Incomparable Liturgy. If I have been Transported into any unbecoming Expressions, by my great Concerne for the best of Forms, I shall upon your Censure of them, without farther Dispute, Confesse them, and Crave your Absolucion. Beseeching you that you will by no meanes Deny mee the humble Request that I make you here in this Letter, more than you doe your Prayers or good Advice by Word of Mouth, which I beseech you to Continue, I rest, with great Sincerity and Affection

Dear and Reverend Sir

New Years Day (1683).

Your most faithfull and most
humble Servant

Answer from the aforesaid Divine to the

Gentleman of the Inns of Court.

SIR, I received yours Dated the first of January within a few Daies after the Date, which Pious Letter I esteem the kindest Newyear's-Gift I have received thes a1 many Years. I was at first Surprized with the Length thereof, having not, you know, soe much Leisure as Will, particularly to Answer long Letters from my friends. But as soon as I had Read a few Lines, I found the Subject soe Gratefull to mee, that I did not only Read it through once, but perused it a second Time with serious Consideracion, and before I laid it out of my Hand, came to a Resolucion, to Comply with your Desires in Penning down my poor Reflections, on every one of those Heads you Recomend to my Thoughts. It did in an extraordinary Manner please mee, to receive soe good a Straine of honest and Pious Zeal, from a young Gentleman in the Inns of Court, for our Incomparable Liturgy, never the lesse admirable, for being neglected by some and Despised by others. It Relishes methinks more of a Colledge, than of a House, Dedicated to the Study of the Law, and you seem much better Qualified for a Square Cap, than a Round. Among your Books of Law, and other good Authors, wherein I know you Conversant, you have not I see forgot your Bible, no nor your Comon Prayer Book neither; the Study of both which, in some measure, is certainly Incumbent on Men of all Professions. But I need say little to this Point, your Practice thereof shews, that you are fully Convinced in this Particular. I shall therefore hasten to the Subject whereto you presse mee, only premising, that I begin to bee very much ashamed, (and soe I believe speedily, will bee2 very many of my Brethren too likewise), that the Laicks, both Learned and Unlearned, begin now to Reproach us parsons, in outstripping of us in our own Trade. But I shall easily absolve them from that Sin, where I discover soe good Fruit, of their Pains, as I do in your Religious and Canonical Letter, and that other Judicious and Devout 3 Piece, by Way 2 bee added above the line.

1 a added above the line.
3 Devout altered from good.

of Advice to the Readers of the Comon prayer, which you mencioned to bee lately Publishd, by a well Meaning and Unlearned Laick. The Authour whereof, who I am Informed is a Citizen of London, hath seasonably done his Part, towards Redeeming the Reputacion of the Citty, as you have yours to restore the Honour of the Temple; for his Book does assure mee hee was no Ignoramus Juryman, nor Tumultuous Petitioner, as your Lines do abundantly, that you were not very Conversant last Christmas at the Scandalous Disorder of your Revells. [This letter left unfinished in MS.] 1 yours added above the line.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCH BUILDING, ITS FURNITURE

AND DECORATION.

As soon as the Restoration was accomplished it was plain that the ecclesiology of Laud had secured a complete triumph. The aim of the puritan was to have a moveable communion table, on tressels, brought out of the vestry for the communion service, and set down in some vacant place in the church, the long sides facing north and south, while no rails protected it. After 1660 this struggle with the puritan is over; the place of the Holy Table is determined to be in the place of the mediaeval altar, with one of its long sides against the east wall; it is covered with a decent carpet of silk; there are often two wax candles upon it; and it is fenced with rails, at which the people no longer hesitate to communicate kneeling. King Charles the First and Laud have given their lives; but their cause has won. No considerable section of the Church of England has ever gone back to puritan practice, however poorly the churches may have been kept.

Accordingly, at the Easter Vestry in 1662, Mr. Evelyn notes how they undid the work of the Puritans:

April 6. Being of the Vestry, in the afternoone we order'd that the communion table should be set as usual altar-wise, with a decent raile in front, as before the Rebellion.

This was before the reformed Common Prayer was appointed to be read and abjuration of the Solemn League ordered to be made. Mr. Evelyn is careful on August 17 of this year to note down that his vicars read both. Some fifteen years after, the keeping of churches still lacked a good deal. On Sept. 10, 1677 for though at Euston he says

the church is most laudable, most of the Houses of God in this country resembling rather stables and thatch'd cottages than temples in which to serve the Most High

yet the foul state brought on by twenty years of neglect, from

1640 to 1660, could not be rapidly replaced by conditions approaching to decency.

At Idbury "on the brinke of Glocestershire" Antony Wood reports in 1674 that

the church is kept in excellent repaire, being an handsome and well built pile.1

But this is owing to half a yard-land having been given for the repair of the church by some ancient lord of the manor.

Some of the churches however must have been like Idbury or Euston, and well kept, for in 1716 Hearne, not given to overmuch praising, says of Whaddon

The Church is very neat and handsome.2

Those who look over the pages of a New View of London published in 1708, or of James Paterson's Pietas Londinensis published in 1714, will be convinced that the building after the fire of 1666 and the upkeep in that decade were as good as possible. At St. Mildred Poultry in 1714 Paterson remarks: "The Floor is paved with Stone, and the Chancel with Marble," just such a distinction as the Cambridge Ecclesiologists would have been pleased to make. The same care was seen elsewhere.

About the same time, [1700] Mr. Nathanael Edmundson, of Manchester, woollen draper, gave the marble pavement of the floor within the altar rails, which event is recorded on a tablet of timber, placed against a pillar at the north-east angle of the aisle, on the south side of the choir, to this effect:

"Ne Altari novis sumptibus exstructo, et modesto ornato Dispar foret Pavimentum Marmoreum fieri curavit, Nathanael Edmundson, Lanarius Mancuniensis, Anno Domini 1700." 3

A new altar had evidently been set up; and the good soul wished to have the floor of the presbytery at least equal in sumptuousness to the new altar.

In the visit to Cambridge of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, he went to Trinity College Chapel, and says:

The altar is of wood, very massive and well made.

Behind it we

1 Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. Andrew Clark, Oxford Historical Society, 1892, vol. ii. p. 284.

2 Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, Oxford Historical Society, 1901, vol.

v. p. 349.

[S. Hibbert,] History of the Foundations in Manchester, London, Pickering, 1834, vol. ii. p. 285.

noticed four very fine pictures, painted on the wall with water colours, representing Christ, St. John, Mary the Mother, and Mary Magdalene.1

From the figures enumerated, it would seem most likely that the Crucifixion was the subject of the altar piece.

The havoc wrought during the great Rebellion in the Welsh churches seems to have been enormous, and the recovery exceeding slow,

Dr. Fleetwood, the Bishop of St. Asaph, seeing apparently the shameful state of so many of the churches in Wales in 1710, exhorts to a liberal spending of money upon their repairs and decoration.

Is it not still an Indication of an excellent Devotion, and of a Mind that truly honours God, and intends to promote his Service, to lay out Money upon such Occasions? There is nothing draws so near to Superstition, as an unreasonable dread of it. . . . And anyone may foretel, without the Gift of Prophecy, that unless this bountiful good publick Spirit, prevail a great deal more among us, and be more encouraged; an hundred Years will bring to the Ground a huge Number both of our Temples and our Synagogues.2

By Temples does the Bishop mean parish churches? by Synagogues chapels?

The continued existence of this foul state in Wales is confirmed by a writer a few years after.

In some, not only the Bells are taken away, but the Towers are demolished, and in many others there are scarce any Seats, excepting here and there a few ill contriv'd and broken Stools and Benches; their little Windows are without Glass, and darken'd with Boards, Matts, or Lettices; their Roofs decaying, tottering, and leaky; their Walls green, mouldy, and nauseous, and very often without Wash or Plaister, and their Floors ridg'd up with noisome Graves without any Pavement, and only cover'd with a few Rushes.

Later on he adds: their state

might well tempt you to think we had lain in the Road of the Turks and Saracens, in some of their wild Excursions; or that we had but very lately pass'd the Discipline and Reformation of an Oliverian Army.3

Further: During Dr. Johnson's Welsh tour, he makes the following notes at Bodville on August 24, 1774 :

1J. E. B. Mayor, Cambridge under Queen Anne, ed. M. R. Rhodes, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1911, p. 125.

2 William [Fleetwood], Articles of Enquiry... at his primary Visitation, no place or printer, 1710, p. 58.

3 Er. Saunders, A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. David's, About the Beginning of the 18th Century, London, John Wyat, 1721, § ii. p. 17.