Retirement Arrangements and the Laity at Religious Houses in Pre-Reformation Devon

Abstract

Most of us would probably think of retirement planning as a modern phenomenon; however, concerns about retirement were also very real to people of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. They, too, sought ways to ensure that they would be able to lead reasonably comfortable lives once they had reached a point when they could no longer work. Peasant parents might sometimes strike maintenance agreements with adult children or other individuals who would be taking over their landholdings; wealthy widows might be able to rely on the income from their dower lands or the jointures arranged at the time of their marriages. Infirm members of the secular clergy could sometimes retire from their parishes with pensions. Another option for a wide range of individuals of different economic backgrounds was to obtain an annuity from or a corrody at a religious house. An annuity was an annual monetary payment, whereas a corrody was an annual allowance in kind—what Barbara Harvey has called a “bundle of privileges” or a “bundle of consumables”—providing for the food, shelter, and often clothes of the corrodian. Both annuities and corrodies could be purchased from or freely given by a monastery.