MASHAM, RIPON, AND MARKINGTON
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MASHAM,(pronounced "maasam," the name coming from the Middle English (Chaucer's Time words for mice and town)

There are plenty of signs that there was a preNorman Christian church in Masham. Roman remains by the River Ure have been found where there was a ford during Roman times. During the fifth century when the Roman Empire was crumbling, one of the emperors sent a letter to the people in the York area saying they were on their own. Rome would no longer claim the region. The Saxons were subsequently subdued by Vikings for a couple of hundred years. Christian burials from preNorman times indicate that a church, almost certainly a wooden one, existed in the town.

The earliest documentary reference to a church at Masham is in the Domesday Book of 1086, but nothing is know about what the church was really like that stood then or earlier in the Anglo-Saxon period. A round shafted portion of a column from the Saxon period stands in the churchyard. Fragments of the sandstone cross that once topped the column are now preserved inside the church. The lower stage of the tower dates from the mid-twelfth century and the upper stage was added early in the thirteenth century. The octagonal lantern and the spire were added in the fifteenth century. The porch was added in the early sixteenth century. For four hundred years after the Normans came, the parish church was closely associated with York Minster. In the middle of the 12th century Roger de Mowbray, the lord of Mashamshire, gave the church to the Minster to form a prebend or canonry. The canonry was held by a series of important ecclesiastics in the service of the King and Pope and among the medieval prebendaries of Masham were to be numbered three future cardinals, one future archbishop of Canterbury and seven more who eventually became bishops. Probably most of the canons never set foot in the church at Masham. After 1278 they regularly sent their appointed vicars (deputies) to serve the pastoral needs of the community. The link with York Minster was broken at the Reformation when, in 1545, King Henry VIII abolished the prebend and subsequently gave its endowments and the local peculiar jurisdiction of the former canon to his new Cambridge foundation of Trinity College.. The College has remained the church’s patron to the present day. A “peculiar” or peculiar jurisdiction denotes an ecclesiastical enclave exempt in most respects from the local diocesan bishop; therefore, vicars of St. Mary’s Church receive their appointment from King’s College Cambridge rather than from the local bishop. Court books survive of the Peculiar Court from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, when virtually all it’s powers were abolished. The present vicar, David Cleeves, told me how the Peculiar Court had worked. Churchwardens were brought to book for not repairing the church building or not providing requisite fittings and furnishings. Laity’s offences fell into two main categories, church-related offenses and moral offenses. In the case of the former, accusations about being Recusants (Roman Catholics), Quakers, or other nonconformist dissenters from the Established Church; not attending church or not receiving the Sacrament; failure to pay church assessments; for working or playing (plowing, playing bowls, delivering goods, drinking at a tavern, etc.) on a Sunday or Feast Day; the moral offenses including fornication, adultery, incest, prohibited or clandestine marriage, the birth of illegitimate children, malicious defaming of neighbors, etc. If the accused were found guilty, the regular punishment was a penance, which took the usual form of the public reading of a confession in church during Sunday morning service “being bare-head, bare-foot, and bare-legged, having a white sheet wrapped about him from the shoulders to the feet, and a white want in his hand.” As I was learning about the early church court’s treatment of offenders, it occurred to me that in the seventh century Mohammed probably learned from Jews and Christians what should be done with heretics, dissidents, and run-of-the-mill sinners. What the twenty-first century fundamentalist, extremist Muslims believe they must do to heretics probably came from those two religious groups. What goes around comes around.

On the fourth Sunday in September there were thirteen of us attending the eight-o’clock communion mass. As we were leaving the service, a lady turned to me and said, “We had quite a good number this morning, don’t you think?”

Gerald and Josie Smith, Ann’s family from Leeds, invited us for lunch at Hob Green Hotel at Markington near Ripon. They are perfect examples of English hospitality and generosity. Later we went to Evensong at Ripon Cathedral. Most of building we see today was built in the twenfth century, but the massive structure was built on and around a Saxon church that dates from the seventh century. The crypt of a saint has remained intact in the cathedral for thirteen hundred years. With practically no Sunday traffic and bells ringing to signal the beginning of evensong, it was easy to squint and imagine what this place was like a thousand years ago. The choir broke that spell and allowed another to emerge. As they filed in behind clerics, they weren't a solemn line of black-robed, hooded monks. This was the Sunday for girls from the minster school to sing with the regular all-male adult choir. Boys sing with choir at other evensongs. RIPON CATHEDRALRIPON CATHEDRAL
We went back to the choir for evensong. Members of the garden festival committee invited us for wine and canapes in the nave after the service. So much for standing barelegged in a white sheet holding a wand.