clergy in our late civil wars; the other from the avarice of ministers, who, in some opulent parishes, made almost as much of permission to bury in the chancel and the church as of their livings, and were paid with considerable advantage and gifts for baptising in private.' After his death the diarist was interred, apart from vulgar folk, in the mausoleum, or dormitory' of the Evelyns at Wotton. Like Bishop Hall, Bishop Compton of London used to say 'The churchyard for the dead, the church for the living;' and when he died, in 1713, he was buried in Fulham churchyard. In The medieval church differed notably from the modern temple in not having permanent seats in the nave for the accommodation of the laity. Though mention is made of pews in the literature of the fifteenth century, it is uncertain what was the article of furniture to which the word 'pew' was applicable. The 'pew closed with iron,' and placed near the high altar of the minster, mentioned in Sir Thomas Malory's translation of the 'Morte d' Arthur,' was probably a priest's confessional. his Instructions for Parish Priests,' Mirk says not a word about pews-silence which of itself demonstrates that private seats for lay worshippers were not common in the earlier half of the fifteenth century; and though Russell's Book of Nurture,' a production of the same period, shows that private closets, similar to our modern pews, were occasionally placed in our temples, for those whom Dr. Doran in 'Saints and Sinners' designates the finer people,' it may be confidently inferred from the author's language, that the grand folk thus distinguished from ordinary worshippers were exceptionally important personRussell says,— ages. Prince or prelate if he be, or any other potentate, Perceive all things for his pew, that it be made preparate; Both cushion, carpet, and curtain, beads, and book forget not that.' Prelates, of course, sat in the chancel, to which sacred quarter admission was also accorded to princes and other persons mighty enough to be deemed potentates. The chancel of every cathedral or superior church abounded with sumptuous furniture of massive and richly-carved wood. Russell'spews,' therefore, do not affect the assertion that, in Catholic times, the naves of our temples were neither pewed nor benched. So long as the area of the nave was periodically set out for a fair, a market, or court of law, the presence of fixed pews on its pavement would have been a source of constant inconvenience to the public. Such permanent seats would, moreover, have occasioned continual embarrassment and dissatisfaction to the clergy in times when pompous processions of richly-robed ecclesiastics moving within as well as about the sacred edifice, were conspicuous features of the solemnities on Sundays and other holy days. But when the Reformation had suppressed the ancient ambulatory processions, and prohibited the holding of fairs and social feasts within consecrated buildings, no consideration for clerical observances or public convenience forbade the laity to parcel out the area of their peculiar quarter with wooden compartments. Bishop Kennet states precisely that churches were first generally seated' in the times immediately following the Reformation. This change, however, was not effected without opposition from many ecclesiastics and laymen, to whom it appeared that Sir Thomas More was worthy of commendation for having protested against the few pews which were to be found in Henry the Eighth's London churches. Under Elizabeth pews became numerous, though by no means universal, in the London churches; and the High Church clergy of the next two reigns-friends to all ecclesiastical arrangements that tended to orderliness and the material advancement of their classwere seldom loth to assign pews to lay families who were ready to pay handsome fees for the comfort and distinction that attended their possession. But even so late as the reign of Charles the First, the contention between the introducers and opponents of pews occasionally gave rise to riots in the churches * Taking the part of the opponents of private seats, Bishop Corbet remarked disdainfully, Stately pews are now become tabernacles, with rings and curtains to them. There wants nothing but beds, to hear the word of God on. We have casements, locks, keys, and cushions-I had almost said, bolsters and pillows; and for these we love the church! I will not guess what is done in them; who sits, stands, or lies asleep at prayers, communion, &c.: but this I dare say, they are either to hide some vice or to proclaim one; to hide disorder or proclaim pride.' Respecting old pews, my readers will find some entertaining particulars in Dr. Doran's volumes on Hassock and Cassock.' of London and its neighbourhood. And, after pews had become common in the naves of churches, the word 'pew' was so far from being restricted to its present signification, that we find Pepys applying it indifferently to a private closet in a house of worship, and a private box in a theatre. Having no permanent seats in their quarter of the church, the devout laity of a medieval congregation usually knelt or stood throughout celebrations of Divine Service, if they were in a condition of health that permitted them to hear mass, anthem, chant, and sermon, in attitudes of unrest. The indolent were wont to loll against walls and pillars; the irreverent were accustomed to walk to and fro, making an unseasonable clatter on the pavement as they passed from spot to spot to exchange greetings and whispered gossip with their acquaintance. But aged persons and worshippers of infirm health were from an early date of our Church history permitted to seat themselves on little stools or portable chairs, which they either brought with them from their homes whenever they attended service, or hired of an official of the church. The reader does not need to be reminded how, during Laud's calamitous primacy, Jenny Geddes began a famous riot in the High Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh, by flinging her stool at the Dean's head.* When this custom of bringing seats into church had become prevalent, the first step had been taken towards the introduction of permanent benches; and, when private families had acquired a customary right to a particular bench on a particular spot of the sacred area, the bench-gradually furnished with a back to lean against, a desk to put books upon, and a bar to keep out intruders, developed into a primitive pew, that was copied and improved upon by emulous imitators. Another article of furniture universally conspicuous in the modern church, and almost as universally absent from the medieval temple, was the fixed pulpit. The permanent wooden or Some historians insist that Jenny Geddes's stool was a three-legged seat; but one of the several pictures in the unique frontispiece of Rushworth's 'Historical Collections' represents the riot in St. Giles's Church, and gives Jenny's stool four legs. The people are depicted sitting on four-legged stools, and beneath the picture is the legend, Strange yt from stooles, at Scotysh Prelates hurl'd, stone pulpits of the feudal churches were usually placed in the open air, so that the preachers might address larger audiences than could be entertained in the churches. Sermons however were delivered within the walls of our temples before the Reformation,-less frequently, indeed, than at the present time, but often enough to be an important element of ecclesiastical instruction. And these addresses were usually delivered from portable box-desks,*—just such pulpits as appear in many of the illustrations of Foxe's Acts and Monuments.' " In the Re formation period pulpit-oratory became more general and serviceable in the churches than it had been for many previous generations. The clergy and the laity alike needed its help to * White Kennet, bishop of Peterborough, says of the medieval pulpits, and those by which they were replaced at or after the Reformation, 'Having entered the church' (i. e. of Chilton) 'in the eastern wall on the right, facing the west, near the entrance into the chancel, we find a seat, pew, or pulpit, made in the wall: a seat, perhaps, for the Abbot of Noteley or his representative, when here; or a confessional for the parish-priest on particular days and proper seasons; or a pulpit, from whence the legends of the saints were read, and stated sermons or discourses read to the people. For other pulpits heretofore were unfixed, portable, to be placed or removed at pleasure; and the present conveniences that are now fixed in our churches are owing to the times that accompanied the Reformation: for then churches were first generally seated; when ambulatory processions, within and about the church, were laid aside; and a pulpit ordered to be provided and set up in every church by the churchwardens, at the cost of the parish. On the one side of the pulpit, towards the right hand of the preacher, is a handsome frame for an hour-glasse, heretofore an attendant on every pulpit: but at the present time the frames are to be found but in few. However, there was one left at Stokenchurch, Oxon, and another at Turfield, com. Bucks; and I observed in the parish-church of High Wycombe, that there is the like iron fastened just by the pulpit, which in the year 1737 I saw furnished with an hour-glass for sand, but cannot say whether it is still used to its original purpose. Not far from this, at the corner-seats in the great isle, is a poor's box, with a slit in the lid, to receive benefactions dropped by the well-disposed into it. This in the time of Popery was called "truncus," and there were many at several altars and images of the churches; and the customary free-will offerings, dropt into the trunks, made up a good part of the endowment of the vicars, and thereby made their condition better than in later times. "Vicarius habebit oblationes quascunque ad truncos tam in dictâ ecclesiâ, &c. &c., quam alibi infra parochiam ipsius ecclesin factas.". . . . This way of collecting charity by a chest placed in consecrated places hath been of very ancient standing . . . . A.D. 1201, 3 John, Eustace, the abbot, coming as a missionary preacher into England, amongst other institutions directed that a wooden box should be put in every parish-church, under the custody of two or three faithful persons, to receive the alms of the people designed for buying lights for the church, and for the burial of the poor.'-Vide Bishop Kennet's Parochial Antiquities.' a degree unknown in the Catholic times,—the former that they might justify the Reformation to the popular mind, and lay clearly before simple folk the doctrines of the Reformed church: the latter that they might definitely ascertain the new views which the spirituality had adopted respecting matters of faith and practice. Hence, from having consisted mainly of rites and ceremonies, varied with occasional written or extempore discourses from the priests, the services of the Church were so rearranged that civic congregations assembled quite as much to hear sermons as to say prayers. The clergy had new tidings for the people, and the people were eager listeners to the novel doctrines. The church became a lecture-hall, the worshippers became students and to meet the exigencies of the crisis, the reforming monarchs and their bishops insisted on the erection of permanent pulpits in the parish churches, took jealous precaution that none but clergymen honestly attached to the principles of the Reformation should discharge the functions of the preacher, and provided sound discourses of wholesome doctrine for delivery from the pulpit to congregations, whose ministers either from lack of ability or from disaffection towards Protestantism could not with safety be permitted to preach sermons of their own composition. The pulpits thus built during the Reformation period were usually provided with hour-glasses, put on little brackets of iron and wood, so that the preacher might know when he had preached an hour, which was deemed the full time for a single sermon. In an inventory of the principal articles of medieval churchfurniture mention must be made of the floral adornments which, though of no or only trivial value, were as exactly articles of furniture, as the cocoa-fibre mats, Turkey carpets, and artistic devices with which we now-a-days decorate our private houses. It still remains with us a universal custom to deck the interior of our churches at Christmas-tide with holly, mistletoe, and laurel; and at other seasons of the year-such as Whitsuntide, and Easter-it is the custom of some of our incumbents to embellish their churches with green foliage and bright flowers, in accordance with usage handed down to us from our remote ancestors. By those persons, however, who thus bestir themselves to preserve an innocent and graceful practice from passing VOL. II. с |