The Church, The Crown and The Christening Gown

This case is long-winded and very complex (believe me, it’s taken me weeks to dig out all the relevant information) so, rather than bore you all with the ins and outs of ecclesiastica versus civil law, I’ve set out the basics so that you don’t give up the will to live! 

Our tale strictly begins in 1510 but we come to the the nub of the matter a year later – 1511.  Richard Hun (aka Hunne) was a successful and wealthy London merchant tailor, well respected and by all accounts a thoroughly decent chap.  Amongst his good deeds, he donated considerable sums of money to the poor in the area but unfortunately, as the saying goes, wealth can’t buy you happiness, and in March 1511 he was to be found at the Church of St Mary Matfelon in Whitechapel, London burying his five week old son, Stephen.  (The original church has long since disappeared but the above is a photograph of the rebuilt church taken around 1880).

It was customary for the church to take a fee, known as ‘mortuary’ for conducting funeral services by demanding an item owned by the deceased.  On this occasion the priest conducting the funeral, Thomas Dryfield (aka Dryffeld), demanded the baby’s christening robe.  However, Dryfield got more than he bargained for.  Richard Hun refused on the grounds that any possessions that had been owned by the deceased would automatically pass to the next of kin as a dead person couldn’t actually ‘own’ anything.  Added to Richard’s case was the fact that, at the age of just five weeks, his son wouldn’t have been of an age to own anything so the christening robe actually belonged to Richard.

These ecclesiastical demands had long been a bone of contention between the church and the common man.  Richard had seen first hand how this practice could completely devastate the lives of the deceased’s family, in that the priest could demand the most expensive item ‘owned’ by the deceased which could result in the loss of the family’s livelihood and could ultimately render them homeless and starving.  So Richard decided he wasn’t going to give up his son’s christening robe.

This wasn’t the first time Richard had locked horns with the clergy.  The previous year he had supported a neighbour, Joan Baker, in a heresy case when she had told the priest at her local church that it wasn’t necessary to revere a crucifix in a church as ‘they be but stocks and stones’.  It seems likely that Joan was in fact a lollard – see http://www.socyberty.com/History/The-Life-of-a-Lollard.330835- and, as many of Richard Hun’s close friends were also of the lollard persuasion it’s more than likely that Richard was himself a ‘closet lollard’.