Sacred space in England, 1560-1640: The view from the pew

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 286-311

  Marsh, Christopher ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61949297212     PISSN: 00220469     EISSN: 14697637     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022046901001531     Document Type: Review

References (120)

1. ChRO, EDC5, 1631.10, 1631.3.
2. See, for example, Susan Dwyer Amussen, An ordered society, New York 1988, 137-43;
3. Dillow, 'Social and ecclesiastical significance', chs vii, viii;
4. Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700, Basingstoke 1994, 337;
5. Charles Phythian-Adams, 'Ceremony and the citizen: the communal year at Coventry 1450-1550', in Peter Clark and Paul Slack (eds), Crisis and order in English towns 1500-1700, London 1972, 80;
6. Keith Wrightson, 'The politics of the parish in early modern England', in Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (eds), The experience of authority in early modern England, Basingstoke 1996, 32-3;
7. Paul Griffiths, Youth and authority: formative experiences in England 1560-1640, Oxford 1996, 104-9.
8. The quotations are from J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English people, Oxford 1984, 173,
9. and Christopher Haigh, 'Anticlericalism and the English Reformation', in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation revised, Cambridge 1987, 73.
10. See also John Bossy, Christianity in the west, 1400-1700, Oxford 1985, 142;
11. Robert Tittler, 'Seats of honor, seats of power: the symbolism of public seating in the English urban community, c. 1560-1620', Albion xxiv/2 (1992), 217-22.
12. See, for example, Martin Ingram, Church courts, sex and marriage in England, 1570-1640, Cambridge 1987, 111-12;
13. Nicholas Alldridge, 'Loyalty and identity in Chester parishes, 1540-1640', in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish, church and people: local studies in lay religion, 1350-1750, London 1988, 94;
14. Andrew Foster, 'Churchwardens' accounts of early modern England and Wales', in Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibbs and Beat A. Kümin (eds), The parish in English life, 1400-1600, Manchester 1997, 86-92;
15. J. F. Merritt, 'Puritans, Laudians and the phenomenon of church-building in Jacobean London', Historical Journal xli (1998), 935-60;
16. George Yule, 'James VI and I: furnishing the churches in his two kingdoms', in Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts (eds), Religion, culture and society in early modern England, Cambridge 1994, 189-91;
17. Eric Carlson, 'The office, function and status of the office of churchwarden', in Margaret Spufford (ed.), The world of rural dissenters, Cambridge 1995, 204-6.
18. Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and people, Cambridge 1998, 171.
19. Scarisbrick, The Reformation, 164;
20. G. W. O. Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, The architectural setting of Anglican worship, London 1948, chs i-iv.
21. On the importance of holy communion in Elizabethan and Jacobean England see Arnold Hunt, 'The Lord's Supper in early modern England', Past and Present clxi (November 1998), 39-83.
22. See Peter Lake, 'The Laudian style: order, uniformity and the pursuit of the beauty of holiness in the 1630s', in Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The early Stuart Church, 1603-1642, Basingstoke 1993, 179, 279 n. 37.
23. See also Merritt, 'Puritans, Laudians and the phenomenon of church-building', 953-4.
24. Certaine sermons or homilies appointed to be read in churches, London 1562, 1623 edn (RSTC 13675), ii. 79;
25. George Herbert, 'The church porch', lines 403-8, in John N. Wall (ed.), George Herbert: The country parson, The temple, London 1981, 135.
26. David Dymond, 'God's disputed acre', this JOURNAL 1 (1999), 464-97.
27. Certaine sermons, ii. 8;
28. Sir Thomas Browne, quoted in Maltby, Prayer Book and people, 172;
29. Visitation articles and injunctions of the early Stuart Church, ed. Kenneth Fincham, i-ii, Woodbridge 1994, 1998, i. 104.
30. Certaine sermons, ii. 77, 99.
31. John Fielding, 'Arminianism in the localities', in Fincham, Early Stuart Church, 105-6.
32. On the first point see Julian Davies, The Caroline captivity of the Church, Oxford 1992, 218-50.
33. On the second see Christopher Marsh, Popular religion in sixteenth century England, Basingstoke 1998.
34. J. Charles Cox and Alfred Harvey, English church furniture, London 1907, 261-86;
35. Beat Kümin, The shaping of a community, Aldershot 1996, 233;
36. John Agate, Benches and stalls in Suffolk churches (Suffolk Historic Churches Trust, 1980), 10, 17-19;
37. Victor Chinnery, Oak furniture: the British tradition, Woodbridge 1979, repr. 1984, 238-9;
38. John Schofield, 'Medieval parish churches in the City of London: the archaeological evidence', in French, Gibbs and Kümin, The parish in English life, 50;
39. Katherine French, 'Parochial fund-raising in late medieval Somerset', ibid. 118-19.
40. ChRO, EDC5, 1631.2, 1611.13, 1590.8.
41. Nesta Evans, 'A scheme for re-pewing the parish church of Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in 1606', Local Historian xxii (1992), 203.
42. ChRO, EDC5, 1632.42, 1620.21, 1631.5, 1628.29.
43. In Cheshire, there are surviving Jacobean pews in Astbury and Lower Peover: Fred H. Crossley, 'Cheshire church furniture', pts i, ii, iii, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society liii (1939), 83-116; liv (1939), 157-89; lv (1940), 41-80 at liv. 188.
44. W. M., The man in the moone, London 1609, quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. 'pew'; WRO, D1/39/2/5, fo. 74v: D1/39/2/9, fo. 49r. I am grateful to Eric Carlson for kindly sending me his copies of the Wiltshire cases.
45. Chinnery, Oak furniture, 234.
46. Richard Gough, The history of Myddle, ed. David Hey, Harmondsworth 1981, 77;
47. Yule, 'James VI and I', 191.
48. Certaine sermons, ii. 8; I. 1.
49. See Yule, 'James VI and I', 189, 192-5;
50. Addleshaw, Architectural setting, 108-13;
51. Documents of the English Reformation, ed. Gerald Bray, Cambridge 1994, 347;
52. Constitutions and canons ecclesiastical, London 1604 (RSTC 10069.3).
53. Crossley, 'Cheshire church furniture', pt iii, vol. lv. 64-6;
54. Yule, 'James VI and I', 189, 193-4, 200;
55. Visitation articles, ii. 132, 159, 174, 192. Many of the court cases studied during the preparation of this article demonstrate the existence of seating in the chancel (near Ely, for example, the parishes of Haddenham, Thetford, Witchford, Stretham, Churcham and Ely St Mary can all be shown to have had such seats). I am grateful to Lynne Broughton for discussing the subject of chancel seating with me.
56. Other arrangements were also possible, of course. Margaret Spufford argued that many Ely parishes celebrated the Lord's Supper in the nave during the early seventeenth century: Contrasting communities, Cambridge 1974, 267.
57. Bossy, Christianity in the west, 142-3;
58. Ephraim Udall, Communion comeliness, London 1641, 4-5, 8-13,
59. ChRO, EDC5, 1636.39.
60. CUL, EDR, B/2/35, fos 207r-10v;
61. Cambridgeshire Record Office, P68/611. See also Dillow, 'Social and ecclesiastical significance', 127, 134-5, 159-60.
62. H. Munro Cautley, Suffolk churches and their treasures, Woodbridge 1937, 5th edn, 1982, 146.
63. Bishop Corbett of Norwich (1623), quoted in Cox, English church furniture, 284.
64. For the equally uninterested attitude of most Elizabethan bishops see Visitation articles and injunctions of the period of the Reformation, ed. Walter Howard Frere (Alcuin Club Collections xiv-xvi, 1910).
65. Dillow, 'Social and ecclesiastical significance', 176;
66. Visitation articles, i. 186-7; ii. 98, 132, 148, 151, 155, 192.
67. Cambridgeshire Record Office, P68/611; CUL, EDR, B/2/35. fo. 210v; WRO, D1/39/2/7, fo. 43r; Visitation articles, i. 16; ChRO, EDC5, 1611.13, 1620.21, 1631.5.
68. Crossley, 'Cheshire church furniture', pts i. ii and iii;
69. Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'The myth of the English Reformation', Journal of British Studies xxx (1991), 13;
70. Foster, 'Churchwardens' accounts', 86-92;
71. Merrit, 'Puritans, Laudians and the phenomenon of church-building', 936-59, quotation at p. 955.
72. ChRO, EDC5, 1636.39, 1639.21, 1635.121, 1631.11, 1636.81, 1636.39. Of course, we know much less about the parishes which readily complied with the Laudian programme of reform, and it is notoriously difficult to establish just how common resentment of that programme was. The work of Judith Maltby on the conformist petitions of 1641-2, however, demonstrates the existence of a very significant number of people whose suspicion of Laudianism matched their dislike of Puritanism: Prayer Book and people.
73. and several of the essays in Fincham and Lake, Early Stuart Church, for example pp. 46, 68, 79-80, 85, 104-5.
74. CUL, EDR, B/2/52, fo. 87v; ChRO, EDC5, 1635.121;
75. R. C. Richardson, Puritanism in north-west England, Manchester 1972, 61 n. 155, 128 (for information on Stirrop).
76. Dillow 'Social and ecclesiastical significance', 185-6;
77. Heal and Holmes, The gentry, 338.
78. For attempts to investigate the mysteries of allocation see Marsh, 'Order and place' (in preparation).
79. ChRO, EDC5, 1590.8, 1631.5.
80. CUL, EDR, B/2/24, fos 17v-18r, 19v. In 1631, for example, Bishop Neile of Winchester had to order the churchwardens of Elvetham (Hampshire) to remove all the locks from pews in the church: Cox, English church furniture, 284.
81. ChRO, EDC5, 1588.30.
82. CUL, EDR, B/2/24, fo. 18r.
83. ChRO, EDC5, 1622.7;
84. ChRO, EDC5, 1620.21.
85. ChRO, EDC5, 1632.41; WRO, D1/39/2/5, fo. 20; ChRO, EDC5, 1638.137.
86. ChRO, EDC5, 1576.44.
87. CUL, EDR, D/2/18, fo. 260r;
88. 'Diary of William Coe', in Two East Anglian diaries, ed. Matthew Storey, Woodbridge 1994.
89. CUL, EDR, B/2/21, fo. 128r; B/2/35, fo. 146v; ChRO, EDC5, 1631.5
90. CUL, EDR, B/2/10, fo. 52v; D/2/18, fo. 93v.
91. ChRO, EDC5, 1679.16.
92. CUL, EDR, B/2/35, fo. 134r;
93. ChRO, EDC5, 1612.33, 1630.54, 1631.10.
94. CUL, EDR, B/2/14, fo. 47v; D/2/18, fo. 122.
95. CUL, EDR, B/2/14, fo. 137r.
96. See, for example, Griffiths, Youth and authority, 192-7: 'worship was for many a highly monotonous and uncomfortable round of kneeling, standing, sitting, bowing, and repetition'.
97. CUL, EDR, B/2/24, fo. 61v. Visitation articles frequently asked whether excommunicates were excluded from services, as they should have been.
98. On the history of other types of seating in the period see Tittler, 'Seats of honour', and Chinnery, Oak furniture.
99. CUL, EDR, B/2/10, fo. 158r;
100. ChRO, EDC5, 1611.13.
101. For the strength of Puritanism in Congleton see Richardson, Puritanism in north-west England, 67, 138-9.
102. ChRO, EDC5, 1620.24; Heal and Holmes, The gentry, 370; ChRO, EDC5, 1636.48.
103. ChRO, EDC5, 1620.24.
104. In a case from Warrington in 1620, witnesses from across the social spectrum were able to provide the court with precise information about the dimensions and position of a disputed pew, and about its occupants during the past five decades: ChRO, EDC5, 1620.21.
105. ChRO, EDC5, 1639.21, 1632.66;
106. Younge, quoted in Keith Wrightson, English society 1580-1680, London 1982, 215-16;
107. Evans, 'A scheme for re-pewing', 204.
108. Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London, Cambridge 1987, 69-70;
109. The shorter Pepys, ed. Robert Latham, Harmondsworth 1987, entry for 19 Jan. 1660/1;
110. The diary of Roger Lowe, ed. W. L. Sachse, New Haven 1938, entry for 2 Dec. 1666.
111. S. R. Gardiner, Reports of cases in the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission (Camden n.s. xxxix, 1886), 140
112. This case (CUL, EDR, B/2/35, fos 188r-214r) will be discussed more fully in Marsh, 'Order and place'.
113. ChRO, EDC5, 1630.54 (on the viscount's role in the politics of the 1630s and 1640s see Maltby, Prayer Book and people), 1621.29, 1611.13, 1605.15, 1620.21.
114. Hans Mol, Identity and the sacred, Oxford 1976, 1;
115. On late medieval precedence disputes see Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars, New Haven 1992, 126-7.
116. Quoted by Cox and Harvey, English church furniture, 283.
117. Francis Blomefield, History of Norfolk, London 1805-10, vi. 317;
118. Addleshaw, Architectural setting, 93 n. 1.
119. Clifford Geertz advises us to conceive of human behaviour as '"saying something of something" - which something needs to be drawn out and explicated': Local knowledge, London 1993, 237.
120. According to Anthony Giddens, one form of 'knowledgability' is not 'propositional' but is instead 'embedded in practical consciousness': The constitution of society, Cambridge 1984, 281.