ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the analysis of materials found in the wills of the nobles. Most wills, even the tersest, usually specify the place of desired burial, and most nobles were willing to subsidize a funeral ending in an interment. There was the usual predilection for the Austin Canons. The Hungerford endowments to Salisbury Cathedral were, likewise, tied quite closely to their own chantries, though Lord Walter left £10 to be distributed among the cathedral clergy at his funeral, ‘in the customary manner’. On the shorter wills, where fewer houses were named, the endowments to the burial house usually represented a good fraction, perhaps 20 to 25 per cent of all the ecclesiastical endowments, both in number and value. Various secular branches of the church gained in the fifteenth century. When all the parish churches of the realm are counted, the number of secular institutions is at least ten times that of the regular houses.
