This measure, so inconsistent with the spirit of the age and so contradictory in its terms, was re-enacted at various dates during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It is perhaps the last "word" as regards the Lady Fast, but the legislature by no means suspended its vigilance in enforcing abstinence at the proper season. Discussion of post-Reformation fasting, however, or fasting in general, forms no part of our present undertaking.
The fact may not have escaped notice that Domina Alicia Seynt Johan de Baggenet "took the vow of widowhood in the chapel of the Lord of Amberley." Possession of a private chapel was, as it still is, a mark of social distinction. "It was once the constitution of the English," runs a law of King Athelstan, "that the people and their legal condition went according to their merits; and then were the councillors of the nation honoured each one according to his quality, the earl and the ceorl, the thane and the underthane. If a ceorl throve so as to have five hides booked to him, a church, bell-tower, a seat in the borough, and an office in the King's court, from that time forward he was esteemed equal in honour to a thane." Again, the laws of King Edgar relating to tithe ordain "that God's church be entitled to every right, and that every tithe be rendered to the old minster to which the district belongs, and be then so paid, both from the thane's inland and from geneat land, as the plough traverses it. But if there be any thane who on his boc-land has a church at which there is a burial-place, let him give the third part of his own tithe to his church. If anyone hath a church at which there is not a burial-place, then of the same nine parts let him then give to his priest what he will."
Domestic chapels were extremely common all through the Middle Ages. In the parish of Tiverton, Devon, there were at least seventeen, some of them within less than a mile of each other. Allusions to these oratories are found in the registers of the Bishops of Exeter, by whom they were severally licensed for the convenience of the owner, his family, and his tenants. As a rule, they were in rooms of the house or castle, not separate buildings. Andrew Boorde, in his directions for the construction of a sixteenth-century mansion, remarks: "Let the privy chamber be annexed to the great chamber of estate, with other chambers necessary for the building, _so that many of the chambers may have a prospect into the chapel_."