ABSTRACT
In a technical sense, chantries were ‘provisions for daily or weekly masses and other services for a private intention, usually the repose of souls of particular individuals’. On a lesser scale they endowed altars and bought the services of countless clerics. They revelled in the diversity of ecclesiastical forms permitted them, and they spread their endowments with both concern and pride. Secular ecclesiastical recipients always received a very large proportion of the chantry endowments. The regulars, including the mendicants, received about one grant in three all through the fourteenth century. The regulars, including the mendicants, received about one grant in three all through the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century there was some movement away from the cloister as a host for the chantries, though again it is a story of relative neglect. Most provisions of prayers stipulated that they were to be said forever. Some wills bequeathed vast sums to buy prayers at the funeral and immediately afterwards.
