When chapels were erected for the especial purpose of the chantries, they were usually also the places of interment of the founder and his family, whence we sometimes find such chapels belong ing, even to this day, to particular fa milies, and adorned with monuments of many generations. One of the most beau :iful chapels of this kind is in the little village of Sandal, a few miles from Don caster, the foundation of Rokeby, arch bishop of Dublin, who died in 1521. The church of Sandal being small, af forded no scope for the design of this magnificent prelate. Having determined that this should be the place of his inter ment, he erected a chapel on the north side of the choir, open, however, to the church on one side, being separated from it only by open wainscot. On entering it by the door the whole economy of one of these chapels is manifest. Under the window looking eastward an altar has stood ; the piscina on the right remains. Jo each side of the east window is a niche where once, no doubt, stood an effigies of a saint whom the archbishop held in pe mliar honour. In the centre is a brass Indicating the spot in which the body of the prelate lies; and in the north wall is a memorial of him, having his arms and effigies, with an inscription setting forth his name and rank and the day of his decease, with divers holy ejaculations. The stone and wood work have been wrought with exquisite care, and the windows appear to have been all of painted glass. The Beauchamp chapel at Warwick contains the very fine monu ment and effigy of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439.
Sometimes chantries were established in edifices remote from any church, a chapel being erected for the express pur pose.
In chantries of royal foundation, or in chantries founded by the more eminent prelates or barons, the service was con ducted sometimes by more than one per son. But usually there was only one officiating priest. The foundation deeds generally contain a specification of his duties, which consisted for the most part in the repetition of certain masses : but sometimes the instruction of youth in grammar or singing, and the delivering pious discourses to the people, made part of the duty of the chan try priests. They also contain an account of the land settled by the founder for the support of the priest. The names of the persons whom he was especially to name in his services are set forth, as well as the mode of his appointment and the circumstances in which he might be removed. Generally the king was named together with the founder and members of his family. This, it was supposed, gave an additional chance of the foundation being perpetu ated. The king's licence was generally obtained for the foundation.
In many towns and country places there are ancient houses called chantry houses, or sometimes chantries, or col leges, which were formerly the residence of the chantry priests, and when called colleges they were the places where they lived a kind of collegiate life. These, as
well as all other property given for the support of the chantry priests, were seized by the crown and sold to private persons, when by an act passed in the first year of King Edward VI. cap. 14, all founda tions of this kind were absolutely sup pressed and their revenues given to the king. An account had been taken a few years before of all the property which was settled to these uses, by the commis sioners under the act 26 Hen. VIII. cap. 2, whose returns form that most important ecclesiastical document the Valor Eccle siasticus' of King Henry VIII. The Valor' has been published by the com missioners on the Public Records' iu five volumes folio.
The act of Edward VI. gave the king all the colleges, free chapels, chantries, hospitals, fraternities or guilds, which were not in the actual possession of King Henry VIII. to whom the Parliament in the thirty-seventh year of his reign had made a grant of all such colleges, &c., nor in the possession of King Edward. The preamble of the act of Edward states that the object of the act was the suppression of the superstitions which such founda tions encouraged, and the amendment of such institutions, and the converting them to good and godly uses, as for the erection of grammar-schools, and for augmenting of the universities, and better provision for the poor and needy. But this act was much abused, as the act for dissolving religious houses in King Henry VIII.'s reign had been, and private persons got most of the benefit of it. The money was not only not appropriated as it ought to have been, but both many grammar schools and much charitable provision for the poor were taken away under the act. As already observed, the teaching of youth was sometimes one of the duties of the chantry priests, and it is probable that wherever there was a school and a chantry provided by the same foundation, the existence of the chantry was made a pretext for suppressing the whole endow ment. Thus at Sandwich, in Kent, the chantry of St. Thomas was suppressed. One of the priests of this chantry was sound to teach the children of Sandwich to read. The citizens, feeling the loss of their school, raised money by subscription for making a new school, and Roger Mau wood, afterwards chief baron of the Ex chequer, was at the head of the subscrip tion. This is the origin of the present free grammar-school of Sandwich. (Journal of Education. vol. x. p. 63.) King Edward founded a considerable num ber of grammar-schools, and the endow ments were for the most part out of tithes formerly belonging to religious houses, or out of chautry lands given to the king in the first year of his reign. These schools are now generally called King Edward VI.'s Free Grammar Schools ; and many of them, such as Bir mingham for instance, are now well en dowed iu consequence of the improved value of their lands. (Strype. Ecclesias tical Memoirs, ii. 101-103, ii. 423, iii. 222, vi. 495.)