Religious order · also Hunters
Black Lantern Brethren
Also called The Brethren · Brethren · Black Lantern Brethren of Sarrum · Black Lanterns · Black Lantern house · Black Lantern
An order that attends troubled ground when a parish asks; in Kent it keeps one small house at Wye. It usually comes in nine to fourteen days, sends two brothers to an ordinary attendance for eleven shillings, and works bounded suppressions at night in fours (two at the working, two at the inner mark) while hired hands hold the outer bound. It makes no finding about any person.
An order called for plague ground, prison chapels and roads where the dead keep bad order, which breaks rather than treats with a power. Its Sarrum house of nine brothers and about twenty lay staff attends pits, closed burial grounds and unplanned workings, and since 4606 must have an officer present, paid by the owner, whenever a working is opened into ground not on a plan. One of the realm's three professions of the unseen and the only one present in London, where four houses attend parishes that send for them; two brothers attend for one to four nights and the house bills the ward at a fixed schedule (eleven shillings an attendance, two pounds four a suppression).
Named with it
- Brother Anselm of the Black Lantern (Sarrum house
- keeper of the suppression book, 4619)
- Brother-Lantern Aldous Fell of Sarrum
- Brother Anselm
- Brother Anselm (head of the Sarrum house
- keeps the suppression book)
- Brother Edmund Rowse (officer
- keeps the attendance book)
- Brother Wulfgar
- Brother Nicholas Stourmouth
- Brother Anselm Hoy
- Sub-Prior Hugh Malby
- Brother Crispin Ayre
Ties
- one of the suppressing orders alongside the Brotherhood of the Lantern Grave
- long and bitter history with the Ladies and pact-families
- contrasted with the Concord of Saint Winnow and the Wardens of the Quiet Ground
- quarrels with the Concord and the Wardens in the country
- bills ward committees, who dispute the accounts
- rival in method to the Concord of Saint Winnow and the Wardens of the Quiet Ground
- work with the chapter court on grave cases
- endorse suppression bills of taking used in the Cambridge essence market
In the chronicle
- · The Amendment of 4189
- · The Black Lantern House at Fleecegate
- · The Suppression at Crozier Hill
- · The Blackdown Stope
- · The Unplanned Ground Rule of 4606
- · Barrow Ash
- · The Black Wake
At the table
Standing schedule: eleven shillings for an attendance, two pounds four for a suppression; a full order with bounds, hired hands, travel and keep runs eight to fifteen pounds. A house sends four men on foot and will not attend without standing and an arranged fee; hired companies commonly hold the outer bound. Its Molling Marsh attendance (4586) took nine nights, the longest the Sarrum house has entered, and was booked as a vampire attack on no evidence. Entries are never copied between houses. The house has twice declined to attend drowned Netherlode for want of a parish request, and was never called for Ironmere. A brother never attends where somebody is being paid to be present, so hiring a company shuts the house out unless the fee is given up in writing to the parish. Attendance books show settled wards served the same night while the four southern riverside parishes wait about three days. Called in serious cases of forbidden practice alongside the chapter court, and sent for (when a village can get them) for failed graves; the belt's strict party is strong among them. Their own records concede that cleansed districts tend to return angrier. They have not attended the Stonecourt cavities.