the status to command a place near one of the altars. [13]
      Trying to move beyond a static and empty image to address questions concerning the way in which the space within the church was used, and how it might have appeared to the parishioners, leads into areas of considerable uncertainty. In strictly liturgical terms, the shape of the calendar is well known, and something of the forms of services can be traced in the service books of the Use of Sarum, the most widely adopted set of liturgical customs in the province of Canterbury, of which the diocese of Lincoln formed a part. [14] Whatever the theory, though, simple country parishes could not support all the ceremonial outlined in customs originally complied for use in a cathedral, and there is also likely to have been some scope for local variation and tradition. [15] Even taking into account the evidence of the modest number of handbooks for clergy which have survived, most famously that by John Myrk, [16] supplemented by churchwardens’ accounts such as those for Morebath which have recently been made to tell a story, [17] by collections of sermons, and by a considerable body of devotional literature, it remains impossible to establish with certainty what actually happened in a parish church, even on Sundays and major feasts.
       Although there have been recent essays in the reconstruction of late-medieval parish religion, particularly by Eamon Duffy and Katherine French, [18] none has attempted systematic analysis of the kinds of activity which might have happened in the physical space of a particular parish church on a particular day. What follows is therefore an attempt to do that, acknowledging that it is an essay in imaginative reconstruction. Recognising that parish churches were much more heavily used during the week than their present-day counterparts, and that the service most frequently witnessed by parishioners would have been weekday Mass, a fairly ordinary day, 2 October 1528, a year from which several of the wills survive, may be taken as a peg on which to hang a series of snapshots inside the church. In 1528 that day was a Friday and, as in 2004, it fell in the week after the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity; it was also, as every year, the commemoration of St Leodegarius, better known in English as St Ledger, [19] a minor saint, whose day was marked with minimal deviation from the ordinary weekday pattern of services. It must be stressed that none of the events to be described is known to have happened on that day, and that there are no records relating to it: while those for whom history should be laden with facts may be unsatisfied, that lack of satisfaction may at least serve to bring into sharp relief the limitations of our knowledge when we ask some very simple questions.
      The only actors in the following scenes whose names can be suggested are some of the regular clergy, who probably arrived at the church early, perhaps shortly before six in the morning, to be let in by the parish clerk, responsible for unlocking the building. The rector was Master William Barle, a graduate, who is known to have held the living in 1526 and was still there in 1535. [20] For present purposes it is assumed that he was resident, at least on this day, rather than an absentee, though in 1526 he did have a curate, Simon Cowper, suggesting that he may have been away for at least part of the time. [21] There was also the priest of the Wake chantry and its associated school, required to be a graduate: in 1526, he was Master William Raynald, though how long he stayed is unclear since by 1535 the chantry was in the hands of one John Curtis. There might also have been one or two other clergy, brought in for a few days, weeks or months, by executors to say Masses for the souls of recently departed parishioners, but there is no record of them.
       The purpose of this early morning arrival at the church was to begin the Offices for the day, services of thanksgiving and praise derived from the monastic Hours and originally designed so that the entire psalter was recited every week. [22] All clergy had long been required to say or chant the Offices, and, even at the end of the middle ages, probably still did so in church as originally demanded, though there were circumstances in which they could do so individually and privately. [23] The first of the daily Offices was Matins, [24] a service of psalms and readings, the length and elaboration of which varied according to the importance of the day in the Calendar, major festivals being marked by nine lessons arranged in three groups, or nocturns, and ordinary weekdays and minor feasts by one group of three. For St Ledger’s day 1528, the normal service appointed for the Friday of the week following the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity was replaced by one which included a hymn and other material in praise of a martyr, and three readings specific to St Ledger, recounting his life as a seventh-century bishop of Autun and the circumstances of his martyrdom at the hands of the leading courtier and politician, Ebroin, so that this first service provided the context for the rest of the day. Immediately after Matins, and so much forming a single service with it that the Anglican Matins was drawn from the combined service, came Lauds, the principal Office of praise. It was shorter than Matins, consisting mainly of celebratory psalms, including the Jubilate (Psalm 100) and Psalms 148 to 150, [25] [a] second hymn in praise of martyrs, and the Benedictus (Luke I, 68–79). In turn, Lauds was probably swiftly followed by the third of the Hours, Prime, originally said at dawn, which contained a hymn in praise of the morning, further psalms, a reading of one or two verses of the Bible, a number of prayers and a benediction.
      The Offices were chanted quietly and in Latin, so that direct lay participation was greatly limited. Because they were performed openly in the church, however, it is possible that a few parishioners might attend all or part of the services so as to be involved in them by association, to pursue private prayer, meditation and, if they were literate, reading from devotional literature including lives of the saints (Fig. 3). How regularly anyone other than the most devout attended any of the weekday Hours is unclear, but the opportunity was there, especially for those in trouble or particular need of spiritual assistance.
     After this group of Offices, the rector or curate chanted Mass, as every day, at the high altar. Before that, some or all of the other clergy may have left, and it is likely that a small congregation came in to the church. For clergy and laity alike, Mass was the most important of the services, as it constituted a re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross and had similar power in relation to the forgiveness of sin as the original event; the act of consecration, which changed the substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus brought his sacrificial, forgiving and healing presence into the very building itself. The Sacrament was held in such reverence that only at Easter, or on exceptional occasions, were the laity permitted to take communion, though its power was such that they could derive spiritual and physical benefits simply from seeing it. Amongst the latter were reckoned to be that those who saw it were for the rest of the day protected from hunger, blindness, sudden death, and many other troubles, as well as acquiring forgiveness from sins such as the swearing of idle oaths: [26] for this reason attendance at Mass was popular, even on weekdays. [27]
      The Mass celebrated on a typical weekday or minor feast such as that of St Ledger was a Low Mass, the form most commonly witnessed by medieval people, which was unique to the western medieval church.  The principal elements of Low Masses were the same as those of the High Masses celebrated on Sundays and major feasts: an opening containing the prayers, epistle and gospel; the offertory, in which the bread and wine were prepared; the canon or consecration, including the elevation of the Host; the actual communion of the priest, followed by the dismissal and blessing. There was, however, much less ceremonial than on grander occasions, the priest usually officiating with a single server, and there was some abbreviation of the service, the Creed and Gloria being omitted. [28] The Propers, parts of the service, such as the epistle, gospel and certain of the prayers, which varied through the liturgical year, usually remained constant through the week, but festivals, even those as minor as that of St Ledger, had their own. [29]
       As with the Offices, much of the Mass, High or Low, was chanted so quietly by the priest that the congregation could not hear it, and even if they could, few would have understood Latin, so that the service had something of the character of a private priestly devotion. For most of the time, the congregation would engage in their own prayers, which lent support to the words and actions of the priest. At the gospel, the people were enjoined to listen carefully, even though they did not understand the language, for it was God’s word, and they could comprehend it through grace rather than through intellectual activity. [30] More direct participation came immediately after the consecration, when the Host was held aloft so that all could see the body of Christ (Fig. 4). At that moment, to which the ringing of the sacring bell drew attention, the lay folk were instructed to kneel in reverence and to pray, as to a king, welcoming the Lord,

      ... in form of bread,
      [Since] for me you suffered a painful death;
      As you suffered the crown of thorn,
      Grant me grace, Lord, that I be not forlorn, [31]

beseeching him that the benefits of actual communion would be conferred on beholders of the Host as much as on the priest who consumed it. [32] The elevation was the climax of the Mass, the bell and statement ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum’, (‘For this is my body’), breaking the almost still and silent canon, the long process of consecration, and creating a visual link from the priest to the Host, the body of Christ, and the pyx where the body was reserved; for those near the chancel the line was continued upwards to the top of the east window which, typically, showed God in glory, while for those further back, the elevation led visually to the rood with its depiction of the act of salvation, set against the Doom, the moment at which salvation was necessary. The extent to which members of the congregation felt involved in the rest of the Mass has been debated, but one hint that they did not see at least the last part of the proceedings as of the greatest importance to them is that a second gospel, the opening of that according to St John, ‘In principio erat verbum’ (‘In the beginning was the Word’), was read at the very end of the service and that those who stayed to hear it were accorded an indulgence. [33]
       After the Mass, the rector or curate might have chanted the three short offices for the middle of the day, Terce, Sext and Nones, each containing a hymn, three psalms, a one- or two-verse Bible reading and a prayer, [34] though whether this was done in the church or in private is uncertain.  As this was being done, the priest of Roger Wake’s chantry might have begun to chant his daily Mass, also a Low Mass, at the altar in the Lady chapel (Fig. 5).The form of the Mass was the same as that at the high altar, but the variable elements may have been specified by Roger Wake or his executors when the chantry was established, and proximity made the service physically much more accessible to parishioners, particularly if they entered the chapel. [35] This kind of votive Mass, paid for and specified by an individual or guild, lay at the heart of the intricately inter-twined relationship between living and departed members of the parish community. For the deceased sponsor, the pains of Purgatory were reduced by the sacrifice of Christ performed in his name, and because, by providing another opportunity for the living to enjoy the benefits of seeing the Host, which was elevated exactly as in the earlier Mass, he was performing a good work even from beyond the grave. That good work was itself a means of salvation, but was also something for which the living witnesses to it would give thanks by praying for the deceased; in turn, such prayers were accounted a good work by living as well as potentially aiding the departed who responded by interceding for them from Purgatory. [36]
      There may have been at least one further Mass, at the altar in the north aisle, for it was quite common for the deceased to pay for a number of Masses for their souls to be chanted on a given number of days, weeks or months after their death, but there is no documentary record of such activity in 1520s Blisworth. The stipendiary clergy responsible for such services were not attached to any particular church, but went wherever there was demand, though not necessarily within particularly wide compass, particularly in a place like Blisworth, which was near a major town.  The presence of squints from both chapels into the chancel may, however, suggest not only that at some point in the later middle ages were Masses regularly performed in the north chapel, but also that both they and those in the Lady chapel took place at the same time as Mass at the high altar, for one of the purposes of a squint was to enable the elevation to be staggered during concurrent services so that the congregation could see each in turn.
        With the end of Mass in the Wake chantry, perhaps by the middle of the morning, came a pause in formal divine service, the only remaining routine service being Vespers. The church was, however, probably used for much of the intervening time in other, less formal, and even secular, ways, and there would have been routine maintenance and cleaning, particularly of the images which would otherwise become grimy from candles, [37] such as those which, on 2 October, might remain lit before the image of St Michael (Fig. 6), whose feast, one of the major events of the year with much more elaborate services than those accorded to St Ledger, was celebrated three days earlier, on 29 September. In addition, a certain amount of parish administration might take place in the church.  At the beginning of October, for example, the churchwardens might review the Michaelmas income from any fields, houses or other property they held, the writing of the accounts perhaps assisted by the chantry priest. [38] Or perhaps the keepers of one of the ‘stocks’ of sheep left for the maintenance of lights would take their half-year account and decide which animals should be slaughtered or sold before the winter. [39]
      The church could also be used for private religion during the day, and people might come in to pray or, if literate, to read, and to express their devotion to the saints, particularly those of whom the church contained images, especially the Virgin Mary,

     Hail, Queen of Heaven and Star of Bliss;
     Since thy son thy father is,
     How should he anything thee deny,
     And thou his mother and he thy child?
     Hail, fresh fountain that springs anew,
     The root and crown of all virtue,
     Thou polished gem without blemish,
     Thou bore the lamb of innocence, [40]

who might be asked for intercessions or other aid. Some saints were associated with special attributes and would be the focus for requests for intercession in particular circumstances. One such was St Roch, a fourteenth-century Provençal, who nursed the sick during an outbreak of plague in north Italy, himself fell ill, was succoured by a dog, and died after being imprisoned either in Italy as a spy, or, in a different version of the tale, when his neighbours failed to recognise him on his return home. From this story are derived both his symbol, a dog, and an association with the healing of the sick. In the middle of the imagined 2 October 1528, a parishioner came into the church to light a candle before his image (Fig. 6), and to pray for the recovery of a dying man, to whom, soon after morning Mass, the rector had been called for the administration of the last rites.
      On being summoned, the rector, had hastened to the church to vest himself in surplice and stole, had collected the pyx containing the reserved Host from its place above the altar, and both salt water, which had been blessed the previous Sunday, and holy oil.  With his curate and the parish clerk carrying a light or a cross, he had made his way to the dying man’s house bearing the Sacrament under a cloth and heralded by the ringing of a bell so that passers-by could venerate the body of Christ. [41] Since the invalid was near the point of death, the priest had, on arrival, administered extreme unction, the most important sacrament after baptism. Despite the need for haste, the procedure was quite elaborate, entailing the saying of some eight psalms, interspersed with the anointing of the sick man’s eyes, ears, lips, nostrils, hands, feet and back, or if the last was not possible, navel. [42] This done, the priest had washed his hands in the blessed water over the vessel containing any unused oil which was kept to be burned and buried in the cemetery. The sick man had then been shriven and given communion, which was followed by an elaborate blessing and a prayer that God release his soul, and the placing of a crucifix where he could see it. [43] At that point the party from the church had remained, saying psalms, until the moment of death, which was followed by several more psalms and prayers. The rector, curate and clerk had then left for a time so that the body could be washed and wrapped in a shroud, and the principal bell of the church had been tolled three times, signifying the death of a man (it would have been twice for a woman). [44] Then, late in the afternoon, they had returned to the house, where the family, friends and neighbours of the deceased had gathered, and, following prayers, the corpse was brought to the church in a procession.
        On arrival at the church the corpse was put into a coffin, where it would remain until being removed for burial, in shroud alone, the following day, and set in the middle of the chancel, covered with a pall, a cloth, and surrounded by a metal frame, or hearse, with pricket-mounted candles at the corners (Fig. 7). [45] In place of the normal Vespers, the last of the daily Offices the priests might perform in the church, there followed the Vespers of the Dead, also known as the Placebo, from the first Latin word of the opening antiphon: ‘I shall please the Lord in the country of them that live’, which preceded the initial psalm, number 116. [46] The Placebo was quite a short service consisting of five opening psalms, the Magnificat, Kyrie, Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary, another psalm in praise of God, and, finally, prayers that all souls might enter the kingdom of peace and light; that the souls of those who had died during that day should not fall into the hands of the enemy or be forgotten but, rather, should be taken up by angels and led to the kingdom of life; that all sins be forgiven; and that the deceased might rest in peace.
      This service was only the first element of the church-based ritual surrounding burial. The following morning, the order of Matins prescribed for the day would be replaced by the second half of the Office of the Dead, the Dirge, followed by the Mass of Requiem and the burial of the body in the churchyard. All these services would be attended by a large number of parishioners and friends, sometimes encouraged by the leaving of money for a ‘breakfast’, so that as many prayers as possible might be said for the soul of the departed at this, the most dangerous moment of its existence, the journey from life to Judgement. There would, in addition, be a number of official mourners, often paid, clad in black hooded robes and carrying tapers. Although the services were all performed in Latin and in the same almost inaudible way as those earlier in the day, the congregation would have been so instructed in them, and have witnessed them so often, that they would have followed them with more readiness than the normal Offices, sometimes, by the second quarter of the sixteenth century, aided by English versions printed in Primers, private devotional books.
       After Vespers of the Dead, which brings this imagined October Friday in 1528 to its close, the body remained in the chancel over night, the candles on the hearse left burning to light the soul on its journey towards Judgement and to fend off the demons who might try to waylay it and bundle it down to Hell. [47] Corpses of people of high rank might be accompanied through the night by watchers, so that the Placebo and Dirge are sometimes collectively described as the Vigils of the Dead, but this Blisworth parishioner was, like most ordinary folk, left alone with the flickering candles, the images of the Doom and saving crucifixion, in the presence of the redeeming Sacrament, the church locked, as almost every night, by the parish clerk, and the people gone home; gone home to bed with a prayer for protection that night:

      Upon my right side I lay me down,
      Blessed Lady, to thee I pray;
      For the tears that you shed
      Upon your sweet son’s feet,
      Send me grace for to sleep
      And good dreams for to dream,
      Sleeping, waking, till tomorrow be day.
           Our Lord is the fruit, our Lady is the tree -
           Blessed be the blossom that sprang of thee!
      In the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen. [48]

Note on the illustrations  I am grateful to Allan Adams for assistance with the reconstruction of the interior of the church, and for drawing the illustrations.  The latter are reproduced by permission of English Heritage and are © English Heritage. NMR.

Notes

1    A. H. Thompson,‘The Chantry Certificates for Northamptonshire’, Associated Architectural and Archaeological Societies’ Reports and Papers, 31 (1911–12), Certificates of 1548 no. 31, p. 158.
2    Bequests to Northamptonshire churches are excerpted in R. M. Serjeantson and H. I. Longden, ‘The Parish Churches and Religious Houses of Northamptonshire: Their Dedications, Altars, Images and Lights’, Archaeological Journal, 70 (1913), pp. 217–452; those relating to Blisworth are at pp. 277–9. The chantry licence is in Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII part 2 (1491–1509) (London, 1916), p. 461.
3    There is a short report on the development of the church, made by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England in 1984, in English Heritage, National Monuments Record, NBR No. 44004.
4     M. Fletcher, ‘Blisworth’, in L. F. Salzman (editor), The Victoria History of the Counties of England, Northamptonshire, IV (London, 1937), p. 225. See also the notes made on the church by Sir Stephen Glynne: Hawarden, St Deniol’s College Library, Church Notes of Sir Stephen Glynne, xl, ff. 1–3 (copy in the Northamptonshire Record Office, ZB, 176/1, 2).
5     R. Marks, The Medieval Stained Glass of Northamptonshire (Oxford, 1998), pp. 22–3.
6     Serjeantson and Longden, ‘Parish Churches’, pp. 277–8.
7     Marks, Medieval Stained Glass, p. 22.
8     ‘Here lyeth Roger Wake Esquyer Lorde of Blysworthe in the countie of Northampton and Elizabeth his wyffe [...] which Roger decessyd the xvi day of March the yere of our Lord God M o ccccciij on whose soule Ihu have mrcy’. 16 March 1503 is 1504 in the modern calendar.
9      Serjeantson and Longden, ‘Parish Churches’, p. 278’.
10     Serjeantson and Longden,‘ Parish Churches’, pp. 277–9.
11     See the wills of Henry German of Geddington (1486), Thomas and Isabel Loddington and Thomas Chapman of Wold (or Old; all 1528),W. Fallance of Staverton (1531), and Robert May of Cosgrove (1540), Serjeantson and Longden,‘Parish Churches’, pp. 327, 436, 409 and 301, respectively.  For a similar pattern in the diocese of Bath and Wells, see K. L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a
Late Medieval Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 167.
12     ‘That house was mad for preyere 'To Iesu and to his Modor dere': ‘A Treatise on the Manner and Mede of the Mass’, in T. F. Simmons (editor), The Lay Folks Mass Book, Early English Text Society Original Series 71 (London, 1879), pp. 128–47, at lines 374–5.
13     French, People of the Parish, p. 194. For detailed discussion of images, see R. Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004).
14     For forms of service, see J. Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century. A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991).
15     French, People of the Parish, p. 182.
16     J. Myrk, Instructions for Parish Priests, Early English Text Society Original Series 31, 2nd edn (London, 1902).
17     E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven and London, 2001).
18     E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1570 (New Haven and London, 1992); idem, Voices of Morebath; French, People of the Parish.
19     In the diocese of Hereford it was also the feast of St Thomas of Hereford, but that was not observed in the Sarum calendar.
20     Details of the clergy in 1526 are known from H. Salter (editor), A Subsidy Collected in the Diocese of Lincoln in 1526, Oxford Historical Society 63 (Oxford and London, 1909), p. 162, and in 1535 from J. Caley (editor), Valor Ecclesiasticus tempore Henrici VIII auctoritate regia institutus, 6 vols (London, 1810–34), vol. 4, p. 332.
21     For absenteeism, see M. Bowker, The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495–1520 (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 85–109; cf. T. Cooper, The Last Generation of English Catholic Clergy: Parish Priests in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in the Early Sixteenth Century, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 15 (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 62–72.
22     A. Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organization and Terminology, 2nd edn (Toronto, 1995), pp. 50–2.
23     See P. Salmon,‘La Prière des Heures’, in A. G. Martimort (editor), L’Église en prière: introduction à la liturgie (Paris, 1971), pp. 841–3.
24     Details of the Offices, both in general and for St Ledger’s day, are derived from the Sarum Breviary: Breviarium ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiæ Sarum, edited by F. Proctor and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1879–86).The principal sections of relevance are as follows: vol. 1, cols v–li and mcccxi–mcccxx; vol. 2, cols 386–95; vol. 3, cols 886–90.
25     For convenience of reference, psalms are numbered as in the Book of Common Prayer rather than according to the Vulgate version of the Bible, which was followed by the Sarum Breviary.
26     Eg.  ‘Treatise on the Manner and Mede of the Mass’, ll. 103-33; Myrk, Instructions for Parish Priests, ll. 312–29.
27     See, for example, A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England, edited by C. A. Sneyd, Camden Society 37 (London, 1847), p. 23, written c. 1500.
28     Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, pp. 93–5.
29     Missale ad Usum Insignis et Prælaræ Ecclesiæ Sarum, edited by F. H. Dickinson, 2 vols (Burntisland, 1861-83).The main parts of relevance are those on cols 1–17, 577–644, 924–6 and 669*–83*.
30     ‘Treatise on the Manner and Mede of the Mass’, ll. 425–48.
31     Welcome, lord, in fourme of brede, For me thu tholedest a pyneful dede; As thu suffredest the coroune of thorne, Graunt me grace, lorde, I be nought lorne. ‘Lay Folks Mass Book’, edited by Simmons, text F (15th century), ll. 196–218 at 213–16.
32     Lydgate, ‘Merita Missae’, in Simmons, Lay Folks Mass Book, ll. 69–77, and ‘Treatise on the Manner and Mede of the Mass’, 581–92.
33     ‘Treatise on the Manner and Mede of the Mass’, ll. 641–52; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 123–4.
34     See Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, p. 80; Breviarium ad Usum Sarum.
35     Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 114.
36     For a case-study of services for the dead in a particular parish church, and especially of the way in which they affected the evolution and use of the building, see P. S. Barnwell, ‘“Four Hundred Masses on the Four Fridays Next After My Decease”. The Care of Souls in Fifteenth-Century All Saints, North Street, York’, in P. S. Barnwell, C. Cross and A. Rycraft (editors), Mass and Parish in Late-Medieval England: The Use of York (Reading, 2005), pp. 57–87.
37     Marks, Image and Devotion, p. 247; French, People of the Parish, p. 195.
38     J. G Davies, The Secular Use of Church Buildings (London, 1968), pp. 61–3.
39     Blisworth wills, in common with many of those for Northamptonshire, refer to such stocks, though nothing further is known of them; for their administration in contemporary Morebath, see Duffy, Voices of Morebath,pp. 24–32, 41–5.
40      Hail quene of hevin and steren of blis;
          Sen that the sone thi fader is,
          How suld he ony thing the warn,
          And thou his mothir and he thi bairn?
          Haill fresche fontane that springis new,
          The rute and crope of all virtù,
          Thou polist gem without offence,
          Thou bair the lambe of innocence.
Late Medieval English Lyrics and Carols 1400–1530, edited by T. G. Duncan (Harmondsworth, 2000), p. 50.
41     The rules for the procession had been established since at least the early thirteenth century. See, for example, ‘Statutes of Archbishop Stephen Langton for the Diocese of Canterbury, 1213 x 1214’, in Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, Part II, edited by F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, 2 vols (Oxford, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 23–36 at cap. 17, and ‘Synodal Institutes of Bishop Roger Poore for the Diocese of Salisbury, with additions, 1219 x 1238’, in the same volume, pp. 57–96 at cap. 64.
42     The form of administration is in Manuale ad Usum Percelebris Ecclesie Sarisburiensis, edited by A. J. Collins, Henry Bradshaw Society 91 (1960), pp. 107–14, followed, at pp. 114–32, by the commendations of the soul.
43     See Speculum Sacerdotale, edited by E. H. Weatherly, Old English Text Society Original Series 200 (London, 1936), pp. 232–3.
44     Ibid., p. 233.
45     C. Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1540 (London and New York, 1997), pp. 47–8.
46     The form of the Placebo is given in Manuale Sarisburiensis, pp. 132–5, as well as in Breviarium, vol. 2, pp. 271–4.  There is an early sixteenth-century English version in the Primer printed in W. Maskell (editor), Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicana, 2nd edn, 3 vols, (Oxford, 1882), vol. 3, pp. 115–28.
47     Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 361–2.
48    Upon my ryght syde y me leye,
        Blesed Lady, to the y pray;
        For the terës that ye lete
        Upone yowre swetë sonnës feete,
        Send me gracë for to slepe
        And good dremës for to mete,
        Slepying, wakyng, til morowe day bee.
              Owre Lorde is the frwte, oure Lady is the tree -
              Blessed be the blossome that sprange of the!
        In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti. Amen.
Late Medieval English Lyrics and Carols, p. 106.

Site of the Manor - its location is uncertain, a 1718 curate states Wake's seat is nearby and south-east of the church.