[Illustration: Porch, Chalk Church, Kent]
“They loved God in those days,” muttered the old gentleman, with a sigh of regret, “and loving God each man loved his brother also. In the church they learnt the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven; the public-house gave them the opportunity of realising the Kingdom of Heaven in the practice of brotherly love. It is a survival of the early Christian Agape. ‘Exercise hospitality one to another,’ says the Apostle--for this is the full meaning of προσλαμβάνεσθαι in Romans xv, 7. In the good old days men did not go into a public-house to drown their wits in gin, but to buy each other good wholesome ale in Christian fellowship. And as every man went to church--of course, there had to be many alehouses!”
We have since discovered a less picturesque though much more plausible origin of these superfluous inns which will be given in another chapter. Nevertheless, allowing for our good friend’s flamboyant enthusiasm, there is an element of truth in his contention. Wherever there is a church we may be certain of finding an old inn hard by. In pre-reformation times the Church, while not exactly countenancing the alehouse, looked not sourly on drinking customs when indulged in with discretion. The training of the character in self-restraint is a great ideal of the Catholic Church. The alternation of festival and fast is one integral feature of the process. Fasting alone is insufficient. Continual abstinence results in self-mutilation; the appetite is merely distorted thereby. It is a great secret of the higher life that where there is no temptation there can be no victory. And so the Church enjoined on our forefathers the duty of feasting heartily and fasting conscientiously each in their due season. A great doctor of the Church gave the maxim that to be fasting after the fifth hour of a holy-day was to be _ipso facto_ excommunicate.
Before inns became common the parish clergy were expected to entertain travellers. It must be borne in mind that until the thirteenth century many of the secular priests were married men. The Rolls of Parliament for 1379 contain a complaint that owing to the non-residence of the clergy this duty of affording shelter to benighted wayfarers was in danger of lapsing. In our own boyhood it was still the traditional custom for travellers in remote districts to put up at the rectory, and this may help to account for the unnecessary size of rectories in sparsely populated country parishes. But obviously the unmarried priest of the fifteenth century found it more convenient to all parties when an inn was built on his glebe, where it would be more or less under his control, and he could be answerable for its good conduct.