( 
 
Ilia 
 
 
 l^-Jiflt fcc \ 
 
^11 
 
 ON 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE 
 
 DECORATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. EDWARD L. CDTTS, B.A., 
 
 Hon. Secretary of the Essex Archoeological Society ; 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE “MANUAL OF SEPULCHRAL SLABS AND CROSSES, PUBLISHED UNDER THE 
 SANCTION OF THE ARCHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 AND IRELAND &C. 
 
 ilontion : 
 
 JOHN CROCKFORD, 2 9, ESSEX STREET, 
 STRAND, 
 
 1854. 
 
LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CBOCKFORD, 29 , ESSEX STREET, 
 
 STRAND. 
 
The following little work was originally written for, and 
 published as, a Supplement to The Clerical Journal, and 
 Church and University Chronicle.^ It is now, in com- 
 pliance with the suggestions of many friends, reprinted in a 
 more convenient form, with some additional matter, and 
 additional woodcuts, and ten illustrative plates. 
 
 The Author gladly embraces the opportunity which a Preface 
 affords, to express his thanks to all those gentlemen who have 
 kindly rendered him assistance; especially to J. H. Maw, Esq., 
 for the loan of books and a valuable collection of drawings of 
 tiles, and for the use of many of the woodcuts which illustrate 
 that part of the subject ; to J. K. Colling, Esq., author of the 
 beautiful volumes of Gothic Ornaments^ for valuable original 
 drawings illustrative of the subject of Gothic polychrome; to 
 the Rev. Lord Alwyne Compton, the Exeter Architectural 
 Society, the Proprietors of The Civil Engineer and Architects'' 
 Journal^ and Mr. French, of Bolton-le-Moors, for the loan 
 of woodcuts ; and to other gentlemen, whose kindnesses are 
 severally acknowledged in the text. 
 
 COGGESHALL, 
 
 September ^ 1854. 
 
 * Published by Mr. J. Crockford, 29, Essex-street, Strand. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/detaiis/essayonchurchfurOOcutt 
 
Coiittiits 
 
 Introduction 
 
 General Arrangement 
 
 POIA'CIIROME 
 
 Wall Painting 
 
 Stained Glass 
 
 Wood Work 
 
 Communion Table 
 
 Altar Chair 
 
 Altar Eails . 
 
 Chancel Screens ... 
 
 Chancel Stalls 
 
 Reading Desk 
 
 Lettern 
 
 The Pulpit 
 
 Pews 
 
 Textile Fabrics 
 
 Wall Hangings 
 
 Tower Curtain 
 
 Carpets and Mats 
 
 Embroidery 
 
 Clerical Vestments 
 
 Coverings of the Lord’s Table 
 
 Metal Work 
 
 Church Plate 
 
 Altar Lights 
 
 Coronje, Standards, and Side Lights 
 
 Tile Pavements 
 
 Monuments 
 
 Font 
 
 Parish Pall 
 
 Alms Chest 
 
 Et Cetera 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 ArrENDix 
 
 Index , 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 13 
 
 23 
 
 28 
 
 28 
 
 31 
 
 31 
 
 35 
 
 38 
 
 41 
 
 41 
 
 44 
 
 45 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 56 
 
 58 
 
 61 
 
 62 
 
 70 
 
 80 
 
 80 
 
 85 
 
 86 
 
 90 
 
 107 
 
 114 
 
 119 
 
 122 
 
 123 
 
 124 
 
 127 
 
 137 
 
■ ry>Af ■' 
 
 ■:• ■ (v:'l7A 
 
 i 
 
 ,.'i 
 
 j 
 
 ... ' i' ^. . .1 •; 
 
 / ;■ < 
 
Plate I Wall paintings Facing page 
 
 Plate II Wall paintings „ 
 
 Plate III Gas standard „ 
 
 Plate IV Brass cross „ 
 
 Plate V Incised slab „ 
 
 Plate VI Tile arrangement Exeter... ,, 
 
 Plate VII Tiles from Exeter „ 
 
 Plate VIII Tiles from Exeter „ 
 
 Plate IX Tile arr. Higham Ferrers... „ 
 
 Plate X Tile arr. Neath Abbey ,, 
 
 127 
 
 128 
 
 87 
 
 111 
 
 112 
 
 131 
 
 131 
 
 131 
 
 132 
 
 133 
 
■■■■4 
 
Cfiurrli jFitrnititrf nuh Dernratinn 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 VERY nation of mankind, at every period, 
 has had an intuitive feeling that the most 
 precious things of the material world, and 
 the highest productions of man’s intellect, 
 ought to be dedicated to the Creator and 
 t Giver, to adorn His temples, and solem- 
 nise His worship. That there is nothing 
 in this universal impulse of veneration calculated 
 to render man’s worship displeasing to God, or less 
 edifying to himself, appears sufficiently proved by 
 the facts that in the first temple, of which God 
 himself condescended to be the architect, the costliest 
 materials — choice woods, and embroidered hangings, 
 and rare furs, and dyed skins, and gold, and silver, 
 and gems — were provided in profusion by the obla- 
 tions of His people ; and that God specially inspired 
 Bezaleel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, and Aholiab 
 the son of Ahisamach, and “filled them with the 
 spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in know- 
 ledge, and in all manner of workmanship ; and to devise curious works in 
 gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones to set them, and 
 in carving of wood . . . and to work all manner of work, of the 
 
 engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, 
 and in purple, in scarlet and in fine linen:” (Exodus xxxv. 30.) We are 
 expressly told that it was the Spirit of God which gave them skill in 
 design and in craftsmanship, and surely thereby for ever sanctified Art to 
 His service. 
 
 If it be objected that we are under a different dispensation, in which heart- 
 worship is all that is required of us, we answer that it is unsound divinity 
 to imagine that heart-worship was less required of the Jews of old than 
 it is now of us Christians ; this is the lesson which every prophet enforced 
 upon Israel, that God was aweary of splendours and ceremonies, which 
 had no heart in them ; these ceremonies and splendours were not intended 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 to supersede heart-worship, hut to aid it : and, since man is the same now 
 as then, therefore those things which aided devotional feeling then will 
 aid it now ; since God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, there- 
 fore the reverent and grateful dedication of costly material and noble art, 
 which He then delighted in, cannot now be displeasing to Him. 
 
 That we may thus reason from the Temple to the Church, we have the 
 authoritative declaration of the Church of England, in the Homily “on the 
 repairing, and keeping clean, and comely adorning of churches which 
 calls the Temple of Jerusalem “ the Mother Church of Judea,” and 
 speaks throughout of the “ Church or Temple and will hardly admit 
 that the Jewish Temple was in any respect superior to the Christian 
 Church. Had that great promises ? so has this. Had that the presence 
 of God ? no less has this. “ Why, then, ought not Christian people to 
 build them temples and churches, having as great promises of the pre- 
 sence of God as ever had Solomon for the material temple which he 
 did build.”* 
 
 And this Homily enforces that other argument which we have 
 used, that it is a right as well as a natural impulse of a reverent 
 heart, to give its best to God. It applies to the Church that pas- 
 sage of Haggai, “ Thus saith the Lord: Is it time for you to dwell in 
 your ceiled houses, and the Lord's house not regarded ?” and thus comments 
 upon it : — “ The world thinketh it but a trifle to see their church in 
 ruin and decay. But whoso doth not lay to their helping hands, they 
 sin against God and His holy congregation. Eor if it had not been sin 
 to neglect and slightly regard the re-edifying and building up again of 
 His temple, God would not have been so much grieved, and so soon have 
 plagued His i3eople, because they builded and decked their own houses so 
 gorgeously, and despised the house of God their Lord. It is sin and 
 shame to see so many churches so ruinous, and so foully decayed almost in 
 every corner. If a man’s private house wherein he dwelleth be decayed, 
 he will never cease till it be restored up again. . . . And shall we be 
 
 so mindful of our common base houses, deputed to so vile employment, and 
 be forgetful towards the house of God, wherein be entreated the words of 
 our eternal salvation, wherein be ministered the sacraments and mysteries 
 of our redemption ? The fountain of our regeneration is there presented 
 unto us ; the partaking of the body and blood of our Saviour Christ, is 
 there offered unto us ; and shall we not esteem the place where so heavenly 
 things are handled ? ” And this last argument that God’s House ought 
 to be “honourably adorned and garnished” — ought to be more beautiful 
 than our own houses — is enforced throughout. 
 
 But we shall be met, perhaps, with the argument that in the present 
 dearth of churches Ave cannot afford to spend money in mere costly deco- 
 rations. It may be paradoxical to the arithmetic of this world, but it is 
 
 * Tlie first Homily “of the Place and Time of Prayer” says that the Tabernacle “was as 
 it were the parish church” of the Israelites in the wilderness: and the Temple rvas “the 
 public church and the mother church of all Jewry.” 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 a simple problem enough to the arithmetic of Faith, that the costliest 
 offering to one church will not prevent a single stone from another : it is 
 a similar paradox to that of Solomon’s, “ There is that scattereth and yet 
 increaseth; there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to 
 poverty.” Do you think the Lord allowed the poor really to suffer be- 
 cause the price of Mary’s ointment was not doled out to them? 
 
 Another argument will be that we are reviving the trappings of Romish 
 superstition, and that the superstitions themselves will follow. We do not 
 shut our eyes to the force which there is in this argument : it is certain 
 that the revival of classical literature and art in the sixteenth century 
 did bring with it a good deal of classical heathenism and morality ; and it 
 is not to be denied that the present revival of mediasval art has some 
 connection with the revival of medigeval ideas in both religious and social 
 questions. It is altogether a curious phenomenon this mediseval revival; 
 and it is necessary to our subject to pause and examine it a little. 
 
 It seems to be one of the laws of human life, that human affairs should 
 move in cycles. Solomon enunciated it when he declared that there was 
 nothing new under the sun. Pythagoras dogmatised the idea in his 
 recurring period, at which all men and all things again begin precisely 
 the same course which they have just completed. We may trust that 
 the revolution is about a progressive, and not a stationary centre; 
 and our wisdom is not to attempt to stop or roll back the motion 
 upon its orbit, but to urge forward the centre of the orbit. To con- 
 fine ourselves to our own subject of art as an illustration of this re- 
 currence of things; — the Romans planted the beginning of what wo 
 can call art in this island, say about the end of the first century ; the 
 Romans left the island at the end of the fourth century, and a con- 
 fusion ensues, in the midst of which we lose sight of art; when we 
 again find traces, it is of a new and native school, which appears to have 
 passed from Ireland to England, and of which the old Irish and Cornish 
 churches, and the ornamented MSS. of the same school, and some few 
 stone crosses and works in silver, are the existing monuments. About the 
 ninth century it seems to have been that this Irish art was supplanted 
 by a revival of classical art, which we call the Romanesque. Again, in 
 the thirteenth century, arose another school of native art, the Gothic ; 
 and again, in the sixteenth, another classical revival ; and now again, in 
 the nineteenth, we are in the throes of the birth of a new native school, 
 founded upon the Gothic. The length of the period of revolution seems 
 to be about 300 or 400 years. 
 
 And these revolutions in art are only symptomatic of a general revolu- 
 tion in national character. 
 
 It is worth while to pause for a moment and look at some of the evidence of 
 this fact, that we are now in the midst of one of these great periodic changes 
 of national character. The change began with, or rather first showed 
 itself in, our Literature, especially our Poetry. The gods and goddesses, 
 the Damons and Daphnes, have all vanished, and a school of poetry, 
 founded upon the romances and ballads of the middle ages, has taken the 
 
4 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 place of these worn-out and hollow conceits. Then it exhibited itself in 
 our architecture ; men became sick of sham temples, and showed a liking 
 again for the dark monkish piles with which Evelyn and Wren used to 
 make themselves merry. The architectural movement began, perhaps, 
 with Church architecture, as was natural,— there was a pattern of that 
 in every village ; but now Dissenting meeting-houses are built like Gothic 
 churches, and Gothic principles have found their way into every branch 
 of our domestic and civil architecture, from the labourer’s cottage to the 
 new Palace of Westminster. 
 
 The same spirit has exhibited itself in our Painting ; the school of the 
 Pre-Raphaelites is gaining a position daily ; Punch has ceased to ridicule ; 
 and the chief of the school was elected an associate of the Royal Academy 
 only the other day. 
 
 And our workmen are not only recurring to beard and moustache, 
 but they are organising their trades unions — unconsciously — on the model 
 of the mediaeval guilds (minus their religious element) 5 and are again 
 endeavouring to recur to the mediaeval system of restriction upon com- 
 merce — the principle of combination versus competition — ^just when men 
 were flattering themselves that free-trade had swept away its last relics. 
 
 We have had a modern Tournament; and a Crusade, to rescue the Holy 
 Places, is by no means an impossibility. 
 
 And it is not in England only that this change in the national mind is 
 taking place ; it is the same in France and Germany and Italy — in short, 
 it is European. 
 
 The revival of mediaeval art has then some connexion with a revival of 
 mediaeval ideas ; but it has not any necessary connexion with the super- 
 stitious practices or erroneous doctrines of the Church of the Middle 
 Ages ; for Gothic architecture and art were not, as so many now imagine, 
 peculiarly ecclesiastical. We do not believe that in any living school of 
 art there has ever been a style especially set apart for religious uses ; at 
 least, it is certain that in the middle ages the same forms, and materials, 
 and colours, were used in the fabric and furniture of the Church and the 
 Hall, in the vestments of the Priest and the Knight ; the religious art was 
 the same as civil art, only that men dedicated the best of it to God’s ser- 
 vice. It is equally an error to think that the revival of Gothic art now 
 is only a religious movement, much less the movement of any small reli- 
 gious party. 
 
 That there is in reality nothing peculiarly Romish in mediaeval art, or 
 peculiarly Protestant in classical, is surely sufficiently proved by the fact 
 that Romanism did not adhere to Gothic, when the tide of the classical 
 fashion set in, but fell in with the new fashion ; all the ecclesiastical work, 
 on the Continent as well as in England, for the last 300 years, has been 
 done in the classical fashion : if St. Paul’s was built in classical style, 
 so was St. Peter’s. The Jesuit churches on the continent — at least those 
 which we have had the oi^portunity of seeing — are those in which the 
 original style of the church has been most spoiled by the addition of 
 gorgeous classicalities. Although it happens that the Reformed Church 
 of England has always used the classical fashion, it was simply because that 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 has been the universal style of its day : it had been previously adopted by 
 the unreformed Church : and if now the Komish Church is again using Gothic, 
 it is only in common with everybody else, Churchmen and Dissenters, 
 Ecclesiastics and Laymen. Indeed, the building most like a cathedral, 
 and one of the finest buildings which the revived Gothic has yet produced, is 
 a Dissenting meeting-house ;* while in the grand Cathedral of all Nations, 
 which is to be built in Hatton-garden, and is to be the great monument of 
 Romanism in this Protestant metropolis of the world, the classical 
 basilica, and not the mediaBval church, is the model chosen.f 
 
 The introduction of Gothic art into our churches, then, is not the whim 
 of a clique of sentimental young curates ; it is only one symptom of a 
 great change which is coming over the whole national mind. It is quite 
 true that this revival of Gothic art is connected with the revival of 
 mediaeval ideas, and it is manifest that this is attended with danger 
 of error and extremes ; but to try to stop the movement, because it has a 
 tendency to excess, would be as foolish as it would be fruitless. Gothic art, 
 or a school of art founded upon the Gothic, appears destined to be the art 
 of Europe for the next three or four hundred years, let who will say nay. 
 We have just completed a revolution, and are beginning the circle again: 
 we cannot, if we would, stop the revolution, or roll the course of the 
 human mind back upon its orbit: let us take care to push forward 
 the centre of the circle. Because we are going to move again through a 
 Gothic period, we need not revolve again through the superstitions and 
 errors of the middle ages ; indeed we cannot, if we would, for we start 
 with the centre of our circle in a very different place from that which 
 it occupied in the thirteenth century. Though we adapt the principles of 
 Gothic architecture to our houses, we are not going to live in castles or 
 moated granges again, or to believe in wizards or enchanted princesses — 
 the centre of our circle has moved beyond that. And so, in adapting the 
 principles of Gothic art to our churches, we shall not recur to chantry - 
 chapels and confessionals; — the centre of our circle has moved beyond 
 that too. 
 
 In the following Essay, then, in which we propose to discuss, in a 
 popular and unscientific way, the application of the principles of this 
 revived Gothic to the interior decoration and furniture of our churches, 
 we shall not forget that the centre of our orbit has moved on 300 years 
 since Gothic was last the art of Europe ; and that, during that period, 
 the Church of England has reformed herself : we shall endeavour to apply 
 the revived style of art, in accordance with the principles which the Re- 
 formed Church of England has so clearly laid down in her Homily on 
 the subject, with a careful avoidance of superstitious practice, or mere 
 “histrionic” pomp, but with a constant recollection that the church 
 should be “ honourably adorned and garnished” according to the best art 
 of the day, as becometh “ the place where so heavenly things are handled.” 
 
 The “ Catholic Apostolic Church” of the Irvingites, in Gordon-square, Loudon, 
 •t See view of it in the Builder for May 14, 1853. 
 
6 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 §mtxu\ JiTiiiigcmeiit. 
 
 EFOEE we can fitly furnish any building, we must first 
 consider well what uses it is to serve ; and, next, it will be 
 wise to consider how those who have gone before us have 
 furnished similar buildings, and to avail ourselves of their 
 experience. First, then, to consider the uses of this 
 building which we are about to furnish. 
 
 The church is the House of God ; and, if we pause for a moment on the 
 phrase, we shall, perhaps, obtain a more significant meaning from it than 
 it carries to us at the first sight. 
 
 The Assyrian Temple, Dr. Layard informs us, was both temple and 
 palace ; it was the House of God, occupied by His Vicegerent. The re- 
 searches of the same explorer teach us that the Temple of Solomon was 
 built in many respects after the Assyrian model — it was built, that is, on 
 the Temple-palace type ; but it was not inhabited by king or high priest, 
 for, in the Presence-chamber of His Palace, the King of Kings Himself sat 
 enthroned in visible glory upon the throne of the Mercy-seat. 
 
 When the Jewish Temple was destroyed, and the people of Christ had 
 passed through their first stage of persecution, and began to assume their 
 recognised place in the world, the first Houses of God which they built 
 were built on the type of the Basilica — the Royal Hall of Audience ; and 
 there, on the raised dais at its upper end, which was called the Pavement, 
 and in the Hebrew tongue Gabbatha— there, where Pilate sat in judgment 
 upon the Son of Man — there the Christian altar, which symbolised Christ, 
 was enthroned in Pilate’s place. The mediseval English parish church, 
 again, was after the plan of a manorial or baronial Hall ; just as the people 
 flocked to the Lord’s Hall, to pay their respects to him, to lay their 
 grievances before him, to pay their feudal services, or to ask acts of kind- 
 ness from him ; so they flocked to their church — God’s House — to render 
 to Him honour and service due, and to ask His favour in return. 
 
 With our modern idea of a House, the application of the phrase to the 
 parish church conveys very little that is strongly marked. If we throw 
 ourselves back into the middle ages, when there were only two buildings 
 in a parish of any importance — the Church and the Hall* — and remember 
 that the architecture of both was alike (for, while chamber windows were 
 often square-headed and simple, the hall has always tall windows and an 
 open roof like a church), and further call to mind how similar was the 
 furniture of both, and that the Lord lived in his hall among his people ; — 
 did justice among them, seated in his high chair on the dais; — feasted them, 
 himself sitting at his high table, and sending, like Joseph to his brethren, 
 
 * And it must be remembered that in Saxon and Norman times the country gentleman’s 
 house consisted of very little besides the hall, where he and his people lived, ate, drank, 
 and slept, in common. 
 
GENERAL ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 7 
 
 messes to those whom he would honour ; and then call to mind that, at the 
 upper end of the church also was a dais, on which stood a high table ; — and 
 that at that high table the Loud did feast His faithful people;— and that 
 frequently upon the reredos of the Altar was sculptured the Last Supper, 
 with our Lord in the place of honour in the middle, and his Apostles on 
 either side of Him, appearing to sit at the Altar as at the high table of a 
 mediaaval hall;* — then we shall begin to see that, to our fathers, the phrase 
 the House of God conveyed a much more precise and definite idea than 
 it does to us, who have rather come to look upon it as a People’s Hall 
 for religious purposes. 
 
 That the Keformers of our Church retained the primitive idea that the 
 church is God’s House, is clear from the Homily which we have before 
 quoted “ On the repairing, and keeping clean, and comely adorning of 
 churches : ” — •“ And to the intent that ye may understand further, why 
 churches were built among Christian people, this was the greatest considera- 
 tion ; that God might have his place^ and that God might have his time 
 duly to be honoured and served of the whole multitude of the parish: 
 First, there to hear and learn the blessed word and will of the everlasting 
 God. Secondly, that there the blessed sacraments which our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ hath ordained and appointed, should be duly, reve- 
 rently, and decently ministered. Thirdly, that there the whole multitude 
 of God’s people in the parish should, with one voice and heart, call upon 
 the name of God, magnify and praise the name of God, render earnest 
 and hearty thanks to our heavenly Father for his heap of benefits daily 
 and plentifully poured upon us, not forgetting to bestow our alms upon 
 God’s poor, to the intent God may bless us the more richly.” 
 
 Hence, then, we learn from an authority to which all we of the Church 
 of England must defer, what are the uses to which the church, the house 
 of God, is to serve. It is to be a place for the instruction of Christian 
 people; for the due, reverent, and decent administration of the sacra- 
 ments ; and for the people to offer up their common prayers and praises to 
 God in: — Preaching, Sacraments, Common Prayer, Common Praise. 
 
 Let us next inquire for a moment how our predecessors have furnished 
 the houses of God. The details of ancient church furniture will be better 
 considered as we come to them hereafter ; here we only consider generally 
 how the building has been arranged internally, and what furniture it has 
 been considered necessary to provide, for these uses of preaching, sacra- 
 ments, prayer, praise. The first assemblies of the people of Christ were 
 held in the upper rooms of private houses ; they were not houses of God 
 famished to that end. The first churches were those in the Catacombs, 
 and they were formed under such peculiar circumstances, that they are 
 not to be looked upon as models of what the body of Christians would 
 have built for their Christian temples, had they been free to build where 
 and how they thought most fitting. 
 
 The churches of the age of Constantine are, then, the first to which we 
 
 * The second Homily “of the Place and Time of Prayer” calls it “God’s Banquetting- 
 house, the Church,” and “ God’s feasting-house.” 
 
8 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 look, as showing what Christians did when they had liberty and wealth 
 enough to erect such houses of God as they thought most fitting to his 
 worship by his church. We have already seen that they chose, for the 
 model of the general frame of their building, the basilica, or royal hall of 
 justice. The plan was simple — an oblong area, divided by two rows of 
 columns into a body and two aisles, with three semicircular apses at the 
 east end. To this the Christian builders added a court in front (at the 
 western end) of the basilica, in the centre of which stood a fountain for the 
 administration of the sacrament of baptism. Between the court and the 
 basilica was the porch. The western end of the church was called the 
 locus Jidelium, the nave, in which the congregation of baptised people was 
 placed (for the catechumens, who were preparing for baptism, were not 
 admitted into the church itself until after their baptism: the porch was 
 the place appointed for them.) 
 
 Here in the nave the faithful offered their common prayer, and received 
 instruction from a priest who preached in an ambo, or pulpit, placed in a 
 convenient position among them. Towards the upper, or eastern part 
 of the body of the building, was a space raised two or three steps, and 
 railed off on the north, south, and west sides, b}’- screens — cancelli — from 
 which this place took the name of chancel ; here were seated the singers, 
 whose duty it was to offer the service of praise to God, in like manner 
 as the Levites had done in the Temple. The eastern extremity of the 
 body of the building, formerly the Pavement on which the judge sat, was 
 still elevated above the chancel, and was appropriated to the sanctuary ; 
 in the centre of which stood the Lord’s table, the Christian altar ; and usually 
 a canopy, or tabernacle, supported on four pillars, was erected over it. 
 Against the eastern wall, in the centre of the semicircle of the apse, was 
 placed an elevated throne for the bishop, and on the right and left were 
 seats for his presbyters. 
 
 Simultaneously with the erection of these basilica churches at Rome, 
 a new style of architecture was springing up in the eastern capital of the 
 empire, which produced a different type of church ; and to compare the 
 two types will clearly be of service, as it may enable us to see what was 
 an accidental peculiarity of architectural fashion, and what was, in those 
 early ages, considered a proper and essential part of a Christian church. 
 
 The ground plan of a Greek church was formed of a Greek cross (a cross 
 with equal limbs). The angles of this cross were filled in with aisles, so 
 as to reduce the exterior plan to a parallelogram ; a porch was added at 
 the Arest end ; three semicircular apses at the east end ; and a dome sur- 
 mounted the central compartment of the cross ; and sometimes, in rich 
 churches (as St. Mark’s, Venice), the four limbs also were crowned with 
 smaller domes. The arrangement of the interior was very similar to 
 that of the basilica churches of the western Christians. In the central 
 compartment of the cross was the chancel ; the eastern compartment 
 formed the sanctuary, in which the Lord’s table, the elevated seat of the 
 chief pastor, and the seats of the presbytery, were arranged as in the basi- 
 lican church. The principal difference observable is, that, while the sanc- 
 tuary in the basilica-church was divided from the chancel by an open arch 
 
GENERAL ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 9 
 
 (which, perhaps, was sometimes closed by a curtain) ; the sanctuary in 
 the Byzantine church was cut off from the chancel by a solid stone 
 screen, with only a small doorway through it, which was covered with a 
 curtain until after the consecration of the elements. 
 
 The earliest churches which we have remaining in England are the 
 little British churches in Cornwall, which are clearly copied from the 
 early Irish churches. These are not after either the basilican or Greek 
 types. They consist of two compartments, a nave and a chancel, 
 separated by a solid screen, the opening through which is, in one case 
 (Perranzabuloe, Cornwall), at the north side, instead of in the centre ; at 
 St. Gwithian’s, Cornwall, it is in the centre, and very small ; at Temple 
 Patrick, Galway, it is in the centre, and nearly the width of the chancel. 
 In this type the altar is at the east end of the chancel : at Perranzabuloe 
 it is set with its longer axis east and west, contrary to the usual position. 
 
 With the revival of classical art in the ninth century, the basilican 
 type was introduced. But in the middle ages, our parish churches had 
 returned almost to the old English type of nave and cliancel; with a font 
 near the entrance; a chancel proper, and sanctuary, in the eastern building 
 which we usually call the chancel ; seats for the clergy in the chancel, and 
 the Lord’s table against its eastern wall. 
 
 What we gather from this summary is, that, under different styles of 
 architecture, and in different ages and countries, churches have exhibited 
 these characteristic features, — a place for the congregation ; a separate 
 place for those who offer the service of musical praise ; a separate place 
 for the administration of the Lord’s Supper ; and a place for the admi- 
 nistration of baptism. This knowledge will assist us in the after-discussion 
 of the details of our subject. 
 
 C 
 
10 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 T is necessary, at the very outset of our undertaking, that we 
 should make up our minds as to the polycliromatic decora- 
 tion of the interior of our churches, aye or no ; for the 
 whole style and tone of the remaining furniture and deco- 
 ration must he governed by this. 
 
 Every great school of architecture, from the Assyrian downwards, 
 has employed colour as a necessary element to its perfection; indeed, it is 
 utterly unnatural to divorce the beautiful in colour from the beautiful 
 in form ; and the manner in which modern Europe has eschewed bright 
 colour is a mental phenomenon worth the study of the psychologist. 
 
 To confine ourselves to the medizeval architecture of England : there 
 can be no doubt, from ancient literary notices of such works, and from 
 existing remains of them, that all our Gothic churches were enriched with 
 polychrome. The old builders had none of that respect for stone and oak 
 which we have: we are so surrounded by compo and painted deal, that 
 the sight of genuine stone and oak have acquired a value in our eyes, be- 
 cause they are honest ; and we have learned to take delight in their natural 
 texture and rich veining, by comparison with the painted shams; and have 
 come at last to think it rather bad taste to hide them with colour. 
 But the old builders dealt with costly marbles, and silken hangings, and 
 mosaics, and gold, and jewels; and, in their eyes, stone and oak were 
 only humble, however serviceable, building materials. 
 
 Moreover, their eyes were so continually feasted upon rich colour in 
 everything about them— their dress, and arms, and books, and furniture, 
 and dwelling-houses— that to have omitted it in their churches would 
 have been contrary to the principles of their art, and opposed to the 
 genius of the people. 
 
 We shall understand this the better, and thereby more justly appreciate 
 the subject of polychrome as it was applied to mediaeval churches, and as 
 it is proposed to be restored now, if we at once plainly picture to ourselves 
 the contrast between the outside appearance of the England of the middle 
 ages, and the England of to-day. Carry yourself back, in imagination, 
 to the fourteenth century, and wander through England with the eye of 
 an artist. As you ride along green-margined roads, through solemn 
 forests, across purple commons, the groups of travellers you meet are clad 
 in bright colours, with gaily-caparisoned horses, and form a succession of 
 brilliant pictures against the background of the forest green, or the flowery 
 turf. You pass an assembly of knights and dames holding a tournament 
 in tlie meadow before a baronial castle; the green field is covered with 
 tents, striped red, and white and blue ; and the windows and balconies of 
 tlie castle are flaunting with embroidered hangings, which wave in the 
 breeze; and the crowd of spectators around the lists is gay as a flock of 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 11 
 
 tropical birds. Look at that knight, who is resting from the combat 
 beside the well hard by: his armour is of sih^er scales, covered with a 
 jiipon of azure, embroidered with his armorial bearing — a lion rampant 
 or; and it is girded with a belt of brightest enamels, and fastened by a 
 clasp of jewels. The scabbards of his sword and dagger are of gold, 
 chased with delicate devices, and their hdts are jewelled; and his shield, 
 which hangs from the tree-trunk beside him, and the helmet at its foot, 
 are coloured also azure and gold. Leave the brave knights to their 
 braveries and courtesies, and ride on to the city in the distance: the 
 houses are not only picturesque in form and rich in quaint carving, but they 
 are enriched with colour and gilding also ; and, on festivals, from every 
 window hang rich tapestries, on which the fair wives and daughters of 
 the citizens lean to see the show beneath; — so that these bright actors 
 move in a scene of harmonious richness. Inside Master Citizen’s house, 
 with whom you lodge, the scene is equally brilliant : tapestried walls of 
 green and gold, stained windows, gilded ceilings. And, when you go to 
 Church for evensong, the same glorious harmony of nature’s brigliest hues ; 
 its walls are diapered, its windows glowing like gems ; its carved capitals, 
 mouldings, and screens, and tabernacle- work, picked out with blue, and 
 green, and red, and white, and gold ; its roof of gilded beams supports a 
 heaven of blue, studded with golden stars ; its eastern end a dream of 
 splendour, with rich hues and burning lamps, and costly plate and 
 jewels ; and the priests and deacons are clothed in cope and dalmatic of 
 embroidered blue and green and cloth of gold. 
 
 We have not the heart to lead you through modern England ; to 
 take you to the platform of a railway station, and show you its confused 
 crowd of eager people, dressed in black and white, and grey and drab, 
 rushing hither and thither ; or to point out to you the descendant of 
 that mail-clad knight, not less noble and chivalric at heart than his an- 
 cestor, but disguised in a black tailed coat, and grey trowsers, black 
 hat, black boots, and black neck- tie, relieved with a white collar and 
 wristbands ; or to drag you up and down weary streets of dirty red brick 
 or drab stucco ; or to wait until Sunday, in order to introduce you to 
 that same church we just now saw, only now with a flood of white light 
 upon its dirty whitewashed walls, with a patch of discordant red in the 
 altar cloth, and another in the pulpit — occupied by a priest in black. 
 
 In short, the England of the middle ages is faithfully reflected in an 
 illuminated MS., with its glowing miniatures, set amidst quaint black- 
 lettered romances ; the England of to-day, in the last volume of the Illm- 
 trated Londo7i News. 
 
 And we have set forth these two pictures, not only to enable the reader to 
 appreciate more truly a mediaeval church, but also fairly to set before us all 
 a grave consideration, which must affect the restoration of Gothic colour to 
 our modern churches. How will it affect people, who live ordinarily in the 
 lllasti'ated News, to be transferred for public worship into a mediaeval MS. ? 
 
 For ourselves, we should hesitate long before recommending the restora- 
 tion of the Gothic system of colour to our churches, did we not believe that 
 it was being introduced into our domestic and civil architecture also. 
 
12 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 And though, perhaps, in our churches the movement may be allowed to 
 keep a little in advance of our civil art, as it has done hitherto ; yet, for 
 ourselves, we should be inclined to make the introduction of colour in 
 the church gradually and carefully, and almost, if not quite, pari passu 
 with its introduction into our houses and public buildings. Of that, more 
 in its place. But we must pause for a moment to support the assertion we 
 have made, that colour is being introduced into civil architecture ; and not 
 only in buildings, like the Houses of Parliament, of mediaeval style, but 
 in the works of those who are not mediaevalists. Witness the lioyal 
 Exchange, the Coal Exchange, the new rooms of the British Museum, the 
 Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, and its magnificent successor at Sydenham. 
 It is true that in all these buildings the colour is a restoration of classical, 
 not of mediaeval polychrome ; but that is our argument, that the love of 
 bright positive colour, as an accessory to architecture, is increasing gene- 
 rally, and not only among the mediaevalists. Indeed, one might safely 
 predicate that the same mysterious impulse which has led the mind of 
 Europe to reject its classical predilections of 300 years, and to return 
 with a new love to romantic literature, and to mediaeval architecture, and 
 to the study and love of the whole art of those ages which we have only 
 just ceased to sneer at as the “ dark ages,” must inevitably lead to the 
 adoption of the colours as well as the forms of that art, in domestic 
 and civil, and no less in ecclesiastical buildings. 
 
 “Ah! ” interrupts one of our readers, “away with these puerile affecta- 
 tions and gaudy conceits, which rob worship of its simplicity and 
 solemnity; would we might still worship as the primitive Christians, or 
 the Scottish Covenanters did, on some hill-side, or in some forest dell, in 
 the grand simple temple of nature ! ” 
 
 In truth. Sir, we admit it : our mediaevalised parish church looks very 
 unsatisfactory, after such a picture as you have conjured up before us. 
 We renounce our mediaBvalisms, and return with you. Sir, to gaze upon it: 
 it is a quiet solemn scene — there is such an one in Derbyshire, a lime- 
 stone dell, where William Mompesson used to pray with his flock, when 
 the plague made it unwise to assemble in their village church of Eyam ; — a 
 beautiful quiet picture — the group of homely worshippers, with nothing 
 but the rough rock for their church walls, and the forest trees for their 
 cathedral aisles, and the pure canopy of heaven for their vaulted roof! 
 But look. Sir! the limestone rock is niched and bossed, and stained with 
 yellow and green moss, and boughs of bramble trail over it, and tufts of 
 fern and flowers spring from its clefts and crannies ; and the floor of 
 your simple church is of emerald green, broidered with pink-white 
 anemone, and blue harebell, and red lychnis ; and your rustic trees have 
 stains of russet-red and yellow-green lichens upon their fretted rich- 
 brown boles; and their boughs arch overhead into a roof of Gothic 
 vaulting, whose spandrils are filled in with the deep blue of the summer 
 sky! 
 
 Suddenly, with a wizard’s wand, strike out all the colour, and leave the 
 whole scene of the hue of dusty stone and dirty whitewash ; the beauty of 
 your simple natural church is gone : — though you might, perhaps, in time. 
 
rOLYCHROME. 
 
 13 
 
 teach yourself hardly to miss the colour, and to take delight instead in 
 the beauty of the forms ; just as we can delight in the network of the 
 winter boughs, when the autumn leaves are gone. 
 
 But, again, scarp the rough rock-wall and whitewash it ; trim your 
 gnarled-tree trunks into straight poles ; block out the Gothic tracery of 
 the boughs, and their spandrils of gaudy blue, with a white sheet. Bah ! 
 hideous ! 
 
 This last scene. Sir, is as it were a church of the deal and stucco style ; 
 the one before it is a Gothic church, without colour; and the simple forest 
 dell is the mediasval church in its rich harmonious colouring. 
 
 And since. Sir, in this climate of ours that beautiful natural temple 
 would often drench you to the skin, and chill the marrow in your bones, 
 till devotion froze within you, and praise chattered its teeth, you would be 
 obliged to give it up, and betake yourself to some shelter or another; 
 and the Gothic artist found this out some centuries ago, that he must 
 have a building to worship in ; but, since his heart yearned after the 
 beauty of that natural temple in which he used to worship, he sought out, 
 with deep insight, the abstract principles of beauty in the form and colour 
 of the great temple of nature, and, with wonderful skill, embodied them 
 in his church, in such forms as architecture admits of. 
 
 Thus far, then, we have been endeavouring to put our readers into the 
 humour to give a fair consideration to the subject of polychrome ; for we 
 know that a strong popular prejudice exists against its application to our 
 churches, even among those who are warm admirers of the forms of Gothic 
 art. Nor is it to be wondered at, in those who have formed their concep- 
 tions of wall painting from some fragment of an ugly old painting of a St. 
 Christopher, with distorted limbs ; and whose idea of the effect of poly- 
 chrome is derived from some half-faded patch of modern polychrome, 
 placed amidst whitewash and plain glass, and looking inevitably tawdry 
 and detestable. No wonder they are opposed to the restoration of such 
 things to our churches, and think it the strangest freak of a lunatic anti- 
 quarianism to dream of spoiling the beautiful forms of our Gothic churches, 
 by covering their “ solemn monotone grey of Time” with a harlequin’s 
 jacket. But let them suspend their judgment until they have turned over 
 the vellum leaves of a few ancient illuminated MSS., and marvelled at the 
 rich, harmonious, glorious colouring of their miniatures, and have learnt 
 to know that these are truthful representations of the scenes which the 
 artist saw around him ; and then they will be better prepared to compre- 
 hend the effect which those same artists, or those same principles of art in 
 modern hands, can produce on the larger scale of actual life. 
 
 Uiall-|5iiintiiig. 
 
 We do not propose to enter very deeply into the archasology of this subject ; 
 though we might easily prove that the interior walls of houses, temples, 
 and churches, were painted by Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, 
 Romans, Byzantines, Saxons, Normans, and Englishmen down to the 
 
14 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 times of the Stuarts. Or, to confine ourselves to ecclesiastical art, we 
 might show that the walls of Christian churches have been painted, from 
 those of the Catacombs downwards. So late as the time of Charles I. the 
 royal portrait was frequently painted in churches. The Puritans painted 
 their churches also, but with the allegories of Time with his hour-glass, and 
 Death with his scythe, instead of with St. Christopher and St. George ; and 
 with Moses and Aaron, instead of Peter and Paul. In the time of James I. 
 it was still customary to paint church walls, and hence the direction of the 
 Canon that they should be painted with “ chosen sentences,” instead of 
 superstitious legends. Even yet modern altar-paintings are very common 
 in our town churches. It was not superstition which painted the walls, 
 neither was it the Reformation which unpainted them ; it was the Renais- 
 sance spirit which taught men that the colours of the rainbow were vulgar 
 and in bad taste; and then churchwardens whitewashed their Gothic 
 churches, and entered it into their accounts as “ beautifying ” 
 
 We may pause for a moment at the Norman period, to note that the 
 Norman system of colour seems to have been a reminiscence of the diffe- 
 rent coloured marbles and stones witli wliich the architect of Eastern and 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 Southern Europe obtained the nobler portion of his decorative colour ; for, 
 in the few remains which we have of Norman colouring, we find that 
 every stone, or every layer of stones, is painted of a different colour from 
 its neighbour stones, without any regard to the mouldings upon them ; 
 e. y., in Gothic colouring, each member of the moulding of an arch is of 
 
POLYCHROME. 15 
 
 the same colour carried round the arch ; in Norman work, each voussoir of 
 the arch differs in colour from its neighbour. 
 
 But we propose to confine ourselves to a very general sketch of the 
 Gothic style of colouring, without entering into the differences in detail 
 which would distinguish the work of one subdivision of the Gothic period 
 from that of another. 
 
 After a somewhat extensive and careful collation of the fragments of 
 Gothic wall-painting which remain to us, we venture then to enumerate 
 the different methods of colouring the walls of a Gothic church as follows. 
 
 If we can trust to the representations of church interiors in the Illumi- 
 nations of MSS. (of which we shall give some notes hereafter), the walls 
 were sometimes only washed with a tint of colour,* and the more positive 
 colouring reserved for the capitals and other carved stones, the roofs, and 
 the furniture of the church. 
 
 Sometimes the walls were tinted, and diapered with some simple pattern. 
 One very common method, which we find throughout the Gothic period, 
 was to wash the wall with a buff colour, and mark it with single, double, 
 or treble lines of blood-red tint — we will not call it an imitation of 
 masonry, but a pattern derived from masonry joints; frequently the wall 
 of some warm colour was diapered or powdered with some usual conven- 
 tional device, a monogram, or fleur-de-lis, or rose, or cinque foil, or 
 armorial badge, or other of the endless variety of such devices which the 
 imagination of the Gothic artist could furnish in infinite profusion : of 
 two of these (Nos. 1 and 2) we here give representations. 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 Sometimes portions of the wall were painted in imitation of the hang- 
 ings with which the wall was so frequently furnished. Thus at West 
 
 * It is, however, so contrary to the genius of Gothic art, to leave any large surface of 
 colour unbroken with diaper, that we are inclined to receive doubtfully the evidence of 
 the M8S. on this point. 
 
16 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Walton, Norfolk, the clerestory walls are grounded with buff, marked with 
 the masonry-pattern above mentioned in single lines, and in each com- 
 partment of the clerestory is painted an imitation of a diapered hanging, 
 as if it were stretched in an iron frame, and suspended by loops and hooks 
 upon the walls. Of some of these compartments, coloured representations 
 are given in Collings’s Gothic Ornaments^ Vol. I. pis. 58, 62, and 63. One 
 is divided into a net -work of long hexagons, red in one horizontal row, 
 buff in the next, charged with white fish ; in another are horizontal bands 
 of red and yellow, the red bands bearing couples of yellow doves 
 within yellow circles, the yellow bands bearing red fieur-de-lis, within 
 blue lines; in another, on a red field, rows of yellow circles bearing 
 yellow griffins, and fleur-de-lis, in alternate rows, with small yellow 
 cinque-foils between the circles. Of another of these diapers we here give 
 a representation heraldically tricked; the colours being red and yellow. 
 
 And another of stars 
 within diapered lines has 
 been adapted to the tile ar- 
 rangement, which we give 
 hereafter under that head- 
 ing. The spandril spaces 
 between the nave windows 
 of the same church have 
 the ground yellow, with 
 red masonry, and a foli- 
 ated sexfoil within a 
 circle, bearing octfoils in 
 oblong spaces; the principal part of the design blood red, with a few 
 very effective thin lines and dots of blue. Sometimes we find a motto 
 diapered over the wall ; or a scroll charged with some legend, or text of 
 i Scripture here and there; or the walls written all over with whole books 
 of Scripture. Sometimes these texts were painted within ornamental 
 borders, or on curtains: we give an illustration of a very elaborate device 
 for framing a text, from St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, representing 
 an angel under an architectural canopy, bearing a veil, upon which the 
 text is inscribed. (No. 4.) 
 
 Frequently the lower portion of the wall was painted in imitation of a 
 hanging with a ground of one colour, while the wall above was tinted and 
 diapered with a ground of a contrary colour. And sometimes there were 
 imitations of panel paintings of scripture or legendary subjects, set upon 
 the diapered background. Among these panel paintings, of course, 
 occurred representations of Saints, Angels, Bishops ; and sometimes, pro- 
 bably, they were of a monumental character. 
 
 Again, we frequently find the lower part painted with a hanging, 
 and the rest of the wall-space of the church covered with a series 
 of scriptural or legendary subjects, arranged in one, two, or three 
 horizontal courses. We know that in domestic buildings the wall- 
 paintings were frequently appropriate to their position : thus, Henry III. 
 directs (Liberate Rolls, quoted in Mr. D. Turner’s Domestic Architecture') 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 17 
 
 that a picture of Winter, as an old man warming his hands, shall 
 he put over the chimney, and a King and his Court in the Presence 
 Chamber ; and the story of Dives and Lazarus at the back of the high 
 table in his hall, and so on: and we may therefore be sure that the 
 
 paintings in churches would have a similar appropriateness of arrange- 
 ment. Accordingly we find the Last J udgment over the chancel arch ; * 
 the Last Supper over the communion table ; and frequently a connected 
 
 * To these imaginative people the nave symbolised the church in this world ; the chancel, 
 like the holy of holies, symbolised heaven. Over the chancel arch, therefore, which divided 
 the one from the other, was an appropriate place for the representation of that event which 
 is the last scene in the militant life of the Christian, and the entrance to his life triumphant 
 in heaven. 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 series of scripture scenes— our Lord’s miracles, or the events of his passion, 
 or other Gospel scenes — round the walls of the nave. One favourite legen- 
 dary subject is the beautiful legend of St. Christopher; for whose story, 
 beautifully told, we refer our readers to Mrs. Jamieson’s Sacred and 
 Legendary Art; this subject is usually painted near the principal entrance, 
 either over the south door, or on the wall opposite. The symbolical 
 representation of St. Michael weighing a soul in the balance, is another 
 common one ; and in the later Gothic times the Dance of Death was a 
 favourite subject. 
 
 We subjoin a few notes of mural paintings, recently discovered or 
 published, which will further elucidate this portion of our subject. 
 
 At Broughton Church,Berks (see Archceological Journal^ Vol. VI. p. 176), 
 the plain surfaces of the walls have been entirely covered with frescoes, 
 of temp. Kichard II. Between the windows, immediately opposite the 
 south entrance, has been a large painting with many figures, of the Last 
 Judgment ; eastward of this, a Mater Dolorosa ; over the south door, a 
 large St. George and Dragon ; eastward of south door, two very perfect 
 paintings of a Bishop, and a woman with dishevelled hair holding a cross. 
 
 At South Elmham, Suffolk {Archceological Journal^ No. 27, p. 297), on 
 each side of a window in the north wall, opposite the south door, within 
 ornamental borders about twelve feet high, were figures of St. Christo- 
 pher and the Hermit, with traces of legends ; on the north side of east 
 window, a painting of the Virgin and Child; and remains of other paint- 
 ings on north side of chancel, and over chancel door: (all now destroyed.) 
 
 At Stanton Harcourt, Oxon {Archceological Journal, Vol. II. p. 365), the 
 walls were painted in distemper (date c. end of fourteenth century), the 
 lower portion with a decorative pattern, and above that two series of 
 scripture subjects — scenes from the gospel history. The design of the 
 lower compartment was a diamond-shaped pattern of intersecting lines, 
 the lines enriched with two red cords intertwined, and at the points of 
 intersection with an expanded flower ; within the diamond panels a white 
 foliated pattern, and on that a device like a pine-apple: the whole of this 
 pattern appeared to be stencilled. The histories appeared to begin at the 
 west end of the south wall of the nave, with the “ Washing of the Dis- 
 ciples’ Feet on the same side was the “Last Supper;” on the north 
 wall was the “Descent from the Cross,” and beneath that the “Entomb- 
 ment ;” also, on the north side, the “ Descent into Hell.” The colours of 
 the figures were red, lilac, &c., and scrolls, bearing descriptive legends, 
 were inserted here and there: (now destroyed.) 
 
 At Wells, Somerset {Archceological Journal, Vol. II. p. 391), traces of 
 colour were discernible in all parts of the church. The upper wall of 
 the south aisle had a red ground, diapered with yellow stars; the pillars 
 had been covered with arabesque ornaments; over the north door remained 
 some traces of a St. Christoplier. In a chantry-chapel, behind a mural 
 tablet, was a fragment of a late Perpendicular design, consisting of two 
 figures (Aquila and Priscilla), on a ground covered with a large tapestry 
 pattern. 
 
 At Beckley, Oxfordsliire, the walls of the belfry were covered with a 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 19 
 
 flowing foliage -pattern of the herb-Bennet {Geum urhanum). It was rudely 
 drawn on the original plaster, — the stems with “ Indian red,” the leaves 
 and flowers with red lead : date, Edward I. The west end of the south 
 aisle had been covered with a very interesting painting of about the 
 same period — a Virgin and Child seated under a cusped canopy, the back- 
 ground richly diapered in diamond pattern, with a flower in the 
 diamond. Other figures appear above, under a canopy, on a ground 
 diapered with flowers (cinquefoil); and, over all, traces of a legend, in 
 Lombardic capitals. These early decorations had been covered over, 
 and a new series of designs painted over them, in the fifteenth century. 
 In the belfry, a large pattern of ascending wavy stems, with large leaves 
 at intervals — the outlines of brown-red, filled up with yellow ochre. The 
 painting on the west end of the south aisle had been covered over with a 
 history of St. Michael weighing souls, the Virgin and Satan assisting. 
 On this subject a greater variety of colours (blue, «Sic.) was employed 
 than in the earlier painting, and the background was diapered with light 
 sprigs of foliage. Over the tower-arch in the nave was a picture of the 
 Last J udgment, represented in the usual mediaeval manner. On the north 
 and south sides of the arch are SS. Peter and Paul, on a background of 
 dark brown-red ; which colour prevailed extensively on the walls of the 
 aisles, and the pillars of the nave, all of which had been painted ; but it 
 was not possible to make out the designs. 
 
 And be it remembered, that, however grotesque in drawing some of 
 these subjects may be, there is much artistic skill and Christian feeling 
 in the designs. We believe it will be found that many of the most 
 famous modern painters have borrowed very much from these works of 
 mediasval art ;* and though, seen as we now see them, in faded patches, 
 they may not look very attractive, we need only appeal to the illumi- 
 nations of MSS. to be sure that, however faulty in parts, these artists 
 would not fail to produce a pleasing ensemble. 
 
 Meantime we find the piers, in simple work, coloured red, with perhaps 
 a line of colour in the hollow of the moulding of the pier and its arch, and 
 perhaps a projecting fillet gilded. In richer work, the whole suite of 
 mouldings of pier and arch are illuminated in different colours ; or the 
 pier, perhaps, banded with spiral lines of different colour, or painted in 
 chevrons, or other devices. In rich work gilding was lavished upon pro- 
 jecting carved work, often set off by a ground, or by contrasting lines, of 
 red. 
 
 The groining of the roof was often picked out with masonry pattern, 
 and the groining ribs illuminated. In an oak roof, the ceiling had the 
 mouldings of its beams, and their bosses, picked out with colour and 
 gilding; and the panels were frequently painted blue, powdered with gold 
 stars, or of some light tint with a pattern stencilled in each panel. 
 
 * For instance, Rubens’ great painting, the Descent from the Cross, clearly takes its gene- 
 ral idea and arrangement from the mediseval treatment of tlie same subject. Hilton’s 
 Deliverance of St. Peter from P^'ison is almost identical in general arrangement with the 
 same subject on a piece of old tapestry at Lyulph's tower, on the bank of Ulleswater ; both 
 perhaps borrowed from an earlier design. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is after a 
 common mediaeval design of the same seene. 
 
20 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Before we proceed to consider liow far this system of colour may he 
 applied to our own churches, let us first add to our knowledge of the sub- 
 ject, by glancing at a few representations of interiors of churches in the 
 illuminated MSS. 
 
 In a fourteenth-century MS. in the British Museum (Add. 10,294), at 
 folio 72, we have an illumination which gives us a peep into the interior 
 of a church, and just enables us to see that its walls are of a pink tint, 
 relieved with lines of a darker colour crossing at right angles (perhaps 
 intended for the common masonry pattern). 
 
 Another MS. in the same glorious collection, of the time of Eichard II. 
 (Dom. A. 17), at f. 11, gives us the interior of a chancel, in which we 
 can hardly determine what the walls were ; but the ceiling is red, with 
 the masonry pattern in gold lines. At f. 120 is a valuable interior of 
 a church ; the spandrils of its groined roof are blue, the groining ribs gilt, 
 the walls are tinted pink, and the flowers upon the cornice are gilt, and the 
 string-course gilt. Halfway up one of the pillars, near the altar, we 
 can see a gilded angel on a bracket: the altar is magnificently draped, 
 and its reredos is gilt. A set of carved stalls, with subsellaa, occupied 
 by a brotherhood of monks at service, has the canopies left white 
 (perhaps to represent the colour of the wood) ; but their ceilings are blue, 
 with gilded ribs; the backs of the seats are painted pink; and the crockets 
 of their pinnacles are gilt. 
 
 At f. 148 is another interior; the spandrils of the groined roof red, with 
 gold masonry pattern, and gilded groining ribs ; the walls are blue ; the 
 capitals of the shafts which carry the groining ribs, and the ornaments 
 on the cornice, are gilded ; altar richly draped ; upon it a crucifix, and 
 the reredos gilt with SS. Mary and John painted upon its side panels, 
 so as, with the crucifix, to form the usual rood. The two arches through 
 which this interior is seen, have a gilt pillar between them, and a canopied 
 niche at the top with ceiling red and crockets gilt ; the figure in it has a 
 gilded robe, and a red head-dress; the carved spandrils of these arches are 
 ornamented with red and gold, and the cornice over them is lavender 
 and gold. 
 
 At f 175 is another interior: the roof of two shades of red in different 
 portions of the roof, with gilt groining ribs ; the windows have stained 
 glass ; the altar is draped as in the other illuminations, and its reredos is 
 a piece of tabernacle- work in three compartments, all gilded; in the cen- 
 tral compartment is a Virgin and Child (Virgin’s robe blue), upon a golden 
 ground; in the sinister compartment, on a gold ground, a monk (robe 
 black), kneeling in adoration of the Virgin; the dexter compartment is 
 not visible. 
 
 Another fourteenth-century MS. (Harl. 16,997), at folio 21, shows us 
 an interior in which the roof is all gilt ; one compartment of wall, up 
 towards the roof over a door, has a blue ground, with a figure outlined 
 upon it in gold lines ; the tympanum of the door is blue, with gold stars. 
 Another interior, at f. 72 of the same MS., has the spandrils of the roof, 
 blue, with gold stars ; the groining ribs gilt. 
 
 At f. 195 is a very beautiful and complete little interior of a chancel 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 21 
 
 represented at the time of the elevation of the Host at high mass ; the 
 roof is red, with gold stars and groining ribs ; the walls appear unpainted ; 
 the stalls the natural colour of the wood; the floor a uniform tint of 
 green; the reredos of the altar is blue and gold, the altar draped as usual; 
 the priest and his deacon and subdeacon richly habited ; the altar has a 
 green conical canopy suspended over it, the lectern (a very nice example) 
 is in its place ; — altogether it is a valuable illustration ; and we need not 
 say that the effect of the colouring in this, as in all these miniatures, is 
 marvellously rich and harmonious. 
 
 In many of these instances the walls are faintly tinted with lavender or 
 some such tint, which is probably intended to indicate that the walls 
 were not painted, or had only a light wash of colour upon them ; but in 
 other instances we find gorgeous wall-patterns : e. g., in the MS. Tiberius, 
 B. 8, at f. 33, the interior of a church is diapered with a very rich mosaic 
 pattern of blue and red, in a style of which we have very many examples 
 throughout the preceding MSS., used as backgrounds for the illuminations, 
 and on the walls of domestic apartments. It must be confessed that 
 these diapers of blue and red and gold are very rich, but not richer than 
 the colouring of very many works which still remain. In many of our 
 churches (especially cathedrals) we find portions of wall-surface richly 
 sculptured in diaper, and we cannot doubt that this was always enriched 
 with colour ; and we can as little doubt that this very diaper, which in rich 
 work was carved into the stone, was in less sumptuous work painted upon 
 its surface. At f. 42 we have an interior painted blue, powdered with 
 gold fleurs-de-lis. The interiors of the domestic buildings will furnish the 
 artist with very many examples of wall-patterns and hangings, &c. &c. ; 
 and with authorities for the harmonious arrangement of the colours in 
 the different parts of a building — a subject of too great magnitude to be 
 entered upon here. 
 
 We have already intimated that we are of those who, in introducing 
 a nobler style of art into our churches, would move slowly and care- 
 fully, and not too far in advance of the general tone of mind. For this 
 reason in the first place, and in the second place because we should have 
 difficulty at present in finding artists for the work, we are not disposed to 
 recommend the introduction of “ historical painting ” into our churches. 
 We would, for the present, confine our efforts in polychrome to mere deco- 
 rative painting ; and, in the present transition state of the popular taste, 
 we should rather advocate the less elaborate methods of imparting warmth 
 and colour to our church interiors. 
 
 Let us take an ordinary parish church of the Gothic period, with 
 chancel, nave and aisles, and western tower, and consider how we would 
 treat it. We would have the floor with a pattern of inlaid tiles, which 
 would give sufficient colour below ; and we would paint the roofs above ; 
 in the nave, perhaps, we would confine the decoration of the roof to a little 
 blue and red and gilding in the mouldings of the main timbers; in the 
 chancel we would also paint the panels, blue with gold stars. The windows, 
 of course, should be filled with coloured glass ; the walls washed with some 
 warm colour, and stencilled either with a diaper pattern of suitable cha- 
 
22 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 racter, or with the monogram I. H. C. ; and, to break the uniformity of the 
 wall space, we would, perhaps, inscribe a few texts upon the walls in black 
 letter, according to Canon 82 . 
 
 The capitals of the piers, and the corbels of the roof, the string-course, 
 and similar features, should be coloured— probably red, heightened in the 
 projecting carving with gilding. To bind together these various portions 
 of colour, we would carry a line or two of colour in the hollow mouldings of 
 the piers and arches, and perhaps gild a projecting fillet in these members. 
 The chancel screen, and the pulpit and reading-desk, should be carefully 
 touched with colour in the same way. And we venture to say that the 
 general effect of such a church would be warm, but sober ; there would be 
 nothing gaudy, nothing to distract attention in it ; it would not be so 
 gay in effect as the Crystal Palace in Hyde-park ; it would not be nearly 
 so rich as the new Houses of Parliament; but we venture to believe 
 that it would satisfy the taste of every person of cultivated and unpreju- 
 diced taste, far more than the cold, glaring, ugly effect of the majority of 
 our whitewashed churches. 
 
 As modern examples of the use of colour in interiors, we may cite 
 the choir of Cologne Cathedral as an instance of the less complete style, of 
 touching only certain parts. The hangings of the stalls are rich in colour ; 
 the ceiling is coloured and gilt ; the windows are very beautiful, but have 
 not much colour in them ; the colour in the stalls, the windows, and the 
 ceiling, is connected and rendered harmonious by a line of blue and red 
 here and there in the hollows of the pier and arch mouldings, with gilded 
 capitals, and an illuminated canopy with a figure halfway up each pier. 
 As an instance of the more thorough decoration of the walls with history 
 paintings, we may quote the remarkable example at St. Apollinaris- 
 berg by Remagen on the Rhine, in which the walls are grounded with a 
 tapestry pattern, upon which are large panels containing a series of noble 
 fresco paintings, by the Dusseldorf artists, of scenes in the life of 
 St. Apollinaris, and other subjects. 
 
 We have not seen Pugin’s Church at Cheadle, which is elaborately 
 painted ; but an interesting example of restoration of polychrome, at 
 Peering in Essex, is deserving of especial notice.* 
 
 We have dwelt at some length upon this part of our subject, first, 
 because the whole method upon which our other decorations and furniture 
 are to be treated, depends upon whether the building in which they are to 
 be placed is to be of plain grey stone with whitewashed walls, or whether 
 the colour of Gothic art is to be combined with its forms. In one case 
 the use of rich hangings, or illuminated furniture, and even of painted 
 windows,f would be incongruous, and glaring, and unpleasing; in the 
 
 * It is an accurate restoration of the ancient painting, with some trifling conjectural ad- 
 ditions where the traces left were insufiflcient to guide the restorer. The ground colour on 
 the walls is perhaps not quite warm enough ; it may ‘probably have faded since its exe* 
 culion. 
 
 t The extension of this remark to stained glass, will doubtless meet with very general 
 dissent ; many persons think the brilliant glass-painting in the midst of the whitewashed 
 wall very beautiful, who would cry out against a painting of much more sober tone upon 
 the wall, as gaudy, simply because they have been accustomed to the one and not to the 
 other. 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 23 
 
 other case, richness of colour in the furniture of the building will be 
 necessary, or it would look dingy and discordant. And, secondly, we 
 have treated it at some length, in the hope of showing that a restoration 
 of the original system of colour to our churches, does not imply either 
 that they shall be filled with hideous figures of saints and sacred person- 
 ages, ludicrous in their contortions and dislocations, or that they shall be 
 dressed in a harlequin jacket. It is right to warn our readers that the 
 effect of many modern attempts at polychrome is not to be taken as a 
 fair sample, for many of them are very unsatisfactory, either from faulty 
 principles of colouring, or more frequently from its too partial application. 
 
 Itaintk ®1m. 
 
 Though the glazing of the windows is, perhaps, strictly a constructive 
 part of the fabric, and therefore beyond our plan, yet stained glass is a 
 part, and a very prominent part, of the polychromic decoration of the 
 interior; and, therefore, we may fairly, in this place, devote a few para- 
 graphs to it as viewed in this light. The stained glass window is, in 
 fact, a brilliant panel picture let into the background of the wall. 
 
 We have not space to enter upon so extensive a subject as the archaeo- 
 logy of glass-painting, and the characteristics of the various styles which 
 prevailed at different periods ; all this information the curious reader may 
 find in the well-known Hints on Glass-painting. We rather propose to 
 address to the “ Eestoration Committee” a few such general hints on the 
 subject, as they would desire to have before resolving upon the introduc- 
 tion of stained glass into their church, or determining upon the particular 
 kind of window which they would have ; leaving all the detail of the 
 matter to the architect and the glass-painter. 
 
 In the first place, then, stained glass need not necessarily make a 
 church too dark. In many of the little Norman churches, such as we 
 have in Essex, and, perhaps, in some of the Early English ones, the 
 windows, in all probability, were not originally glazed at all; and the 
 apertures are so small that the insertion of coloured glass would have made 
 the church much too dark for use ; but when glass was introduced into 
 them we find usually another window or two, of Early English or Deco- 
 rated date, added, which amply supplied the light which the glazing took 
 away; and if we will only glaze these windows suitably, the slight amount 
 of pattern or colour which is required to make them ornamental, and to 
 give a warmer tinge to the light which passes through them, need never 
 make a Norman or Early English church inconveniently dark: and our 
 Decorated and Perpendicular churches can never be made too dark by the 
 richest window of their styles. 
 
 There are three classes of designs for windows ; the quarry window, with 
 a little colour introduced into the border of the lights ; the quarry window, 
 with colour introduced in figures, shields, geometrical bands, or other 
 devices, on the diapered background formed by the quarries, as well as in the 
 borders ; and the picture window, in which the whole window is filled 
 
24 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 with a rich coloured design, either of figures under canopies, or of various 
 scenes from Scripture, or of one scene extending throughout the window. 
 
 The first kind of design is very suitable for small windows, where great 
 richness of effect is not required, and where the smallness of window- 
 aperture will not allow of the stoppage of too much light by the glazing ; 
 it is suitable for Norman or Early English lancets; for small Decorated 
 windows ; or for the clerestory lights, or for the small nave windows of a 
 Perpendicular church ; but it is not suitable for the immense window- 
 space of many of our Perpendicular churches ; these were made so large 
 purposely for the admission of the splendid pictures which the art of the 
 glass-painter of the period was producing; they require a rich and full 
 body of colour to tone down the blinding glare which white glass admits 
 through them ; and a mere quarry pattern in so large a space would look 
 tame and poor. 
 
 There are points of detail to be attended to in the first class of win- 
 dow, in the pattern of the quarry and the border, and the filling of the 
 tracery lights, where there are any: but all these matters the “Restoration 
 Committee” will leave to the professional man ; and designs of this kind 
 are so simple and easy, that there is little risk of any error, if the com- 
 mittee will wisely leave it to a competent architect or glass-painter, and not 
 insist upon some whim of their own. 
 
 The second kind of window includes many varieties. There is the 
 Early English window, with brilliant bits of colour set, like gems, here and 
 there, at the lower corners of the quarries ; or with devices of colour set 
 in the diapered ground — quatrefoils, or niched saints, or medallions con- 
 taining little Scripture pictures, or shields with armorial blazonings : or 
 the Decorated window, with interlacing bands of colour, or shields, or 
 heads, or bits of colour, introduced here and there amidst the fiowing de- 
 sign of the diapered background : or the Perpendicular window, with a 
 shield, or memorial figure, or medallion, set in the centre of each light. 
 
 Now, in determining to have a window of this class, which is rather 
 richer than the first, and not so rich and costly as the third class, it must 
 be remembered that great attention must be paid to style. A window 
 with Norman subject medallions, or stiff Early English foliations, would 
 not do for a Decorated window; or a Decorated design, with a background 
 of fiowing vine pattern, though very beautiful, would be unsuitable 
 for a Perpendicular church ; — unsuitable, not merely because it would be 
 an arch 90 ological blunder, but because its spirit would not harmonise with 
 the spirit of everything else around it. Eor instance, the spirit of Early 
 English quarry diaper is stiff, abstract foliation ; the Decorated style 
 gives us gracefully-flowing natural foliage ; the Perpendicular delights in 
 flat, geometrical patterns. Put three characteristic quarry patterns of the 
 three periods together, and the difference of the genius of the art which 
 dictated them will be seen at once. 
 
 How is it then, it may be asked, that we do find that the mediseval 
 artists themselves constantly mingled the styles, by adding to, or furnish- 
 ing, an earlier church in the style of their own day, and yet the combi- 
 nation is not displeasing. We admit that these combinations, which we 
 
POLYCHROME. 
 
 25 
 
 almost universally find in our old cathedrals and churches, and domestic 
 buildings too, are not displeasing ; that they even add to the picturesque effect 
 of the whole; and we venture to suggest a reason. The later styles of Gothic 
 art are natural developments from the earlier, and the mind is not displeased 
 to see additions to an early work in a more mature style naturally developed 
 from it. How the mind at once,almost instinctively,perceives the natural deve- 
 lopment, is a psychological question not to be entered into here ; but that this 
 is the case, may perhaps be shown by looking at a combination of Classical 
 and true Gothic, which is not pleasing. And we believe that it will be easily 
 discovered that any attempt to reverse the combination of the styles of 
 true Gothic, and engraftstiff Early English upon flowing Decorated, would 
 be also offensive in its degree; Perpendicular glass in an Early English 
 lancet would not be displeasing, perhaps ; but an attempt to put Early English 
 glass into a three or five light traceried window of a Perpendicular church 
 would be a failure. 
 
 We come then, from this digression, to the conclusion that the point for 
 the consideration of an ordinary Church Eestoration Committee is, 
 whether generally, from the amount of light required, the funds at their 
 disposal, &c., a window of the first, second, or third class would be 
 preferable ; and having decided upon one of the second class, they must ask 
 their professional adviser to explain the various styles of design of this 
 second class, which would be suitable for the particular window in ques- 
 tion ; and will do wisely to be very much guided by his advice rather 
 than by any unlearned preference of their own, as to the especial design 
 to be adopted. 
 
 We beg, however, to remark, that we think this second class into 
 which we have ventured to divide window designs, has not been brought 
 into such extensive use as it should be ; and more especially, perhaps, in 
 Perpendicular windows. It appears to us that it is a style more easy 
 of successful treatment than the full rich subject window; and that 
 perhaps a majority of the modern windows would have been more effective, 
 had they consisted of a shield, or a figure, or a medallion, set in a grisaille 
 back-ground, than they are at present, with their rows of badly-painted 
 saints under dingy debased-looking* canopies, or their heavy unrelieved 
 masses of badly-harmonised and poor-toned colour. 
 
 In the first class we have a merely ornamental panel ; in the second we 
 have a device or figure set upon an ornamental panel, under a niche of 
 masonry; in the third class, which we are now to consider, we have a 
 painting — a work of art — set in the background of diapered wall. No 
 doubt many windows of the second class, especially where one or more 
 figures are introduced, require not only the mind but the hand of an 
 artist; but the windows of the first two classes have more the character 
 of mere decorative “ furniture” windows : these designs of the third class 
 are of higher character, and are, or ought to be, not mere furniture win- 
 dows, but fine paintings, — works of art. If, then, in stained glass, you 
 
 * We know that ancient Perpendicular canopies in stained glass, as in miniatures and 
 other paintings of the same period, are of this dehased-looking character ; hut we do not 
 like them better for that, 
 
 E 
 
26 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION, 
 
 require merely a decorative feature in the coup-d’oE,il of your church, select 
 from classes one and two ; if you desire to enrich your church with a fine 
 work of art in glass-painting, do so, but you must not grudge to pay a 
 proper price for it ; you can buy decorative painting at so much a foot, 
 but you cannot buy art so. 
 
 It must be confessed that we have had very little of anything which 
 can be called high art in modern glass painting, and no wonder, it has not 
 yet been asked for ; but we do not doubt that there are some scores of 
 men who are capable at once of giving a design for a small window which 
 shall fairly claim the dignity of a work of art ; and there are, perhaps, a 
 few of the Pre-Raphaelites who could furnish a design for any window, 
 not inferior to the work of the old masters in this branch of art ; and 
 there are manufacturers capable of furnishing the material for the execu- 
 tion of the design. We are by no means decrying modern glass -painting, 
 we are endeavouring to do it a service, by leading its patrons — its cus- 
 tomers — to understand more clearly the difference between mere decora- 
 tion in stained glass, and works of art in stained glass ;* and to induce 
 them to put the latter on such a footing, in the honour they pay to it as a 
 branch of painting, and consequently in the price which they are willing 
 to pay for noble works in it, as shall induce artists to turn their attention 
 to this branch of art ; — as shall enable the architect to put a commission 
 for a subject window into the hands of a painter, instead of the hands of 
 a manufacturer. 
 
 Large Perpendicular windows, as we have already said, require a richly- 
 coloured subject; some of the largest, which are also the latest, require 
 that the window shall be occupied by only two subjects, one over the 
 other, stretching throughout the breadth of the window: the effective 
 treatment of a cartoon on this scale, and the harmonious arrangement of 
 brilliant positive colour in such a work, demand the skill of an artist of 
 considerable power, and of one who has made this peculiar branch of art 
 an especial study. 
 
 What is to be done then? It happens that these late churches, whose 
 windows imperatively demand the costliest glass, have always an immense 
 breadth of window aperture, so that to fill them with fine works of art is 
 a matter of impossible expense. What is the second best thing to be 
 done? Do not put in inferior design, or inferior execution. Dull the 
 glass all over by some of the many contrivances in use ; or fill the lights 
 with Powell’s stamped quarries as a temporary measure, and put in fine 
 windows one by one, as benefactors are found to do it ; or eschew design 
 altogether, and order a few hundredweights of scraps of coloured glass 
 (with a sufficient quantity of white and yellow), and get some artist, who 
 has a feeling for the harmony of positive colours, to make a mosaic of 
 patchwork, with no attempt at design or form of any kind, no attempt to 
 do anything but make a pleasing arrangement of colour: the result will 
 be a confessedly “ furniture ” window, but one whose polychromic effect 
 
 * Much the same difference that there is between the work of the maker of the higher 
 class of modei-n French room-papers, and the water-colour artist. 
 
POLYCHEOME. 
 
 27 
 
 will be as rich and fine as if the harmoniously arranged patches of colour 
 had been formed upon a cartoon of Kaphael’s ; and the eye will not be 
 offended by bad design, bad grouping, bad drawing, bad sentiment, and 
 all the other bad things which would be combined in a cheap subject 
 window by an inferior glass-painter. 
 
 For windows of smaller size, as we have said, there will be little diJfficulty 
 in obtaining a really good painting on stained glass, if the donor is willing 
 to put the commission into the hands of an artist, and to pay him fairly for 
 his skill and knowledge, and not so much per square foot for his material, 
 grudging every pomid beyond as money wasted. 
 
28 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 
 fnimniraraii falik. 
 
 L the early churches had the altar placed immediately 
 in front of the apsis. In primitive times it was probably 
 always of wood ; in the fourth century St. Augustine 
 and others speak of wooden altars; perhaps the first 
 clear mention of a stone altar is by Gregory Nyssen, 
 A.D. 370; they were not commanded until 509, at the 
 Council of Epone in France. After that they gradually became general, 
 but still appear to have been a loose slab of stone, supported by 
 a frame, or by legs, or on brackets in the wall. After the thirteenth 
 century they seem to have been always fixed immoveably against the 
 eastern wall, or against a stone screen or reredos ; and generally the slab is 
 supported by other perpendicular slabs, which form a kind of altar-tomb. 
 The altars were generally taken down in our English churches about the 
 year 1550, though some few escaped and remain to this day. The Canon 
 of 1 603, which is our present rule on the subject, says as follows : “ Whereas 
 we have no doubt but that in all churches within the realm of England con- 
 venient and decent tables are provided, and placed for the celebration of 
 the Holy Communion, we appoint that the same tables shall from time 
 to time be kept and repaired, in sufficient and seemly manner, and covered 
 in time of divine service, with a carpet of silk, or other decent stuff, 
 thought meet by the ordinary of the place, if any question be made of it, 
 and with a fair linen cloth at the time of the ministration, as becometh 
 that table, and so stand,* saving when the said Holy Communion is to 
 be administered, at which time the same shall be placed in so good sort 
 within the church or chancel, as thereby the minister may be more con- 
 veniently heard of the communicants in his prayer and ministration, and the 
 communicants also, more conveniently, and in more number, may com- 
 municate with the said minister.” 
 
 We note, especially, that the idea of an altar upon which a hostia is 
 sacrificed, is carefully eschewed, and the altar is treated as a table. At 
 the time of its use it is to be placed in the position most convenient for 
 the guests at it ; and though now in England the Lord’s Table ahvays 
 retains its position at the east end, yet, even now, in the Island of Jersey, 
 the more puritan custom still continues: in the fourteen or fifteen 
 churches of that island, only one or two have anything in the shape of an 
 
 * The meaning of the canon clearly is, that the table, when not in use for the ministra- 
 tion, is to stand where it has been accustomed : where this was, is clear from a sentence 
 in the Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth, a. n. 1564 : “ The Holy Table to be decently made, 
 and set where the altar stood ; at the Communion to be placed in good sort within the 
 chancel, and afterwards placed where it stood before.” 
 
WOOD-WOKK. 
 
 29 
 
 altar or table at the east end ; * and when the Holy Communion is cele- 
 brated, a temporary table is placed in the alley, in front of the reading- 
 desk. 
 
 But although it is to be treated as a table, and is thus to be placed when 
 in use in the most convenient position, yet it is not to be put out of the way 
 at other times (as it is in the Jersey churches); the Canon orders that 
 when not in use it is to stand in the accustomed place, on the platform or 
 dais at the east end of the chancel. 
 
 One cannot help calling to mind the arrangement of ancient halls ; how 
 the lower tables were moveable boards, but the high table — the lord’s 
 table, as it too would be called — stood always on the dais at the upper end 
 of the hall; like Chaucer’s Frankelein’s table, 
 
 “ His table dormant in bis halle alway 
 Stode redy covered alle thelonge day.” 
 
 and we cannot help thinking that the Reformers had this resemblance in 
 their minds, when they ordered that the high table at which Ottr Lord 
 from time to time feasts his people, should always thus stand upon the 
 dais of “ God’s Banquetting-house.” f 
 
 But, at least, we clearly gather that it was the intention of the framers 
 of these canons, that, as the Font of stone was to be set in the ancient 
 usual place, J and stand there always as a symbol of the one sacrament, 
 so the Lord’s Table should stand in the ancient usual place at the other 
 end of the church, as a symbol of the other sacrament. 
 
 In making a Lord’s Table for a church, we have not to consider then 
 merely how to make it convenient for actual use at the time of ministra- 
 tion ; indeed, since it is not a table at which people sit to the Holy Feast, 
 but before which they kneel, the question of convenience as to size or 
 shape vanishes altogether, for a table of almost any form and any size 
 would not be inconvenient ; and we have principally to consider that it is 
 a table which is to stand in a conspicuous part of the church, as a kind 
 of continual reminder of the Holy Feast, a symbol of the Sacrament of 
 the Lord’s Supper. It is to be a table then, not an altar ; it may be of 
 any size which beauty of proportion requires ; and it is to be a “ decent” 
 and “ seemly” table. Of what material are we to make it ? The table 
 at which the first Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was eaten was doubtless 
 of wood. 'Wlien churches were upper rooms in poor men’s houses, doubt- 
 less the Lord’s Table was an ordinary table converted to that temporary 
 use. In the Catacombs very probably the table would be a slab of stone, 
 resting upon pillars of the same material, or a square block of stone, or 
 the tomb of some martyr ; and from these very probably it was that, when 
 the Church emerged into daylight, and took possession of royal halls, she 
 introduced tables of stone into her temples ; and from Rome the custom 
 gradually spread throughout Christendom. A good deal might be said in 
 favour of a Lord’s Table of stone, or marble, or mosaic ; we use tables of 
 
 * We speak of five or six years ago ; things may have progressed since that time. There 
 was then only one ancient font in the island, and that not in use. The old altar-slahs may 
 still he seen forming part of the pavement in Mont Orgueil Castle. 
 
 + Second Homily “of the Place and Time of Prayer.” 
 
 t Canon 81. 
 
30 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 similar material in our halls ; they w6uld be more durable than wood, &c. 
 &c. ; but we can hardly doubt that it was the intention of the Eeformers, 
 and the meaning of the Canon, that in our Lord’s Tables we should return 
 to the primitive material: which, if symbolism should lead us to prefer 
 one material to another, has these two points of superiority over stone, 
 not only that the Passover-table in the upper room at Jerusalem was 
 probably of wood ; but also that, while stone only reminds us of the altar 
 upon which slain beasts — the types—were sacrificed, wood reminds us of 
 the cross upon which the Lamb Himself— the great antetype — offered up 
 himself; of that wood, upon which that body was broken, and that blood 
 shed, with which at this table he spiritually feeds his faithful people. 
 
 For the Lord’s Table then, we come to the conclusion that we reject the 
 mediseval material, and that we will make it a table of wood, of a size 
 proportioned to the church in which it is to he placed ; in a large church 
 it should be large enough not to be overlooked, for it is a symbol of a 
 great mystery of our religion ; in a small church it should not be so large 
 as to appear to overfill the eastern end. In style it is to be a Gothic table, 
 and in sumptuousness it is to be such as becometh that table at which 
 so heavenly a feast is given. As to its form, we are, perhaps, not left 
 entirely at liberty to adopt that which we might think most picturesque : 
 Collier (folio vol. 2, p. 304), tells us — “ Bishop Kidley, as far as it appears, 
 complied with the order (to take away altars and set up tables in their 
 room), without any reluctancy ; and afterwards, when there happened a 
 contest about the form of the Lord’s board, that is, whether it was to be 
 made upon the resemblance of an altar, or like a table, he declared for the 
 latter figure, and gave a precedent of it in his own cathedral of St. Paul’s, 
 where he ordered the wall standing on the back side of the altar to be 
 broken down;” this was in 1550. Again, the advertisements of Queen 
 Elizabeth, in 1564, order “that the parish provide a decent table, standing 
 on a frame, for the Communion Table.” The Canon of 1603, by which we 
 are to guide ourselves, only alludes to the tables which already exist, and 
 orders that they shall be kept in repair, without saying anything about 
 new tables, unless we are to imply that all new tables were to resemble 
 the old ones. If, then, our holy tables are to stand upon a “ frame” or 
 upon four legs, then we say cover such a table entirely with its cloth, for 
 the blank space which a partial covering would leave would be eminently 
 ugly; and if the table is always to be entirely covered during divine 
 service, we say make it of durable and excellent material, but let it be 
 plain and simple, for it is useless to expend ornament upon what is always 
 to be concealed. 
 
 But, if we may assume that the extreme scrupulousness which was then 
 very necessary, is so no longer, and that we are left a greater latitude, 
 subject to the decision of the ordinary if any question arise; then, so long 
 as we keep it a table, we should be at liberty to make the table of any shape 
 which may seem to us most suitable for convenience or beauty; and those 
 who prefer to make the altar-cloth of scantier dimensions, so as to exhibit 
 part of the table, are at liberty to do so, and to put a solid front to the 
 table, and to ornament it with panel- work or carving. 
 
WOOD-WORK. 
 
 31 
 
 The objection which would once have existed to this, on the ground 
 that such a table was altar-wise,* has perhaps lost much or all of its 
 force now. We have been three hundred years without any altars of 
 this shape; and the shape of the altars which were destroyed in 1550 is 
 as much a matter of antiquarian research, as the form of those which 
 Constantine put into his churches, or the persecuted Romans used in the 
 Catacombs ; and it happens that, of the altars which escaped destruction, 
 the majority consist of a slab, either laid on the sill of a window, or 
 supported on brackets against the wall. We venture to indicate, then, 
 to those who desire to make their table of this form, that authorities 
 for its ornamentation may be found in the high tombs, wliich remain 
 abundantly in our churches ; f or in the seats, which look like low tables, 
 represented in illuminated MSS. and other mediaeval works ; — e.y., in 
 those about to be mentioned in discussing the question of altar-chairs. 
 
 Sltar-Cjiitir. 
 
 In primitive times, when there were no parish churches, but every church 
 was a cathedral, the bishop sat enthroned in the middle of the eastern 
 apse, facing the people, with his presbyters in a semicircle on either hand, 
 and the deacons standing before them. In parish churches, it would 
 appear, from the frequency of the occurrence of sedilia, that the clergy, 
 the priest, and deacon and subdeacon, sat on the south side near the altar. 
 But there are altar-chairs of very early date ; some say that the altar- 
 chair is provided for the bishop, as chief pastor of the church, and is not 
 to be occupied by any one else ; and the time may perhaps come when 
 the increased number of chief pastors might make it a pleasing custom, 
 thus to have a seat of honour for him who might be expected to come fre- 
 quently and unexpectedly, as his occupations would permit, to encourage 
 the scattered portions of his flock with his presence, and instruct and 
 strengthen them with his exhortations. But, at present, such an empty 
 chair would rather be a painful memorial of the infrequency with which 
 circumstances permit such opportunities of edification and intercourse 
 between bishops and people. 
 
 But there are indications that such chairs were anciently used by the 
 consecrating minister ; and the traditionary practice is to place them on the 
 north side of the altar. There seems, therefore, to be no valid objection 
 to the present very usual custom, where there are more clergy than one 
 to a church, of placing a chair for the use of the nonpreacher on the north 
 side of the altar, or one on each side, so that each may retain his OAvn 
 side of the table. As to the position of these chairs, whether they 
 should face westward or towards the communion table, appears of little 
 consequence ; the more usual fashion of placing them to face westwards 
 
 * The legal definition of an altar is that it he of stone, and attached to the wall behind. 
 
 ■t Remembering that the shields upon them must not be emblazoned with armorial 
 bearings when adapted to a Lord’s Table: they might be blazoned with the very usual 
 symbols of the Lord’s passion. 
 
32 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 has this argument for it, that it was the primitive custom for the clergy 
 to sit thus ; the other fashion has the authority of the sedilia in its favour. 
 
 Where sedilia exist in a convenient position, it would be difficult to 
 give a good reason why they should not be used, except, perhaps, that 
 they are are apt to be particularly cold and uncomfortable — an incon- 
 venience which can be overcome by placing a board and a cushion on the 
 seat, and lining the niche with hangings. From the frequency with which 
 niches are represented in paintings as thus furnished with hangings, there 
 can be little doubt that sedilia were frequently so furnished ; though, in 
 other cases— for instance, in the desecrated chapel of Little Coggeshall, 
 Essex — the backs of the sedilia have been painted, and, therefore, most 
 probably not made comfortable with hangings. In some cases the 
 sedilia are formed by carrying down the sill of the easternmost chancel 
 window on the south side: in many of these cases it is probable that this 
 is rather the place for the priest’s seat than the seat itself; and that 
 it was furnished with a wooden back and cushion, hangings, and probably 
 a tester overhead, after the usual fashion of chairs of estate. 
 
 But to return to the altar-chair. Should it be simple and humble, as 
 becomes the character of the parish priest ? or stately and handsome, as 
 befits his office? Perhaps, as he is there engaged in his office, his seat 
 should partake of the latter, rather than of the former character. And a 
 glance at modern altar-chairs will satisfy us that this is the view gene- 
 rally taken in modern times. 
 
 But in many instances very poor models have been taken for imitation ; 
 or some ricketty high-backed chair from a cottage, has been promoted to 
 this use because it was ancient-looking. Probably very few models of 
 the best period of Gothic art exist; but the illuminated MSS., and 
 other similar sources, furnish abundant authorities to the designer. In 
 looking through them, we shall pass all the common domestic chairs, and 
 select two classes for consideration. The first is that of carved chairs ; 
 and the next is that in which the fabric of the chair is hidden by the 
 hangings and cushions with w’hich it is furnished, and in which it is 
 tolerably clear that the frame -work of the chair is not ornamentally 
 carved. 
 
 Of the first kind, the most gorgeous examples will be found on the 
 great seals of our monarchs. For instance, on that of Henry III. the 
 king is seated upon a throne, whose front is arcaded in two rows of 
 panelling, with rampant lions at the angles. A cushion is laid upon the 
 seat ; and at the back is a dossal of carved tabernacle- work, divided into 
 three compartments, by standards which bear balls and other ornaments. 
 The centre compartment is filled in with two arcades ; and in the side 
 compartments, which slope down towards the extremities, the lower 
 arcade of the centre compartment is continued, and the triangular space 
 over it is filled with a trefoil ; and the whole upper beam of the back is 
 ornamented with a cresting. The king’s feet rest on two lions couchant, 
 by way of footstool. In the seals of Edward I. and Edward II. we 
 have the same general outline of chair, with some differences in the 
 minor details of the ornament. In the seal of Edward III. and 
 
WOOD-WORK. 33 
 
 Richard II. the king is seated in a niche, which is canopied and pinnacled 
 in the usual style of niches in architectural work. 
 
 Here, then, are two types — one of a seat with arcaded front and back ; 
 the other of a canopied niche’^ — which are capable of an indefinite variety 
 of treatment, and of any degree of sumptuousness. The coronation chair 
 in Westminster Abbey is of this period, and is a valuable instance of 
 the former style of treatment. There are also represented in illumina- 
 tions many other varieties of chairs, in which regal and episcopal per- 
 sonages are seated, which might be taken as authorities for simjfier altar- 
 seats. Frequently they appear to be merely a stool of wood — whether 
 solid, or formed of several pieces, of course does not appear — with a little 
 panelling on the sides, and a cushion laid on the top. Another chair, 
 frequently met with in these illuminations has the front of two semi- 
 circles, the upper one of which holds the cushion, the lower forms the 
 legs. Sometimes this chair has a high back, as in the Royal MS.T5 D. 
 III. f. 268 ; and sometimes the back has a hanging thrown over it, and 
 another over the seat, under the cushion, and hanging down in front, — as 
 in the representation of Parliament assembled for the deposition of 
 Richard II., in the Harleian MS. 1319 (which is engraved in the Pictorial 
 History of England, Vol. I. p. 799). 
 
 The other class of seats, which we very commonly find as chairs of 
 state, have the seat and the back entirely enveloped in drapery, and a 
 tester overhead, — the whole in the usual style of magnificence, with 
 embroidered tapestry, or cloth of gold, and rich fringes. Of course any- 
 thing of this kind would be suitable only in a church in which rich colour 
 and hangings were used throughout. Chairs of this kind are to be found 
 constantly in fourteenth-century MSS., as chairs of state. For in- 
 stance, in the fine copy of Froissart, Harleian, 4379, at f. 135, is one of 
 these chairs, which has the dossal and tester of blue, powdered with gold 
 fleurs-de-lis, the under side of the tester lined with a cloth of crimson 
 embroidered with a flowing foliage pattern- Often the tester and the 
 drapery of the seat are fringed. A chair of the same shape, with elbows, 
 back, and tester, all of carved wood, without any hangings, is repre- 
 sented, together with a curious reading-table and lettern, in the Royal 
 MS. 1 5 D. III. (engraved in the Pictorial History of England, Vol. I. 
 p. 864.) 
 
 It is not desirable, perhaps, that the gorgeous state chairs which fur- 
 nished the presence-chambers of the royal Edwards, should be provided for 
 parish priests; though, doubtless, seats not much inferior were to be 
 found anciently in the centre of the dais of every baron’s and knight’s 
 hall: but we have gone somewhat fully into the subject, in the en- 
 deavour to point out to the parson or his churchwardens where they 
 may find better models for chairs, of any degree of simplicity or sump- 
 tuousness, than in the poor Tudor and Jacobean “ Gothic chairs ” of 
 Wardour-street, or the waifs and strays of the old cottages and farm- 
 houses in their neighbourhoods. 
 
 * The stone sedilia are, in fact, usually niches of this kind. 
 F 
 
34 
 
 CHUKCH FURNITUEE AND DECORATION. 
 
 For the benefit, however, of those of our readers who prefer the usual 
 high-backed chair, we here give a representation of a tolerably good 
 example of the class, and which we copy from the catalogue of Mr. Frank 
 Smith. 
 
 In the Eoman Basilica the sanctuary was divided from the chancel 
 by the triumphal arch ; and in the Greek Church by a solid screen with a 
 narrow door, which was closed by a curtain until after the consecration of 
 the elements ; but in our churches the sanctuary does not appear to have 
 been screened off* from the chancel until it was ordered to be so by Arch- 
 bishop Laud. 
 
 It is, however, the almost universal custom now in our churches, being 
 intended probably as a substitute for the chancel-screen ; and it forms a 
 convenient position for the communicants at the time of the reception of 
 the Holy Communion. For this reason the upper rail must be massive 
 and smooth, not carved or crested at top, and it must not be higher than 
 about two feet and a half above the step upon which the communicants 
 kneel. The space beneath should not be too closely filled in, which will 
 perhaps be the consequence of copying the upper tracery of a perpen- 
 dicular rood-screen, as is now sometimes done ; a screen of lighter cha- 
 racter, or an adaptation of pierced panel-work w^ould probably be much 
 
WOOD -WORK. 
 
 35 
 
 more suitable for the purpose ; a light screen-work of wrought metal might 
 be introduced with still better effect in such a position, where strength and 
 lightness and elegance are to be combined. We introduce an example of 
 one executed in brass, by Messrs. Brawn and Thomason. 
 
 Cliirattl-imws. 
 
 We have already seen that in all ancient churches there was one portion 
 eastward of the nave screened off from the rest of the church, and there- 
 fore called the chancel. In our ordinary mediaeval parish churches the 
 chancel was a separate building, and it was only necessary to place a 
 screen across its western end between the chancel and the nave. In the 
 cases where there were aisles to the chancel as well as to the nave, 
 bringing the area of the church nearer to the basilica-type, there the 
 choir was surrounded, as in the basilica-church, with screens on the north 
 and south as well as on the west. 
 
 Where there were chantry-chapels — as there frequently were, at the 
 east ends of the aisles ; against the east walls of the transepts, where 
 there were transepts ; and in other positions — these chapels were also 
 inclosed by pierced screens, of wood or metal, from the rest of the 
 church. 
 
 Over the western chancel- screen was usually placed a representation of 
 the Kood, ^. e. the Crucifix, with the attendant figures of SS. Mary and 
 John ; this was sometimes a painting — more frequently the figures were 
 detached carvings in wood. Sometimes a representation of our Lord in 
 glory (technically called “a Majesty ”) was placed in this position: and it 
 is probable that paintings or carvings were sometimes attached to the 
 screens of the chapels, representing scenes from the Histories of the 
 saints to whom they were dedicated. 
 
 At the Reformation, these chantry chapels, and all the superstitions 
 connected with them, were swept away; the altars and screens were 
 removed, and the chapels thrown into the area of the church.* The 
 Rood was taken down from the chancel-screen (to which it had given the 
 name of the Rood-screen) ; but since it was in conformity with primitive 
 usage and sound doctrine that a portion of the church should be specially 
 reserved for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, and for the use of 
 the choir, therefore the Reformers left the chancel-screens standing, and 
 
 * There are still a few examples left, both of chantry altars which were overlooked (for 
 instances see Glossary of Architecture), and of the screens which inclosed the chantry 
 chapels ; e. g. at Little Horkesley, Essex ; All Saints, Sudbury, &c. &c. 
 
36 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 directed, in the Rubric at the beginning of the order for Daily Prayer, that 
 “ the chancels shall continue as they have done in times past.” 
 
 If the practice of the Reformers in this respect needs any defence, we 
 shall not presume to take it upon ourselves, but will give it in the words 
 of Bishop Beveridge, from his sermon on the reopening of the Church of 
 St. Peter, Cornhill, after its destruction in the Fire of London, “The 
 Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper being the highest mystery in all our 
 religion, as representing the death of the Son of God to us, hence that 
 place where this Sacrament is administered was always made and reputed 
 the highest place in the church ; and, therefore, also, it was wont to be 
 separated from the rest of the church by a screen or partition of network, 
 in Latin Cancelli, and that so generally that from thence the place itself is 
 called the Chancel. That this was anciently observed in the building of 
 all considerable churches within a few centuries of the Apostles themselves, 
 even in the days of Constantine the Great, as well as in all ages since, I 
 could easily demonstrate from the records of those times. But, having 
 waived antiquity hitherto, I am loth to trouble you with it now ; but 1 
 mention it at present only because some, perhaps, may wonder why this 
 should be observed in our church rather than in all the other churches 
 which have lately been built in this city, whereas they should rather 
 wonder why it was not observed in all others as well as this.* For, besides 
 our obligations to conform as much as may be to the practice of the 
 Universal Church, and to avoid all novelty and singularity in all things 
 relating to the worship of God; it cannot easily be imagined that the 
 Catholic Church, in all ages and places, for thirteen or fourteen hundred 
 years (now fifteen or sixteen hundred years) together, should observe such 
 a custom as this, except there were grave reasons for it. What they were 
 it is not necessary for us to inquire now. It may be sufficient to observe 
 at present that the chancel in our Christian churches was always looked 
 upon as answerable to the Holy of Holies in the Temple, which you know 
 was separated from the Sanctuary or body of the Temple by the command 
 of God himself.” 
 
 The increasing necessities of some of our populous parishes have led 
 to the subsequent taking down of some of these chancel- screens, in order 
 to throw open as much space as possible for the use of the worshippers. 
 In those days, when the erection of a new church was an unheard-of 
 prodigy, and a hopeless impossibility, it was perhaps the only prac- 
 ticable course : but we presume there are few who do not now see that 
 the proper course would have been to build new churches. Our large 
 churches, when thus filled, are too large for any preacher of ordinary 
 lungs, in whatever position the pulpit be placed, to make himself audible 
 to those in the corners and behind the piers ; and it is the conscientious 
 efibrt to make themselves audible under such circumstances, which invalids 
 so many of our clergy. We presume, then, that among those who are 
 conversant with the facts, there will be few who would not desire to 
 
 * It was also observed in the church of All-Hallows the Great, Thames-street. See a 
 Paper on Church Arrangement, by W. Hey Dykes, Esq., in the Yorkshire Architectural 
 Society's Transactions for 1862 , to which Ave are indebted for this extract, and for other hints. 
 
WOOD -WORK. 
 
 37 
 
 see the congregation, even as a matter of convenience only, again confined 
 to the nave, the space within which the pulpit ministrations of one man 
 may be profitable to them without being injurious to himself, and to see 
 the rest drafted off to a new church. 
 
 We thus, it is true, leave the chancel-aisles empty, and some may say 
 useless; but better useless than detrimental. But they are not really use- 
 less ; for they add often to the beauty of the church, and beauty is utility. 
 They will afford space, too, for monuments : and when the churches are 
 left open all day, and pious books are provided for pious readers, as in the 
 days of the Reformers, here will be the position in which the letterns may 
 most conveniently be placed. 
 
 Sometimes the chancel-screen had a loft or narrow gallery over it, from 
 which at certain times the Gospel was read, and other things declared to 
 the people who filled the nave. We are not able to quote any authority 
 for it, but we would suggest whether this loft was not sometimes occu- 
 pied by a band of minstrels, as was the gallery in the corresponding posi- 
 tion in a hall. The organ -galleries in our cathedrals are really the old 
 rood-lofts. 
 
 We, however, do not require any loft over the chancel- screen ; and we 
 venture to think that its absence is rather advantageous to the interior 
 effect, especially of a small church. The open tracery of a screen forms 
 no obstruction to the perspective of a church ; it forms a rest, upon which 
 the eye dwells for a moment, and then passes on, the better enabled to 
 measure the perspective beyond ; but a gallery forms rather an obstruc- 
 tion, which arrests the eye, and blocks out everything beyond itself. 
 
 The screens were sometimes formed of stone, as in most of our cathe- 
 drals. A very singular instance exists at Stebbing in Essex, where the 
 chancel arch is filled by three sub-arches of coeval date (fourteenth cen- 
 tury), with a little tracery in their heads, which form a screen almost 
 unique in character,* and pleasing in effect ; the idea is worth the notice 
 of our architects. More usually the chancel screens are of wood. Timber 
 screens of early date are rare, but there are remaining very beautiful and 
 simple examples, some of the best of which are engraved in the plates to 
 the Glossary of Architecture, and form beautiful models for the assistance 
 of the modern designer. Screens of the fifteenth century are very com- 
 mon, and the restorer will probably find abundant examples existing in 
 his own neighbourhood. 
 
 We would only suggest that as the earlier screens are of more elegant 
 character than the later ones, and lighter, and therefore perhaps more 
 suitable for modern use, it may be advisable not to put a screen of Per- 
 pendicular character into a church of earlier date ; indeed in designing a 
 Perpendicular screen for a modern church, we should be disposed to make 
 the tracery of lighter character than that in the existing models of the 
 style. 
 
 Although of the few instances of Early English or Decorative chancel- 
 
 * There is a rude arrangement of the kind in one or two small Norman churches in 
 Cambridgeshire and elsewhere. 
 
38 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 screens, none has retained its colouring in a sufficiently perfect con- 
 dition to furnish us with authorities, yet they do contain sufficient in- 
 dications that they were always decorated in this manner : and of the 
 Perpendicular screens many retain their colouring in a very entire 
 condition. They appear to have been always very highly decorated : the 
 most usual decoration of the lower panels, is a series of apostles or saints 
 painted upon coloured grounds : the mouldings of the tracery were also 
 painted in various colours ; and in many cases further enriched with pow- 
 derings of minute ornaments in gold or colour; gold ornaments (flowers, 
 stars, &c.) are common on red, blue, and green grounds ; black and white, 
 upon blue and red. Circular beads of tracery and shafts of columns, are 
 frequently painted with a spiral banding of different colours, green and 
 white, or red and black, &c., and the various members of the moulding are 
 painted, white, green, vermillion, blue, &c., with great taste, and a total 
 absence of gaudiness of effect ; carved spandrils, faces of buttresses, and 
 the cresting at the top of the screen, are generally gilt. 
 
 Ctjann'l-ltalls. 
 
 We are seeking to adapt every part of the church to the requirements 
 of our Reformed Liturgy. We must take, as the clue to guide us in 
 what we feel to be a somewhat difficult part of our task, that authorita- 
 tive declaration, “ and the chancels shall remain as they have done in 
 times past.” But, in furnishing a new church, are we to copy the 
 arrangement of the chancels of times past? This rubric at least autho- 
 rises us to do so, if we shall And it convenient. Is it convenient ? 
 
 And, flrst, what use are we going to make of that distinct eastern 
 part of the church which we call the chancel? We have already, in 
 discussing the subject of the chancel-screens, arrived at the conclusion 
 that it will be convenient, in the great majority of our chancels at least, 
 to keep the congregation in the nave and its aisles, though, where 
 space is absolutely required, of course we would fill every corner of the 
 church with worshippers. 
 
 And we are free to confess, that, besides the convenience to the 
 preacher, or reader, and hearers, we should be influenced by the con- 
 sideration, which we have already quoted from Bishop Beveridge, that, 
 “ as the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the highest mystery in all 
 our religion, as representing the Son of God to us — and hence that place 
 where this sacrament is administered has always been made and re- 
 puted the highest place in the church — therefore, also, it was wont to 
 be,” and should continue to be, “ separated from the rest of the church,” 
 and reserved especially, where other requirements will allow, for the 
 celebration of that sacrament. 
 
 We would not, therefore, seat it, like the rest of the church, for the 
 reception, in common with the nave, of a portion of the ordinary congre- 
 gation. 
 
 If this were the only point which entered into the consideration, we 
 
WOOD-WORK. 
 
 39 
 
 should be inclined to say — seat it with benches, facing eastward, for the 
 reception of the communicants at the time of the celebration of the Holy 
 Communion ; only let the benches be of richer character than those in the 
 nave ; for, since “ this was always made and reputed the highest place in 
 the church,” propriety demands that its furniture and decoration through- 
 out should be of richer character than that of the remainder of the church. 
 
 But we know that the choir — that part of the congregation specially 
 trained to render the musical part of the service, the service of praise — was 
 anciently seated in the chancel ; and we must, therefore, consider the sub- 
 ject in this additional light; for — again to quote Bishop Beveridge — 
 “ besides our obligations to conform as much as may be to the practice of the 
 Universal Church, and to avoid all novelty and singularity in all things 
 relating to the worship of God, it cannot easily be imagined that the 
 Catholic Church, in all ages and places, for thirteen or fourteen hundred 
 years (now fifteen or sixteen hundred) together, should observe such a 
 custom as this, except there were grave reasons for it.” 
 
 The question which arises is, do we require any such provision for 
 choirs in our parish churches, in our Reformed Church ? 
 
 Let us turn to our Prayer-books : and we find in the form for morning 
 and evening prayer three distinct kinds of worship combined ; the service 
 of prayer in the prayers and litany — the service of preaching in the les- 
 sons and sermon — and the service of praise in the canticles and psalms ; 
 for it is manifest enough that the psalms were not intended to be read as a 
 portion of the didactic service — they were the sacrifice of praise ofiered 
 daily by the Levites in the Temple of Jehovah, at Jerusalem; and they 
 were bequeathed by the Jewish church, through the Jewish apostles, to 
 the Christian Church ; and have been continually used in the Christian 
 Church ever since, as divine songs which the Ploly Spirit inspired the 
 psalmists to write, in order that they might be sung to the praise of God 
 in the solemn assemblies of his people. 
 
 Now, at present, we are not a musical people. A few centuries back we 
 were as musical as the Germans are now; then every man in a miscel- 
 laneous company could take his part in a madrigal; and the viol circu- 
 lated from hand to hand round a festive company ; and then, perhaps, 
 such congregational psalmody was heard in our churches as may be heard 
 now in many of the German churches, where, instead of the lamentable 
 squeaking of a score school children, a whole congregation of not untrained 
 barytone voices will pour forth one of Martin Luther’s noble hymns, 
 with a volume of the sound of human praise, which is worth the 
 thunder of all the organs in Europe. 
 
 But we are not now a musical people ; and therefore, perhaps, it is that 
 the service of praise has fallen into both practical and theoretical neglect 
 amongst us ; so that we have come to look upon psalmody, rather as an 
 agreeable and edifying relief to the attention, introduced as a break in the 
 midst of public worship, than as an important part of public worship— 
 the service of praise to God, the dedication to his worship of the most 
 spiritual and heavenly of human arts, that with which saints and angels 
 are represented as praising God for ever upon their golden harps. 
 
40 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 There are, however, abundant indications that we are about once more, 
 in another generation or two, to become a musical people ; and we must 
 remember that, in furnishing a church, we are not doing it for the needs 
 of to-day or of this generation, but for the needs of the Church of England 
 for as many generations to come as our oaken timbers will last. The 
 question then becomes, not do we at this moment require, but is it 
 likely that provision will hereafter be required, for a body of persons 
 trained to lead the congregation in the ordinary service of praise, and to 
 offer occasionally that more elaborate devotion of the art of music to 
 God’s worship, for which a time is marked out in our ritual, after the 
 third’collect. Or rather the question is, is it right that there should be 
 a choir ; for if so, however unlikely it might seem at the present moment 
 that it would be accomplished, it would be our duty to make such pro- 
 vision as we are called upon to make for it, and to trust in God that 
 whatever practice is right and laudable towards bim in the public worship 
 of his church, or profitable to his people, he will guide his people into, 
 in his good time. 
 
 Believing, then, that it is right, and that it is the mind of the Eeformed 
 Church of England, that this service of praise should be duly performed ; 
 and knowing that the persons who were trained to lead the congregation 
 in the congregational parts of it, and to perform the higher parts, were 
 anciently and universally seated in the chancel stalls and sub-stalls ; and 
 holding with all our early reformers, as Bishop Beveridge expresses it, 
 that “ there is an obligation upon us to conform as much as may be to 
 the practice of the Universal Church, and to avoid all novelty and singu- 
 larity in all things relating to the worship of God — therefore we come to 
 the conclusion that not only are existing chancels “to remain as they 
 have done in times past,” but that also the chancels of new churches are 
 to be furnished in like manner. The village choir, such as it is, is usually 
 accommodated with a distinct seat ; indeed, it is found practically indis- 
 pensable : we are turning them out of their galleries, in the course of our 
 restorations, and there appears no good reason why they should not 
 be restored to their ancient accustomed place in the chancel : — perhaps the 
 change may lead them to feel that they are not singing for the amusement 
 of the congregation, but to the praise of God ; and so induce them not 
 only to sing better, but also to behave more reverently than the members 
 of village choirs— and town choirs, too — are in the habit of doing. 
 
 We proceed to notice, then, briefly, how the chancels were anciently 
 seated. A row of stalls extends down each side of the chancel, against 
 the north and south walls, or screens ; and returns along the east face of 
 the chancel-screen, as far as the doors of that screen. These stalls are 
 usually placed (as the nave seats are) upon a slightly-raised platform, 
 with a front, supporting a book-desk, before them. These stalls, as all our 
 readers will remember, are separate seats, provided with elbows, and in 
 cathedral choirs have usually very elaborate canopies over them. Before, 
 and a little below, the stalls, is frequently another seat, forming the subsellas, 
 or sometimes several rows of subsellas. 
 
 It is not essential, we presume, that the stalls should be separate seats ; 
 
WOOD -WORK. 
 
 4J 
 
 but they need not be so elaborate as many of the existing examples are, 
 and may therefore be placed in a village chancel without any very great 
 cost ; and they do form a comfortable and becoming furniture. There is 
 a set of very simple, but very excellent stalls in Basted Church, Kent, 
 which might be taken as a good model.* 
 
 ^ SMiiing-itsIt. 
 
 “ And likewise that a convenient seat be made for the minister to read 
 service in,” is all that the Canons tell us on the subject of the reading- 
 desk, to which we must add the Rubric at the beginning of the Order for 
 Morning Prayer : “ The Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the 
 accustomed place of the church, chapel, or chancel, except it shall be 
 otherwise determined by the ordinary of the place.” 
 
 It would be work of supererogation to go through the arguments which 
 have been so often urged as to where the reading-desk should be placed, 
 and how it should face. We content ourselves with merely summing up 
 the conclusions at which we arrive, that the reading-desk should be placed 
 just outside the chancel-screen, facing north or south. 
 
 Now that we are turning the large square pews out of our churches, it 
 would not be very consistent to retain a great square pew for the Reader, 
 as if he alone wished to be comfortable and exclusive ; and while we are 
 trying to persuade people to kneel when they pray to God (marvellous, 
 that any Christian should need more than a moment’s thought to persuade 
 him to do so), it will be advisable that the priest should set the example 
 in a somewhat conspicuous, at least in an unmistakeable, manner. For 
 these reasons a simple kind of desk or lettern, with a front and sides pierced 
 in panel-work, the desk not too high, will be the most suitable. 
 
 And the desk must be placed at a little elevation, on a platform, not 
 only for the convenience of hearing, but because the Reader is the leader 
 of the prayers of the congregation ; and common sense dictates that the 
 CJioragus should occupy a raised Tliymde. 
 
 Mim, 
 
 Or Lecturji, is the old-fashioned name for a book desk, such as was 
 formerly a very usual piece of furniture, both in houses and churches ; and 
 which may still be found commonly enough in the rooms of university 
 men, and the libraries of the studious, who have occasion to refer to pon- 
 derous tomes. 
 
 In churches, in the middle ages, similar desks were placed to hold the 
 various service books which were required in different parts of the church ; 
 and every one will remember the use which was made of them by our 
 Reformers to hold the Bible and other godly books, that the people might 
 
 * We believe that they are taken from designs in the Insirumenta Ecclesiastica, but 
 have not the work to refer to at the moment. 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION, 
 
 resort to them, and learn the truths of their religion. Many of these old 
 letterns still exist in our churches, with the old black-letter folios still 
 chained to them, and conjure up picturesque scenes, such as that which a 
 popular engraving has familiarised to many of our readers, of some good 
 old man or scholarly youth reading the holy lessons to a group of listening 
 people. 
 
 It may perhaps some day become again the fashion, as it was for many 
 years after the Reformation, for our churches to be left open at certain 
 times, besides those when it is opened for divine service, in order that those 
 who choose may have a place to go to for meditation and prayer. Those 
 who know the crowded condition of the dwellings of the poor, both in town 
 and country, know well that retirement for private devotion is impossible 
 for them ; and how many are there in all classes of life whose domestic 
 circumstances would render such opportunities valuable ; indeed, who is 
 there in whom the quiet of an empty church, and its solemn and holy 
 associations, do not produce a tone of mind different from that which his 
 own bedchamber can produce? 
 
 There is not, that we are aware, any suspicion of error or superstition 
 hanging about such a practice ; it has never been forbidden, or, that we 
 know, discouraged ; it simply fell into disuse when religion waxed cold in 
 the land, and to do anything beyond going to church once on a Sunday 
 was considered mere ignorant fanaticism, and to savour of unorthodoxy. 
 And we may look for the time when the revival of spiritual religion which 
 this century has witnessed will have brought back this good old custom of 
 our Reformed forefathers. When this time arrives, we shall then need 
 again great letterns, upon which to place, as of old, a series of approved 
 works, for the use of those who thus resort to them. 
 
 But at present we are concerned chiefly with the lettern upon which 
 is placed the Bible from which the lessons are read, the Bible Lettern 
 we may call it; it is still used in all our cathedrals, and in many other 
 churches. Perhaps it was not only for the convenience of hearing, that 
 the Bible lettern is thus placed in the midst of the people, but also, per- 
 haps, that the lessons from God’s word should be read from a different 
 place from that from which the addresses of the minster to the congrega- 
 tion are delivered, and from which he leads the prayers of the congrega- 
 tion : there is assuredly something very signiflcant and beautiful, and 
 very characteristic of the high estimation in which our Church holds the 
 Bible, in thus placing the word of God conspicuously, enthroned as it 
 were, in the midst of the church. 
 
 Of letterns for this purpose, a sufllcient number of beautiful ancient 
 examples remain ; sometimes they were of marble, or of brass, or of iron, 
 or more commonly of wood. In cathedrals and wealthy churches, they 
 are frequently of brass, and then very generally in the shape of an eagle, 
 whose outspread wings form the desk. The bird which soars nearest to 
 heaven, and which is appropriated as the symbol of St. John the Evan- 
 gelist because of the sublimity of his writings, and because he was caught 
 up to heaven in holy vision, is thus represented as it were bringing down 
 the heavenly volume from above. At Durham, the brass lettern repre- 
 
WOOD-WORK. 
 
 43 
 
 sented a pelican in her piety. A dove, too, the emblem of the Spirit who 
 inspired the writers of Scripture, is found bearing the Holy Book on her 
 wings. 
 
 More usually the lettern is a desk of wood, sometimes double, some- 
 times with four desks, more commonly with only one; a form more suit- 
 able for the purpose for which we require it. Good examples, of various 
 forms, and various degrees 
 of sumptuousness, remain in 
 many of our churches. Seve- 
 ral are engraved in the Oxford 
 Glossary of Architecture ; and 
 other authorities and aids for 
 modern design may be found 
 in the illuminated MSS. ; — for 
 instance, one of the simplest 
 possible form in the MS. of 
 the fourteenth century in the 
 British Museum, marked 
 Royal, 15 D. III., at folio 271 ; 
 it is simply two upright posts 
 fixed in a block at the base, 
 tied by a transverse bar at half 
 their height, and supporting a 
 plain sloping desk. Another, 
 in the Harleian MS. 16,997, 
 at f. 21, is like a desk with a 
 crested ridge, and pinnacled 
 buttresses at the ends. Another 
 beautiful one, at f. 145 of the 
 same MS., has a base of eight 
 gabled sides, from which rises 
 a pillar, which supports the 
 sloping desk. Working draw- 
 ings of two rather nice exam- 
 ples are given in the second 
 series of the Instrumenta Ec- 
 clesiastical part 6. The faults 
 especially to be avoided are 
 making the base too small, and the whole thing too slight, so that when 
 a large heavy book is laid upon the desk it is rickety and top-heavy ; 
 and sloping the book-board too much, so that at the top of the page the 
 reader has to read at the ceiling, at the bottom of the page at the floor — 
 neither of them very comfortable or advantageous positions. 
 
 In cathedral and collegiate churches, the Bible lettern is always in the 
 middle of the choir ; in parish churches its position must be determined 
 by utility. The Rubric orders that the reader shall so stand, and so turn 
 himself, that he may be the best heard by all the congregation : the let- 
 tern, then, must be placed where the reader can be best heard. In large 
 
44 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 churches this will probably he in the middle alley, somewhere about oppo- 
 site the easternmost pier of the nave ; in a small church, in the middle 
 alley quite at the east end of the nave. In a large church it will be 
 necessary for the reader, and therefore the lettern, to be at some ele- 
 vation. 
 
 We may mention that there is a very fine ancient eagle-lettern of brass 
 in St. Nicholas Church, Lynn, copies of which, cast in brass, are pro- 
 curable ; and we present a representation of a brass lettern of very excel- 
 lent design, which is also to be had ready manufactured. 
 
 ®jit f iilfiit. 
 
 The use of an elevated stage for the convenience of one who addresses 
 a multitude of people, is so ancient, and universal, and indispensable, 
 that without going through the arguments which will readily occur to the 
 reader, or instancing Ezra’s pulpit of wood, and all the later series of 
 instances, we come at once to the conclusion that it must have been 
 always in use in churches. 
 
 Some very ancient ones exist, e. g . : in the mother church of Venice, on 
 the Island of Murano, is one of the ninth or tenth century. We find pulpits 
 which usually appear to be moveable, represented in MSS. of Saxon and 
 of later date ; but we have none remaining in our churches of earlier date 
 than the fourteenth century ; a few both of stone and wood exist of that 
 date, but most of the mediaeval pulpits which remain are of the four- 
 teenth century; and, again, we find many of Jacobean* style, some of 
 which have a correctness of form and richness of effect superior to much 
 work of other kinds of the same period. 
 
 They are usually octagonal in plan, supported on a central pillar, the 
 sides enriched with panelling or niches : they are ascended either by an 
 encircling stair, or by a stair in the thickness of the wall or pier against 
 which they stand. Not infrequently they are surmounted by a flat 
 tester, such as was placed over chairs of state ; or by a pinnacled canopy, 
 which gave it the air of a canopied niche, within which the preacher 
 stood. Their position is almost universally against the south-east pillar 
 of the nave, just without the chancel-screen. A series of beautiful 
 examples has been published by Mr. Dolman, carefully drawn to scale, 
 with details, so as to furnish the restorer with all that he requires. 
 Others have been engraved on a smaller scale in the plates of the Oxford 
 Glossary of Architecture. 
 
 The usual position for the pulpit appears to have been, in a small 
 church, just outside the chancel, either on the north or the south side, 
 indifferently. In churches of larger size it is sometimes, for convenience 
 sake, placed further down the nave, against one of the piers, and facing 
 diagonally across the church. 
 
 ■* The Canons of 1603 order a pulpit to be placed in every church not already provided 
 with one. 
 
WOOD-WOEK. 
 
 45 
 
 The mediaeval Church appears not to have undervalued the ordinance of 
 Preaching, if we may judge from the beauty of their pulpits, for many of 
 them are not only beautiful examples of wood carving, but they were 
 coloured and gilt in a very elaborate and splendid manner. 
 
 Several of those in Dolman’s Series have the original polychrome 
 decoration restored. Mr. Blackburne’s Decorative Painting also contains 
 a very beautiful one from Burlingham St. Edmund, Norfolk. 
 
 fras. 
 
 We have now provided a desk at which the minister shall read the 
 Prayers, and a pulpit from which the preacher may be the better audible ; 
 how are the congregation to be provided for? 
 
 We are not about to enter upon an attack against the modem high 
 pews ; that good work has been already so thoroughly performed, and the 
 pew system has so thoroughly succumbed to the attack, that it would be 
 a work of supererogation. It is true they do still continue in many 
 churches, but with hardly a defender left, and their demolition is only a 
 question of expense. 
 
 There is, however, one argument in favour of the “good old 
 square family pew” which one sometimes hears, and which has so 
 much of truth and good feeling in it, that it deserves some attention. 
 And this argument is, that the person who really desires to worship 
 God, is, in one of these high pews, shut out from much which is cal- 
 culated to distract attention and disturb devotion, from the sight of 
 this person’s fine dress, and that person’s impertinent staring, and the 
 irreverent behaviour of half-a-score more ; that here he can feel alone and 
 worship God in quiet. But we do not go to church to feel alone and 
 worship God in quiet — we ought to do that every day, and more than 
 once a day ; on Sundays and holidays we go to church to feel ourselves one 
 of the flock of Christ’s people, and to worship God in the great congrega- 
 tion; and any arrangement which tends to produce this feeling of quiet 
 loneliness during Common Prayer, ought to be broken down at once. We 
 would beg to suggest that closed eyelids will shut out distracting sights 
 as effectually as half-inch plank. But still you would not feel so quiet and 
 retired, you would not so much enjoy the service. But we then further 
 press two questions : May it not be that in a high pew, concealed from 
 sight, you would kneel, and otherwise behave with a devoutness of out- 
 ward action which would assist your inward devotion, but which you are 
 ashamed to exhibit before the sight of the congregation ? Ought you to 
 be ashamed? Is it a true modesty, which hides its deep feelings ; or is it the 
 wrong shame of appearing to be more devout than your neighbours ? And 
 the second question which we would suggest is this, do you clearly ap- 
 prehend the difference between your own private prayers, and the prayers 
 which you share in as part of Christ’s mystical body. “ Our churches,” 
 says the Homily, already so often quoted, “ are not destitute of promises, 
 forasmuch as our Saviour Christ saith. Where two or three are gathered 
 
46 
 
 CHUKCH FUENITURE AND DECORATION, 
 
 together in my name^ there am I in the midst among them. A great number, 
 therefore, coming to church together in the name of Christ, have there, 
 that is to say in the church, their God and Saviour Christ Jesus present 
 among the congregation of his faithful people, by his grace, by his favour, 
 and godly assistance, according to his most assured and comfortable 
 promises.” 
 
 The tendency of our modern tone of mind is to individual isolation : we 
 do not appreciate sufficiently the real and not mere imaginary oneness 
 with our famil}', our tribe, our nation, our race; above all, that mystical 
 but very real oneness with the faithful. In short, however agreeable to our 
 own feelings the retirement of a high pew may be, it repudiates our mem- 
 bership in Christ’s mystical body, which is the company of all faithful 
 people; it cherishes the feeling of isolation from that body, with which 
 we ought to rejoice and weep, pray and praise, in common; and, for our 
 own sakes, we ought to pull it down, or get out of it.* 
 
 And now, having, in somewhat of a digression, answered, as we hope, 
 the last argument in favour of high pews, we return to our more imme- 
 diate subject. When we have turned all the high pews out of our churches, 
 what is the proper course to pursue ? Is the congregation to sit or stand ? 
 
 In the primitive assemblies of Christians, there can be no doubt that the 
 people sat to hear instruction ; it was the custom of the country so to do. 
 Scholars sat around their master, instead of standing, as they do with us. 
 Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel ; Our Lord was sitting, with other young 
 people, among the doctors in the Temple, at a kind of catechetical lecture, 
 when he astonished them with the wisdom of his answers and of his 
 questions. There were seats in the Jewish synagogues. Peter stood up 
 when he addressed the people, leaving the rest of the assembly seated : on 
 the day of Pentecost they were all sitting. St. James directs that the 
 man with the gold ring and goodly apparel, and the poor man in old 
 raiment, shall both sit ; and further, be it remarked, that the one shall not 
 have a good pew, well lined and cushioned, near the pulpit, and the other 
 be thrust into a free seat in an obscure corner. So that, where it is the 
 custom to sit, as it is now with us, we may provide seats for the congre- 
 gation in church — only, not a good seat for the rich, and an inferior one for 
 the poor. 
 
 But, with the more hardy habits of England in ancient times, it does 
 not appear to have been customary for the whole congregation to sit. 
 Until the fourteenth century there appears to have been no fixed seats — 
 at least in the naves of our churches, except sometimes a stone bench 
 round the walls, and, less frequently, round the piers ; some of the con- 
 gregation sat, some stood. From illuminations in MS., representing in- 
 teriors of churches, we find that part of the congregation sat upon little 
 low stools, or upon cushions placed upon the fioor, or upon the floor 
 
 * The Homily “ of Common Prayer and Sacrament,” says, “although God has promised 
 to hear us when we pray privately, so it be done faithfully and devoutly,” yet by the histo- 
 ries of the Bible it appeareth, that public and common prayer is most available before God, 
 and therefore is much to be lamented it is no better esteemed among us, who profess to be 
 but one body in it. 
 
WOOD-WORK. 
 
 47 
 
 itself.* There is indeed evidence that, in the time of Archbishop Cranmer, 
 it was not a matter of course that the congregation should be all seated ; and 
 the remark in the Homily on the repairing, &c. of churches, that churches 
 ought to be made comfortable, that people may be induced “to tarry 
 there the whole time appointed them,” seems to indicate that it was the 
 custom then in England, as it is now on the Continent in many churches, 
 that only a small portion of the nave was furnished with fixed seats, and 
 that the people were in the habit of coming in for a little time, and going 
 away again; and, in support of this, we may adduce the fact that, in 
 many of our churches, there are a few old benches incorporated amongst 
 the Jacobean or later pewing. 
 
 But fixed benches began to be introduced in our English churches in 
 the middle of the fourteenth century (the benches which remain in many 
 churches are of this date) ; and the fashion rapidly spread, until perhaps 
 the naves of most of our parish churches were, at least partially, furnished 
 with fixed benches. Our cathedral naves still continue unincumbered. 
 
 The usual arrangement of the seats appears to have been, to have a 
 broad alley down the middle of the nave from east to west: if the aisle 
 was broad, it was treated in the same way ; if narrow, the alley was left 
 next the wall, and the piers were included in the block of seats : a broad 
 alley also ran from the south door to the north ; and frequently the seats 
 did not extend west of the line from the south door to the north. These 
 seats were invariably of the kind which we call open benches ; they had no 
 doors, and were certainly unappropriated. 
 
 It is, however, of the fifteenth century, the especial age of wood-work, 
 that the most numerous and the richest examples remain. 
 
 The ends of the benches were sometimes rendered highly ornamental 
 by carving. There are three types of bench ends. 1. The ordinary 
 square end, of the same height as the back of the bench : sometimes this 
 was left quite plain ; sometimes flanked by a couple of little buttresses ; 
 sometimes covered with carved panel work, in which shields of arms, 
 sacred monograms, and other devices, were introduced. 2. We have the 
 end of the bench carried up into an ornamental poppy-head;f some- 
 times really a poppet-head, or carved human head ; more frequently a 
 bunch of foliage, half expanded, the central undeveloped bud standing 
 up, the lateral leaves expanded and curling down with crisp foliage and 
 graceful curve. The conventional fleur-de-lis is a very usual design for 
 the poppy-head. The face of this, and of the succeeding type, is fre- 
 quently enriched with panel carving. The 3rd type has an elbow com- 
 bined with the poppy-head ; the elbow either a plain curve, or frequently 
 
 * Until late in the mediseval period, it was very usual for persons to sit in their houses 
 upon cushions placed upon the floor, or upon the rushes on the floor. Fitzstephen men- 
 tions, as a proof of Thomas h Bechet’s munificence, that he caused his servants to cover the 
 floor of his hall with clean straw or hay every morning in winter, and with green branches 
 of trees in summer, that these guests who could not find room at table might sit on the 
 floor without spoiling their fine clothes: and all our I'eaders will remember the scene in 
 the first part of Henry the Fourth^ in which Hotspur reclines on the rushes — 
 
 “ She bids you 
 
 “ Upon the wanton rushes lay you down,” &c. 
 t Pupa, or puppet, or poppet-head. 
 
48 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 formed into a bunch of foliage, or an animal’s head. In rich examples, 
 figures of bishops, saints, dragons, &c. are sometimes placed upon the 
 elbow. 
 
 Few, we think, will dispute that, artistically speaking, the seats mar 
 the interior eflect of a church : they break up that eflect of vastness and 
 grandeur of area, which the sweep of an unincumbered floor gives to a 
 fine church; they hide the bases of the piers, diminish their apparent 
 height, and, therefore, injure their proportions. 
 
 We have not seen it remarked that the stilted bases of the fifteenth 
 century piers may have been devised partly to remedy this defect, and to 
 bring the ornamental members of the base into sight again. With our 
 present habits it is not probable, even if it were desirable, that we shall 
 ever adopt the fashion of moveable seats ; the propriety of stilting the 
 base in order to raise the piers above the benches, and to give them their 
 fair proportion, is, therefore, worth the attention of our modern architects. 
 
 But the great desideratum is to keep the benches low and unobtru- 
 sive. They are no part of the church ; they are merely a concession to 
 infirmity ; and, therefore, should not be made a prominent part of the fur- 
 niture. With this view, we would rather discourage a double row of tall 
 poppy-heads in the central alley, and would recommend a simple style of 
 pewing, though, of course, good and durable. 
 
 We would also suggest that, in many of our village churches, there 
 is more space than is required for the usual congregation, and that it 
 would add to the beauty of the churoh if as great a space as can be 
 spared of the west end of the nave were left unincumbered. This is 
 the case in some churches — for instance, in the very fine and interesting 
 church of Stoke-by-Nayland, in Suffolk; and the effect is very pleasing. 
 We do there, at least, obtain the full beauty of the proportions which 
 the architect gave to his tall slender piers and arches, and to the gable- 
 wall of his nave. 
 
 We have, then, provided seats, in which the congregation may with 
 convenience listen to a sermon of even “hour-glass” duration. But the 
 congregation in the locus Jiddium is not only to receive instruction — it is 
 to pray also ; and, in the arrangement of the pews, the convenience for 
 kneeling ought to be as studiously provided for, as the convenience for 
 sitting. 
 
 The space between the benches ought to be wide enough for kneeling 
 with comfort ; and the backs ought to be low enough for him who kneels 
 to rest upon with comfort. The average dimensions of the ancient 
 benches are — width of seat, from back to back, 3 ft. 2 in. ; height 
 of standard, 3 ft. 2 in.; width of standard, 1 ft. 6 in.; width of 
 seat, 1 ft.; height of seat, 1 ft. 5 in.; height of back, 2 ft. 10 in.;* 
 and the back usually has a slight inclination backwards, which materially 
 adds to the comfort of the occupant. The minimum widtli between the 
 
 * These dimensions, and several other hints in this part of the subject, have been taken 
 from an excellent paper “on Open Seats,” by the Rev. F. P. Lowe, published in the Lincoln- 
 sliire Architectural Society’s volume for 1852. 
 
WOOD-WORK. 
 
 49 
 
 seats, from back to back, is now fixed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners 
 
 Cushions, placed upon a low, fiat 
 board, are undoubtedly the most com- 
 fortable for kneeling upon; and we 
 would suggest the advisableness of 
 providing every seat with them, both 
 to encourage the practice of kneeling 
 at prayer, and also to insure uniformity 
 in the colour and design of this part 
 of the furniture of the church. A 
 low, flat kneeling cushion will always 
 be found far more convenient and 
 comfortable than a sloping board. 
 
 A great number of very excellent 
 examples of bench-ends exist, and en- 
 gravings of many may be found in the 
 various works which have been pub- 
 lished relating to these subjects. Small 
 woodcuts will be found in the Glossary 
 of Architecture. Working drawings 
 of examples worthy of reproduction 
 are given in Brandon’s Analysis of 
 Gothic Architecture^ and in Collings’s 
 Gothic Ornaments. Two cheap sheets 
 of working drawings of good examples 
 have also been published by Mr. 
 Parker of Oxford. 
 
 The example which we here give is 
 a curious and very fine one, about 
 6 feet high, which, with a pendent of 
 similar size and character, though 
 with diflferent tracery, stands in the 
 chancel of Attenborough Churcli, 
 Notts. 
 
 Bench-end, 
 Attenborough, Notts. 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Cfftile Jfakb. 
 
 HAT is a curious theory of Mr. Kuskin’s which he hints at 
 in the second volume of his Stones of Venice, that virtue 
 and the love of bright colours go together. One might, 
 perhaps, write a curious episode on the subject, showing 
 how all races of mankind, in the healthy childhood and 
 fresh manhood of their race, have exhibited the same love 
 for positive bright colours, and the same skill in their arrange- 
 ment; and we might amuse ourselves, and perhaps our readers, 
 by recalling the mystical meanings which were attributed to the various 
 colours, so anciently, and so universally, that Lord Lindsay conjectures 
 that these very meanings must have been attributed to the colours before 
 the dispersion of the tribes of men from the plains of Shinar. And then we 
 might show how, when a race has become highly civilised, worn and 
 sophisticated in the world’s ways, it has gradually lost this taste, and 
 imbibed instead a fastidious liking for neutral, undecided, and delicate^ 
 tints ; and, instead of seeing with Mr. Buskin any connection between 
 bright colour and virtue, has rather held, with the Englishmen of the last 
 200 years, that gay colours are irreligious vanities, and that religion 
 ought to be clothed in lugubrious black, or at most in jejune purple. 
 
 It is quite certain that certain characters of mind and tones of thought 
 are to be discerned in such indications as these ; and we cannot but think 
 that the tone of mind which will clothe the outward appliances of its 
 religious services in gloomy and mournful colours, must have a gloomy 
 and mournful idea of religion. It has no foundation in Scripture : in the 
 Temple and the priests’ dresses, and all the furniture and appliances of the 
 Levitical worship, the blue, and the purple, and the scarlet, and the fine 
 linen, and the silver, and gold, were used abundantly ; and in the New 
 Jerusalem of John’s vision, the fine gold and the jasper, and sapphire, 
 and chalcedony, and emerald, and sardonyx, and sardius, and chrysolite, 
 and beryl, and topaz, and chrysoprasus, and jacinth, and amethyst, are 
 laid in layers as its foundations and walls, to figure to us its holy bright- 
 ness ; and a rainbow, with its arch of purest, brightest hues, surrounds 
 the throne. 
 
 We have elsewhere adduced some arguments to show that the people of 
 Europe,* in this nineteenth century, are again taking up that taste for 
 bright colour which they have so long declared to be vulgar and barbarous. 
 But we believe it is hardly generally known what great provision is being 
 made to satisfy this revived taste. To confine ourselves to our own sub- 
 
 '* That is, of Christian Europe ; for it is singular that the Turks (and some other semi- 
 civilised people) are just throwing off the tastes which we are taking up again, and taking 
 those “ civilised ” tastes which we are discarding. 
 
TEXTILE FABKICS. 
 
 51 
 
 ject: there are a great number of manufacturers in Birmingham and 
 elsewhere, who are producing the most beautiful textile fabrics, mediaeval 
 in the spirit both of their designs and colours, in a quantity, and with a 
 growing competition among the various makers, from which we may infer 
 the fast increasing demand for such wares. 
 
 There are now lying before us a series of specimens, kindly furnished to 
 us by Mr. Burton, of .52, Wigmore-street, and by Messrs. Newton, 
 Jones, and Willis, of Birmingham, of some of the richest and most 
 beautiful of these materials. No description can enable the reader who 
 has not seen similar works to picture to himself their richness and 
 beauty; and the woodcuts which we shall introduce below will give the 
 bare design, but will no more picture the effect than a woodcut in out- 
 line can give the effect of a brilliant coloured miniature. 
 
 ^all iangings. 
 
 We have already mentioned, under the head of Polychrome, that the 
 walls of the Church, as well as the walls of the Baron’s hall, were anciently 
 adorned with hangings, and that the wall-paintings are frequently in 
 imitation of such hangings. 
 
 As to their antiquity, Elfleda gave hangings to the Saxon Abbey 
 Church of Ely, on which were embroidered the principal events of the 
 life of her deceased Lord, Brithnoth, Earl of Mercia ;* and Wiglaf, King 
 of Mercia, in 833, gave to Crowland Abbey Church a hanging, on which 
 was the Storie of Troy; and every one will remember the Bayeux tapestry, 
 which was made to surround the church of Rouen ; and Dugdale’s 
 Monasticon^ in the lists of property belonging to the various religious 
 houses, furnishes descriptions of an endless variety of similar hangings. 
 Many of the modern fabrics to which we have alluded are intended and 
 adapted for this purpose ; and, in many cases, they may be used for the 
 walls of the sanctuary with very excellent effect ; they will produce a 
 richer and better effect, at less cost, than the heavy reredos of stone 
 which we sometimes see introduced now, or than panelling of wood. 
 These hangings must not cover the whole wall, but only the lower part 
 of it; where there is a string-course, that marks the height to which 
 the hangings must be carried ; and they may be fastened to a rod attached 
 immediately below the string-course. But, where there is no stone string- 
 course, it is not necessary to put up any cornice of stone or wood ; the 
 hangings may be suspended in the same way from a rod, at about the 
 same height, without any disguise. 
 
 ^It is not necessary that the hangings should be all of one colour and of 
 one pattern ; it is rather in accordance with the Gothic feeling for colour, 
 to vary the colours in alternate breadths of the hanging, hung perpendicu- 
 larly. We constantly find in illuminations that hangings and draperies 
 
 * Beiitham's History of Ely, p. 86. 
 
52 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 of contrasting colours are combined ; for instance, in the Froissart' of the 
 fourteenth century, in the British Museum (Harl. 4379), at f. 135, is an 
 interior of a room in which the hangings on the same wall are different : 
 one is a green ground, with natural coloured flowers; the other, a red 
 ground, with green trees alternating with a white bird with a scroll in its 
 mouth. And, in altar-draperies, the frontal and super-frontal are, almost 
 always, of contrasting colours and different patterns ; and the same principle 
 is to be observed in fringes, striped counterpanes, bier-cloths, &c., where we 
 find alternate stripes of different colours. For instance, in one cloth, in 
 Add. MS. 10,294, at f. 86, we find alternate stripes of green, blue, pink, 
 yellow, blue, pink, flesh colour, and green, divided by white lines: in 
 another, atp. 88 of the same MS. alternate stripes of white, yellow, and green, 
 recurring, divided by red lines. In the MS. in the British Museum, Tiberius, 
 B. 8, at p. 59, are curtains striped blue and light scarlet; and, at p. 62 of 
 the same MS. three different hangings are hung over the front of a gal- 
 lery. And many of our readers will remember the very singular exhibi- 
 tion of this fashion in the dresses of the time of Eichard II. when one side 
 of the robe is often of a different colour from the other, and one hose 
 different from the other ; and often, if the right side of the robe is blue, 
 the left leg will be encased in blue, and the corresponding sides in red : 
 so that a man might be described heraldically, as quarterly azure and 
 gules. 
 
 But note carefully, that 
 when contrasting colours are 
 brought together, they should 
 not be actually in contact, 
 but divided by a line of 
 white, black, yellow, &c. ac- 
 cording to the principles 
 which we shall, before con- 
 cluding this portion of our 
 subject, quote from Mr. 
 French’s tract on iheArrange- 
 No. 1. merit of Colour. The list which 
 
 binds the edges of the hanging will often be quite a sufficient division. 
 
 We here present a few patterns of materials, which may be obtained for 
 this purpose of Messrs. Newton, Jones, and Willis, of Birmingham, whose 
 case of ecclesiastical manufactures in the Great Exhibition will be re- 
 membered by many of our readers ; but we must again remind them, that 
 from these woodcuts they can only judge of the pattern, and that it will 
 require a very vivid imagination to picture the colours, and the rich effect 
 of the combinations. 
 
 The first pattern (No. 1) which we give of wall hangings, is of a fine 
 woollen material, and of good fifteenth-century design; the flowers upon 
 it have doubtless been copied from ancient work : a hanging represented 
 at f. 19 of the Eoyal MS. 15 E. VI. (date Hen. VI.), in the British 
 Museum, has a gold sprig like the one in the left top corner of this cut, 
 upon a blue ground. In this pattern the ground is crimson, and the main 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 53 
 
 portion of the sprig is gold colour ; the leaves on the stalk, and the two 
 upper sprays between the rose petals, are green ; and a cinquefoil of blue 
 is introduced in the centre of the rose. We would suggest that this 
 pattern would be more effective if a single thread of yellow or black were 
 carried round the green leaves, to divide the green from the red ; and that 
 the contact of the red and blue in the centre of the rose-sprig would have 
 been better avoided. The same design, with the same colours, may be 
 had upon a green ground ; the effect of which would, we think, be more 
 pleasing. 
 
 The next pattern (No. 2) of which we give a representation is of good 
 design, gold on a crimson ground, and is not unpleasing in appearance. 
 It is also made with a gold-coloured device upon a green ground. 
 
 No 2. 
 
 Still richer in effect is the hanging which we here give (No. 3), which 
 is made of a finer woollen material : its colour is a rich ruby, with 
 
 No. 3. 
 
 a gold-coloured device. This design also may be had in gold on a 
 ground of green, in order that the two colours may be used in alternate 
 stripes or breadths. 
 
54 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 The design which we next give (No. 4), made in a coarser woollen 
 
 material, is of rather late 
 character, gold on a crimson 
 ground, and has a very ex- 
 cellent appearance. 
 
 But we have reserved for 
 the last of these hangings a 
 honne houche (No. 5), of whose 
 richness and beauty the 
 woodcut does not give the 
 faintest conception. It is in- 
 tended for positions in which 
 especial richness of material 
 and beauty of ejffect are desir- 
 able. The material is a very 
 rich satin damask ; and we 
 will endeavour by help of 
 the woodcut to describe the 
 colours from the brilliant piece of the fabric which lies before us. The 
 ground is a rich ruby ; the lines which mark the divisions or compartments 
 of the pattern, the crowns, and the 
 greater portion of the flower patterns, 
 are gold colour ; the shields are of blue 
 ground, with gold monogram ; the 
 calices of the flowers, and a leaf here 
 and there, are green ; and the three 
 outer petals of each flower are white, 
 while the inner petals are gold. The 
 whole effect is extremely rich and 
 beautiful ; but the material is so rich, 
 and consequently so costly, that it 
 could only be used for certain posi- 
 tions — for instance, for the covering of 
 the Communion Table, or the hanging 
 (dossal) immediately behind it ; and 
 in the latter case only when colour was 
 used in the rest of the walls and win- 
 dows and furniture of the sanctuary. 
 
 The Illuminated MSS. furnish us with a vast variety of authorities for 
 hangings. We believe it will be acceptable to many of our readers to 
 have a few notes of them, which we accordingly subjoin. 
 
 In the Royal MS. 15 D. III. (British Museum), which is of the fourteenth 
 century, at f. 1, we have a crimson ground, with a large flowing foliated 
 pattern of gold covering it ; at f. 12 is the same pattern in gold upon a 
 ground of blue ; and at f. 103, the same pattern in gold upon a black 
 ground ; at f. 232, the same pattern in silver upon blue ground ; and at 
 f. 268, the same pattern in light crimson upon a ground of a darker tint 
 of the same colour. 
 
 No. 5. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 65 
 
 In the Harleian MS. 16,997, at f. Ill, is a hanging of olive green, with 
 a gold pattern upon it, with a border both on its upper and lower side 
 bearing an inscription. 
 
 In the MS. Tiberius, B. 8, of the fourteenth century, at ff. 49 and 65, 
 are patterns which it is rather difficult to describe ; the ground is blue, 
 and covered with a pattern formed by irregular spirals formed of double 
 lines, with little curved strokes on each side of the stem, in the way in 
 which one would represent a feather ; the pattern is of gold. At f. 54, 
 the same kind of spiral lines have leaves like ivy-leaves springing from 
 them ; the pattern light crimson, on a ground of a darker tint of the 
 same colour. 
 
 In the Koyal MS. 15 E. VI. of time of Hen. VT., at f. 5, is a 
 royal room with hangings of red, powdered with gold sprigs. At f. 6 of 
 same MS., hangings of crimson, powdered with gold sprigs ; on the upper 
 side is a border consisting of a fillet formed by double lines, and filled 
 with little circles, like stained glass borders of the same period. Atf. 19, 
 is a gold sprig on blue ground. At f. 327, a crimson ground, with spiral 
 pattern of gold, like those already described at ff. 49 and 65 of Tibe- 
 rius, B. 8. The two hangings at f. 135 of this MS. have already been 
 mentioned. At f. 145 of the same MS. is one wliich requires and de- 
 serves a more lengthy description : the ground is red ; upon it are plants 
 with leaves and flowers, the flowers so arranged that they form a kind of 
 lozenge pattern, in the centre of which are the leaves and stalks of 
 the plant ; each side of the lozenge contains four flowers, and the 
 colours are thus arranged : — First square : top corner flower, and two 
 on each side of it — all belonging to one plant, whose leaves are within 
 that square — are white. Second square, to the right of first : top 
 
 corner flower and two on each side, yellow. Third square, below and 
 between first and second : top corner flower and two on each side of it, 
 blue : all the squares in this row have the upper flowers blue : and in the 
 alternate row, the squares alternate white and yellow in upper part. The 
 leaves and stalks are green, falling in the centre of the square ; and be- 
 neath is a bunch of lines, like the lines with which we should represent 
 grass, which are of gold. If the reader will be at the trouble to take a 
 pencil and sketch out this pattern, and touch in the colours, he will 
 allow that the result will repay us the trouble of so complicated a descrip- 
 tion, and him the trouble of unravelling it. 
 
 All these hangings are from domestic rooms. It is somewhat singular 
 that we do not find them more frequently in representations of interiors of 
 churches ; for the lists in the Monasticon put it beyond doubt that similar 
 hangings were used in churches : e. g, among the cloths of York Minster 
 we find “ two white pieces, with red roses “ twelve red pieces, with the 
 arms of Lord Scrope “ eight blue pieces, with the arms of John 
 Pakenliam,” &c. 
 
 The use of them was not forbidden at the Eeformation, or abandoned 
 until it was also abandoned in domestic furniture ; for, in the seventh 
 year of Edward VI. we learn from Dugdale’s History of St. Paul's^ p. 274, 
 that baudekins of divers sorts and colours were still used for garnishing 
 
56 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 the quire, at the King’s coming, and for the bishop’s seat ; as also at other 
 times, “ when the quire shall be apparelled for the honour of the realm ; ” 
 which last sentence gives a Komanist the opportunity of making the not 
 undeserved remark, that such things ought to be for the honour of God, 
 not for the honour of the realm.* 
 
 N.B. — Kich hangings will assuredly look gaudy and offensive, if they 
 are placed amidst white light, and whitewashed walls. 
 
 franir fnrtain. 
 
 There is another purpose to which these hangings have been 
 recently applied, to the great increase of convenience, and with 
 very excellent effect. In some places, now that the tower arch has 
 been cleared of its incumbrances, and the ringing floor, which once 
 blocked its upper part, has been removed, the ringers are obliged to ring 
 from below, in sight of the congregation, or to have the ropes carried over 
 pullies, so that they can ring from some out-o’-the-way place, with increased 
 difficulty and want of precision. Now in some churches a curtain has 
 been suspended across the lower part of the arch, which, during the 
 assembling of the congregation, hides the shirt-sleeved makers of melody 
 from the view of the people ; and when their work is done, the 
 curtains are withdrawn or looped up at the side, and that beautiful and 
 effective feature in the perspective of the church, the tower arch with its 
 west window, are again restored to the view. 
 
 The hangings which we have already described, are very suitable for 
 this purpose ; and we append an illustration of the way in which they 
 may be hung, so as to make the rod an ornamental adjunct. Perhaps the 
 
 example here given would be still better without the ends to the rod, the 
 rod being supported by brackets against the wall ; in a low arch, perhaps 
 across the spring oi the arch, from cap to cap of the imposts, would be 
 the proper height for the curtain (painted curtains at the backs of niches 
 are generally at this height); but in a tall arch it would be unnecessarily 
 
 * Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament, p. 151. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 57 
 
 blocking the west widow ; and a height of nine or ten feet would be 
 sufficient. 
 
 The illustration given above is really a door-curtain ; such curtains 
 over entrance doors, and in place of a vestry-door, are coming into very 
 extensive use, and are found to be of great service. They are, more- 
 over, when of handsome material and judiciously mounted, a very 
 great improvement to the interior effect of the church; giving to it what 
 
 our churches so much want, a more furnished and inhabited look: — “for,” 
 says the Homily, “ like as men are well refreshed and comforted, when they 
 find their own houses having all things in good order, and all corners clean 
 and sweet, so when God’s house is well adorned, and is kept clean, 
 
 JN’o. 3. 
 
 comely, and sweet, the people are the more desirous and the more com- 
 forted to resort thither, and to tarry there the whole time appointed 
 them.” 
 
 The patterns which we here give of materials for hangings are of thick, 
 
 I 
 
58 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 heavy, woollen cloth, and made expressly for the purpose of door-hangings 
 and the like. 
 
 The first (No. 2) is a cloth 54 inches wide. The design (which is not 
 quite correctly represented in the above cut) is in crimson on a purple 
 ground, and the efiect is rich and quiet. 
 
 The subjoined pattern (No. 3) may also be had in similar material, in 
 crimson on a ruby ground ; or in gold on a blue ground ; or gold on a 
 crimson ground. The design is a very usual mediaBval one; we have 
 seen it in use, and can warmly recommend it as a pattern which can 
 hardly fail to be effective. 
 
 These door-hangings will be found to exclude draughts more effectively 
 if they are made sufficiently long to he a little on the floor, and have 
 small pieces of sheet lead sewn up, at frequent intervals, in a broad hem 
 at the bottom of the curtain. 
 
 fHrprt 0 anil 3Hats. 
 
 However beautiful a tesselated pavement may look, it is far too cold, in 
 our cold, damp climate, for any one to stand upon in winter time, without 
 not only inconvenience, but risk. For ourselves, we do not believe that 
 anything is at present to be obtained more beautiful and more suitable 
 
 than a Turkey, or Persian, or 
 Indian carpet or rug. But 
 it is only right towards our 
 readers who entertain a dif- 
 ferent taste, to tell them that 
 carpets and rugs of mediaeval 
 design are manufactured for 
 such purposes, and to lay 
 before them one or two ex- 
 amples. 
 
 The first (No. 4) is a design for a Brussels carpet, which is made both 
 in two shades of crimson ; and with a greater variety of colours, crimson, 
 yellow, green, blue, and purple. 
 
 No. 5 is also a design of very good character. 
 
 We add a design (No. 6) for a border, in the same 
 colours and same style of design as (No. 4), which 
 may be added round the edge of this carpet, cut to 
 any size, and form a suitable finish to the design. 
 
 And next we add a few designs for mats about a 
 foot wide, for use at the altar-chairs, or sedilia, or communion rails, or 
 wherever such an appliance may be needed. 
 
 The first (No. 7) is of the rich material which the manufacturers call 
 
 velvet pile, the device 
 in dark crimson upon 
 a lighter shade of the 
 same colour. It is 
 also made in a greater 
 
 No. 6. 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 No. 7. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 59 
 
 and more brilliant variety of colours. And the next (No 8) is a design 
 for a thick carpet, 12 inches wide, intended to cover the steps of the sanc- 
 tuary upon which the communicants kneel. 
 
 (No. 8.) 
 
 It has recently been very much the fashion to work carpets and mats 
 for these purposes in German worsted- work. 
 
 No. 6. 
 
 It is very far from our intention to say one word to discourage those 
 who desire to follow the example of the women of Israel, “that were 
 wise-hearted, who did spin with their hands, and brought that which 
 they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine 
 linen,” for the adornment of the Tabernacle. (Exod. xxxv. 25.) But we 
 beg to tender to them a little assistance in selecting the most advisable 
 
60 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 way of devoting their time and talent to church work ; for it has been 
 our lot to see many works of this kind, in which much good feeling, and 
 labour, and cost, have been utterly wasted, and their result has been a 
 work offensive to correct taste, for want of a little more knowledge of the 
 subject. 
 
 And in the first place we would say generally, do not expend time, and 
 labour, and money upon Berlin wool-work, or upon any other work of the 
 same mere mechanical nature. It is a sad misnomer to style it “ fancy- 
 work,” for there is not a particle of fancy— imagination — in filling up a 
 given number of squares with certain given colours, and repeating the 
 pattern dozens of times over : a machine can do all this more accurately 
 and more cheaply. It is a degradation of human intellect to set a human 
 being to do machine’s work ; it is a mere waste of God’s glorious gifts of 
 fancy and invention, for any one who possesses them to be content with 
 filling up given squares with given colours. There is only one case in 
 which this kind of work becomes uncensurable, and that is when, after 
 looking through the patterns of altar-carpets made by machinery, you 
 find nothing so good in design as you desire, and are resolved to make a 
 carpet, not composed of a hundred repetitions of the same square, but 
 whose design shall make it a work of art : and in the accomplishment of 
 this we beg to offer two cautions. First, do not take any design in, or 
 make up a design from, works in stone, or wood, or metal, and transfer 
 that to your canvass, and think that you have at least secured a genuine 
 Gothic design, and cannot be wrong so far in your work. Any artist 
 will tell you that the treatment of a design must depend upon the mate- 
 rial and mode in which it is to be executed : a design very suitable for 
 tough oak, would be too fragile executed in brittle stone ; and a design 
 for either tough oak or brittle stone, very unsuitable for execution in 
 malleable iron ; and all of them too stiff and formal for the delicate feats 
 which the needle ought to trace. In evidence of this, compare the 
 crocheting of a canopy engraved on a monumental brass, or painted in 
 a stained window, with actual crocheting executed in stone; or compare 
 a stone chancel- screen with one executed in metal. 
 
 Again, as to the arrangement of your colours : the ancient artists did 
 not get their rich effects of colour simply by using brilliant colours, but by 
 arranging them according to certain principles; and there is no more 
 common fault than this of mismanaging the colours in work which is in- 
 tended to be Gothic; for, in truth, we civilised moderns have not the 
 intuitive knowledge of the harmonious arrangement of these bright colours, 
 which a half-naked Arab, or a still more barbarous South Sea Islander, 
 has. We give here a few simple rules, which Mr. G. J. French (in 
 his tract entitled Hints on the Arrangement of Colour, &c.) has deduced 
 from a careful study of ancient works in polychrome, and which 
 will be found very useful by the amateur designer, in every attempt at 
 the arrangement of colour on Gothic principles. 
 
 1. To separate the permanent colours, red, blue, green, purple, ruby, violet, &c. 
 from each other, by spaces or lines of yellow, white, or black. 
 
 2. To paint with brilliant colours on grounds of yelloio (frequently gold), 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 61 
 
 white or black ; or, if the ground was of any other colour, to use yellow^ white^ or 
 black only for the ornamentation. 
 
 3. To combine two or more shades of red or of blue, green, purple, &c. &c., 
 without the intervention of yellow^ white^ or black. 
 
 4. To place yellow^ white^ or black together, or upon each other, without 
 reference to the law which appears to have regulated the arrangement of all 
 other colours. 
 
 There are, of course, many principles besides these, requisite to be 
 known for the production of a harmonious arrangement of colours ; but 
 the observance of these may save the amateur from many glaring faults, 
 visible in a great majority of modern Gothic designs. 
 
 But, after all, the only safe course to pursue is to obtain a design for 
 the work from an artist, or an amateur, who has made this branch of 
 Gothic art an especial study: — ^Hhis branch of Gothic art” — for one of the 
 great faults in the designs of modern Gothic furniture and decoration is, 
 that Gothic architecture has so much monopolised the attention of our 
 revivalists, that the forms of architectural detail have been improperly 
 introduced into work for which they are quite unsuitable. 
 
 fiiilirnitoti!. 
 
 But Embroidery is the true female art; which we may trace from the 
 “ wise-hearted” women of Israel, through the heroes’ wives of the Trojan 
 war, and the noble matrons of Eome, through our own Saxon fore- 
 mothers, and the Norman ladies, and all our old English matrons, down to 
 the noble dames of the time of Elizabeth, who furnished whole palaces with 
 the works of the busy needles of themselves and their bower-maidens. 
 It is again coming into fashion in England, and most deservedly 
 so ; for, with some aid perhaps from the artist in the general design, it is 
 here that woman’s own implement, the needle, can disport itself in a hun- 
 dred delicate fancies and womanly imaginings, and the result shall be a 
 work of art, which no machine could produce. What the pencil and 
 palette are to the artist, the pen and ink to the writer,* the needle, and 
 silk, and gold “ passing,” may be to the gentlewoman. There are works 
 embroidery of the fourth century still in existence, and still pre- 
 served with as much care as a painting of a great master ; there never 
 will be a piece of coarse mechanical German worsted-work which will 
 be worth preserving a day, when its present use has passed. 
 
 Two manuals on the subject have been published, which we can recom- 
 mend to those who desire to know more of this beautiful art ; one entitled 
 Church Needlework, with practical remarks on its arrangement and pre- 
 paration, by Miss Lambert, authoress of the “ Handbook of Needlework,” 
 published by Mr. Murray, of Albemarle-street ; the other, English 
 
 * Fuller says: “ Whilst monks were engaged with their pens, nuns with their needles 
 wrote histories also; that of Christ his passion for their altar clothes, and other Scripture- 
 (and more legendary-) histories, in hangings to adorn their houses.” 
 
62 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Mediceval Embroidery^ with a practical chapter, by a Lady, published by 
 Mr. Parker, of Oxford. In both these works will be found ample direc- 
 tions for the practical part of the work, and some examples of old em- 
 broidery works as hints for imitation ; and any one who will take up the 
 subject zealously may very soon collect a large number of ancient ex- 
 amples of works, both of those actually existing, and of representations of 
 others in illuminated MSS. &c., which, in the hands of the skilful needle- 
 woman, will furnish an inexhaustible store of designs for reproduction, 
 or, still better, of authorities for aid in original design.* 
 
 It is not part of our plan to enter into the details of the subject, but we 
 may indicate briefly the mode of operation. The principal portions of old 
 needlework were never worked upon the material itself, whether silk or 
 velvet, but were done separately, upon a coarse kind of unbleached linen, 
 and then attached to the ground ; with various devices, of packing with 
 wool and the like, for throwing portions of the design into effective relief. 
 Gold thread, called “passing” or “tambour,” floss silk, and twisted silk, are 
 the materials employed, with the addition of spangles, beads, and jewels in 
 rich work. The flowers or devices, thus separately worked, are afterwards 
 attached to the ground of silk or velvet, and scrolls and tendrils of gold 
 and silken thread are then added, which take oflT any appearance of stiff- 
 ness, and connect the applied device more thoroughly with its ground. 
 
 Even from this brief description, we think it will be easily seen that a 
 robe or hanging, or altar-covering, or cushion, or pulpit-cloth, may be 
 produced in less time, with not much greater cost, with less of mecha- 
 nical drudgery in the making, than an ordinary piece of “ wool work ; ” 
 and that the work will be infinitely more pleasurable, since it will bring 
 the invention and taste more into play; and the result will be of infinitely 
 more value. 
 
 Clraial fiHtimiiti 
 
 In order to give a complete and satisfactory sketch of this subject, the 
 vestments of the clergy in the Keformed Church, it will be necessary, 
 first, briefly to enumerate those of the rmreformed Church of England, 
 and then to show the changes which were introduced at the time of the 
 Keformation, and at several subsequent periods, up to the present time. 
 
 We need not dwell upon the robes of the lower orders of the ministry 
 of the unreformed Church ; they were clothed in surplice, or albe, or 
 gown, just as we clothe singing men and boys, and parish clerks, and 
 beadles, in surplices and gowns, to distinguish them as office-bearers in 
 the Church. 
 
 * The 14th vol., No. 5, of M. de Caumont’s Bulletin Monumental contains descriptions 
 and woodcuts of some very interesting early examples of embroidery : many valuable 
 hints for designs may be gathered from the descriptions of the vestments and hangings of 
 the religious houses throughout Dugdale’sil/owas^zcon; and from the Church of our Fathers 
 by Dr. Rock. The illuminations in MSS. will funiish other valuable authorities. More 
 actual examples of embroidery still exist in England than is commonly imagined ; and 
 on the Continent a still greater abundance. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 63 
 
 The vestments of the deacon consisted of the surplice (in choir), or the 
 alhe when serving at the altar ; over the left shoulder was worn the stole, 
 and over the left arm the maniple, and over all was worn the tunic* or 
 dalmatic. 
 
 The priest wore the cassock ; over that the surplice or the alhe ; the 
 stole and maniple ; the cope in procession, or the chasuble and amice, at the 
 mass. If the priest were a canon, he wore the amys (a furred cape and 
 hood) and a cap in Choir ; and sometimes rectors of churches wore the 
 same insignia. 
 
 The bishop wore the robes of the inferior orders, viz. cassock, rochet 
 (a variety of the surplice), stole, maniple, dalmatic, cope, or chasuble and 
 amice, and, in addition, sandals, gloves and ring, and a mitre, and bore a 
 pastoral s^a/T'with a crook head. An archbishop wore the pall over his 
 chasuble, and the head of his pastoral staff was cruciform. 
 
 It is worth while to pause and note the somewhat curious fact, that 
 none of these vestments were originally invented as ecclesiastical robes, 
 appropriated to the clergy: they appear nearly all to have been originally 
 pieces of ordinary costume, worn alike by clergy and laity ; then retained 
 by the clergy in the ministrations of the Church, after they had ceased to 
 be worn by other people ;f and then they came to be esteemed sacerdotal 
 garments, and some of them were modified in shape, and symbolical 
 meanings were given to them. 
 
 The alhe, of which the surplice is only a variety introduced about the 
 eleventh century, was the ordinary long robe of the Koman Empire ; the 
 strip of cloth called an orarium, which the Komans laid over their shoulders 
 when engaged in offering sacrifice, was the origin of the stole ; the maniple 
 was at first only a napkin for use, before it became changed into an orna- 
 ment ; the tunic or dalmatic was a common civil tunic ; the cope was the 
 common cloak with a hood, and was worn by laity as well as clergy, in 
 the Saxon times ; the chasuble also was worn commonly by Saxon laymen, 
 and is still, under the name of Poncho, worn in Spain and Spanish America, 
 whence it has recently been re-introduced among ourselves. The amice 
 was the ordinary hood ; the mitre, at first an ordinary head-dress, perhaps 
 became an episcopal distinction from the bishop keeping his head covered 
 as a mark of his dignity ; and even the pall itself was a relic of the toga, 
 with which the Bishop of Eome conferred the dignity of Roman citizenship 
 upon those whom he delighted to honour, J before it became an ordinary 
 distinction of a Patriarch; and so, in modern times, the hands which 
 clergymen and lawyers now wear are the curtailed descendants of the 
 
 * Strictly, the tunic should he longer and more scanty than the dalmatic, and appro- 
 priated to the sub-deacon ; hut according to present usage throughout the Roman com- 
 munion, they are alike. 
 
 t This retention of obsolete fashions arose, probably, in the first place from the fact that 
 rich robes were presented to churches, to be worn by the priests at their ministration ; 
 these robes first, from their splendour, and, next, from the associations connected with them 
 — given, perhaps, by a monarch, and worn by sainted bishops ; and, further, from their 
 ha\ing been consecrated to the use of Divine service, were hardly likely to be laid aside 
 because the cut of them had gone out of fashion : for the mind rather desiderates an air of 
 venerable antiquity in things connected with solemn ceremonial observances, both religious 
 and national. 
 
 % Dr. Rock. 
 
64 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 falling band of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the black 
 gown is hardly to be distinguished from that which was worn by the 
 grave citizens of the same period ; and the dignified clergy still wear the 
 shovel hat, and the rest of the costume which was usual a century 
 ago, but is now obsolete among the laity.* 
 
 The early Eeformers seem to have made no alteration in the robes of 
 the clergy: the earliest order on the subject is that of the 2nd Edward 
 VL, which makes some very slight changes in the old vestments. This 
 authoritative retention in the Church of England of so many of the old 
 vestments, gave great ofience to Calvin and Bucer, and the men of their 
 tone of mind; and, in the endeavour to pacify and conciliate them, 
 it was ordered in the 5th Edward VI., that vestments {i. e. chasubles), 
 copes, and albes were not to be worn; but an archbishop or bishop 
 was to be vested in a rochet, and a priest and deacon in a surplice. 
 But by the Act of Uniformity (1 Eliz. c. 2), the Parliament thought fit 
 to rescind this last order, and return to the original rule; and, in all 
 subsequent alterations and revisions of the Prayer-book, that Eubric 
 has been retained which orders that “the minister, at the time of 
 the Communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use 
 such ornaments in the church as were in use by the authority of Par- 
 liament in the 2nd Edward VI.” The Puritans always resolutely 
 opposed anything of splendour in the vestments of the clergy, as 
 they did in the ornaments of the Church; and doubtless, in many 
 instances, the Eubric was from the first disobeyed by men of this 
 way of thinking; but, from incidental allusions in the writers of the 
 period, and from other sources of information,! it is highly pro- 
 bable that the Eubric was very generally observed down to the great 
 Eebellion, and again on the Eestoration; and that it was only after the 
 accession of William III., that the more sumptuous and beautiful of the 
 clerical vestments fell into so general disuse. Though even yet, on great 
 occasions, sufficient of the old costume is worn, to prove that the 
 “ full dress” of the clergy is still regulated by the 2nd Edward VI. For 
 instance, the bishops appeared in copes and mitres, so late as the corona- 
 tion of George III. ; and copes have been continued at every coronation, 
 down to that of her present Majesty. 
 
 The only existing authorities on the subject of costume are — First, 
 the Eubric at the beginning of the Prayer-book, which upholds the 
 authority of the 2nd Edward VI. : this Eubric was slightly altered from 
 what it had before been, and put into the shape in which it now stands, 
 and was sanctioned by authority of Parliament, on the Eestoration of 
 Charles II. by the Act of Uniformity; which act is the basis on which the 
 
 * This adherence to precedent is not peculiar to the robes of the clergy; we find the 
 same feeling exhibited with reference to all other robes of state and office. The Sovereign 
 (at the coronation) still wears robes which have their origin in very early times; the 
 Knights of the Garter wear the costume of the end of the fifteenth century; the Heralds 
 wear the tabard of still more remote fashion; judges and barristers, mayors, aldermen, and 
 beadles, exhibit, in their official costume, instances of the universality of the same. 
 
 t The reader who is curious in such matters may refer to the interesting collection of 
 authorities in the Hierurgia Anglicana. (Rivington, and Masters, London.) 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 6o 
 
 Church of England, as the Established Church, rests: the “Concordat,” 
 as it were, of the Church of England. And, secondly, we have the 
 Canons of 1603,* which in some particulars, are opposed to the 
 2nd Edward Yl.f Thus, according to the latter authority, a priest 
 at the Communion ought to wear an albe, and a vestment (chasuble) 
 or cope ; according to the former, he ought to wear a surplice, 
 with sleeves, and the hood of his academical degree. And we must 
 adduce as a third authority on the subject — a very illegal, but a very 
 potent one — fashion, which is at present opposed to both the above 
 authorities ; for, according to the usual custom of the day, a priest at the 
 Communion wears a cassock and girdle, a surplice and hood, and a scarf 
 or stole, and bands. 
 
 Which of these two contradictory authorities — the Act of Uniformity, 
 and the Kubric of 1662, on one side, or the Canons of 1603 on the other 
 side — is to be obeyed, we must leave it to the ecclesiastical lawyer to de- 
 cide; or how far, under the peculiar circumstances of our Church, the 
 unwritten law of the general custom of the clergy, having the tacit con- 
 sent and the example of the bishops, may be held to override the written 
 law of Kubrics and Canons, we do not presume to decide. 
 
 It will be sufficient for our present plan to give a few notes on some of 
 the vestments sanctioned by these various authorities of the Keformed 
 Church, without determining which are to be considered obsolete. 
 
 The Cassock is a long coat, such as was in former times worn by both 
 
 * Canon 24, “ In all cathedral and collegiate churches, the Holy Communion shall be 
 administered upon principal feast-days, sometimes by the bishop, if he be present, and 
 sometimes by the dean, and sometimes by a canon or prebendary, the princii)al minister 
 using a decent cope, and being assisted with the gospeller and epistler agreeably, according 
 to the advertisements published anno 7 Eliz,” 
 
 In A Brotherly Persuasion to Unity, by T. Sparke, D.D., 1607 A.i>., we find that this 
 order was universally obeyed. He says: “As for the cope appointed by the 24th Canon, 
 we need not here trouble ourselves at all ; for there is none that 1 know or hear of at such 
 places that refuse therein to conform themselves.” 
 
 Canon 25. Surplices and hoods to be worn in cathedral churches when there is no com- 
 munion. 
 
 Canon 58. “ Every minister saying the public prayers, or ministering the sacraments or 
 other rites of the Church, shall wear a decent and comely surjdice, with sleeves, to be pro- 
 vided at the charge of the parish. . , . Furthermore, such ministers as are graduates 
 shall wear upon their surplices at such times such hoods as, by the orders of the univer- 
 sities, are agreeable to their degrees, which no minister shall wear (being no graduate) 
 under pain of suspension. Notwithstanding, it shall be lawful for such ministers as are 
 not graduates to wear upon their surplices, instead of hoods, some decent tippets, of black, 
 so it be not silk.” 
 
 t “And whensoever the bishop shall celebrate the Holy Communion in the church, or 
 execute any other public ministration, he shall have upon him, beside his rochet, a surplice 
 or albe, and a cope or vestment, and also his pastoral staff in his hand, or else borne or 
 holden by his chaplain. Upon the day and at the time appointed for the ministration of 
 the Holy Communion, the priest that shall execute the holy ministry shall put upon him 
 the vesture appointed for that ministration, that is to say, a white albe, plain, with a vest- 
 ment or cope. And, where there be many priests or deacons, then so many shall be ready 
 to help the i riest in the ministration as shall be requisite, and shall have upon them like- 
 wise the vestures appointed for their ministry ; that is to say, albes with tunicles (dal- 
 matics). ... In the saying or singing ot mattins and even-song, baptising and burying, 
 the minister in parish churches, and chapels annexed to the same, shall use a surplice. 
 And in all cathedral churches and colleges, the archdeacons, deacons, deans, provosts, 
 masters, prebendaries, and fellows, being graduates, may use in the choir, besides their 
 surplices, such hoods as pertaineth to their several degrees which they have taken in any 
 university within this realm. But, in all other places, every minister shall be at liberty to 
 use any surplice or no. It is also seemly that graduates, when they preach, should use 
 such hoods as pertaineth to their several degrees.” — 2 Edw. VI. From first Prayer-book 
 of Edw. VI. 
 
 K 
 
66 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 clergy and laity ; when the laity abandoned it for more convenient or more 
 fashionable garments, it was still retained by the clergy. For the great 
 body of the clergy its colour was always as it is now, black; but Doctors 
 of Divinity wore it of scarlet.* In the Roman Church, Bishops wear the 
 cassock of purple. Cardinals of scarlet, and the Pope of white. 
 
 The Albe was a long white dress, fitting more 
 tightly about the person than a modern surplice, 
 and with tight sleeves; it was frequently girded 
 about the waist with a broad band or girdle, and 
 in later times with a cord. We give here a repre- 
 sentation of a deacon in an albe ; and the albe may 
 be seen beneath the upper vestments in the two 
 figures of priests (Nos. 5 and 6) given below. In 
 the Romish Church the albe had apparels (squares 
 of cloth of gold, or embroidered work), two at 
 the bottom in front and back, one on each wrist, 
 sewed upon the garment : the 2nd Edward VI. 
 orders that in the Reformed Church the albe 
 should be worn plain. 
 
 Tlie Surplice was a larger form of the albe, introduced about the 
 eleventh century,f perhaps to allow more room for the furred garments 
 which were then worn beneath it, whence its name 
 “ superpelliceum.” Its use in the Roman Church was 
 confined to the choir, the albe being always used in 
 the Communion service. We give here a represen- 
 tation of its early form, from a MS. of the eleventh 
 century. 
 
 Sometimes the surplice appears to have been very 
 ample. Dr. Rock mentions an instance in which 
 twenty yards of fine linen were left by will to make 
 a surplice for the donor’s parish church. Mr. French 
 of Bolton, Lancashire, has produced a “circular sur- 
 No. 2. plice,” “ taken from representations in old illustrated 
 
 MSS.,” which is made after the fashion of an early chasuble: is very 
 ample, and may be such as the twenty yards of fine linen were converted 
 into. 
 
 In the Reformed Church, until recently, the surplice appears to have 
 been short enough to show the cassock beneath it, and to have had a 
 little ornamentation in needlework about the collar and the gathering 
 of the folds at the neck. The brass of Sir William Dye, parson of Tat- 
 tisfield, in Westerham Church, Kent, date 1567, exhibits him in a long 
 cassock, and shorter surplice, as above described, and a scarf about his 
 shoulders. In a print by Hollar, of a procession of the order of the 
 garter, in Ashmole’s Order of the Garter (copied in the Hierurgia Angli- 
 cana\ in the time of Charles II., the cassock reaches to the feet, and shows 
 the surplice beneath ; in another print in the Hierurgia^ copied from Herne’s 
 
 ^ Dr. Rock’s Church of onr Father's, Vol. II. p. 19. t It>i(I. p. 4. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 67 
 
 Domus Carthusiana, a priest is kneeling at a litany-desk, having on a 
 short surplice, with sleeves wide, but only reaching to the middle of the 
 forearm, with a little ornamental work round the bottom and the sleeves. 
 
 The Maniple does not appear to have ever been used in its Eoman 
 shape (as it is shown in the following illustrations of priestly robes) by 
 the Keformed Church, though of course napkins have been used, as mat- 
 ters of convenience and decency. 
 
 The Stole is an ornament of the clerical costume, about which there is 
 some considerable obscurity. We find no mention of it in the Eeformed 
 Church ; and yet, as we have seen, a scarf (the usual modern form of the 
 stole) is seen in the effigy of the parson of Tattisfield.* It is certain 
 that now nearly every priest in the Church of England wears a long piece 
 of black silk round his neck, after the manner of the old stole. Whether 
 it be an unwarrantable assumption of the 
 amys of the canon or rector, or of the scarf 
 of the nobleman’s chaplain, or whether it 
 be a lineal descendant of the stole, is not 
 perhaps sufficiently clear.f In the illus- 
 tration which we have given of the old 
 form of surplice, the stole is seen worn 
 over the left shoulder and tied beneath 
 the right arm, as it was worn by deacons 
 at the administration of the Communion. 
 
 The Dalmatic, or Tunic, was made of silk 
 or other like material, often embroidered, 
 and with its lower border fringed. Its shape 
 is shown in the accompanying woodcut. 
 
 The Cope was a full cloak, of rich material, silk, velvet, cloth of gold, &c., 
 and of various colours ; its shape, when spread out, was a half-circle, as is 
 
 * It is possible that his scarf represents the amys of the cathedral costume, and that 
 Sir W. Dye wears it as a rector, according to the custom already quoted on the authority 
 of Dr. Rock. 
 
 t See Mr. G. J. French’s interesting tract on the Tippets of the Canons Ecclesiastical, in 
 which a good deal of curious learning is brought together which bears upon the subject. 
 
68 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 shown in the accompanying cut. The centre of the straight side fits 
 round the neck, and the ornamental fillet on that straight side forms the 
 two ornamental borders in front, which are seen in the figure of a priest 
 wearing a cope (No. 5). The little square ornament attached to the upper 
 side of the cut (No. 4) is the morse, or clasp, with which the cope is fas- 
 tened across the chest: seen in situ in the cut of a priest in cope (No. 5), 
 which is from the monumental brass of Henry Marten, Rector ofYuxham, 
 in Upwell Church, Norfolk. 
 
 The Chasuble was a garment made of silk, or 
 some similar material, and was appropriated from 
 early times (i. e. from about the sixth century) as 
 the Eucharistic vestment. 
 
 It is clearly derived from the poenula, a garment 
 which, about the time of Augustus, began to suc- 
 ceed the toga as the ordinary outer robe of a 
 Roman citizen. It was in the sixth century that 
 it went out of fashion again as a part of ordinary 
 civil costume, but was still retained as an eccle- 
 siastical robe. An early representation of it, as a 
 part of a bishop’s ceremonial costume, occurs in 
 the frescoes in the choir of St. Vitalis’s church, 
 Ravenna,* where we see a patriarch of Ravenna, 
 in crossed sandals, an albe, a stole with fringed 
 and ornamented ends, and a chasuble, surmounted 
 by the pall. 
 
 In its earliest shape it appears to have been a 
 large circular piece of cloth, with a slit or an 
 oblong hole in the centre, through which the head 
 was placed, and the garment fell in full folds round 
 the person. In later times it appears to have been 
 cut to an elliptical shape, the longer ends falling 
 before and behind. About the Norman period, it 
 was a semicircle, folded in two, and the straight 
 edges sewed together, leaving only an opening for 
 the head. Still later, the back and front were cut to a point, in the shape 
 of a pointed arch. And, recently, in the Roman Church, the sides have 
 been almost entirely cut away ; and it rather resembles a long narrow 
 cloth, with a hole in the middle for the head. In its modern form it is 
 stiff and ungraceful, however rich with embroidery and jewels: in its 
 earlier forms it was a very picturesque robe. The annexed illustration, 
 taken from a monumental brass of a priest of the latter part of the four- 
 teenth century, exhibits the way in which it was worn. 
 
 In the middle ages it was adorned with a band of goldsmith’s work 
 or embroidery, which passed up the middle of the front and back, and 
 round the shoulders. Sometimes the portion about the neck and shoulders 
 was ornamented with embroidery ; and very rarely we find an ornament 
 
 * Engraved in Dr. Hock’s Church of our Fathers, Vol. I. p. 319. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 69 
 
 of goldsmith’s work and enamels or jewels upon the breast, which is 
 called the rationale, and probably was derived from the breast-plate of the 
 Jewish high priest. 
 
 This is the garment which is mentioned in the 2 Edw. VI., and in 
 other modern documents, as the Vestment. Its use has been revived in 
 several modern churches, English, Scotch, and Colonial, and many of our 
 readers will remember the very beautiful one, which, with other eccle- 
 siastical vestments of very excellent design and workmanship, was exhi- 
 bited in the Great Exhibition by Messrs. Newton, Jones, and Willis, of 
 Birmingham. 
 
 The Rochet is the episcopal surplice of fine linen 
 (now of lawn) ; it dates from about the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century. 
 
 The Chimere was originally, as Mr. Gilbert French 
 has shown in his tract on the Tippets of the Canons 
 Ecclesiastical, the amyss or almuce worn by canons 
 — the portrait of Archbishop Parker in Lodge’s 
 portraits (copied in Mr. French’s tract) exhibits it 
 under this form; it has in modern times grown 
 into a satin gown, which almost covers the surplice, 
 and the lawn sleeves are now detached from the 
 surplice, and, for convenience sake, appended to 
 the chimere; it was not until the seventeenth cen- 
 tury that the sleeves were gathered up and tied at 
 the wrist. 
 
 The episcopal Gloves are still worn by some of 
 our bishops, of lavender kid, with a deep gold 
 fringe. The episcopal Ring is also worn by several 
 of the Scotch bishops. 
 
 The Mitre and Pastoral Staff were, in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, frequently carried 
 before the coffin at the funerals of the bishops, as 
 the insignia of their office; mitres were actually 
 worn at the coronation of George III. ; we have no 
 mention of the actual use of the staff* later than 
 temp. Charles I. Archbishop Harsnet, who died a.d. 
 
 1631, is represented in his monumental brass in albe 
 and cope, and mitre, and bears his pastoral staff* in one hand, and the 
 Bible in the other. The mitre, with the modern robes, is represented in 
 the monumental effigies of Hacket at Lichfield, 1713, and of Archbishop 
 Sterne 1683, Dolben 1686, Lamplough (with crosier also) 1691, Sharp 1713, 
 all at York Cathedral— they are engraved in Drake’s Eburacumf and 
 the mitre and staff* appear in the effigy of Archbishop Sheldon, 1677, in 
 Croydon Church. 
 
 The use of the pastoral staff* has been revived in one or two instances in 
 
 * Hkrnrgia Anglicana. 
 
70 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 the Colonial Churches. The Instrumenta Ecclesiastica, Part VI., Second 
 Series, give a drawing of a beautiful one, having an ebony stem and an 
 ivory crook, mounted with silver gilt, which is now used by one of the 
 colonial bishops. 
 
 finttrings nf tlj^ InA’s ftalilt 
 
 The altars of the primitive Church seem to have been covered entirely 
 with rich stuff or silk — occasionally embroidered with imagery, and even 
 enriched with precious stones. At the time of the celebration of the 
 Lord’s Supper they were covered with another cloth, which for several 
 centuries appears to have been indifferently of silk or of linen; after 
 the end of the ninth century it was always of linen. 
 
 The later Greek and Koman Churches have introduced additions to the 
 primitive practice. The present Eubric of the Eoman Church requires 
 three cloths (besides the corporal), two of which need only cover the top 
 of the altar — the third hangs down to the floor at the ends, but not in 
 front. The Greek Church places four small pieces of cloth, marked with 
 the names of the four Evangelists, on the corners of the altar, and over 
 these two cloths and a corporal. 
 
 We take, for special description of the way in which the drapery of a 
 mediaeval altar was managed, an instance from the style of the fourteenth 
 century — the period when Gothic art was at its highest perfection, and 
 the period which the great majority of our architects take as the starting- 
 point of their inventions. We And in illuminated MSS. of this four- 
 teenth century the same type continually. Take, for example, one in the 
 MS. in the British Museum, marked Domitian A. 17, which is of the time of 
 Kichard II. ; at folio 1 1 , we And an altar, with its top covered with a white 
 cloth which does not overhang the front or sides ; the front displays two 
 vestments ; the under one, or antependium, reaching with its fringe a 
 little more than half-way down the front, leaving the moulded base of the 
 altar visible below it ; upon this is a pall, which reaches with its fringe 
 about one-fourth of the depth of the antependium. The pall is of blue, 
 powdered with gold fleurs-de-lis ; its fringe is green and white ; the ante- 
 pendium is crimson, with a gold foliage pattern upon it ; its fringe is also 
 green and white ; the altar itself is tinted lavender, to imitate, probably, 
 the tint of the stone. 
 
 To these fourteenth-century altars, sometimes, instead of a painted 
 triptych as a reredos to the altar, there was a hanging called a dossal,* of 
 the same suit as the antependium ; also the altar appears always to have 
 been inclosed on each side with curtains {see Dom. A. 17, ff. 11, 148, 175, 
 &c.) ; also a canopy was frequently suspended over the altar, under which 
 hung the pyx in which the consecrated wafer was kept {see Harl. MS. 
 16,997, f. 195, &c.) 
 
 The canopy is usually small, conical in form, apparently formed of silk; 
 
 * A similar hanging, with the same name, was hung at the back of chairs of state. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 71 
 
 and the pyx, in the shape of a dove, in which was contained the conse- 
 crated wafer which was reserved for the sick, is suspended beneath it. 
 This little canopy is the mediaeval representative of the larger canopy or 
 catafalque, supported by four pillars, under which the Holy Table was 
 placed in the early church, for its greater honour. 
 
 The curtains were hung on rods close to each end of the altar, but not 
 in front, the rods being supported by slender ornamented pillars, frequently 
 surmounted by a figure of an angel holding a taper. It is probable that 
 at some period there was a curtain also in front, which was drawn until 
 after the consecration, in correspondence with the custom of the Greek 
 Church; and that when the front curtain Avas disused, that the consecra- 
 tion might be performed in the presence of the people, the side curtains 
 were left as ornamental accessories to which the people had become 
 accustomed. These side curtains also are not to be seen in some of the 
 representations of altars of the latter part of the fifteenth century. 
 
 It is not quite clear how much of this arrangement the Reformers 
 retained, or how much has the sanction of the Rubric which orders 
 that all ornaments of the Church shall continue as they have done 
 in times past. The pyx and its canopy were removed, or in some in- 
 stances, perhaps, the pyx was removed, but the canopy allowed to remain 
 as a relic of the primitive observance ; it is certain that some of the 
 Caroline divines restored the primitive canopy of honour over the table in 
 a few instances. The frontal and superfrontal or dossal were certainly re- 
 tained in many instances * during the time of Elizabeth, and were revived 
 by the Caroline divines. And we may note here, that though the 
 multiplying of cloths by the Roman Church might be useless and 
 superstitious, yet the mere ornamental drapery of a mediseval altar 
 has no connection with the Romish errors on this sacrament: so 
 far from the drapery having anything to do with a sacrifice or an altar, 
 it is that which converts the altar into a stone table, and presents the 
 sacrifice as a feast. 
 
 The Advertisements of the 2nd Eliz. (a.d. 1 560) order, “ That they shall 
 decently cover with carpet, silk, or other decent covering, and with a fair 
 linen cloth (at the time of the ministration), the Communion Table.” And 
 next we come to the 82nd Canon of James I. (a.d. 1603) still in force, 
 i. e., or in such force as is consistent with the subsequent and contradictory 
 enactment of the Act of Uniformity at the restoration of Charles II., that 
 the ornaments of the Church should continue as in the 2nd Edward VI. 
 
 The Canon, however, has clearly been the general rule of modern 
 practice ; the Act of Uniformity may be against it ; but the almost uni- 
 versal modern practice, sanctioned by the tacit approval of the bishops, is 
 on its side. This Canon orders, that the Communion Table shall be 
 “ covered in time of divine service with a carpet of silk or other decent 
 stuff, thought meet by the ordinary of the place, if any question be made 
 of it.” At that period (1603) floor carpets were still a rare luxury, and 
 the rich carpets which were brought from the East were generally used 
 
 * See Uierurgia Anylkcma. 
 
72 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 as table-covers. It was probably the intention of the framers of the 
 Canon to return to the primitive custom which we have above mentioned, 
 of covering the Lord’s Table with one covering of rich material at ordinary 
 times, and one linen cloth at the time of the celebration ; but it is quite 
 clear that it was their intention that the Lord’s Table should be apparelled 
 with the sumptuousness which became a table dedicated to such a 
 feast. Indeed, though the Church of England is careful to guard against 
 superstition, and especially watchful against the return of errors only 
 lately driven out, she is also careful against the opposite error ot 
 degrading the Holy Supper; she is careful to maintain its dignity as 
 a sacrament ; she teaches that Christ is really present in it to the faithful ; 
 and she bids those who partake of that feast not to sit, as at an ordinary 
 table, but to kneel : the bread may be ordinary bread, to avoid superstition, 
 but it must be of “ the best and purest wheat bread which may conve- 
 niently be gotten the table is to be a Lord’s Table, not an altar of sacri- 
 fice, but it is to be covered with (what was then) a rare and costly covering. 
 
 As instances of the way in which the Canon was undertood at the period 
 of its promulgation, we may mention that St. Giles-in-the-Eields, London, 
 had “ a large Turkey carpet to spread on week days over the table,” pre- 
 sented by the Duchess of Dudley, who died 1640 ;* and in 1608 the 
 churchwardens’ accounts of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, record that they 
 “ bought a cloth of gold, and a cushion, for the Communion Table.” f 
 Lichfield Cathedral, in 1634 , had a covering of cloth of gold for the Com- 
 munion Table. J 
 
 In discussing the vesting of our own Communion Tables, we will first 
 pause for a moment upon the reredos. 
 
 The dossal, or super-frontal, or reredos^ was sometimes a piece of stone 
 sculpture ; sometimes wooden tabernacle-work ; sometimes a hanging, 
 which was always of the same suit with the antependium. Some such 
 enrichment of the central portion of the east wall of the chancel, so as to 
 form a background for the table, has always been usual in our modern 
 churches, i. e. in such of them as have had any care at all bestowed upon 
 tbeir decoration: it is in this position that the paintings have usually been 
 placed, with which many of our town churches have been adorned ; and 
 frequently we find an ornamental panelling of wood, or a composition of 
 bad upholstery painted upon the wall, to form an “altar-piece;” and fre- 
 quently the eye of Providence, or the Hebrew name of God inscribed 
 within a triangle and surrounded by rays, or tbe Communion-cup, or 
 texts of Scripture, are painted in ornamental compartments, to form 
 a reredos to the Holy Table. 
 
 It is desirable that this custom should be continued, only of course in 
 better taste. The reredos may be a piece of carving in wood or stone ; or 
 a painting; or it may be a richer compartment of wall decoration; or a 
 richer breadth of hangings. Several old churches have for the reredos a 
 representation of the Last Supper carved in bas relief in stone.§ A very 
 
 * See Hierurgia Anglicana, p. 27. f Ibid, p. 27. t Ibid. p. 35. 
 
 ? Engraved in tbe plates of the Oxford Glossary. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 73 
 
 beautiful example of a -wooden reredos in three canopied compartments, 
 with paintings in each, is represented in the fourteenth-century MS. Do- 
 mitian A. 17, f. 175; and many triptychs which formed altar paintings still 
 exist : many of the finest paintings of the great masters were painted for 
 this purpose. Hangings suitable for this position have already been men- 
 tioned under the head of “Wall Hangings,” and glanced at in the subject 
 of “Embroidery.” 
 
 To come more especially to the coverings of the table itself^ may we use 
 two cloths of different colours, after the mediaeval fashion? The Gothic 
 artist delighted in this combination of difierent colours ; we find it con- 
 stantly, not only in altar draperies, but in the arrangements of hangings 
 over walls, balconies, &c. ; in the tester and dossal of state chairs and 
 beds ; in the two cushions which were constantly used for the seats of 
 chairs, and for the pillows of beds and couches, and placed for seats upon 
 the floor, &c. ; and there can be no doubt that in a church richly adorned 
 with colour it would add to the richness of effect of this, which should be 
 the richest portion of the building. And since in the mediaeval altar this 
 arrangement appears to have been introduced solely for the sake of effect, 
 there does not appear primd facie any objection to the reintroduction of 
 the pleasing fashion. 
 
 The Act of Uniformity and the Eubric may perhaps sanction it;* but 
 since the 84th Canon has been universally received in modern times as 
 the Church’s rule on this subject, and since in these days there is much 
 jealousy on little unimportant matters of this kind, it is probable that 
 the Canon will, for the present, be generally accepted as the guide; and 
 we shall practically decide now, in the majority of cases, for a single 
 “ carpet of silk or other decentf stuff. ’ 
 
 Next, of what shape shall our single cloth be? 
 
 We believe that it is entirely opposed to the feeling of Gothic art to 
 
 * See note at end of chapter, p. 79. 
 
 t This word “decent” occurs several times as a descriptive epithet of church furniture; 
 it may be worth while to pause for a moment upon it. It certainly has not the force which 
 it would now have in ordinary colloquial language : for now to descrtbe a table as a decent 
 table w'ould be rather an epithet of disparagement, meaning only tolerably handsome, so-so. 
 The Canons clearly borrow the phrase from the 1 Corinthians, xiv. 40, “ Let all things be 
 done decently and in order,” where the original word is tl(r^np' 0 va> 5 , handsomely, grace- 
 fully, in a beautiful shape or way, becomingly (= decently, deceo). A carpet of silk or other 
 decent stuff means, then, of silk or other handsome or becoming stuff ; becoming, that is, 
 the use to which it subserves. 
 
 L 
 
74 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 throw a loose drapery over a table. The mediaeval artists thoroughly 
 appreciated — no one more so — the beauty of graceful folds of drapery, 
 witness the exquisite draperies of their figures ; hut the small piece of 
 rich material which would form a cover for the Communion Table will 
 
 never fall into graceful forms ; it will always stand out in stiff, angular, 
 and most unpleasing shapes. We have given here, in proof of this asser- 
 tion, a woodcut of an altar-cloth of this kind, with which the manufacturer 
 has taken much pains, in order to make the corner folds fall as gracefully 
 as possible ; and, as we borrow the cut from his own catalogue, it is 
 certainly not unfavourably represented ; and indeed the object is perhaps 
 attained as far as is possible ; but the ungraceful fall of the folds at the 
 corners will still, we imagine, be offensive to every tasteful eye. 
 
 The mediseval artist in all such cases — not only with an altar, but in 
 every similar case — fitted the drapery to its position, by cutting out the 
 superfluous corners, and uniting the sides : and this course we recommend 
 without hesitation. 
 
 We then have to consider whether this cover shall reach to the bottom 
 of the table, so as to conceal it entirely, or shall be only of such a depth 
 as will show part of the table beneath it. 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 75 
 
 Perhaps the idea of a table would he better retained by not concealing 
 the whole of it, but by treating the cover in the way represented in the 
 last illustration on the preceding page, which is certainly more like an 
 ordinary table-cloth than the more usual modern form of the altar-cloth, 
 and has a better appearance. It has also this advantage, that, by leaving 
 part of the table visible, it insures that the table itself shall be a “ decent ” 
 table, and not such a ricketty worm-eaten thing as we too often find 
 used for this purpose. 
 
 As for the material which we are now to substitute for the “ carpet of 
 silk,” which formed the rich table-cover of the time in which the Canon 
 was published : — the ordinary modern material is either good broad cloth 
 or rich velvet; both good and handsome materials, and in accordance 
 with the spirit, though not with the letter, of the Canon. And both these 
 materials may very well be retained, for both are susceptible of treat- 
 ment which will make them harmonise with the other Gothic details and 
 furniture of the church. 
 
 At the same time we would direct attention to the other fabrics of 
 mediseval design and character which are being introduced, at present 
 more especially perhaps for domestic uses — damasked silks, with a gold 
 pattern on crimson, silver on blue, &c. — which perhaps more nearly re- 
 semble the “ carpet of silk ” of the Canon, and which are more in accord- 
 ance with Gothic taste, than the rich, but somewhat heavy and sombre 
 velvet. 
 
 The usual modern colour for the table covering is red. We have no 
 evidence when this colour became so universally adopted. It was not the 
 colour which the Komish Church used as appropriate to the Sunday fes- 
 tival. Probably the reason for its adoption was the same which has 
 caused the almost universal adoption of the rich Tent for Communion- 
 wine, that it forms so apt and natural a symbol of the blood of 
 Christ.* 
 
 This covering — whether of cloth or velvet — has for many years been 
 usually ornamented with a monogram — generally the IHS, surrounded 
 by a wreath or by rays; and with an edging of gold lace; and with 
 fringe. 
 
 Bearing in mind what has been said under the head of the “ Lord’s 
 Table,” that it was clearly intended, when not in actual use at the cele- 
 bration, to stand on the raised dais of the chancel as a kind of symbol of 
 the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; it is clear that the usual ornamen- 
 tation with the monogram of the name of Christ, is significant and appro- 
 priate. Perhaps the Canon did not contemplate any such symbol upon 
 its “ carpet of decent stuff,” because then possibly some of the “ weaker 
 brethren ” might have had fantastical scruples about it ; but now no such 
 objection exists; and the fact that it was so universally introduced, long 
 before the present mediaeval revival began, is proof that the great divines 
 of the last and preceding centuries saw no objection to the careful use 
 
 * Among tlie symbolists of the middle ages red was symbolical of the Passion of our 
 Lord. 
 
76 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 of such symbols, and that we need not scruple to use them, with like 
 caution and care against any recurrence of superstition. 
 
 We have only to suggest on the subject, by 
 I* way of amendment, that the devices in use have 
 
 frequently been very faulty in point of taste and 
 beauty ; the monograms in letters of a debased 
 character — thus; and the cruciform devices of 
 bad forms. 
 
 We subjoin one or two designs of monograms 
 and cruciform devices ; and an endless variety of 
 others may be selected from old works. There are also other devices which 
 
 may properly be used in this position : any of the infinite variety of cruci- 
 form devices (but not a plain cross); the “Pelican in her piety,” i. e. feeding 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
 
 77 
 
 her young ones with the blood-drops from her own breast — a symbol of 
 Him who shed his blood to feed a famishing world ; the Holy Lanab ; 
 and many other devices, are suitable for such a position. These devices 
 should, of course, be embroidered; and we would here repeat the hint 
 
 which is given under the head of “Embroidery,” that designs taken from 
 wood, stone, metal, &c. are not always adapted for reproduction in em- 
 broidery: the golden thread may, and often should, luxuriate in delicacies 
 and intricacies of ornamentation, which could not be executed with more 
 stubborn material. 
 
78 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Of lace borders for the Communion-cloth and similar positions, we have 
 some exceedingly beautiful examples before us, from the repertoire of 
 Messrs. Burton and Co., late of Wigmore-street, which are not more 
 costly, and far more beautiful than the usual border of gold lace. One 
 has on a crimson ground a series of circles, within each circle a quatre- 
 foil, and within that a floriated cross, the whole pattern being in 
 gold colour. Another has a running pattern of vine foliage in gold, 
 upon a crimson ground; a third has a very rich scroll pattern of pas- 
 sion flower, in crimson, white, and 
 green, upon a gold-coloured ground ; 
 and several other patterns lie 
 before us, whose descriptions how- 
 ever would perhaps hardly convey 
 any definite idea to the reader. 
 These borders are made entirely 
 of silk ; the colours are very cor- 
 rectly arranged, and the fabrics are 
 exceedingly rich and beautiful in 
 effect. We are enabled to give in 
 the margin a woodcut of a border 
 of similar character; but we must 
 again leave it to the imagination 
 of our readers, out of these mere 
 outlines to create the beautiful and 
 richly coloured design which they 
 represent. 
 
 We strongly recommend these 
 borders to the notice of those of 
 our readers who are engaged in 
 any work which requires the aid 
 of such accessories. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be not unneces- 
 sary to note here that in mediaeval 
 fringes, unlike the modern ones, the 
 different coloured threads of which 
 the fringe is composed are not in- 
 termingled; in a mediaeval fringe, 
 the colours are arranged in sepa- 
 rate masses — an inch or two of one 
 colour, then an inch or two of the 
 next, and so on. Fringes of this 
 kind are now very commonly made, 
 with generally a correct arrangement of the colours: the fringe for a 
 heavy cloth should be rich and massive, especially the fringe to be 
 attached to one of the ordinary heavy velvet cloths : the introduction of 
 gold thread into such a fringe is a very great addition to its effect, with- 
 out adding very materially to the cost. 
 
 Altar-coverings, with the whole cloth powdered with embroidery, have 
 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 79 
 
 also recently been introduced — it is unnecessary to say that their effect is 
 very beautiful. 
 
 Of the fair linen cloth with which the table is to 
 be covered at the time of the ministration, little need 
 be said. Few persons would like to see a mere com- 
 mon table-cloth used for this purpose, and for years 
 cloths have been fabricated on purpose, with a crossed 
 sceptre and crosier in the corners, or a Communion-cup 
 of bad shape in the centre, or some similar device, 
 instead of the ordinary domestic patterns ; we would 
 merely suggest that, in purchasing a new one, it should 
 be damasked with the more correct designs which are 
 now introduced in cloths manufactured for this pur- 
 pose. A similar remark will apply to the fair linen 
 cloth with which the remnants of the consecrated 
 elements are to be covered after the distribution. We give here a repre- 
 sentation of one of the new fabrics in use for this purpose. 
 
 * Note referred to at p. 73. — It must be remembered, however, that this fashion of con- 
 trasting hangings does not appear to have obtained in the latter part of the fifteenth century. 
 Several altars are represented in the book DerWeiss Kunig, which is of that date. The majo- 
 rity have no frontal at all, only a pall, which reaches about half-way down the front of the 
 altar : one at pL 9, has an embroidered frontal. Some notes on the furniture and arrange- 
 ments of the altars in this very interesting work will sei ve to illustrate several points in 
 the present inquiry, and will interest many of our readers. PI. 8 is a marriage scene, the 
 Pope officiating : the “ altar-piece ” is a painting of a pieta in a classical frame-work ; the 
 front of the altar is concealed by the figures ; two lighted candles on the altar (no super- 
 altar) ; the chalice standing upon the corporal. 
 
 PI. 9. — Pope administering the Eucharist to a king and queen: altar has embroidered 
 and fringed frontal as well as pall, besides two large lighted candles ; two smaller candle- 
 sticks upon the altar bear each three small lighted tapers ; service-book rests on a small 
 sloping stand upon the altar ; reredos has a painting — Virgin and Child with SS. Peter 
 and Paul standing one on each side ; and beneath this painting another subject, which ap- 
 pears to he sculptured in low relief, in a shallow long panel, but it is half hidden by the 
 taper-sticks, &c. 
 
 PI. 10.— Reredos— a painting of the Resurrection in classical frame ; altar vested in pall; 
 two lighted candles upon altar; the chalice standing upon corporal ; and a book on sloping 
 desk. 
 
 PI. 16.— A funeral altar and ornaments upon it as in pi. 10 ; but here the dossal is a 
 hanging, with a cross and a shield of arms at the intersection of the limbs, to match the 
 bier-cloth. 
 
 PL 53. — Altar vested in pall, which has two large crosses marked on its comers ; a small 
 cloth (corporal ?), with one side fringed, is laid upon the pall so that the fringed side hangs 
 over the front of the altar; two lighted candles ; reredos, a triptych. Virgin and Child in 
 centre, and a saint on each wing; a long shallow niche beneath the painting as in pi. 9, in 
 which there appear to stand some vessels, one of which is perhaps a pyx ; a semicircular 
 curtain on a rod surrounds the back and sides of the altar. 
 
 PI. 69. — Funeral scene: altar with fringed pall; two candles and chalice; dossal is a 
 hanging with a cross and two shields beneath its transverse arms. 
 
 PI. 1 63.— An altar vested in pall; embroidered hanging suspended from a classical cor- 
 nice for a dossal; altar crowded with plate; including two huge candlesticks, a large pyx 
 with cover of pyramidal tabernacle-work, a hand of benediction on a stand, &c. «fcc. 
 
 PI. 201. — Altar in hinged pall, four lighted candles upon it, and book on sloping desk; 
 reredos a hanging with a cross having a shield at the intersection, and a half-length figure 
 of the Saviour; below two side-altars are shown, which have similar dossals, with the 
 omission of the figure. 
 
 PI. 225. — Altar vested on pall ; reredos, a triptych. Crucifixion in centre, a saint on each 
 wing; two candles, chalice, cruet, and book-desk. 
 
 PI. 237. — Altar vested in short-fringed pall ; altar-piece a very good half-length Virgin 
 and Child ; two candles, and no other furniture upon the altar. 
 
80 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 dal 
 
 Cliurttr f ktt. 
 
 HALICES were anciently of the same material and form 
 as the drinking-cups in ordinary use ; we can imagine to 
 ourselves that when the church wanted a cup for the Holy 
 Communion, or if the existing cup appeared unworthy of 
 its purpose, the great man of the congregation or the 
 parish, gave the choicest of his own cups, and dedicated it 
 to that use. They were not always of the precious metals; in poor 
 churches, in very early times, they were allowed to be of base 
 metal, or of glass, bone, or even wood.* When rare foreign materials 
 were fashionable for drinking-cups, we sometimes find the Communion- 
 chalice of the same materials — agate, crystal, ivory, and cocoa-nut, 
 mounted in precious metals. Frequently these vessels were splendidly 
 adorned with precious stones. 
 
 The Reformation made little, if any, change in Communion-vessels then 
 in use ; the almost universal absence of ancient plate now in our churches 
 is owing to the circumstance that it was seized during the Commonwealth, 
 when our churches, with their furniture, fell into the hands of the 
 schismatics. The modern Communion-vessels consist of the chalice, 
 paten, fiagon, and ofiertory basin; where a church possesses more 
 vessels than are actually needed for the administration, they are all 
 usually displayed upon the altar at the time of the Communion ; and very 
 properly so ; when we give a feast to our friends we enrich our tables and 
 side-boards with the display of our costly plate ; especially if any of it 
 has been the gift of friends — as most of the Communion-plate of our 
 churches is the gift of the friends of the Lord — it would be a slight to 
 our friend’s gift not to display it. 
 
 The ofiertory-basin is usually displayed upon the Lord’s Table on every 
 Sunday. Of course the fashion arose from its being required every Sunday 
 for use, when people used to believe it a proper part of worship to oflTer of 
 their substance for pious uses ; where it is not now required for use, it may 
 very well be retained as a protest against the neglect of that laudable 
 custom. 
 
 We shall all desire that the Communion-vessels be of the precious 
 metals, and that they be rich and costly ; the Lord’s Table ought not to be 
 furnished for His banquet with worse vessels than we grace our own tables 
 
 * The reader who desires more particular information on the subject, may consult a paper 
 in the Archaeological Journal, Vol. III. p. 129, and the works on the subject by Mr. Shaw, 
 (Church plate) or the Rev. A. Smith, (College plate) ; and the inventories of church plate 
 preserved in the Monasticon: and especially Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament, 
 
METAL WORK. 
 
 81 
 
 with: indeed, if we believe with St. Paul that that cup is the Communion 
 of the Blood of Christ ; if we are to apply what our Lord says in the sixth 
 chapter of St. John — as the Church of England declares that we are — to 
 the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we shall all agree, without any ten- 
 dency to Romish error on this subject, that the most precious things of 
 earth are not too precious for the use of the ministration of that Supper. 
 
 We set out then with the idea that the plate with which we grace our 
 own tables at a banquet, is to be in some respects the standard by which 
 we are to guide ourselves in providing plate for what the Homily calls 
 the Banquet of the Lord ; viz., that the plate for this use ought to be 
 more precious than that out of which we take our common feasts. 
 
 We might, if space would permit, dwell upon the neglect into which, 
 for the last two hundred years or more, works of fine art, in the precious 
 metals, have suflered in public appreciation. The tide of fashion, how- 
 ever, is already turning; and, as beautiful workmanship in chasing, and 
 embossing, and enamel, is again introduced into our domestic vessels, it 
 ought also again to grace our church vessels. Some very beautiful speci- 
 mens of church plate were exhibited in the Great Exhibition, which proved 
 that our church plate has been taken up by artists, who, with a due 
 measure of the patronage without which, when his materials are so 
 costly, the artist’s hands are tied, will speedily raise it to a high standard 
 of excellence. Mr. Keith obtained a medal for a case of plate, which 
 has been engraved in Part VI. of the Instrumenta Ecclesiastica, 2nd series, 
 among which some of the patens, chased and enriched with enamel, and 
 several chalices, enamelled and jewelled, were especially noticeable. The 
 Messrs. Skidmore, of Coventry, had also some very beautiful church 
 plate — a chalice, of elegant shape, enriched with delicate blue enamel ; 
 a two-handled chalice, enriched with niello; and offertory-basins, with 
 jewels and enamels set in the rim. 
 
 Many of the modern Chalices are made after the model of the fifteenth- 
 century priest’s chalice. We venture to think that better models might 
 be chosen. The mediaeval Communion-chalice was intended to contain a 
 very small portion of liquid, but yet to be a vessel of conspicuous size ; con- 
 sequently the bowl is small and shallow, in proportion to the foot and stem. 
 There was a propriety of symbolical expression in this marked smallness 
 of the bowl ; but in reproducing such a chalice on a larger scale, so that 
 the bowl may be capacious enough for our use, the whole cup is magnified 
 to a gigantic size, and the stem and knop become of a size which is 
 inconvenient to the grasp. 
 
 The cup for the congregation, in the times before the laity were de- 
 prived of their privilege, was much larger than the mediasval chalice, and 
 frequently had two handles, and probably more resembled the large 
 loving-cups and wassail bowls of the middle ages, which were intended 
 for the participation of a large company. Eor in those times not only 
 was the number of communicants about ten times as large as in these, in 
 proportion to the number of the congregation ; but it was the custom then 
 (and was so in the Reformed Church, until the time of James I., or later,) 
 for the communicants to drink, and not merely to taste, of the cup. 
 
 M 
 
82 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 It is true that we do not need such large Communion cups, first, because 
 of the small number of communicants with us, and of the usual fashion 
 of partaking; and second, because the ease with which the cup can (and 
 according to our ritual may) be filled from the flagon, will make it 
 unnecessary to have the communion-cup of a larger size than is convenient 
 to the grasp, even when the number of our communicants has again 
 become as great as it ought to be. 
 
 Still the shallow bowl, in the type of chalice which has frequently been 
 chosen of late as a model, is so markedly and intentionally smaller in 
 proportion to the stem than the ordinary drinking-cups of the same period, 
 as to convey clearly the idea that it is only to be partaken of by very few 
 persons ; and this is certainly an idea which we wish by all means to avoid 
 expressing. 
 
 We give here three examples of modern cups of very excellent design, 
 but all of them, as it appears to us, somewhat open to the objection which 
 we have just mentioned. 
 
 We venture to suggest the ordinary drinking-cups of the thirteenth, 
 fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, and many of those of the sixteenth, 
 as supplying better models than the mediaBval chalice for our Communion- 
 chalices. Existing examples of these are not wanting, and representations 
 of them abound in the Illuminated MSS. 
 
 The paten appears frequently to have been used as a cover for the 
 chalice, and is now sometimes made that it may be so used; but it is 
 contrary to our modern ideas of propriety and reverence to place a plate 
 over a cup, as a make-shift cover. There are, however, instances both 
 before and after the Eeformation, of a distinct cover to the chalice; 
 and experience has, Sunday after Sunday,, so convinced us of the 
 desirableness of some means of preventing accidental impurities 
 from getting into the Communion-cup, or of some means of removing 
 them, or of both, that we shall venture to suggest the propriety of 
 introducing into more general use some kind of cover to the cup. 
 
 The ordinary fourteenth century drinking-cup has an elegant conical 
 
METAL WORK. 
 
 83 
 
 cover ; * and the chalice of the same period also appears sometimes (as 
 was natural) to have had a similar cover.f We could hardly find a more 
 beautiful model for a chalice and cover. A very beautiful Communion-cup 
 at Westerham Church, Kent, which is probably of sixteenth-century 
 date, has a cover surmounted 
 by an armed figure. 
 
 A veil or covering of linen 
 or silk, such as is represented 
 in the accompanying cut, is 
 sometimes used for the pur- 
 pose for which we have here 
 suggested a cover. 
 
 If a spoon be introduced for 
 the removal of accidental im- 
 purities, no one would desire 
 that it should be of the com- 
 mon domestic fashion. One of 
 the old “Tostle spoons,” which 
 used to be given as christening 
 presents, and of which numbers 
 still exist, might be applied to 
 the purpose. Some of the ma- 
 nufacturers of church plate make spoons of suitable forms. 
 
 The Paten used anciently to be made of the same materials as the 
 chalice: (for curious information upon this 
 subject, see Pugin’s Glossary of Eccl. Orna- 
 ment, sub voce.) Our Church gives no special 
 direction on the subject: the precious me- 
 tals, silver, silver-gilt, and gold, are the most 
 usual and the most suitable materials. It 
 is simply a shallow plate, but it is susceptible 
 of considerable beauty, both in its form and 
 its surface ornamentation ; the superstitious 
 scrupulousness of the modern Romish Church 
 will not suffer any engraving upon its inner 
 face. Ancient patens, however, are sometimes engraved with some appro- 
 priate device; and there seems no valid reason why ours should not be 
 similarly adorned. 
 
 Some ancient examples exist in the Treasury of York Minster, and are 
 engraved in the Archceological Journal, Vol. III., p. 137, and No. 20, p. 331. 
 Many other ancient examples exist, choice specimens of which will be 
 found represented in the works on the subject already mentioned, and in 
 Mr. Digby Wyatt’s splendid volume of Church Plate, and in some of the 
 foreign works on the same subjects. 
 
 * See Roman d' Alexandre., passim, in Bodleian, Oxford, 
 t See an instance of a semicircular cover in Royal MS., 15 D. 3, ft iSO. 
 
84 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 The Flagon is to hold the reserve of consecrated wine above what the 
 cup will contain, so as to obviate the necessity for a cup of inconvenient 
 size, or a plurality of cups. Since the Communion-wine is to be conse- 
 crated in it, it should be of the same precious material as the other 
 
 Communion-vessels, and naturally should be en suite with them in fashion. 
 The fashion in very common use, which resembles a tankard, is very 
 ungraceful; some flagons of modern-mediaeval design, which have long 
 spouts like cofiee-pots, are not much more satisfactory in the associations 
 which they suggest ; probably some of the claret -jugs, which our art- 
 manufacturers have produced, will furnish more suitable types ; and 
 valuable hints may be derived from the representations in those inex- 
 haustible store-houses of elegant art-design, the mediaeval MSS. The 
 flagon should have a lid, for the same reasons which have already been 
 mentioned in speaking of a cover for the chalice. 
 
 The Alms-hasin is sometimes a bowl of 
 silver, than which nothing can be more 
 suitable ; and it is a vessel susceptible of 
 much elegance of form, and giving ample 
 space for ornamental engraving or embossing. 
 The old shallow embossed bowls of brass, or 
 latten, which are frequently to be met with, 
 and, indeed, are still in use for ewers in 
 some places on the Continent, have been frequently applied of late years 
 as alms-basins. 
 
 At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute, on June 1, 1849, Mr. 
 Octavius Morgan, M.P., exhibited a collection of these dislies in bright 
 yellow metal, several of which were ornamented with sacred devices and 
 inscriptions ; on one was the Annunciation, on others are found Adam and 
 Eve, St. George, the Grapes of Eshcol, the Paschal Lamb, &c. “The 
 northern antiquary Sjoborg, who has written much on the subject, calls 
 them baptismal dishes or alms dishes.”* We would hint to our readers 
 that forgeries of these vessels are not uncommon. 
 
 * Arclvxological Journal, No. 23, p. 295. 
 
METAL WORK. 
 
 85 
 
 It was a custom in the Primitive Church to bum lights during the 
 public service, “ to signify to the people (according to Dr. Donne) that 
 God, the Father of Lights, was otherwise present in that place than in 
 any other.” Candlesticks do not, however, appear to have been placed 
 upon the altar until the tenth century, but to have been arranged around 
 it ; usually there were only two candlesticks upon the altar, but there 
 were others ranged around it, and a lamp was kept constantly burning 
 before the reserved Host in the pyx. Other tapers and lamps were burned 
 before favourite shrines, and images, and the like. At the Keformation 
 all these additional lights were banished, and only two wax-lights 
 retained. “And shall suffer from henceforth no torches nor candles, 
 tapers, or images of wax, to be set before any image or picture, but only 
 two lights upon the high altar, before the Sacrament, which, for the signi- 
 fication that Christ is the very true light of the world, they shall suffer 
 to remain still.” (1st Edward VI. 1547.) The phrase “ before the Sacra- 
 ment ” is somewhat ambiguous ; perhaps it means that the candles were 
 only lighted during the Communion Service and not at Morning 
 Prayer.* 
 
 The use of the candlesticks, as part of the furniture of the Communion 
 
 * Pugin {Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament), says that two large candlesticks, called 
 Elevation Candlesticks, stand on each side of the altar, which are lit immediately before 
 the Consecration, and in some churches extinguished after the Elevation, in others left 
 burning till after the Communion. 
 
 In the representations of altars which occur in Der Weiss Kunig (latter part of fifteenth 
 century), we always find two lighted candles upon the altar, e. g. at plate 8, during a 
 marriage service ; at plate 10, during a confirmation ; at plate 16, durmg a funeral, &c. At 
 plate 9, which represents the administration of the Eucharist to a newly-married couple, 
 there are, in addition to the two large lights, two smaller chandeliers, each bearing three 
 small tapers, upon the altar. 
 
86 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Table, has been continued in cathedrals and royal and college chapels, 
 and in some parish churches,* to the present day, under the authority of 
 the Eubric which orders that such ornaments of the church shall be re- 
 tained as were in use, by the authority of Parliament, in the 2nd 
 Edward VI. 
 
 We give here three good examples of ancient candlesticks, which will serve 
 well for the purpose of the altar-lights. They are usually made of the mixed 
 metal called latten ; but may be had of richer material. The second of 
 the series is a very beautiful one ; the wood-cut does not do it justice. 
 
 ftrraiffi, ^tankrte, ani |ito-£igl!ta. 
 
 The method of lighting a church effectually and handsomely was long 
 a problem, which we have only perhaps just now satisfactorily solved. Our 
 fast decreasing space will not permit us to discuss the subject so fully as 
 it deserves. We must content ourselves with a few brief notes. 
 
 There are two modes of lighting — by candles, and by gas. A good deal 
 of the uiisatisfactoriness in our modern lighting of churches has arisen 
 from endeavours to make gas look like wax tapers ; because the medigeval 
 builders had no gas, and our modern imitators had an idea that we were 
 to eschew all the discoveries of modern science, and imitate mediaeval 
 works as slavishly as the Chinese tailor. 
 
 Now that we have fairly recognised the principle that the modern 
 builder must avail himself of every modern discovery, some of our first 
 designers have treated gas-lights in a way which is beginning to show us 
 
 that, instead of any injury to the effect of a Gothic building, they may be 
 made, when properly handled, accessories of great beauty, for which 
 the mediaeval artist would have gladly given all his wax tapers and 
 twinkling lamps. 
 
 There are then two distinct styles of design in church-lights; one for 
 candles, the other for gas. 
 
 ♦ For a list of authorities, see the Ilierurgia Anglicana. 
 
S-Sor. Li<h'"’t'>TneQii'*fn 
 
METAL WORK. 
 
 87 
 
 The distribution of the light to the various parts of the building is 
 effected by side-lights affixed to the wall ; by standards, fixed upon the 
 bench-ends, or standing upon an independent pedestal ; and by coronae, 
 or chandeliers as we commonly call them, suspended from above. Of 
 side-lights we give here a couple of examples, and a light of the same 
 character adapted as a pulpit-light. 
 
 The idea of a standard-light is a staff of wood 
 or metal, of the requisite height, holding a socket 
 at the top for the candle, and with a metal bowl 
 beneath the socket, to catch the falling wax. The 
 idea may be elaborated into a splendid pedestal, 
 bearing a multiplicity of lights ; but for an or- 
 dinary village church, the simple standard as we 
 have described it, attached to the ends of the 
 benches, is perhaps sufficiently elaborate, and has a simple quaintness 
 whose effect is very pleasing. 
 
 We have before us some gas standards by Mr. Skidmore, of Coventry, 
 a very successful artist in ecclesiastical metal- work. One is a giant light 
 
 adapted to throw light upon the Bible-lettern, or for any similar position. 
 A tall standard of brass is surmounted by a crown, out of which proceed 
 four branches — the straight central continuation of the standard, sur- 
 rounded by three curved ones ; the branches are ornamented with sprigs of 
 foliage, and each terminates in a crown, from which proceed three gas 
 jets. Another smaller standard is fixed upon the end of a carved 
 bench ; a beautifully designed stem divides into three elegant branches, 
 
88 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 bearing foliage, and each terminating in a flower, out of which three little 
 jets of gas issue, like luminous stamens. The whole design, worked in 
 brass, is very elegant. 
 
 The corona is a circlet of wood or metal bearing a number of tapers 
 round its rim, and suspended from the roof • this mode of lighting a 
 building is very ancient, and its retention still in our larger domestic 
 rooms, and our halls of public assembly, is sufficient proof of its efficiency. 
 
 Coronas have sometimes two or three circles, one over the other, and 
 diminishing in diameter, so as to form a pyramid of light, with exceed- 
 ingly beautiful effect.* 
 
 * Many beautiful ancient examples of coronse remain on the Continent : (Vide 
 Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament, sub voce.) 
 
METAL WORK. 
 
 89 
 
 We give in pages 87 and 88, three examples of coronae of one circle for 
 candles, of various degrees of elaborateness. 
 
 It is more especially, perhaps, in these coronal and pyramidal arrange- 
 ments of light, that gas will enable the artist to revel in novel and beau- 
 tiful designs ; he is no longer compelled to work his design out of dots of 
 light, which are encumbered with a stick of wax (in candles), or a metal 
 bowl (for oil) beneath each ; he has now in his hands a light, whose necessary 
 accompaniment is nothing but a thin stem of metal, such as the artist re- 
 quires for the skeleton of his design ; a light which, save that it must have 
 this thin stem, is indefinitely plastic ; it may he drawn out in long con- 
 tinuous lines of light, or dotted in ten thousand little jets, or fiashed out 
 in great masses of brilliant flame. This plasticity is one great charac- 
 teristic of gas; and another is the invisibleness of its generation — its 
 freedom, that is, from the incumbrance of a roll of wax, or a bowl of oil. 
 To make a gas flame issue from a sham half-burnt candle, or from a 
 pseudo oil-vase, is the same mistake as to make a screen of brass of the 
 same design and substance as one of timber ; and every design for a gas- 
 light which does not bring into prominence those two characteristics — of 
 facility of handling and invisibleness of generation — so as to make them 
 sources of gratification to the beholder, will be a failure. 
 
 N 
 
90 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 
 E are confined within limits which preclude the possibility 
 of our entering at any length into a description of the 
 many hundreds of examples of ancient tiles which lie before 
 us. We propose to confine ourselves to such a sketch of 
 the antiquities of the subject as a “ Church Restoration 
 Committee,” or a country Clergyman desirous of repaving 
 a church, would desire to have, in order to avoid any violation of antiqua- 
 rian propriety ; and to such practical hints as may perhaps enable them 
 to avoid some of the errors by which the effect of modern tile-pavements 
 has so often been injured. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the decorative tile pavements of the 
 middle ages were derived from the classical mosaic pavements, in which 
 the pattern was produced by inlaying substances of various colours in 
 stone or marble. In these northern countries nature did not supply varied 
 marbles and rare stones, and the Gothic artist essayed a humble imitation 
 of these in coloured clays, just as even the artist of southern Europe 
 would sometimes use a piece of moulded clay in the midst of a rich design 
 of mosaic- work, where the clay gave the colour which he required. The 
 earliest examples, however, of inlaid tiles, which have hitherto been found 
 in England, cannot be assigned to an earlier date than the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 The mode of manufacture appears to have been as follows : the tile of 
 red clay, generally about four to six inches square, and one inch thick, 
 was impressed on its upper surface with a stamp which bore an orna- 
 mental design ; the hollow which this stamp left in the tile was filled up, 
 in the more usual description of tile, with a whitish clay, giving the 
 ornamental design in white on a red field. Generally the whole face of 
 the tile was covered with a yellowish glaze, which was burnt on in the 
 furnace. Of course, much of the success of the manufacture depended 
 upon procuring two clays of the requisite colours, which would shrink 
 equally in the drying and burning ; if the white clay shrank too much, it 
 would shrink away from the red intaglio at the edges, its surface would 
 shrink beneath the level of the red clay, and the tile would be spoiled; if 
 the white did not shrink so much as the red, then the white would rise 
 above the level of the red, and probably, by its unequal expansion, force 
 the whole tile into a curved shape. And these are among the points of 
 manufacture which are to be attended to in the purchase of modern tiles ; 
 though, indeed, the principal modern makers have attained such profi- 
 ciency in the manipulation of their art, that their tiles are superior in 
 workmanship to the ancient ones. 
 
 The tile which we have described, with a yellow pattern on a red 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 91 
 
 ground, is the most usual kind of ornamental tile ; but there are other 
 varieties occasionally found. Sometimes the usual arrangement of the 
 two colours is inverted, and we have a red device on a yellow ground. In 
 another kind the stamp or mould is so made that it throws the ornamental 
 design into relief, and the field is left hollow and not filled in with other 
 coloured clay: this we may call the embossed tile. In another kind the 
 design is only impressed in outline ; but in these the yellow glaze with 
 which the surface is covered, being thicker in the incised lines, often 
 produces a different colour in the outlined pattern; these we may call out- 
 line tiles. 
 
 We find also a few instances of inlaid tiles in other colours. Unin- 
 tentional varieties of colour are sometimes produced by over or under 
 burning; thus at Westleigh, Devon, and Bristol Cathedral, some black 
 and yellow tiles have been converted into dark-green and yellow. But 
 besides these, we have a few valuable examples of the use of other 
 than the usual colours — e. g. at Stone Church, Kent, are several Early 
 Decorated tiles, having a blue foliated device on a black ground ; and at 
 St. Alban’s is a tile in which yellow and green are combined. A yellow 
 device, on a blue ground, occurs on a late thirteenth-century tile at Dor- 
 chester, Oxon ; blue and white on red at Humstall Kidware, Staf- 
 fordshire ; and a beautiful and very remarkable Early English tile 
 from Erithelstock, Devon, is included among Messrs. Maw and Co.’s 
 collection of drawings, in which blue, green, red, yellow, white, and 
 black, are combined upon the same tile. 
 
 Besides these ornamental tiles, a great number of plain tiles enter into 
 the design of a tile pavement, and these are of various colours, plain 
 black, red, yellow, white, dark green, and blue: these are sometimes of 
 the same size as the ornamental tiles ; sometimes half or one-third the 
 width, intended for borders and dividing lines ; sometimes of various 
 shapes, which, with other tiles, fit together and produce a geometrical 
 pattern. 
 
 The devices found on ancient decorative tiles are almost infinite in their 
 variety. We may perhaps conveniently divide them into the following 
 classes : — human figures, including representations of kings, bishops (Chap- 
 ter-house, Westminster), ladies, knights in combat, huntsmen, &c. &c. ; 
 animals of every kind, especially those used in heraldry, lions, stags, swans, 
 and dragons, &c. ; heraldic devices; geometrical devices, including those 
 very numerous ones in which a portion only of a geometrical design is 
 contained on each tile ; foliage designs, including again those in which 
 each tile bears only part of the whole pattern; lettered tiles, including 
 those which bear sacred monograms, monograms and initials of individuals, 
 tiles which bear letters forming portions of legends and inscriptions, and 
 others in which the letters appear to be only ornamental; and lastly, to 
 include the variety of others which will not come under any of these 
 heads, we must add a class of miscellaneous. 
 
 A great number of examples have been published. Selections of valuable 
 and interesting examples, carefully drawn in colours to the full size of the 
 originals, will be found in the following works : — Examples ofi Decorative 
 
92 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Tihs^ by Mr. J. G. Nichols ; Patterns of Inlaid Tiles in the Diocese of 
 Oxford, by Mr. W. A. Church; Ancient Irish Tile Pavement, by Mr. 
 Oldham; and in the Catalogues of Messrs. Maw and Co., of Benthall 
 works, near Broseley, Shropshire, and Messrs. Minton, of Stoke-upon- 
 Trent, Staffordshire. Other interesting examples on a smaller scale 
 will be found in the Oxford Glossary of Architecture, and scattered 
 throughout many other architectural and topographical publica- 
 tions; and the varieties of tile patterns are so endless, that perhaps 
 there are few of the army of ecclesiologists whose note-books will 
 not furnish additional unpublished examples. Besides the above publi- 
 cations, we are favoured, by the courtesy of Messrs. Maw and Co. with the 
 loan of their very extensive and valuable collection of tracings and draw- 
 ings of interesting unpublished examples, for our use in the drawing up of 
 these notes. It demands some self-denial to turn away from so valuable 
 a mass of material for an elaborate essay on the archaeology of the sub- 
 ject; but we must confine ourselves here to the notice only of some of 
 those which will be practically useful to the modern restorer. 
 
 It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark that, in selecting patterns for 
 modern use, regard must be had to the date of the style of pavement which 
 is to be introduced. Not only would it be an antiquarian blunder to in- 
 troduce tiles of an earlier date than the fabric, but the effect produced by 
 the incongruity of the style of ornament of the floor with the style of the 
 ornamentation of the rest of the church would be unsatisfactory.* Even 
 in a church which is very destitute of architectural ornamentation which 
 would contrast with the floor patterns, we must remember the probability 
 of decorative patterns being hereafter introduced into the windows and 
 upon the walls, and must let the design of the floor be such as will har- 
 monise with the style likely to be adopted, or which in many cases must 
 be adopted, in those parts of the fabric. 
 
 In determining this point, it would not always be wise, because the 
 fabric is of Early English date (for example), to place a pavement of Early 
 English design. Eegard must be had to the modifications which the 
 building has undergone; for instance, if there are many Perpendicular 
 windows, these must have Perpendicular glass; the decoration of the walls 
 ought to harmonise with the windows; and, in such a case, perhaps a 
 pavement of Perpendicular design might be the most desirable. The 
 characteristics of design which mark the different periods are, of course, 
 in accordance with the characteristics of the Gothic art generally of those 
 periods. An eye familiar with Gothic art in architectural detail, painted 
 glass, &c,, will easily recognise the dates of a series of tile patterns : to 
 explain them to one unfamiliar with the subject would be to write an 
 episode on Gothic design, which would far exceed our limits. We give, 
 however, the dates of the engraved examples which we introduce, in order 
 to assist those of our readers who are not familiar with these minutiae of 
 detail. In looking through a collection of tile patterns, the reader must 
 also remember that the majority of them are intended to form one of a 
 
 • See some observations on this subject under the head of “ Stained Glass,” p. 23. 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 93 
 
 set of four, nine, sixteen, or more tiles ; and that in many cases it is utterly 
 impossible for any but a very practised eye to appreciate the etfect of the 
 design from this one fragment of it ; for very frequently the whole design 
 is a geometrical one, of very great intricacy as well as beauty. 
 
 We give here a few examples of ancient tiles by way of specimen ; and, 
 first, three geometrical tiles.* Nos. 1 and 2 are each one of a set of tiles — 
 the whole design of the set being an intricate series of intersecting circles. 
 
 Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 
 
 Fig. 1, from Oxford, is of Decorated date; fig. 2, from Neath Abbey, is 
 also Decorated ; and fig. 3, from Komsey Abbey, is of Early Decorated style. 
 And next, four very elegant foliated patterns — 
 
 Fig. 4. Fig. 5. Fig. 6. Fig. 7. 
 
 Fig. 4, also from Romsey Abbey, is of thirteenth-century date ; 
 fig. 5, from Gloucester Cathedral, is also late thirteenth century; and 
 figs. 6 and 7, from the Abbey Church of Great Malvern, are both of the 
 latter part of the fifteenth century. 
 
 We now give a few sets of tiles in order to illustrate the remarks 
 which we have made above: and first, in order to exhibit at the same time 
 examples of the class of “animal tiles,” 
 we give a set of four curious tiles of 
 the fourteenth century (fig. 8), bearing 
 discovered in the ruins of the 
 Collegiate Church atWallingford Castle. 
 
 And next (fig. 9), an interesting set 
 Fig. 8 . of four tiles from Reading Abbey, which Fig. 9 . 
 
 will also exhibit a design of two birds pecking from a tree ; a device very 
 usual on mediasval tiles, and, indeed, in mediaeval ornamentation gene- 
 rally, and which is doubtless derived from the primitive Christian symbol 
 of the two birds pecking from a tree, which we find in some of the early 
 Christian monuments in the Roman Catacombs. This tile is of the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 And next we give an example of a grotesque design of Early Decorated 
 
 Fig. lu. 
 
 character, from an old tile, whose “ha- 
 bitat” is not certainly known (fig. 10.) 
 
 Next we give an example of a very 
 beautiful geometrical design, of late 
 Early English date, carried over four 
 tiles, from Bristol Cathedral (fig. 11). 
 
 Another very pleasing example of the 
 
 
 Fig. 11. 
 
 * With a few exceptions, the following examples are from the catalogue of Messrs. Maw 
 and Co., Encaustic Tile Manufacturers, of Broseley, Shropshire. 
 
94 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 
 Fig. 12. 
 
 □EDHSSQEQES 
 Fig. 13. 
 
 usual union of geometrical device with foliation, from the Abbey Church of 
 of Great Malvern (fig. 12), is in the 
 style of late Early English or Early De- 
 corated work. Yet the central orna- 
 ment, and other circumstances, lead to 
 the belief that it is a work of the latter 
 part of the fifteenth century, in imita- 
 tion of an earlier design. 
 
 (Fig. 13) is another charming foliage design, with a border round it, from 
 the same place, which is certainly of the latter part of the 1 5th century. 
 
 And here is a repre- 
 sentation of the way in 
 which the various kinds 
 of devices, foliated and 
 animal, are combined in 
 the same design, from 
 the pavement at Win- 
 chester Cathedral (fig. 
 
 14). It is of Early 
 English date ; and in 
 
 Fig. 14. 
 
 Fig. 15. 
 
 the pavement it is set lozengewise, and surrounded by narrow plain dark 
 
 Fig. 16. 
 
 green tiles, which divide it from another set of 9 tiles, on each of which a 
 foliated device is repeated. And fig. 15 is another set of 9 tiles, from West 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 95 
 
 Hendred Church, Oxfordshire, forming an exceedingly beautiful Decorated 
 design. The tiles which compose this latter design are given in fac simile 
 in Mr. Church’s Booh of Oxford Tiles. 
 
 And lastly we give, on a rather larger scale, a set of nine tiles, from 
 Gloucester Cathedral (Fig. 16), forming a beautiful design of late Per- 
 pendicular character. 
 
 Not to pass over modern 
 designs altogether, we here 
 give an example of one 
 (Fig. 17) from the manu- 
 factory of Mr. Godwin, of 
 Lugwardine, Hereford, which 
 we have selected because it is 
 not imitated from an ancient 
 tile, hut gives an idea of the 
 characteristics of modem 
 design. 
 
 As we have already stated, 
 there are hundreds — even 
 thousands — of examples of 
 ancient tile patterns exist- 
 ing ; and they have been 
 copied by the modem manu- 
 facturers in a style of work- 
 manship more perfect, and with material superior to the old ones. And 
 yet the majority of the modern tile-pavements are failures, — they fail 
 to give the same satisfaction to an educated eye that the old ones do. 
 
 One reason for this may he, that some of the modern tiles which were 
 made at the commencement of the revival of the art were highly glazed, 
 and in the pavement composed of them the pattern was lost in the reflected 
 light, and the whole floor had moreover a look of uncomfortable lubricity 
 which was particularly offensive. The manufacturers, however, have 
 remedied this defect, and now never glaze their tiles unless specially 
 ordered to do so ; so that it is now quite inexcusable to ruin the effect 
 of a tile pavement by this fault. 
 
 Another defect in some pavements is the had design of the tiles ; hut 
 this is a comparatively rare fault, owing to the very general adoption of 
 old tile patterns for modern use. A much more frequent fault is that of 
 injuring the effect of the old designs, by copying them with a certain 
 over-neatness and prettiness, which may look more satisfactory perhaps 
 in the single tile, hut is not so effective in the pavement. 
 
 It is, however, very easy to procure tiles of perfect workmanship and 
 unexceptionable design from the principal manufacturers ; and there is no 
 difficulty in having them made after any given design, at a cost which is 
 almost inappreciable in the purchase of a number of tiles. The chief 
 difficulty is in the arrangement of the general design ; it is here especially 
 that modern pavements have failed ; and even yet the elucidation of the 
 ancient principles of arrangement is by no means a superfluous work. 
 
96 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 The leading fault has been the mistaken idea, which has prevailed in 
 designs for stained glass also, and in many other things, that the greater 
 the quantity of rich work (or colour or material) the richer the effect would 
 be : whereas, to produce a rich effect, rich work (or colour or material) 
 must be judiciously set amidst a foil of plainer work. In a window the 
 coloured glass must be relieved with an abundant quantity of white and 
 yellow ; in a pavement the inlaid pattern tiles should be relieved with a 
 sufficient intermixture of plain tiles. 
 
 The proper arrangement of the general design is a matter of such 
 primary importance to the good effect of the pavement, that we proceed to 
 dwell at some length on the principles of arrangement which may be 
 deduced from the existing examples (not very numerous) of ancient 
 pavements, in which the general arrangement can be determined.* 
 
 There appear to have been, speaking generally, two different methods of 
 arranging large elaborate tile pavements during the mediaeval period ; one, 
 which we will call panelled, prevailed in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries ; the other, which we will call diapered, in the fifteenth century. 
 
 The first we have called panelled because the general design is divided 
 into numerous panels of various shapes by narrow lines composed of plain 
 black, or green, or, more rarely, red tiles. When the area to be paved is 
 very large, it is first divided into more manageable spaces by a few main 
 bands of plain tiles running north and south. Take a small fioor, or one 
 of these spaces of a larger floor, and we find it thus arranged : — It is first 
 divided into oblong panels running east and west ; these are again sub- 
 divided into smaller panels of lozenge, triangular, and other shapes. 
 
 The colours of the bands which form the larger panels are generally dif- 
 ferent from those which form the sub-panels ; and the intersections of these 
 bands are almost always marked by a tile of different colour, frequently by 
 a small inlaid tile. These sub-panels are filled in either with repetitions 
 of the same inlaid tile, or with sets of four, nine, or more tiles, forming a 
 pattern, after the fashion of which we have already given examples; fre- 
 quently two sets of tiles are alternated in a panel, or one set forming 
 a pattern will be placed in the panel, and filled in with tiles of another 
 pattern; and a variety of other combinations which it would be tedious to 
 describe. 
 
 As an example, take the pavement of the Exchequer Chamber, 
 Exeter Cathedral. It is first divided into large oblong panels, by 
 broad bands of tiles marked with black lozenges on a red ground 
 (red lozenges on black, in some of the bands). Each panel is sub- 
 divided longitudinally into three compartments, by narrow bands of green ; 
 and these three sub-panels are differently filled in as follows: — 1, has a 
 row of squares set lozengewise, the angles extending to the sides of the 
 panel, the squares formed by narrow green tiles, with a red tile at the 
 intersections ; each square is filled up with a set of sixteen tiles, forming 
 
 * For much valuable information on this portion of our subject we are indebted to a paper 
 by Lord Alwyne Compton, published in the Northamptonshire Architectural Society’s 
 Transactions for 1850. 
 
:tile-pavements. 
 
 97 
 
 four repetitions of a foliage pattern ; the half squares (or triangles) left 
 on each side of the panel, are filled in with various different tiles. 2, is 
 divided into square compartments set lozengewise, by green tiles, with a 
 red one at the intersections, but in this panel each lozenge is half the size 
 of those in panel 1, so that two are required to reach across the panel; 
 the squares are filled in some cases with a set of four tiles, in others with 
 four repetitions of the same tile. 3 is divided into large triangles, by 
 bands of green, which stretch from side to side of the panel, at the same 
 inclination as the bands in the other panels ; and the triangles are filled 
 with tiles very irregularly disposed.* 
 
 The paving of the Presbytery of Winchester Cathedral, a work of the 
 13th century, has been much injured; but enough remains to show that 
 it was arranged on the same principles as the Exeter pavement: the 
 panels run east and west the whole length of the Presbytery. Drawings 
 of two of these panels lie before us : in one panel the borders are red, 
 composed of two strips of narrow dark tiles, between which is a series of 
 small square tiles, set lozengewise, charged with a yellow mullet (star of 
 five points) pierced red; and the triangular spaces left between these 
 
 Fig. 18. 
 
 lozengewise inlaid tiles and the narrow strip tiles are filled in with trian- 
 gular dark tiles. The panel is divided by the narrow dark tiles (with no 
 
 * See further deseription of this pavement, and diagram of it, in Appendix. 
 O 
 
98 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 coloured tile at the intersections) into a series of square subpanels, five 
 of which reach across the panel ; and these squares are filled by sets of 
 four inlaid tiles, the pattern alternating in adjoining squares. 
 
 Fig. 19. 
 
 In the other panel one border has a series of small square tiles inlaid 
 with a yellow eight-leaved flower on a red ground, between fillets of nar- 
 row dark-green tiles; the border on the other side of the same panel has, 
 on a red ground, a central yellow stem with little trefoils on footstalks, 
 springing from it in pairs, between dark fillets. The panel is divided 
 lozengewise into squares by dark fillets with a plain red tile at their 
 intersections; three and a half squares extend across the panel; and these 
 squares are filled by a set of four tiles, forming a foliated pattern — all the 
 squares having the same pattern. 
 
 The ancient tile of which we here give a representation (fig. 18) appears 
 to have borrowed its design from an arrangement on this principle, and 
 might serve to fill in a panel, which would have much the effect of some 
 of those above described. 
 
 (Fig. 19) is a tile arrangement adapted from the 13th century wall 
 diaper at West Walton, Norfolk, before mentioned at p. 16. 
 
 The method of arrangement of the fifteenth century we have called 
 diapered, because that word perhaps best represents the general effect of 
 the design. In this method the area is not broken up into numerous 
 panels by narrow dark bands ; sometimes, indeed, it is divided into a few 
 large spaces by straight rows of tiles of a uniform pattern — often heraldic 
 tiles ; but generally the whole area, where not unusually large, is one field, 
 filled in by a diaper pattern, arranged on this wise — the diaper consists of 
 alternate squares of sixteen tiles each; one square is composed of sixteen 
 inlaid tiles (red and white), often forming a single device, but sometimes 
 repetitions of the same tile ; the other square is of four central tiles, gene- 
 rally forming one device, with twelve plain tiles arranged in a border 
 round them. 
 
 These are descriptions of elaborate tile pavements. There are many 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 99 
 
 others of much simpler, but often very beautiful and effective designs, 
 which are, perhaps, more suitable for the naves of our churches, where 
 the portions of a design left visible by the pewing are very small, and 
 of awkward shapes, and where, consequently, a design of this large and 
 elaborate description would be cut up into what might not improbably 
 turn out to be unpleasing, or at least confused and ineffective, fragments. 
 
 Many floors are formed of arrangements of tiles which are all, or nearly 
 all, plain, but of different colours ; and the effect produced by the alter- 
 nating of these different colours is sometimes very pleasing. Several 
 very good Early English arrangements of this kind at Rochester Ca- 
 thedral are engraved in the Glossary of Architecture, pi. 207. One is an 
 effective geometrical pattern, which may be thus described: — Crosses 
 patee (formed of isosceles triangles, whose apexes meet in the centre of 
 the cross) are disposed so as to touch one another at the angles ; the 
 crosses are black ; the intermediate square and lozenge-shaped spaces are 
 yellow. Another pattern consists of squares divided diagonally, and the 
 opposite triangles thus produced are coloured black and yellow, as in the 
 tile here represented (fig. 20), the colours being interchanged in adjoining 
 squares : e. g. if the top and bottom triangles are black in one 
 square, they are yellow in all the squares which adjoin it. We 
 here give a representation of the effect of this arrangement * 
 (fig. 21). Another is formed of alternate squares, set lozenge- 
 wise, of red and yellow ; another by alternate lozenges of the 
 
 Fig. 21 
 
 Fig. 20. 
 
 * This identical pavement is represented in an illumination in a splendid MS. of Scrip- 
 ture Histories in the British Museum (Royal, 15 D. III. folio 361). It occurs also at Great 
 Bedwin, Worcestershire ; and is represented in glass at Great Malvern. 
 
100 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 same colours. Another has squares of yellow, surrounded by narrow black 
 bands, with little yellow squares at the intersections of the bands (fig. 22.) 
 
 Fig. 22. 
 
 At Beaulieu a pavement has lately been discovered, formed of square red 
 
 tiles, surrounded by a narrow band of 
 black, with, at the intersections, a small 
 red tile with a yellow rose (fig. 23). 
 
 The effect of the pavement depends 
 80 materially upon a proper arrangement 
 of its general design, that we believe it 
 will be acceptable to many of our readers 
 to have here a list, which we have taken 
 pains to compile, of nearly all the known 
 examples of existing ancient arrange- 
 ments ; with a reference to the works in 
 which some of them have been engraved ; 
 and we beg to recommend a study of 
 them, not only to the amateur who is 
 about to design a pavement, but also to the restorer who is about to select 
 an arrangement from the pattern-book of a tile manufacturer, or to ap- 
 prove or disapprove of the design submitted by his architect. 
 
 Two of the thirteenth century, in the chapels of Sawley Abbey Church, 
 engraved in the Yorkshire Architectural Society's Transactions, Vol. for 1853. 
 Woodperry, Oxon. 13th century. Archaeological Journal, Vol. III., pp. 127 
 and 129. 
 
 Helpstone, Northants, 13th cent. Glossary, pi. 209. (The altar platform of 
 this is very good.) 
 
 Rochester Cathedral, 13th cent. Glossary, pi. 207. 
 
 Winchester Cathedral, 13th cent. Glossary, pi. 207 ; and another in Presbj’’- 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 101 
 
 tery of same Cathedral, 13th cent. Collings’s Gothic Ornaments^ Vol. I., 
 pi. 101. 
 
 Chapter-house of Salisbury Cathedral, 13th cent. Collings’s Gothic Orna- 
 ments^ Vol. I., pi. 97. 
 
 Old Singing School, Worcester Cathedral, late 13th cent. Oxford Glossary^ 
 pis. 204 and 205. 
 
 Chapter-house, Westminster, latter part of 13th cent. 
 
 Exeter Cathedral, 13th cent. Collings’s Gothic Ornaments^ Vol. I., pi. 96 ; 
 and Exeter Society's Transactions^ Vol. III., pi. 27, and infra. 
 
 Neath Abbey, Glamorgan, 14th cent. Messrs. Maw and Co.’s Catalogue. 
 
 Upper rooms of Muniment Tower, New College, Oxford, 14th cent. 
 
 Great Bedwin, Wilts, 14th cent. Glossary., pi. 206. 
 
 Oxford Cathedral, 14th cent. Glossary, pi. 200. 
 
 Abbey-house, Malmesbury, 14th cent. Nicholl’s Examples of Decorative Tiles, 
 p. xvii. 
 
 Prior Crawden’s Chapel, Ely, c. 1330 a.d. Collings’s Gothic Ornaments, Vol. 
 II., pi. 14. 
 
 Higham Ferrers, North Hants, c. 1340. Churches of the Archdeaconry of 
 North Hants. 
 
 Malvern Abbey Church, c. 1450 a.d. Blackbume’s Decorative Painting of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Three at Tewkesbury Abbey Church, viz. : one in Beauchamp Chapel, c. 1438 
 A.D. Carter’s Ancient Architecture, Vol. IT., pi. 27 ; and another in Fitz- 
 Hamon’s Chapel, c. 1500 a.d. Blackburne’s Decorative Painting. And 
 another in the Founder’s Chapel, c. 1397 a.d. 
 
 Abbot Seabrooke’s Chapel, Gloucester Cathedral, 15th cent. (1454 — 1457.) 
 Carter’s Ancient Sculpture, pi. 17. 
 
 St. Cross, Winchester. 
 
 Christ Church, Hants. 
 
 One at Ely, originally in the passage leading to the Lady Chapel, now laid 
 down in the south transept, formed of tiles of various shapes. 
 
 Fountains Abbey, formed of tiles of various shapes. 
 
 Beaulieu Abbey. Engraved above (fig. 19). 
 
 Muniment Room, Salisbury Castle. 
 
 Bristol Cathedral. 
 
 Lady Chapel, Winchester. 
 
 We shall also add a few notes of tile pavements as represented in 
 illuminated MSS. 
 
 In the fourteenth-century MS. already mentioned (Royal, 15 D, 
 III.), at f. 1, is a floor of alternate light and dark green squares. 
 At f. 48, of alternate yellow and green squares. At f. 268, of alter- 
 nate squares, which we will designate as A. and B. ; A. has a field of 
 darkish green with a large roundel of lighter tint ; B. has a field of yellow 
 green, with a pattern upon it in rather darker tint, about the same tint as 
 the lighter tint in A., the pattern consisting of a lozenge in the middle 
 with small triangles to occupy the angles of the tile. At f. 274, of 
 alternate squares, C. and D. ; C. having upon a field of light brown a 
 lozenge of yellow ; D., upon a field of yellow, a square of light brown, 
 and within this square as large a quatrefoil of yellow as it will contain. 
 At f. 284, tiles all the same pattern, which may be described, heraldically, 
 
102 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 as party per sinister bend, black and greenish yellow, a square counter- 
 changed. At f. 364, the same pattern as at Rochester as before described. 
 At f. 409, alternately, E. and F. ; E. being party per bend yellow and 
 pink a square counterchanged ; F. the same pattern in yellow and green. 
 At f. 432, tiles all the same pattern, party per bend black and yellow, 
 a roundel counterchanged.* 
 
 In a MS. of the time of Richard II., in the British Museum (Dom. A. 17), 
 at f. 49, is a floor of alternate squares, green and yellow. At f. 120 is the 
 very interesting interior of a church already described: its floor is of 
 squares, G. and H. alternately ; G. having upon a fleld of green a square 
 of lighter green ; H. upon a field of the lighter tint of green, a square of 
 yellow (gilt in the MS.) At f. 148, another interior of a church, whose 
 floor is not of tiles, and perhaps is only a fancy of the illuminator’s, 
 which is not practicable, but it is worth describing; it consists of 
 lozenges of pink, blue, and green, arranged alternately in diagonal 
 rows ; in each lozenge the tints are shaded off from dark at the 
 upper corner to light at the lower, and upon each lozenge is a gilt 
 pattern like the sacred Tau (T with a ring at the top), and beneath the 
 arms of the T two dots. At f. 175, alternate squares of two shades of 
 green. At f. 205, a floor of alternate squares, each square formed of a set 
 of nine tiles, and these sets of nine divided from each other by bands 
 (of same sized tiles) of yellow ; one set of nine has a yellow tile in the 
 
 centre surrounded by eight red ones ; 
 the other set of nine has a yellow centre 
 surrounded by eight green ones. This ar- 
 rangement is represented in the accom- 
 panying figure (24). At f. 145, interior 
 of a chancel, fioor of a uniform green tint. 
 
 In a MS. of the time of Henry VI., in 
 the British Museum (Royal, 15 E. VI.), 
 at f. 2, is a floor of alternate green and 
 yellow (gold in MS.) squares. At f. 5, 
 two floors, one green and brown, the 
 other green and yellow. At f. 6, alter- 
 nate grass-green and brown-green. At 
 f. 327, green and black. At f. 109, a 
 singular but effective pattern, which may be thus described; alternate 
 square sets, thus composed — a centre of light green, surrounded by a nar- 
 row band of salmon colour, with light green squares in the corners ; in 
 the alternate set the colours are counter-changed. This effective design 
 is here shown at fig. 25. At f. 135 is a floor of the same pattern in green 
 and buff; and at f. 145, in two shades of green. At f. 122, alternate 
 squares, I. and K. ; I. is red, with a pattern in dark lines, consisting of a 
 square, scored diagonally, with, in each compartment, a little V, its point 
 
 * This pattern occurs frequently in pavements represented in stained glass ; e. g. at 
 Great Malvern. 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 103 
 
 directed towards the centre; K. is plain brown: the same occurs again 
 at f. 125 and f. 170. 
 
 A few other authorities for arrangements of late fifteenth-century date 
 may be obtained from the pavements which occur in the plates of Hans 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 '0 
 
 m 
 
 
 ■0 
 
 
 11] 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 W////, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9. 
 
 
 Wi 
 
 1 
 
 
 u 
 
 9/ 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 yM'-- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 '9 
 
 
 
 
 b 
 
 i 
 
 j 
 
 'A 
 
 
 
 'A 
 
 m 
 
 
 I 
 
 ■ 
 
 ii 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 WMSMA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 
 fM- 
 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 Vi 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 Fig. 25. 
 
 Burgmair in Der Weiss Kunig* On pi. 1 is a pavement composed of two 
 kinds of tiles alternating; one is the same as that already figured as 
 fig. 20 ; the other is represented by a circle inscribed within the square.f 
 At pi. 69 is a pavement composed of four different tiles, which we will 
 distinguish as 1, 2, 3, and 4. 1 is like fig. 20; 2 is represented by a plain 
 
 circle inscribed within the shaded square tile ; 3 is uniformly shaded ; 4 is 
 left plain ; and they are thus arranged : — 
 
 2? 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 2? 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 1 ? 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 1? 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 2? 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 2? 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 At pi. 51 is another pavement of three tiles, arranged in diagonal rows; 
 the first row is of plain tiles, the other row consists of two tiles alternating, 
 one is a plain shaded tile, the other is represented by a plain roundel upon 
 a shaded ground. At pi. 114 is a pavement, composed of two kinds of 
 
 * We are indebted to J. H. Maw, Esq. for the loan of this valuable and most interesting 
 book ; it is full of authorities for the armour, architecture, costume, and manners of the 
 period. 
 
 t The plates are not coloured. 
 
J04 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION, 
 
 tiles, arranged in diagonal rows ; one tile is plain, the other has a cross 
 saltire, with fleur-de-lis terminations, with a small cross intersecting it in 
 the central point. At pi. 134 is a pavement composed of two kinds of 
 tiles, arranged diagonally, one plain, the other with small shaded quarter 
 circles taken out of the angles. At pi. 237 a pavem.ent of two tiles, alter- 
 nating, one tile like that already figured as fig. 20 ; the other is repre- 
 sented by a shaded roundel, surrounded by a circle. At pi. 227 a pave- 
 ment of two tiles, in diagonal rows ; one tile plain, the other has a pattern 
 composed of a small square in the centre, with stalked trefoil leaves 
 springing from its angles, and a little three-quarter circle attached to the 
 sides of the square. At pi. 219 is a very singular and effective arrange- 
 ment, of which we give a representation (fig. 26). The Spread Eagle is 
 the armorial badge of the Emperor of Germany, in an apartment of whose 
 palace the pavement occurs. 
 
 We find some singular instances of tiles adapted as monumental memo- 
 rials: the most extensive is that of the floor of the Chapter-house at 
 
 Fig. 26. 
 
 Jumieges, in which designs, containing figures of abbots under canopies, 
 with angels, borders, and other accessories, are drawn in outline upon sets 
 of tiles. The designs are clearly in imitation of the ordinary designs which 
 we find incised upon slabs of stone ; they are all of the same date, and are 
 
TILE-PAVEMENTS. 
 
 lOo 
 
 commemorative of the series of abbots of the twelfth and early part of the 
 thirteenth century, at which period the floor was fabricated. This inte- 
 resting floor has been destroyed, hut drawings of the whole series of effi- 
 gies are preserved in the valuable Gagnieres collection in the Bodleian, 
 and one of them has been engraved in the Archaeological Journal, Vol. V. 
 p. 234. Very probably, in repairing the Chapter-house, the old sepulchral 
 slabs of the abbots were displaced, and these memorials laid down in their 
 stead, with the idea of rendering the floor more uniform and sightly. 
 
 Two small examples of a similar kind of tile effigy, of the date of 
 Henry VIII., occur in the tiling on the altar-platform of Lingfield Church, 
 Surrey; one of them has been engraved in the Archaeological Journal, Vol. 
 VL, p. 176. 
 
 At Worcester Cathedral is a set of tiles, in the pavement, forming a 
 cross, with a moulded base, lily terminations to the limbs, and the mono- 
 gram I. II. C. in the centre; somewhat similar to the designs which occur 
 in cross-slabs of stone; it is engraved by Mr. Nichols, in his Examples 
 of Decorative Tiles, Part II. p. 1. The scattered tiles of a similar cross 
 occur at Great Malvern Abbey Church. Another example exists at 
 White Ladies’ Nunnery, Salop, published by the Antiquarian Etching 
 Club: it has a tile with a plain cross in the centre; the upper and lateral 
 limbs consist of one tile each, the lower limb of three tiles, all of which 
 are of the same pattern — not made for the purpose, but a tile which 
 was originally designed to form a set of several tiles has been used for 
 this purpose. Tiles inscribed “ Orate pro aia Joins Hertlond” have been 
 found in the Lady Chapel, Gloucester; and a tile, with a similar inscrip- 
 tion, at North Creake, Norfolk; a similar one was found in the tile-kiln 
 at Bawsey, inscribed “ Orate pro aia dni Nichi de Stowe Vicari. Thoresby 
 mentions that in 1723 there was found, at Kirkstall Abbey, a stone coffin, 
 covered by a mosaic of tiles like a tesselated pavement, and an inscription 
 formed of small tiles. This practice of laying down memorial tiles may be 
 worthy of imitation, especially as a means of marking the places of ancient 
 interments, in relaying a floor with tiles. It might sometimes be desirable, 
 and it would, if well managed, impart variety and interest to the floor, to 
 mark any interment of importance by a monumental tile design of rather 
 elaborate character ; e. g. an ornamental design or blazoned shield, in the 
 centre of a field of plain tiles, surrounded by a marginal inscription 
 between fillets, with evangelistic symbols in the corners ; or a cross in 
 the centre, with shields in the angles of the inscription. 
 
 A very interesting application of tiles occurs at Great Malvern, where 
 the east wall of the chancel, and perhaps the eastern ends of the north and 
 south walls also, have been lined to a certain height with tiles, whose 
 design is in imitation of carved panelling, or of tapestry hangings ; a set 
 of six of these is engraved in Mr. Nichols’s Examples of Decorative Tiles. 
 Similar tiles, clearly designed by the same artist, have been found under 
 the ruins of an old wall at Monmouth Priory. The authorities thus fur- 
 nished have been followed in several modern churches ; and several kinds 
 of tiles are now manufactured, expressly adapted to this and similar uses. 
 Mr. Minton has produced a very beautiful porcelain tile for this pur^jose, 
 
 P 
 
106 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 and has carried the manipulation of tlie art to such perfection, that now 
 any colours, and any number of different colours, can be combined upon 
 the same tile, and the result is so perfect and brilliant, as to look rather 
 like enamel than like clay. Messrs. Maw and Co. have adapted certain 
 suitable patterns of their ordinary tiles to this use ; they are of course 
 much cheaper than the porcelain tiles, and the effect of them is very 
 satisfactory. 
 
 These kinds of tiles are coming daily more and more into use for poly- 
 chromatic decoration, and will, perhaps, be adapted still to other uses ; 
 they have this advantage over all other kinds of polychromatic decoration, 
 that they are indefinitely durable, and that a sponge and a few buckets of 
 water will always restore them to their original brilliancy and beauty. 
 
MONUMENTS. 
 
 107 
 
 glonuintiits. 
 
 N entering upon the subject of monuments within churches, 
 we must pause for a moment to allude to the present 
 crusade against intramural interments, for it very much 
 affects the question. If we are to have no more interments 
 within churches, all our monuments within the church will 
 be mere cenotaphs, a class of monument which requires 
 very different treatment from a sepulchre. A mural tablet, or a bust, 
 or a statue, might then be suitable memorials ; hut the founder’s 
 niche, and the altar-tomb, and the recumbent lifelike effigy in alabaster, 
 the incised effigy on brass, and the cross-slab, would all be unsuitable for 
 cenotaphs. 
 
 But while we are much opijosed to burial, in a common coffin, 
 beneath the loose boards of a family pew, or to any kind of burial 
 which can injure the living; yet we are sure that interments, in leaden 
 coffins, in the vaults of a church, are unobjectionable; and we are sure 
 that every one would feel it a deficiency if we had not thus the dead 
 among the living in our churches; would feel that one element in the 
 sacredness of the building had vanished, and that the congregation had 
 been deprived of a constant and most effectual homily. We not only 
 hold that it is desirable that interments in churches, with proper precau- 
 tions, should not be discontinued, but what is practically to our purpose, 
 w^e believe that they never will be discontinued.* And we therefore 
 proceed at once to enumerate the various kinds of ancient monuments 
 which we find in churches, and to remark upon those which are suitable 
 for modern use. 
 
 But, first of all, we must mention that very common and most praise- 
 worthy custom of the middle ages, to make the memorial consist in some 
 requisite to the fabric or furniture of the church. In these days, when we 
 require so many churches, and when our existing churches require so 
 much to make them what they should be, this is the fashion of monu- 
 
 * We append a curious instance of legislation on the subject near a thousand years ago. 
 In the laws made in King Ethelred’s reign (a.d. 991), occurs the following: — “It hath been 
 an ancient custom in this country to bury the dead often witliin the churches, and thus to 
 make cemeteries of those places which have been consecrated to the worship of God. Now 
 we desire that from hencefoiward no man be buried in the church unless he be of the 
 sacerdotal order, or (at least) a holy layman; so that it be known that by the sanctity of 
 his life he deserved to have his body buried there. We do not, however, wish that bodies 
 which have been formerly buried in the church should be cast forth ; but where mounds 
 appear, let them be either buried deeper in the ground, or else let a way be made over 
 them, and let them be brought to a level with the pavement of the church, so that no 
 mounds appear there. But if in any place thei’e shall be so many graves that this cannot 
 easily be done, then let those places be used as cemeteries, and let the altar be removed ; 
 and there let churches be built where men may olfer unto God purely and reverently.” 
 
108 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 mental memorial which we would first of all, and beyond all, recom- 
 mend for adoption : instead of a mausoleum in a park, let us have a 
 chapel in the hamlet which is at an inconvenient distance from the 
 parish church ; instead of a great private vault like an ice-house in the 
 churchyard, an additional aisle to the church ; instead of building up a 
 great marble tomb against the chancel wall, repair the church, or refloor 
 it, or reseat it, or put in a stained window ; or, instead of a mural tablet, 
 give a new set of service books. While the fabric is in disrepair, or dis- 
 order, or the furniture is deficient in a becoming sumptuousness, it is 
 ill-taste to pile up useless monuments. 
 
 Something of this kind is the first kind of monument which we have 
 to notice — the Founder's Tomb. The builder of a church, or a portion of 
 a church, frequently had a niche formed in one of the walls ; very fre- 
 quently we find it on the north side of the chancel, where perhaps 
 it also served the purpose of an Easter sepulchre ; and beneath this 
 niche, when he died, the stone coffin of the founder was deposited. A 
 cross was carved upon the lid of his coffin ; but the church beneath whose 
 wall he lay was really his monument. This old custom has so much of 
 poetic beauty in it, that it is not wonderful that it has been revived of 
 late years in several instances. 
 
 Next we notice the altar tomb with the Recjumbent Effigy upon it. And 
 here we may mention incidentally, that on the funerals of persons of dis- 
 tinction — who only had such monuments as these— the embalmed body 
 appears sometimes to have been laid, uncoffined, and dressed in its ordi- 
 nary robes, upon a herse in the church, and surrounded by lighted tapers;* 
 and these altar-tombs, with their lifelike effigies, appear to be accurate 
 representations of the deceased as he thus lay in state. Sometimes the 
 same kind of framework for the tapers, which had been placed over the 
 corpse, was erected in iron or brass over the effigy ; and on the anniver- 
 sary of the death, the tapers were lighted, and masses for the dead were 
 sung, just as on the day of burial.f 
 
 If we remember that these effigies were coloured to represent the very 
 habit and features of the deceased, we shall see that this pageant must 
 have had a very striking and solemn effect. As tlie flickering taper-light 
 fell dubiously across the marble form, the illusion would be very perfect! 
 and tlie effect would appear to us to have been too fearful ; only that we call 
 to mind the solemn sweetness which the old artists gave to the counte- 
 nances of these effigies; and that the men of those days — with all their 
 errors— seem to have looked upon death with a firmer faith, and a more 
 vivid hope, than we. 
 
 Our present costume however is so ill adapted for representation, 
 that an effigy can only be used in cases where the deceased had 
 some robe of office, which will admit of statuesque representation. 
 Several of these monuments have been erected in modern times ; we 
 
 * Representations of such scenes are to be found in illustrated MSS. and are described in 
 the romances of the middle ages. 
 
 + e. g. In the Beau hamp Chapel, Warwick ; in Tanfield Church, near Ripon; in 
 Beded Cluuch, Yoik.-'liiie ; and in the south choir aisle of Cologne Cathedral. 
 
MONUMENTS. 
 
 109 
 
 may mention especially that of Earl Powis, by Mr. Eichardson, the 
 restorer of the Temple effigies, the working model of which was exhibited 
 in the Royal Academy exhibition of last year. 
 
 It is not within the compass of our plan to enter into the antiquities 
 and curiosities of the subject, or we might mention here the curious 
 wooden eflBgies which occur at Danbury, Little Baddow, Little Horkes- 
 ley, and Burrs, Essex ; Hildersham, Cambridgeshire ; that of William de 
 Valence, in Westminster Abbey; and of the Dauphin, the eldest son of 
 Louis IX. of France, on his tomb in the abbey church of Royaumont.* 
 
 Some altar tombs have no effigy, and frequently formed, as their name 
 intimates, the altar upon which the masses for the soul of the deceased 
 person beneath it were offered up. There can be no doubt that this was 
 derived from the primitive custom of erecting the altar of a church over 
 the place of martyrdom of a Christian saint ; from which also was derived 
 the indispensable mediaeval custom of placing relics within or beneath the 
 altar. A very remarkable instance occurs at Layer Marney, in Essex, 
 in which a small altar is attached to the west end of the altar tomb, 
 upon which lies the effigy of Henry Lord Marney. We may mention a 
 modern instance, in which the altar-tomb is applied to a better use: 
 Thomas Guyon, of Coggeshall, in the county of Essex, left in 1664, as an 
 inscription upon the face of his altar tomb records, 200/. for a weekly dole 
 of bread to the poor for ever; and the bread is every Sunday placed upon 
 the top of the donor’s tomb; who thus, as it were, from his grave, still 
 distributes his own benefaction. 
 
 The Brass Effigy, inlaid in a slab of stone or marble which forms part 
 of the pavement, was doubtless introduced to prevent the overcrowding of 
 the area of the church with altar tombs. But to this kind of memorial, 
 also, our unpictorial costume forms, in most cases, an objection ; though it 
 has been ably handled in several modern instances, where the existence of 
 an official costume rendered artistic treatment possible. It is true that 
 engraved effigies in brass, as sepulchral memorials, did not cease when 
 costume ceased to be picturesque ; and a very curious series of late brasses 
 might be added to the series of monumental brasses published by the 
 Messrs. Waller, and by Mr. Boutell, which, though not very beautiful, 
 might be of some service to the modern designer. For instance, we 
 find the effigy of George Clifton, at Clifton in Notts, in the doublet 
 and brocaded breeches and short cloak of the time of James I. ; 
 and the effigy of a Lay Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, in the 
 ante-chapel of his college, in a similar costume with a stiff M.A. gown, 
 in place of the more graceful short velvet cloak. And, again, at Swaff- 
 ham Prior, in Cambridgeshire, the effigy of a gentleman of the time 
 of Charles the First, in the usual costume of the period, with a long 
 horseman’s cloak, standing with hands clasped in prayer. And the effigy 
 of a lady at Stoke by Nayland, in Essex, in the costume of the time of 
 the Stuarts. And, to pass by many others, latest and most unpicturesque, 
 in Paul’s Cray Church, Kent, the effigy of a merchant, in the ordinary 
 
 * Lenoir’s Museum of French Monuments. 
 
110 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 dress of the Georgian era. Of the class more capable of artistic treat- 
 ment, we find a post-Keformation priest, Thomas Leman, at South Acre, 
 in Norfolk (1534), a kneeling figure in cassock and surplice; and at 
 Westerham, Kent, another post-Eeformation priest, standing with clasped 
 hands, dressed in a long cassock falling in folds about the feet, and a 
 surplice, with a worked collar falling low upon the neck, and reaching 
 only half-way below the knee ; and a scarf (not a stiff stole) about the 
 neck. 
 
 And of quite modem effigies, we may mention that, in the Chapel of 
 Caius College, Cambridge, in the ordinary modern costume of a Master 
 of Arts, with the barbarous, but very picturesque “ Gate of Honour ” of 
 that College, placed over him by way of canopy. 
 
 A greater number of these modern effigies in brass has been executed 
 than is perliaps generally known; nearly all, if not all, of them executed 
 by the Messrs. Waller of London. Among them we may mention two 
 figures of the Eev. Lord Down and his Lady, under canopies of Decorated 
 character, in a church in Yorkshire. A monument, in Ely Cathedral, to 
 the memory of M. Basevi, the architect, who was killed by a fall from the 
 tower, consisting of a portrait effigy holding a surveyor’s rod and a plan 
 of his great work, the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, under a canopy 
 of Decorated character, with a diapered background. A monument to the 
 memory of a gentleman and lady in Grimsagh Chapel near Preston, Lan- 
 cashire, consisting of a very rich double canopy of Decorated character, 
 surmounted by tabernacles, in which are figures of Law, Justice, and 
 Charity: beneath Avhich are figures of the deceased, upon a diapered 
 background, with the arms of the deceased introduced. At Gresford 
 Church, Flintshire, a monument to the Eev. Christopher Perkins and 
 Jjady ; two figures under a double canopy. At Fen Drayton, Cambridge- 
 shire, to the Eev. George Eaw ; two figures kneeling at the foot of a cross, 
 with texts of Scripture, &c. introduced. And, lastly, we may mention 
 the monument of the Eev. W. Newcome, Vicar of Sutton, near Ely, a 
 rubbing of which (by the kindness of Mr. Waller) lies before us. Avery fine 
 triple canopy, which appears to us to be adapted, with some considerable 
 and very judicious alterations, from the beautiful canopies of the Swynborne 
 Knights at Little Horkesley, Essex, incloses a figure of the deceased, in 
 surplice, and stole, and bands ; it is evidently a likeness ; the costume is 
 natural, and it is most successfully treated in the style of the artists of the 
 beginning of the fifteenth century ; the whole is inclosed within a marginal 
 fillet with evangelistic symbols at the corners, the fillet bearing a simple 
 English inscription in black letter: this example is quite sufficient to prove 
 that our modern clerical costume is quite capable of artistic treatment 
 in comx)etent hands. We would also point out the very beautiful design 
 for a monumental brass of a lady, which .Mr. Waller exhibited at the 
 Great Exhibition, and for which he gained an award. 
 
 Perhaps our modern costume might be adapted with better success to 
 the small demi- effigy with the inscription slab beneath, of which we have 
 many ancient examples, both of priests, knights, ladies, and civilians, 
 and which in the ancient examples always forms a pleasing design. We 
 
’■’. ,;S ■!*<■' * ' ' -’■• ,■ 
 
 4w N 
 
 
 
 ■ ■■ - " 
 
 ■ ':'■ V- 
 
 
 
flir I! flail tf'aiiril.'?C'l'''fe-fi-rri\>ihv attni li\- 
 
 iiiife gt tilnB- oiiiii) 3j,n-siii]. imwp 
 
MONUMENTS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 are enabled by the kindness of the Kev. C. Boutell to give an instance 
 of this kind of brass from his work on Monumental Brasses, which will 
 enable our readers to form an opinion upon the subject. 
 
 The Monumental Crosses in brass are free from the diflSculties which 
 beset the treatment of the portrait effigy, and may perhaps be made 
 to form one of the most pleasing kinds of sepulchral memorials for 
 modern use within the church. Ancient examples may be found in 
 the Messrs. Waller’s beautiful series of Monumental Brasses, or in Mr. 
 Boutell’s less costly work on the same subject, or in the series pub- 
 lished by the Oxford Architectural Society. Several modem examples 
 
 If TiP)kfDonri5c’atTireXaftmr ai&nt icp 
 liim (f To amf (ii f lour alraf^Titra 
 
 ♦ aaujo’-t- ♦jfl ♦ louTjgf Tf 43arHomi aorta 
 
 of very beautiful design have been executed by Mr. Waller; rubbings of 
 them lie before us, side by side with rubbings and engravings from ancient 
 examples; and while Mr. Waller’s designs are not mere copies, they have 
 all the spirit and character of the old ones, and their execution does not 
 in the least degree suffer by the comparison. The accompanying plate 
 represents one of these brasses executed by Mr. Waller. 
 
 While these brass memorials are the most durable, and among the most 
 beautiful kinds of monuments, their cost is not excessive in proportion to 
 the cost of other monuments. Single effigies in brass may be executed 
 for from Si. or 10/. up to about 30/.; brass crosses from 8/. up to about 60/. 
 The elaborate brasses, with canopies and figures, are of course more 
 expensive. 
 
112 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Some of the simpler forms of the monumental slab, inlaid with brass, 
 would form inexpensive memorials, and more durable and far better in 
 appearance than the memorial pavement-slabs generally in use. For 
 instance, a slab of Sussex marble, with a shield— of good shape, and not 
 too large — in the centre, with the armorial bearings emblazoned upon it ; 
 and an inscription, upon a fillet round the margin of the stone.* The 
 colour, which is contained in the shield, might be carried over the design 
 by its introduction in the marginal inscription, either in evangelistic sym- 
 bols, or ornamental devices, in the angles of the fillet ; or in the initial 
 cross, and the capital letters of the inscription. 
 
 There is another common variety of the sepulchral slab which might 
 be well adapted to modern use. It is generally of dark marble, and has no 
 device in the field of the slab ; but it has a marginal fillet, formed by two 
 thin lines of brass, and upon this fillet the inscription is traced in capital 
 Lombardic letters, the letters with the initial cross and the two points 
 (colons) which separate the words being of brass, each sunk into its own 
 distinct matrix. These letters, gilded, or, in rich work enamelled, 
 upon the field of dark variegated glossy marble, would form a beautiful 
 design. 
 
 Next we come to the Cross-slab. The raised cross-slab, or slab with a 
 cross sculptured upon it in relief, though not infrequently found in the 
 pavement of a church, has this objection, that it forms an obstruction 
 in the level of the pavement, and has the further disadvantage that it is 
 therefore very subject to attrition. It should therefore hardly be used, 
 except in an out-of-the-way part of the church. The incised cross-slab, 
 or slab with a cross incised upon it, is a very simple and inexpensive and 
 appropriate memorial. Executed in Sussex marble, or in alabaster, and 
 illuminated with gold and colours, it might be made a very beautiful 
 monument. The accompanying plate represents a very usual and excel- 
 lent design for an incised cross- slab. 
 
 The simplest sepulchral stone might have a far better character given 
 to it with no increase of expense, by placing the inscription in good plain 
 capital letters round the margin of the slab, between two incised lines, 
 instead of across the slab, as is the usual fashion. Very many beautiful 
 ancient examples of all these varieties of the Cross-slab will be found in 
 the Archaeological Institute’s Manual of Sepulchral Slahsf 
 
 It is not improbable that monumental memorials may have been 
 introduced among the polychrome decorations of the walls of churches ; 
 but the mural monuments with reclining and kneeling effigies, and mural 
 brasses, J are only to be found of the period when Gothic art had become 
 debased.§ They are not to be recommended for imitation. 
 
 Indeed, mural monuments generally, which have been so much the 
 
 * Instead of an enamelled shield of brass, a porcelain tile, with the shield of arms, might 
 be introduced with good effect, at a less cost, and of not inferior durabilitj\ 
 t Published by Mr. Parker, Oxford. 
 
 t We find also inscriptions and shields of arms, and other devices, painted upon panel or 
 parchment, and framed and suspended against the wall as monuments. 
 
 5 There are a few earlier instances on the Continent. 
 
nr nmcE m D cccxtoc aaeP torm tHree tjecctg. 
 
 LX 
 
 Cr-Rdk'\"& 
 
MONUMENTS. 
 
 113 
 
 fashion for a considerable period, are very unsatisfactory in their effect. 
 It is perhaps hard to tell why ; whether it is merely because the designs 
 have been ill-adapted for their peculiar position, or whether the position 
 is unsuitable for any kind of monument. 
 
 Where the pavement of a church has been broken up, to lay a 
 Christian in the holy ground, it is perfectly natural to lay a slab of stone 
 over the place, and equally natural to inscribe upon it some memorial of 
 him who lies beneath ; there is nothing here like vanity. But, to go out 
 of the way to put a man’s effigy, or a memorial of him, upon the wall of 
 the church, may, perhaps, unconsciously impress us with an idea of the 
 memory of the departed person being held up before the congregation, as 
 though his example ought to be kept before them — his name not suffered 
 to die from their recollection. Of course, nothing of the kind is intended, 
 or dreamt of, in the majority of cases ; but some subtle unconscious per- 
 ception of this may partly account for the fact that no mural monuments 
 we ever saw pleased us so much as any of the other kinds of monuments 
 which we have mentioned ; that the more simple these mural monuments 
 are, the less displeasing ; and that the simplest tablet of marble, with the 
 simplest epitaph, is the least displeasing of all. 
 
 If polychrome were introduced upon the walls, then, perhaps, a shield, 
 with the name upon a scroll beneath it ; or an inscription upon a label, or 
 within an ornamental border, treated in the same way that a text upon 
 the wall would be ; or an effigy introduced into some painted subject, like 
 the memorial designs which are now introduced into painted windows; or 
 any mode of executing the same designs in a more durable manner — by 
 mosaic, or porcelain tiles, or inlaid marble, or other process — might be in- 
 troduced with good effect : but, whatever may be the cause, and whatever 
 the remedy, certain it is that of mural monuments, which are now the 
 most usual kind of church monuments, we have never yet seen one, ancient 
 or modern, which appeared to us satisfactory. 
 
 In looking at any of these ancient monuments, it must be always 
 remembered that in their original state they were almost universally 
 adorned with colour. The alabaster effigy was coloured into a perfectly 
 accurate representation of the features and dress of the deceased. This 
 may be seen in the effigy of William de Valence at Westminster Abbey;* 
 and traces of the original colouring have been discovered in numberless 
 instances: (see Mr. Kichardson’s account of his restoration of the Temple 
 effigies.) The altar-tomb was also coloured ; sufficient traces remain, 
 of the colouring on that of Lord Bourchier, at Westminster, to enable us 
 to restore the whole; and its very beautiful original effect may be judged 
 of by the representation of it given in Mr. Blackburne’s Decorative Paint- 
 ing of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The monumental slabs inlaid with brass were also enriched with colour 
 and enamel; and their original beauty may now be imagined by any one 
 
 * Portions of the detail of the figure are given in Collings’s Gothic Ornaments, Vol. L, 
 plates 8 and 9 ; and the colouring of the tomb itself in Blackburne’s Decorative Painting of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Q 
 
114 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 who has seen the restored brass at Ely, in the restored choir. And the 
 humbler cross-slabs were also enriched with colour, and, in their setting of 
 chequered flooring, were highly decorative features in the church. 
 
 In primitive times, it is clear, from the sacred and early ecclesiastical 
 writers, that baptism was performed when and where occasion required. 
 
 Afterwards there was only one font in each diocese, and the rite was 
 performed by the Bishop, at Easter and Whitsuntide only, except in cases 
 of dangerous sickness : and in those days the font was usually a shallow 
 octagonal basin, into which the catechumens descended by three steps ; 
 and it was frequently inclosed within a separate building, often near to, 
 but not part of the church, called the Baptistry. 
 
 In the earliest times in England it is clear that converts were baptised 
 at once, in the nearest river or spring, or in any convenient vessel, as in pri- 
 mitive times, and as indeed convenience demands in all missionary times : 
 the Baptistry and Font are the accompaniments of the seemly order of a 
 settled church. 
 
 The entire absence of Saxon fonts is very remarkable, and is still not 
 satisfactorily explained. In Norman and subsequent times every parish 
 church had its font of stone, and baptism appears always to have been ad- 
 ministered by immersion, even in the case of adults. The baptism of the 
 Saracen mother of Thomas a Becket, is a very favourite subject with the 
 old illuminators, and she is always represented as immersed in a tub or 
 huge font: in medisBval romances, we read of the romance-king ordering 
 a tub to be made, in which to baptise the huge heathen whom he had con- 
 verted to the faith by the irresistible arguments of his good lance and 
 sword. 
 
 The Reformers of the English Church, while discarding the exorcising, 
 and anointing, and the other old symbolical observances, which had grown 
 perhaps into superstition, and had become unsuited to the anti-symbolical 
 tone of mind of the Christians of their age, retained what was essential, 
 and reverent, and “decent;” and when the Puritan undervaluing of the 
 Sacrament had led them to the ejection of the fonts out of many of the 
 churches, the Canon of 1603 ordered as follows: that “according to a 
 former constitution, too much neglected in many places, we appoint that 
 there shall be a Font of stone in every church and chapel where baptism 
 is to be ministered, the same to be set in the ancient usual places, in which 
 only Font the ministers shall baptise publicly:” (Canon 81.) 
 
 Yet the Church of England seems to retain one relic of the ancient 
 rule of the baptism of converts by the bishop, in its rubrical direction in 
 the service for the “ baptism of such as are of riper years,” that notice of 
 an adult baptism shall always be given beforehand to the bishop. 
 
 The “ ancient usual place ” for the font is somewhere near the prin- 
 
MONUMENTS. 
 
 115 
 
 cipal entrance to the church, to symbolise that we enter the spiritual 
 Church of Christ by baptism. In smaller churches it is generally placed 
 on the east side of the pier which is on the left hand to one entering by the 
 south door ; in larger churches it is sometimes placed at the west end of the 
 nave. The Rubric orders that the baptismal rite shall be performed in the 
 presence of the congregation; to this end, perhaps the position at the 
 west end of the church is the more convenient ; and this position, with 
 respect to the Communion Table, is sufficiently significant. The same 
 necessity of having the font conveniently within sight of the congre- 
 gation will make it advisable, especially in a large church, to have the 
 font elevated upon a platform, sufficiently large for the officiating minister 
 to stand upon, in full sight of the whole congregation. 
 
 The importance of the sacrament demands a fitting beauty in the 
 vessel which ministers to it ; the importance of keeping their own baptism 
 continually before the minds of Christians— which dictated the order of 
 the Church of England that it should be performed in church, in the 
 middle of divine service, in the presence of the congregation, instead 
 of in a separate baptistry — would dictate a certain conspicuousness in size 
 as well as in beauty. 
 
 We find ancient fonts of an infinite variety of forms : the square bowl, 
 usually Norman, with an arcade, or series of Scripture or symbolical 
 figures, or other ornamental designs, sculptured in has relief upon its 
 sides: and the round bowl, similarly ornamented; we find also some 
 instances of hexagonal, and multi-sided bowls. But the most usual form 
 is the octagonal, which we find either as a plain octagonal prism of stone, 
 hollowed in its upper side ; or resting on a central shaft and base ; or 
 shaped like the capital of a pier; or resting upon a central and four 
 corner shafts, an allusion to our Lord and the Eour Evangelists; and we 
 find it of all degrees of simplicity, and all degrees of elaborate beauty. 
 The reason for the frequency of this form may be, that, according to the 
 ancient method of spiritualising numbers, “ the number 8 refers to the 
 new birth in baptism ; for the seven days’ creation of the natural world are 
 symbolised by the number 7 ; and the new creation by Jesus Christ by 
 the number 8, in allusion to the 8th day, on which he rose again from the 
 dead. And this reason St. Ambrose, more than fourteen centuries ago, 
 assigned for the octagonal form of the baptistry : — 
 
 Octachorum sanctos templum surrexit in usus, 
 
 Octagonus fons est, munere dignus eo. 
 
 Hoc numero decuit sacri baptism atis aulam, 
 
 Surgere, quo populis vera salus rediit, 
 
 Luce resurgentis Christi, qui claustra resolvit 
 Mortis, et a tumulis suscitet exanimes.” * 
 
 * These lines were formerly inscribed over the font of St. Tecla. Their meaning is as 
 follows: — “A temple with eight sides has arisen for sacred purposes; and the font is 
 octagonal— meet for the purpose for which it is designed. It was fit that the baptistry 
 should be erected with this number, since by holy baptism true salvation returned to the 
 people, with the light of Christ rising from the dead, who has loosed the bands of death, 
 and shall call the dead from their graves.” — Poole’s Structure, Arrangement, and Decoration 
 of Churches. 
 
116 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 Mr. Simpson’s Series of Fonts, published by Van Voorst, will furnish 
 the reader with aburfdant examples of all these different types of the 
 font ; and the series of plaster models of curious and good fonts, published 
 by the Camden Society, will supply still more useful authorities for repro- 
 duction; but note carefully, that when an ordinary village stonemason 
 is to make a font from such a model, it will be wise to give him working 
 drawings, of the full size, of every moulding, and of every bit of deco- 
 rative carving. But wherever there is any sculpture, in foliage or 
 figures, it should be entrusted only to a good artist ; for it is near the eye, 
 and is very conspicuously placed, and ought to be of finished workman- 
 ship. Indeed, the font is just that piece of church furniture upon which 
 an artist would delight to lavish his skill : it is not so large that he would 
 become tired of his work; the purpose of the font admits of great elegance 
 and variety of form ; it will bear ornamentation without limit ; and, from 
 its position, not one fine stroke of the chisel will be lost. No wonder, 
 then, that the old artists have left us such gems of beauty as we find in 
 many of our old fonts. The modern font may be made of any kind of 
 stone, from the rough sandstone, to the delicate alabaster, or the choicest 
 marble; and the addition of a little colour and gilding (to be recom- 
 mended only when colour is introduced throughout the church) will com- 
 plete its finished and beautiful effect. 
 
 But, while we are giving hints as to the making of new fonts, let us 
 interpose one word in favour of the rough old stone font which you, good 
 reader, may be proposing to yourself to replace with a gorgeous Pugin- 
 esque new one. 
 
 Do not forget the spiritual charm of association, which transcends all 
 the charms of your most lovely carving and painting, as greatly as poetry 
 transcends flat reality : in that rude old bowl the forefathers of your vil- 
 lage have been baptised for hundreds of years ; your own ancestors, 
 perhaps, for many a generation, have been christened (we like the old- 
 fashioned word) in it. How old is it ? Fourteenth century at least. 
 Look ! yonder old knight, whose alabaster effigy lies, with clasped hands 
 and sweet solemn face, on its altar tomb in the middle of the chancel, 
 and whose dust lies in the earth beneath — he was baptised in that old 
 font ; and how many generations of country knights, and yeomen, and 
 peasants, how many saints whose souls are now in paradise, the fruition 
 of that washing, have been bathed in that life-giving bowl ! It is a holy 
 relic; the Homily calls it “the fountain of our regeneration;” do not wan- 
 tonly destroy it ; it has a beauty to the spiritual eye, which Phidias and 
 Tintoret could not give to your new piece of Caen stone ! 
 
 There is a village church in Nottinghamshire, near the beautiful Trent, 
 where an old circular Norman bowl, with a low arcade around it, keeps 
 guard on one side of the priest’s door, and a massive old octagonal 
 Decorated bowl on the other; and the font in use is a Renaissance marble 
 bowl, on an elegant baliuster pedestal. Beware ! there is as much bad 
 taste among the Gothic revivalists of these days, as there was among the 
 classic revivalists of those: there are, perhaps, as many interesting relics 
 of antiquity every day disappearing before the well-meaning ignorance 
 
MONUMENTS. 117 
 
 of the injudicious restorer, as were ever swept away by the fanatical zeal 
 of the Puritan image-breaker. 
 
 Indeed, in nearly every case, our advice would be, where you have an 
 old stone font, keep it, however ugly. Much may be done by a little judi- 
 cious beautifying. There was an old plain, dingy, corroded marble bowl 
 of a font at Waltham Abbey; and our readers knowhow very dilapidated 
 old Purbeck marble looks, and can judge what would have been the fate of 
 such a bowl in many hands : it has lately been restored— merely refaced 
 and polished — and the plain massive block of shining dark-mottled marble 
 has now a remarkably rich effect. Many plain shapelC'S fonts might bear 
 a little moulding — to be done only after having obtained very competent 
 professional advice : and however plain and ugly the font, it will at least 
 furnish a ground for a little diapering, or more ambitious decoration, in 
 colours. 
 
 So many fonts have recently been made of smaller size than the ancient 
 ones, because baptism by aspersion is now almost the universal fashion, 
 that it is perhaps not quite unnecessary to utter a caution on the subject. 
 Baptism by aspersion is as valid as by immersion, but it certainly is not 
 so significant of the spiritual washing ; it is contemplated by the Church 
 of England only as the exceptional mode of performing the rite ; there 
 cannot be much doubt that the tendency of the public mind is to revert 
 to the primitive custom ; and therefore any one who is expending care 
 and money over a font, in the hope that he is providing something which 
 will last for many generations, will be wise at least to provide for a change 
 of fashion, and make his bowl large enough for an immersion; or his 
 children may live to see their father’s donation to his parish church turned 
 out of it as useless. 
 
 Many of our old fonts show traces of staples by which a cover was 
 fastened down upon them, according to a constitution of Edmund Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, in a.d. 1236. Many covers of fifteenth-century 
 date remain ; they are usually in the form of a spirelet of wood 
 with crockets at the edges ; and sometimes rise into a lofty sjDire of most 
 elaborate tabernacle-work. Generally these seem to have been raised by 
 help of a chain and counter- weight passing over a pulley; but in St. 
 Gregory’s Church, Sudbury, is one, retaining much of its colour and 
 gilding, in which the lower part of the cover slides up, telescope fashion, 
 over the upper. 
 
 These covers appear to have been intended to form a kind of canopy of 
 honour over the font, answering in some measure to the canopy which 
 stood over the altar. This idea is confirmed by the singular instance at 
 Luton in Bedfordshire, in which the font is inclosed in an octagonal stone 
 structure, of fourteenth-century character, with open arches at the sides, 
 supporting a stone canopy. 
 
 A cover to our modern fonts may perhaps be desirable, to keep out the 
 dust ; if flat, it may be ornamented with scroll-work in iron or brass. If 
 it be desired to make it more ornamental, the canopy of honour, we think, 
 is the idea which the artist should have before him in his design. 
 
 We ask permission of our readers to make a digression here upon a 
 
118 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 couple of old vestments, which are not strictly Church Furniture, but 
 which are connected with baptism, and which involve so much beautiful 
 religious poetry, that we venture to hope that, if our readers do not adopt 
 the fashion, they will, at least, thank us for recording it. 
 
 In olden times it was the custom, after a child’s baptism by immer- 
 sion, to clothe it first in a new linen garment, which was called the 
 “Chrisomer.” After baptism by aspersion had become the rule, the 
 garment was altered, but the idea retained, and the child was received 
 from the priest’s hands in a garment which is called in the north a 
 “Christening Say;” and there are persons still living in the north 
 who were thus enveloped in a christening say. The garment, as the 
 name implies, was of silk (say) — generally, of course, of white silk, in 
 allusion to the purification of the child from the stain of original sin 
 — and was sometimes embroidered with more or less of sumptuousness. 
 There is clearly nothing superstitious in the custom ; it is a custom only 
 just (in the present generation) fallen into disuse; and we record it in the 
 hope that, amidst our many revivals of old customs, this also may be 
 revived. There are few persons, we hope, who, on accidentally opening 
 a long unopened drawer, or on intentionally opening it on the anniver- 
 sary of their baptism, and seeing that white christening say, would not 
 feel a gush of old and holy associations ; mournful thoughts of that bap- 
 tismal innocence so symbolised ; thoughts of childish prayers and mother’s 
 teachings, which would break through the worldly crust which so quickly 
 forms about the heart in these days of feverish energy ; feelings which 
 might perhaps bathe the soul anew — if not in the sweet waters of inno- 
 cence, yet in the cooling and renewing streams of penitence. 
 
PARISH PALL. 
 
 119 
 
 E minor evil of the present day, against which it be- 
 hoves all men to set their faces— and that would accom- 
 plish its cure — is the expensive fashion of funerals ; as 
 among the middle classes, so especially among the poor. 
 It is no uncommon thing in country places to see the 
 funeral of a labouring man followed by five-and-twenty or 
 thirty mourners, in the same class of life, all dressed in new black clothes 
 — of the colour and material which is the most costly to people of their 
 condition. 
 
 Among the middle classes, too, the expense of funerals is a matter 
 which has long been felt to be a great burden. Much of this expense 
 might be spared, and the funeral solemnity rendered even more becoming 
 and impressive than it is, by a recurrence to one or two funeral customs 
 which have not been very long obsolete. 
 
 One custom is the provision of a Parish Pall ; the other is the adoption 
 of the black cloak for men, and the cloak and hood for women, as the 
 costume of the mourners at a funeral, and the disuse of the fashion of 
 wearing an entire suit of mourning afterwards. 
 
 A parish pall has already been introduced in many places ; and there 
 appears little difficulty in the way of introducing them generally. It 
 will not be difficult to find a benefactor to give one ; it would be perhaps 
 a fitting occasion, when a funeral occurred in a wealthy family in the 
 parish, if they would provide a pall for that funeral, and then present it 
 to the church. 
 
 If we were asked how a pall should be made in accordance with the 
 feeling of mediaeval art ; we should have to reply that the ancient palls, 
 though very beautiful in workmanship, and very correct in the feeling 
 which they typify, are so opposed to our modern usage, that it will take 
 some time, and a little further progress of the popular tone of feeling with 
 respect to death in that direction which it has already taken, before 
 “ correct ” palls can be generally introduced. Eor the ancients, though 
 they clothed the attendants at a funeral in the livery of woe, veiled the 
 dead from their sight by a covering of brilliant colours, which spoke of 
 cheerful hope ; and from end to end, and from side to side, of the bier- 
 cloth, were two broad stripes, which fell in the form of a cross upon the 
 coffin ; and presented to the eye and mind of the mourner, so often as 
 he glanced towards the lost one, the symbol of that one death which took 
 the sting from Death, and robbed the Grave of victory. 
 
 In the fourteenth century we find the bier-cloth very often composed of 
 stripes of alternate colours, blue, red, green, &c.; sometimes, of one 
 
120 
 
 CHURCH FURNITURE AND DECORATION. 
 
 colour covered with a pattern of embroidery, or powdered with a fleur- 
 de-lis, or monogram, or heraldic badge. 
 
 In the flfteenth century we find similar hier-cloths of rich material. 
 Portions of a very splendid one, embroidered with “ histories” on a gold 
 ground, in the possession of the Fishmongers’ Company of London, are 
 engraved in Miss Lambert’s Church Needle Work (London : Murray). A 
 representation of another of crimson velvet, richly embroidered, preserved 
 by the Sadlers’ Company of London, is given in Shaw’s Dresses and De- 
 corations of the Middle Ages. In Der Weiss Kunig, of the latter part of 
 the flfteenth century, are several representations of funerals, in which the 
 bier-cloths are of two types ; one is a large cloth, with a flowing pattern 
 upon it of the same character as in the dresses and hangings in the same 
 book, and marked with a plain cross, and a shield of arms either worked 
 upon it or laid upon it at the intersection of the cross ; the other appears 
 to have, over a cloth like that above described but without the cross upon 
 it, another smaller cloth, of the size of the top of the coflSn, with an es- 
 calloped edge just falling over the sides, and this upper cloth has a cross 
 upon it from end to end and from side to side. At plate 177 a bier-cloth 
 is represented, plain, with a plain cross ; but the scene is a field of battle ; 
 and at plate 180 is a pall of the second kind above described, in which the 
 material of both cloths appears to be of black velvet, marked with a white 
 cross and fringed. 
 
 These coloured and embroidered bier-cloths were not laid aside at the 
 Reformation. We have seen above that a black velvet pall was intro- 
 duced towards the close of the fifteenth century ; but it was a long time 
 before the fashion became universal. In the year 1562, the Merchant 
 Tailors had three palls of different kinds. In 1572, John Cawood,a well- 
 known printer, left to the Stationers’ Company a pall, which is described 
 in his will as “ a herse-cloth, of clothe of gold, pouderyd with bleu 
 velvet, and border’d abought with blacke velvet embroidered, and steyned 
 with bleu, yellow, red, and green.” 
 
 Every guild and company in the middle ages appears to have had its 
 own herse-cloth for the use of its own fraternity ; and in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for 1813 is a curious article on “ City Funerals,” which shows 
 that the city livery palls were commonly let out for funerals, up to a very 
 recent period.* 
 
 A very necessary part of the furniture for funerals is a wooden bier, 
 upon which to carry the cofiin ; they are in use in very many parishes ; 
 and their convenience makes their universal adoption desirable. Probably, 
 when the bier-cloths were very heavy and costly, they were not laid 
 immediately upon the coffin, as now, which necessitates their hasty re- 
 moval, and folding up in the middle of the service; but the bier itself had 
 a kind of frame-work over the coffin, upon which the bier-cloth lay undis- 
 turbed, while the coffin was drawn out from beneath it. In the fourteenth 
 century, and earlier, when the coffin-lids were generally ridged, this 
 frame-work would be of corresponding shape : in representations of the 
 
 * Journal of British Archceological Association^ Vol. I. p. 179. 
 
PARISH PALL. 
 
 121 
 
 fourteenth century, the cloth almost always assumes this shape. In later 
 times, when the coffln-lids were flat, the framework of the hearse would 
 undergo the same change.* 
 
 The use of the parish pall would not, however, very much decrease the 
 total expense of a funeral ; it is rather in the disuse of the fashion of 
 putting all the members of a family into complete mourning that we 
 must seek to attain this desirable end. In former times, people wore 
 their ordinary dress at a funeral ; but over it, and completely enveloping 
 and concealing the person, was worn a long mourning cloak and hood. 
 The mourning cloak and hood are not yet obsolete in many parts of the 
 kingdom, and it forms so very solemn and appropriate a dress that we 
 cannot think that its gradual reintroduction would be attended with much 
 difficulty. And the provision of a set of these mourning cloaks as part 
 of the furniture of the church, for the use of any of the parishioners who 
 required them, would at once do away with the great expense attending 
 a funeral. Families in better circumstances would probably obtain the 
 use of cloaks of their undertakers, as they now hire the pall. 
 
 The great difficulty will be to persuade people to cease to go into entire 
 mourning also, and to content themselves instead with black gloves and 
 a hatband, or a crape round the arm like the soldier’s mourning, or some 
 similar way of showing respect for the dead, without incurring a cost 
 wffiich might often, to use the saying of the country people, “ make the 
 dead man turn in his gravd” with grief, for the embarrassment and care 
 which his widow and children are heaping up to themselves, from com- 
 pliance with a foolish but tyrannical fashion. 
 
 Fashions in dress, however, descend ; the expensiveness of funerals is a 
 subject in which some ameliorations have been effected in the higher 
 ranks, and to which the attention of the public generally is still alive. 
 The clergy especially may do much in the present state of feeling, when 
 existing fashions are unsettled and men are looking for some change, 
 towards directing the public taste, and hastening the general introduction 
 of wiser customs. 
 
 * Since the above was written we have seen in Mr. Pinnock’s admirable Clei'ical Papers, 
 the following api'opos quotation from a Tract on Funerals, &c. by the Ecclesiological Society. 
 “ Every consideration, sanitary and moral, cries out against the present system of carrying 
 the coffins on the shoulders. In every case it is prejudicial to the bearers; in some it is 
 absolutely dangerous. It would be curious to know when this fashion came in. Even now 
 there are very few parishes without their hiers; and they are almost always a subject of 
 enquiry in Visitation Articles. But when we come to examine into their use we shall find 
 it very limited ; and in some places confined entirely to such as died of infectious diseases. 
 Hence the jolting, staggering, lugging,— the exclamations, ‘Hold hard! ’ ‘Look out’ ‘Take 
 care!’ which are almost inseparably connected with the shoulder system. For the coffin 
 has first to be hoisted, then put down on the trestles, then the bearers have to emerge from 
 the pall, then the pall has to be re-arranged, then after the ‘lesson’ the pall must be thrown 
 back, the coffin re-hoisted, the pall arranged for the thh'd time; and last of all, the whole 
 process must be repeated at the grave. Now, contrast this with the bier. The coffin is 
 simply lifted on to it; the hearse put over it ; the pall spread over that ; thus without any 
 one re-arrangement it is brought into the church, then out of it into the churchyard ; then 
 the pall being removed with the hearse, the ropes are run through the rings, the coffin yet 
 resting on the bier, and the lowering into the grave is an imposing ceremony instead of a 
 distracting bustle.” 
 
 R 
 
122 
 
 ALMS CHEST. 
 
 
 T is required by Canon 84 that an alms chest shall be set 
 up near the entrance of every church to receive the bene- 
 volences of the people. 
 
 Some of the original alms chests set up in obedience to 
 this Canon still remain; they are generally a square post 
 of wood about 3 feet high, with the upper part hollowed 
 into a box, which has a lid well secured by ironwork ; the whole affair 
 very rude and inartistic. 
 
 Recently the alms chests have been a box of the kind represented in 
 the accompanying woodcut, and sometimes ornamented 
 with more or less of ironwork, attached to or near the 
 door. 
 
 A still more goodly-looking device is to insert a 
 carved stone bracket in the wall, and fasten a wooden 
 chest upon it; or to leave the upper member of the 
 bracket very thick, and hollow that part of the stone 
 itself into a chest. 
 
 There is a pretty idea for an alms chest at Wickham 
 Bishop’s Church, Essex, where the upright post of tim- 
 ber terminates in a demi-angel, with hands placed together in the atti- 
 tude of prayer, and the opening for the money is between the hands of 
 the angel ; perhaps it would be an improvement if the hands were placed 
 together in the attitude of one who holds both hands to receive something ; 
 it would perhaps still more naturally express the idea intended to be con- 
 veyed, that the alms-giver places his money in the hands of an angel — 
 “ lendeth his money to the Lord.” 
 
 Another arrangement of the alms chest is, to form a niche in the wall 
 beside the door, like the niches which we so commonly find in the walls 
 of churches, and which answered the purpose of little cupboards; and 
 either to place a wooden box, well secured, within this niche ; or to place 
 a deep stone as the base of the niche, and hollow the stone into a chest. 
 
JiT CETERA. 
 
 123 
 
 (Bt €ttm. 
 
 EVERAL other things there are, coming under the designa- 
 tion of Church Furniture, which, for one reason or other 
 we dismiss with a brief note to each. 
 
 The Litany Desk was undoubtedly contemplated by 
 our rubrics, in cases where the prayers are said from a stall 
 in the chancel. The Hierurgia Anglicana gives us a reprint of 
 an engraving of the time of Charles II. in which a Minister is represented 
 as saying the litany kneeling at a desk in the midst of an unpewed nave. 
 And we presume that few will doubt that there is something appropriate 
 and significant in the Minister quitting his place in the choir and kneeling 
 humbly at the head of the congregation, while offering up this penitential 
 service in their name. But since, as matter of fact, the litany desk is 
 not now generally in use, it is enough for our object to indicate that the 
 furniture necessary for the observance of this ancient usage will consist 
 of a kneeling cushion, and a desk. A rectangular cushion, with tassels at 
 the four corners, made of one of the materials already described under 
 the head of Textile Fabrics, is more according to mediaeval usage than 
 a hassock, and more comfortable than a kneeling-board. The desk may 
 be adapted from some form of the Lettern already described. 
 
 A dissertation upon the Bells would be out of place here ; and 
 
 The Organ would require an essay to itself. 
 
 The position of the Clock is a question of considerable difficulty ; and 
 a very instructive paper might be written upon the subject, if it only 
 contained an account of the ancient examples which might be gathered 
 together of its treatment, and the various ingenious devices by which 
 our own architects have endeavoured to make it harmonize with the 
 design of a Gothic church tower. A paper of such length, however, would 
 increase too much the size of this little work, which has already grown to 
 a length exceeding that which was originally contemplated ; and it is not 
 a subject upon which a few sentences would be of any service. 
 
124 
 
 CONCLUSION, 
 
 Ctmtlttski. 
 
 NE or two practical hints in conclusion : first, most of the 
 refurnishing of churches which is being now done, is done 
 too hastily ; men are impatient to see the whole of their 
 church remodelled at once ; they collect what money they 
 can, venture upon a debt of a few hundreds in addition, 
 and spread that sum over the entire surface of an ambi- 
 tious restoration; the result of which is a lamentable amount of ostenta- 
 tious and bad church work. 
 
 Do the work gradually — one portion this year, another next — as funds 
 come in ; only whatever is done let it be thoroughly well done ; and put 
 up with things as they are, or with temporary makeshifts, in the mean- 
 time. Especially let nothing in the way of merely ornamental work be 
 done at all, unless its execution be of the best ; leave all your corbels in 
 block, and your bench ends rough slabs of oak, until you can afibrd to do 
 them well. The quantity of trashy carving with which England has been 
 deluged during the last ten or a dozen years it is sad to contemplate; 
 when people have been to the Crystal Palace a few times, and have learnt 
 to appreciate what good carving is, we shall not be surprised to find 
 another popular movement springing up, whose object it will be to saw 
 off all the poppy heads and deface with the hammer all the corbels which 
 the popular movement of the last twenty years has called into existence, 
 as offensive and injurious to the taste of the people, and unworthy of 
 God’s house. And can any of our readers call to mind any modern 
 church carving which they would feel much grieved to see thus treated? 
 
 Secondly, if you meditate a sumptuous gradual restoration, begin at the 
 right end. If you begin with the richest portion first — for instance, an 
 altar-table, vested in a blue cloth embroidered with gold, and a gorgeous 
 polychromed reredos — it will look so very glaring amidst the squallor 
 around it that you will run a risk to “fright the isle from her propriety.” 
 Begin with the least gorgeous and startling portion of your furniture first, 
 and gradually work up to a climax •, and then the glowing hues of your 
 sanctuary will be toned down and harmonized by the rest of the picture. 
 Eor instance, if you meditate polychrome, it is indispensable that you 
 should tone down the white light of the windows first ; if you cannot 
 afford to fill them all with stained glass at once, at least you must soften 
 and tinge the light in some way : then put colour into your pavement ; it 
 will very much tend to prevent any very startling effect when you come 
 to put it upon your walls : introduce colour in the nave before you pro- 
 ceed to the more elaborate work of the chancel ; and so forth. 
 
 For after all there are many people in your parish who are not quite so 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 125 
 
 advanced in the appreciation of Gothic art as you ; and have not quite 
 overcome their Kenaissance horror of the colours of the rainbow : and they 
 have a jealousy of any startling innovation in church matters and not 
 altogether without reason. Their jealousies are often very ignorant, an 
 stupid, and annoying; for instance, when they think that to sit in the old 
 sedilia is a leaning towards Eome ; and polychrome a mark of the Beast. 
 Yet after all, this blind prejudice is an instinct of conservatism which 
 has something respectable about it ; it deserves painstaking instruction, 
 and a good deal of forbearance, and a prudent endeavour to make your 
 improvements in a manner as little startling as may be. 
 
 In conclusion let us recall to mind the principle which has been insisted 
 upon throughout this essay as the guiding principle in all our church 
 building and church furnishing — viz., that the church is God’s house, and 
 that our best of material and of art ought to be devoted to it. 
 
 Let this principle be clearly established and fully developed in our 
 minds, and the furniture of our churches will hardly err in essentials. It 
 is the idea that a church is solely a public building conducive to private 
 edification, which is the parent of the greater part of the errors which 
 have been committed. Where people were poor or parsimonious, they 
 suffered the building to fall into a condition of dust and dilapidation ; — 
 they only spent a couple of hours a week there, and could put up with 
 the discomfort for that time. Where people were rich and luxurious, 
 they kept the building in good repair; they furnished their pews with 
 comfortable cushions and handsome books ; and set up a powerful organ ; 
 and, with the good feeling which the laity always entertain towards their 
 pastor, they provided him a comfortable reading-desk, and a handsome 
 pulpit ; while the Lord’s Table was ricketty and worm-eaten, and the 
 Font filled with candle-ends. As if the God of us Christians were a dif- 
 ferent Being from the great and mighty Lord God who was worshipped 
 with solemn pomp at Jerusalem ; or as if it was very right for the Jews 
 to pay him open homage with awful reverence, but as if we Christians are 
 not required to pay him any public service ; or, as if we are entitled, by 
 our new relation to Him, to divest ourselves of all awe, and lay aside all 
 outward reverence ; and contritely confess our sins, and earnestly offer up 
 our humble petitions, and sing our solemn praises, lounging quite at our 
 ease in a well-cushioned private pew. 
 
 Let us only cease from that false view of religion, which makes our 
 own souls, instead of God, the one object to which all our religion is 
 directed ; which looks upon public worship as a means of individual edifi- 
 cation, instead of the solemn worship of the Almighty Father ; and there 
 would soon be little reason to complain of the mode in which our churches 
 are built or furnished. That which is due to God would be reverently 
 performed ; that which is needful for man would be reasonably provided. 
 And we should sin to doubt that, in seeking to serve God most acceptably, 
 we shall also find the greatest good to our own souls. 
 

 
 '•^', Wm 
 
 .'AvVi'v.-. 
 
 
 
 
 
 % . 
 
 "V 
 
 
 
 
 ' : /\- , ’ ' > '^>' . 'iT^v:> , .ii'f ■ ■ ■'H' - ' " ->> i . 
 
 .,.:V W^:fcl■ ; 
 
 •>■«. .< ■ •' '' •,.. :{;*(g(j .(^.-fj'- * ’1!:'.'5.''l ••! ■■ ■' ■■? 5 .<,v/jfi& ® i; 1» J 
 
 ; 'V ''■''■'■y" ■ V-. ' ’ , “ •'■■•■'"'" ' -^:j!', "fe' ■’"^0- "-nr- '; '7'"^''‘.--' V; 
 
 - ' ■•' r v' -r mo 7 : M'''V 
 
 ^:r 
 
 ,' . :-'',r'- . '■■:■;• ir :'^i^''h"^' . 7' ’■■ \) . .*'ji i^j:ifi^J^-'‘%.f{:r 
 
 ^ 7 ',V::;';::; ' Jv U - ' 7 ;: 7 h. 
 
 >■ '' 7 > 
 
 i^' ■ 77 -' ■77 
 
 ' , ' - 7 ' ''f;i 7' 
 
 
 ■r'- rr ' ' ‘ 
 
 . ,7 
 
 7) ’ 
 
 ,(v '^7 
 
 •'TM: 
 
 
 
 77 'f^v ^0'%m$■* 
 
 ■'rrii7'..->r.''-^":i>-..t^ t). 
 
 ftr 
 
 
 s 
 
r 
 

APPENDIX. 
 
 127 
 
 
 HE exigencies of a printer’s office required that some por- 
 tions of the foregoing essay should be printed off as they 
 stood in the periodical in which it first appeared. We 
 therefore add here an explanation of some of the Plates 
 I with which this reprint of the essay is enriched; and we 
 
 1 shall take the opportunity to give a few additional remarks 
 
 on some subjects which our former limits made it necessary to compress. 
 
 Plate I. contains two illustrations of wall paintings: one is a represen- 
 tation of the 13th century painting on the clerestory wall of West Walton 
 Church, Norfolk, mentioned at p. 16; it appears to be intended to repre- 
 sent a piece of tapestry or needlework placed in an iron frame, and sus- 
 pended upon a wall, which is painted with the common masonry pattern 
 of the period. The ground colour of the wall is buff, with red masonry 
 lines ; the frame of the painting, and the loops by which it is hung, are 
 black. The painting represents a net full of fishes, intended probably 
 either as a symbol of the church, or as an allusion to Peter the fisherman, 
 to whom the church is dedicated ; the lines of the net are black ; the first 
 row of hexagonal meshes contains red fish on a buff ground, the next row 
 buff fish on a red ground, and so on in alternate rows. 
 
 In the other corresponding spaces of the clerestory walls are similar frames 
 filled in with different patterns: one pattern is given at p. 16, another at 
 
128 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 p. 98, and a portion of another pattern is here represented, on a larger scale 
 than the others. The colours in this pattern are red and huff, counter- 
 changed. 
 
 The ground upon which these frames of tapestry are represented will 
 serve as an illustration of the simplest kind of wall decoration, which we 
 have called, at p. 15, the “masonry pattern.” We give here another 
 
 more elaborate instance of it from Great Wenham Church, Suffolk, where 
 every stone has a leaf in the angles, and a cinque-fbil in the centre ;* and 
 the pattern is bordered by a scroll of elegant character.! 
 
 The other figure in Plate 1 respresents one of the restored spandrils of 
 the nave arcade at Peering Church, Essex, mentioned at p. 16. The 
 ground of the wall is a slate colour ; the flower with which it is diapered 
 is black; the shield is “paley or and gules, on a canton of the second a 
 martlet of the first;” the string-course over the shield is red. The walls 
 of the nave are entirely painted with this pattern ; the piers and arches 
 are at present left in their native stone-colour ; the walls of the chancel 
 are of a dark slaty claret, diapered with black fleur-de-lis. The dark 
 ground may perhaps appear strange to our notions of colour; but it is not 
 infrequent as a ground for the brilliant miniature paintings in the MSS. 
 of the 14th and 15 th centuries ; and its effect in this church is not gloomy 
 as might be imagined, but quiet and agreeable. 
 
 On Plate II. we have given two examples of the bold flowing patterns, 
 characteristic of the style of design of the latter half of the 15th century. 
 Fig. 1 is from Bishop Beckingtoffs shrine in Wells Cathedral: the ground 
 is red, the pattern chocolate, the centre ornament white ; it forms, as is 
 manifest from the cut, the back of a niche ; and other patterns in the 
 same bold style ornament other niches of the same shrine, some with the 
 same arrangement of colours, some in black and green. 
 
 This style of design is not confined to wall decoration : it was univer- 
 sally used at this period for wall-hangings, tapestry, furniture, dresses, &c. 
 Pig. 2 is another example of it in black and gold from Ranworth Church, 
 Norfolk, where it occurs as the diaper of the robe of one of the series of 
 Apostles which are painted on the panels of the rood-screen. The illumi- 
 
 * Is it possible that, as the lines of the pattern were suggested by the joints of the stones, 
 so the centre pattern was suggested by the mason’s mark, which is so universally found on 
 the face of mediteval ashlar. 
 
 + Very much like one of the borders of the tile-pavement in the Chapter-house, West- 
 minster. 
 
Plate II. 
 
 Ranworth Churchy Norfolk. 
 
(- 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 129 
 
 nated MSS. of the period will furnish the decorator with abundant 
 examples of these designs ; the single book Der Weiss Kunig, which we 
 have before quoted, would supply some scores of different patterns. 
 
 It must be carefully noticed, however, that patterns of this kind seem 
 never to have been spread over the whole wall of a church, but restricted 
 to some small space to which it was desired to give special importance 
 of decoration. In Der Weiss Kunig such patterns frequently occur as 
 dossals to chairs of state, where the walls of the room are either left 
 entirely plain, or where the lower portion of the walls is furnished with 
 hangings of a simpler style. At Coggeshall Church, Essex, portions of 
 paintings in a similar taste, and in the same colours — red and chocolate, 
 with touches of white — have recently been discovered ; which appear to 
 have extended only over the lower portion of the eastern walls of the 
 nave and chancel-aisles, forming dossals to the chantry-altars there 
 placed. 
 
 Of a simpler kind of diapering, very commonly used in the 1 .5th cen- 
 tury for panels of rood-screens and similar situations, we here give an 
 example from East Ilarling Church, Norfolk. The ground is red, the 
 
 ornaments are black, white, and yellow, as heraldically tricked in the 
 woodcut. 
 
 Perhaps few of us have as yet progressed sufficiently in our revived 
 love of colour, to desire to see it introduced on the exteriors of our houses 
 and churches ; but there can be no doubt that in the middle ages exteriors 
 were coloured. 
 
 Upon exteriors of churches it was perhaps only partially introduced: 
 for instance, in the doorways with their mouldings and sculpture ; in the 
 tiles or leads with their ornamental cresting; perhaps in the string-course 
 under the parapet, the gurgoyles, and the mouldings of the windows. 
 
 We do not propose to enter at any length into the subject of exterior 
 decoration ; but as the mere assertion of the fact will be startling to many 
 of our readers, we will add a few proofs in support of it. In the Royal MS. 
 15 D. 3 (Brit. Museum), which is of the 14th century, at p. 138, is a re- 
 presentation of the building of the Temple. The Temple is represented by 
 a little Decorated church with a semi-circular apse ; over the exterior of 
 the door is a projecting canopy supported by struts— -a quasi-porch. The 
 
 s 
 
130 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 canopy is painted yellow on its under side, and the exterior mouldings of 
 the doorway are touched with colour. The exterior of the roof of the 
 church is covered with lead, painted blue to represent the colour of the 
 lead, and each sheet of lead is painted with large fleurs-de-lis of a darker 
 shade of blue. 
 
 At f. 395 of the same MS. is a representation of a lead covering of a 
 church roof, in which the rolls dividing the sheets of lead are of a darker 
 blue, and each sheet of lead has a row of three large fleur-de-lys in a 
 darker shade of blue. 
 
 In the MS. Domitian, A. 17 (Brit. Museum), of the time of Kichard II., 
 at f. 175, is a representation of a church covered with lead, and with a 
 high ornamental cresting; the lead is painted blue (lead colour); the 
 cresting and the rolls which divide the sheets of lead are gilt. Gilt crest- 
 ings are not uncommon in MSS. 
 
 In the royal MS. 15, E. 6 (Brit. Museum), of the time of Henry VI., 
 the buildings in many of the illuminations have red and blue tiles on dif- 
 ferent parts of the same buildings, arranged, clearly, with a view to chro- 
 matic efiect. 
 
 But we have traces of colour still remaining on the exteriors of churches 
 of all dates. 
 
 At Fountains’ Abbey, in the Cloister Court, is a small Norman door- 
 way, leading into what is locally called the “ Brother’s-room ;” there is a 
 plain Norman hood-moulding over it, the under face chamfered at an 
 angle of 45°. The space between this hood-moulding and the arch of the 
 door is painted white, with red lines to indicate the voussoirs ; the hood- 
 moulding itself is painted in zig-zag bands, alternately black, white, and 
 red. It is curious that the points of the zig-zag pattern do not coincide 
 with the constructional angles of the moulding ; one row of points falls 
 upon the middle of the chamfer, the next row of points upon the middle 
 of the face of the hood. 
 
 In the course of the restoration which is now being carried on at Car- 
 lisle Cathedral, several fragments of exterior colour have been found. 
 One fragment which seems to have formed part of the exterior mouldings 
 of a door-arch of Norman date has the characteristic mouldings painted 
 red, black, and white. Portions of the original north transept, a work of 
 the very beginning of the 14th century, were also found, consisting of 
 fragments of carving, mouldings, &c. ; some of which were without doubt 
 part of the external decoration, and these were covered with a coat of 
 white paint. 
 
 Traces of colour were found upon a mutilated Virgin and Child, which 
 formerly occupied a niche outside the tower of the same cathedral, a work 
 of the first quarter of the 1 5th century. 
 
 Considerable traces of decorative colour remain on the exterior of the 
 late Perpendicular porch of Ilitchin Church, Hertfordshire. The porch is 
 very deeply moulded in the doorways and windows, and enriched with 
 niches, panelling, and carving. It has recently been partially restored, so 
 that the colour now remains only in fragments ; but sufficient remains to 
 indicate the principle of its application : the carving has a yellow tinge, 
 perhaps the ground for gilding ; the flat surfaces and curves of mouldings 
 are red ; and the shafts of archways and the fillets of mouldings of a dark 
 colour which looks like brown.* 
 
 Traces of colour remain on several of the rich late porches of Norfolk 
 
 * “ But may have been black,” says our correspondent (Mr. C. H. Purday, to whom we 
 are also indebted for the above notices of exterior colour at Fountain’s and Carlisle, and for 
 many other kindnesses.) More probably, perhaps, it was the chocolate colour which, as we 
 have already seen, is so extensively used in the decorations of this period. 
 

 
 z r ■■ 
 
 
 «. ,j' 
 
 :y: <' '.. .v.. 
 
 i', 'k' ,‘ ■ ' 
 
 • ■ .>vf - '■< 
 
 m .^>^1 
 
 V'» h-i • , 
 
 i:,' 
 
 
 Vl'-ill'i'.*,* 
 
 ,,.'f:' 'V;. '■■ /'.t' 
 
 fe ‘ -■ 
 
 S t . ■- 
 
 v:-t‘ 
 
 ,[v"' '''^" '■ " ' 
 
 '-■\)L ■’-■ .'k ' " , .v..\^'i>'i ■■ 
 
 **>.' 'i' 5.- ^ . w.- r ^* '' ' . 
 
 ■'-r- ^'■'t j^. ’ ;,s*^'.' 
 
 
 ;%^.‘.;«(}^':iOfe;' «&Wt'v 
 
 •i 
 
 ■Sf 
 
 
 
 ii.'''V«V^t'' ViV; 
 
 
 -.V'v'x.v' ,, --. . 
 
 
 ’.A‘. , •'» -.^' ^ •"•' ij - ■ 
 
 'r.,- o ■ *, •' '.■ ‘ .' . 
 
 k :■ 
 
 vV,’\>..i-,^ • 
 
 >{"*■'. ^^ :>>i ■;.■>?.•/ 
 
 >/, t^’, rv^,.i <( . 
 
 t r-i. 
 
 
 :-, . V'M. •■ - . . . :4i ' "'>. 'V.; 
 
 . . v; inr^ ■"* -i • '/ '*' *'* ‘.'fJii' ji/* ’ 
 
 .„ ',•-■. ' ’; 0~r.r- 
 
 ■ - ,/■-/' ■■:•;. .,> v,t> y,n, 
 
 
 •iiU 
 
 i<. f/» -v; . 
 
 
 ■. -f..- 
 
 ^r' -. -y, 
 
PLATE VI . 
 
 J '■W Mevv^i Lx rJel . 
 
 D^V ;!cSon,Lith''.®toThpy Queen . 
 
 TXLE T:S: Y Ex ME J>1' T , E X K T E R C 3E T -IE- E B IQ 3^1, . 
 

 i’lt ' ■ 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 
Plate Yll. 
 
 Fig. 13. 
 
 Fig. 17. 
 
! ;■; ' 
 
 f . 
 
Plate VIII. 
 
 Fig. 19. 
 
 Fig. 31. 
 
 Fig. 3'F 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 131 
 
 and Suffolk. There were traces of yellow colour upon the exterior mould- 
 ings and carvings of the south door and priest’s door of Coggeshall Church, 
 Essex. 
 
 The ornamental flint and stone panelling, so common in the plinth and 
 parapet* of the late Perpendicular churches of the Eastern Counties, and 
 the patterns which are produced upon the surface of the wall by the use 
 of black and red bricks, are in fact external coloured decoration. 
 
 Plate III. Design for gas standard, see p. 87. 
 
 Plate IV. A monumental slab, inlaid with a brass cross, and marginal 
 inscription, designed and executed by Mr. J. G. Waller, and laid down in 
 the pavement of Kingweston Church, Somersetshire. 
 
 Plate V. A monumental slab of alabaster, with a cross incised upon 
 it; the design, but not the inscription, is taken from a slab of the 15th 
 century, in Bridgeford Church, Nottinghamshire. 
 
 Plate VI. The diagram on the opposite plate will enable us to describe 
 more fully and clearly than we have done at p. 96, the arrangement of 
 the design in the very characteristic panelled pavement from the Exche- 
 quer Chamber, Exeter Cathedral. It was not possible in a drawing on so 
 small a scale to do more than indicate the arrangement ; to put in the 
 designs of the inlaid tiles so as to give completely the effect of the pave- 
 ment would have required a very large and costly drawing; but we give 
 separately woodcuts of the various tiles which are used in the design, on 
 Plates VIII. and IX. ; and their positions in the pavement are indicated 
 by reference numbers in the diagram, so that with very little trouble 
 the whole of this interesting design may be fully made out. 
 
 The general characteristics of this style of design have already been 
 noticed at p. 96. In studying the details more closely the first thing 
 which will strike the eye is the studied want of symmetry; the panels are 
 not of equal width ; the borders are studiously varied ; the filling in of no 
 two panels is quite alike ; the angles of the angular sub-panels do not 
 coincide in adjoining panels; and in the groups of inlaid tiles with which 
 the sub-panels are filled in, the same capricious irregularity is observable : 
 for instance, in the third panel from the top of the Plate (called panel 1 in 
 the text, p. 96) there are twenty-seven squares formed by the interlacing 
 narrow bands, and these squares are filled up with sets of four tiles form- 
 ing one pattern ; and of these patterns there are ten different ones ; and 
 they are so distributed that in only one instance do the two contiguous 
 squares contain the same pattern. 
 
 The pavement of the Chapter House of Salisbury Cathedral is similarly 
 treated. It is an octagonal building: first, it is divided into four com- 
 partments by borders which run from the central pillar to the centres of 
 the four cardinal sides of the octagon ; then each compartment is divided 
 into ten long panels of unequal widths, which all run towards the central 
 pillar; and these panels are sub-divided and filled in on exactly the same 
 method as the Exeter pavement: some panels are divided into small 
 squares filled in by sets of four tiles like the third panel from the top in 
 Plate VI. In some the sub-division is still smaller, and the squares 
 formed by the border tiles are only large enough to contain one tile ; in 
 other panels there is no sub-division by strip-tiles, but the whole panel is 
 filled in with different patterns of inlaid tiles. 
 
 * Many late Perpendicular churches have parapets of brick, which are clearly original ; 
 and they sometimes occur where the wall is of hewn stone, looking strangely incongruous. 
 We beg to suggest that in such cases the brick parapet has been stuccoed and painted with 
 ornamental panelling, probably of the same character as that which we see in the flint- 
 work parapets of the same date. 
 
132 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The muniment-room of the same cathedral is also octagonal, and its 
 pavement is similar to that of the chapter-house above described, except 
 that each of the four main compartments is divided into only six panels. 
 A diagram of half of this latter pavement is given in the Northampton 
 Architectural Society’s annual volume for 1850. 
 
 A pavement very similarly arranged remains in a tolerably perfect 
 condition in the Archive Chamber of the principal registry, over Saint 
 James’s Chapel, in the same Cathedral of Exeter, but it is so covered with 
 the presses with which it is furnished that it is hardly possible to copy 
 the arrangement correctly. 
 
 A fragment of another pavement of similar character, consisting of the 
 ends of three panels, remains in St. James’s chantry in the same cathedral; 
 
 the panels have all been divided into large tri- 
 angles, as in the second and fifth panels of the 
 Exchequer Chamber pavement, filled in with 
 tiles of diflTerent designs. 
 
 Another fragment in St. Paul’s chantry, of 
 the same cathedral, exhibits the same princi- 
 ples of arrangement ; one panel is divided like 
 the fourth, from the top, in the plate of the Ex- 
 chequer Chamber pavement, and each square 
 is subdivided into nine squares of a single tile, 
 that tile being a shield of the royal arms, given 
 in the margin ; the triangular spaces which fill 
 up the sides of the panel, are filled with inlaid tiles without any division 
 of dark tiles. 
 
 Beneath the rood screen, on the north side, where the altar of St. 
 Nicholas formerly stood, a fragment of pavement remains, exhibiting 
 part of a panel filled in with a trellis work of dark border tiles, each 
 lozenge of the trellis work being filled with an inlaid tile whose pat- 
 tern is a Bishop standing upon a bracket — his length along the diagonal 
 of the tile — with a vine leaf springing from the bracket to fill up the 
 angles of the tile.* 
 
 Plates VII. and VIII. give the details of the tile pavement in the Ex- 
 chequer Chamber, Exeter Cathedral.f 
 
 Plate IX. represents a portion of a pavement at Higham Ferrers, 
 Northamptonshire, whose date is about 1340, a.d. The division into panels 
 is apparent : the filling of those panels presents peculiarities which will 
 be best understood by a study of the plate, for the drawing of which we 
 are indebted to the courtesy of Mr. J. K. Colling, the author of the beau- 
 tiful work on Gothic Ornaments. 
 
 The remarkable pavement of Prior Crawden’s Chapel, Ely, presents 
 many features of resemblance to the Higham Ferrers pavement ; its details 
 have been given by Mr. Colling, at plate 14, Vol. II., of his work above 
 referred to. 
 
 Plate X. is another fragment of a pavement of 14th-century date, 
 discovered in the ruins of Neath Abbey, Glamorganshire. It appears 
 to form part of two panels, divided by the central rows of tiles: one 
 
 * These arrangements are shown in a plate given in a paper by Mr. Hewett, in the Exeter 
 Society’s Transactions ; he assigns them to the early part of the fourteenth century. 
 
 t For the loan of several of these blocks we are indebted to the Exeter Architectural 
 Society; they originally illustrated a paper on this pavement, by the Rev. J. Hewitt, 
 which is published in the Society’s Transactions; for others we are indebted to the Rev. 
 Lord Alwyne Compton, whose excellent paper on Tile Pavements, alluded to at p. 96, they 
 originally illustrated. 
 
r:> 
 
Plate X. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 133 
 
 panel is sub-divided by border tiles into squares of a single tile ; the 
 heraldic tiles which occupy these squares are those of England, Clare 
 E. of Gloucester, Turberville, and Mowbray ; the 
 other panel is filled with a diaper pattern, which 
 is not quite correctly represented in the plate 
 (copied from one in the Archaeological Journal ) ; 
 the diaper is given correctly, but on a smaller 
 scale than the Plate, in the six tiles figured 
 in the margin. 
 
 The lower member of the border supplies us 
 with very good examples of the curious devices 
 which are sometimes found upon inlaid tiles. 
 
 FINIS. 
 

 
 iM, 4 *’^' 
 
 (■Ivi!'' 5 
 
 .'if ""f ; 
 
 
INDEX. 
 
J 
 
 f- 
 
 m 
 
A. 
 
 Albe 
 
 All-Hallows the Great, Thames- street 
 
 Alms-dish 
 
 chest 
 
 Altar chair 
 
 in primitive church of wood 
 
 lights 
 
 meaning of 
 
 representations of antient examples of (note) 
 
 of stone introduced 
 
 rails 
 
 removed from our churches in 1550 
 
 vestments 
 
 ^ in Roman church 
 
 in Greek church 
 
 of 14th century 
 
 of 15th century (note) 
 
 Amice 
 
 Ancient Pulpits^ by Dolman 
 
 Aquila and Priscilla, in a wall painting at Wells, Somerset 
 
 Assyrian temples, arrangement of 
 
 Attenborough Church, Nottinghamshire, bench ends at 
 
 B. 
 
 Basevi, monumental brass of 
 
 Basilican churches, arrangement of 
 
 Beaulieu, tile pavement at 
 
 Beckley Church, Oxfordshire, wall paintings at 
 
 T 
 
 PAGE 
 
 63, 66 
 
 ... 36 
 
 84 
 
 ... 122 
 
 31 
 
 ... 28 
 
 85 
 
 ... 85 
 
 85 
 
 28, 370 
 34 
 
 ... 28 
 
 70 
 70, 71 
 70 
 
 ... 70 
 
 79 
 
 ... 63 
 
 44 
 
 ... 18 
 
 6 
 
 ... 49 
 
 110 
 
 8 
 
 100 
 
 18 
 
138 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Beckington’s shrine, Wells Cathedral, wall painting upon (PL II. fig. 1) 128 
 
 Berlin wool work 60 
 
 Bier 120 
 
 Bier-cloth 119, 120 
 
 Blackburne’s, Mr., Decorative Painting ... 45 
 
 Books chained to desks in churches 42 
 
 Borders for altar-cloth 78 
 
 Brandon’s (Messrs.) Analysis of Gothic Architecture 99 
 
 Basted Church, Kent, stalls at 41 
 
 Bridgeford Church, Nottinghamshire, incised slab at (PI. V.) 131 
 
 Bristol Cathedral, tiles from 93 
 
 British churches, arrangement of 9 
 
 Broughton Church, Berkshire, wall paintings at 18 
 
 Burlingham St. Edmund, Norfolk, pulpit at 45 
 
 C. 
 
 Canon of 1603, on clerical vestments 65 
 
 Canopy over the altar 70 
 
 over the font 117 
 
 Carlisle Cathedral, exterior painting at 130 
 
 Carpets and mats 58 
 
 for covering of altar 71 
 
 Cassock 63, 65 
 
 Cathedral (R. C.) of all Nations, Hatton Garden 5 
 
 Catholic Apostolic Church, Gordon-square 5 
 
 Chalice 80, 81 
 
 Chancel screens 35 
 
 defence of, by Bishop Beveridge 36 
 
 Chancel stalls 38 
 
 Charles I., portrait of, in churches 14 
 
 Chasuble 63 
 
 shape of 68 
 
 Chimere, an episcopal vestment derived from the amys 69 
 
 Chrisomer 118 
 
 Christening say 118 
 
 Church NeedleioorTc, by Miss Lambert 61 
 
 of our Fathers, by Dr. Rock 68 
 
 ’s (Mr. W. A.) Oxford Tiles 92 
 
 plate 80 
 
 Clerical vestments 62 
 
 Cloak, mourning 121 
 
 Clock 123 
 
 Coggeshall Church, Essex, wall painting at 129 
 
 Ceiling’s (Mr. J. K.) Gothic Ornaments 49 
 
 Cologne Cathedral, colouring of 22 
 
 Colour, bright, eschewed by modern Europe ... *. 11, 50 
 
 , hints on arrangement of, by Mr. G. J. French 60 
 
 Communion table 28 
 
 Compton, Lord Alwyne, Paper on Tiles, by 96 
 
 Cope 63, 67 
 
INDEX. 
 
 139 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Coronse 86, 88 
 
 Coverings of the Lord’s table 70 
 
 Crawden’s Chapel, Ely, pavement in 132 
 
 Crowland Abbey Church, hangings in 51 
 
 Cucklet dell, Ej^am, Derbyshire 12 
 
 Curtains of tower arch 56 
 
 over doors 57 
 
 at the sides of the altar 70, 71 
 
 D. 
 
 Dalmatic 63, 67 
 
 Dance of death, painted on church walls 18 
 
 Decent, meaning of the word in the canons (note) 73 
 
 Der Weiss Kunig^ representations of tile pavements in 103, 104 
 
 Dolman’s (Mr.) Ancient Pulpits 44 
 
 Down (Rev. Lord) monumental brass of 110 
 
 Dui’ham Cathedral, lettern at 42 
 
 E. 
 
 Eagle, used for bible lettern ... 42 
 
 East Harling Church, Norfolk, painted rood screen at 129 
 
 Easter sepulchre 108 
 
 Ely Cathedral, Saxon hangings in 51 
 
 Embroidery 61 
 
 English Mediaeval Embroidery (J. H. Parker) 62 
 
 Exterior painting of churches 129 
 
 Eyam, Cucklet dell at, where worship was performed during the plague 12 
 
 F. 
 
 Feering Church, Essex, restoration of colouring at (PI. I. fig. 2) ... 22, 127 
 
 Fen Drayton Church, Cambridgeshire, monumental brass in 110 
 
 Flagon 84 
 
 Font ... 114 
 
 cover 117 
 
 Fountain’s Abbey, exterior painting at 130 
 
 French’s (Mr. G. J.) Ilints on the Arrangement of Colour 60 
 
 Fringe for altar cloth 78 
 
 G. 
 
 Gas, use of, in churches 86, 89 
 
 Grave-stones 112 
 
 General Arrangement of ancient churches 6 
 
 Gloucester, Lady Chapel, monumental tiles at 105 
 
 Cathedral, tiles from 93, 95 
 
 Gloves, episcopal 69 
 
 Godwin (Mr.), tile design by 95 
 
 Great Bedwin, tile pavement in stained glass at ’ 99 
 
 Malvern, tile pavement in stained glass at 99, 102 
 
 , monumental tiles at 105 
 
 , wall tiles at 105 
 
140 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Great Wenham Church, Suffolk, wall painting at 128 
 
 Greek churches, arrangement of 8 
 
 Grimsagh Chapel, Preston, modern monumental brass in 110 
 
 H. 
 
 Hendred, West, tiles from 95 
 
 Hitchin Church, Hertfordshire, exterior painting on porch 130 
 
 Homilies, quotations from 2 
 
 I. 
 
 Intramural interments, law of King Etheldred against 107 
 
 J. 
 
 Jewish temple, arrangement of 6 
 
 called mother church of Judea 2 
 
 Jumi^ges, monumental tile pavement at 104 
 
 K. 
 
 Kingweston Church, Somerset, monumental brass at (PI. IV.) Ill 
 
 Kirkstal Abbey, monumental tiles at 105 
 
 L. 
 
 Lambert’s (Miss) Church Needleworh 
 
 61 
 
 Lettern, or Lecturn 
 
 41 
 
 Lighting of churches 
 
 86 
 
 Linen table-cloth for altar 
 
 79 
 
 Lingfield Church, Surrey, monumental tiles at 
 
 105 
 
 Litany desk 
 
 123 
 
 M. 
 
 
 Malvern, Great, Abbey Church, tiles from 
 
 93, 94 
 
 Maniple 
 
 63, 67 
 
 Maw and Co’s (Messrs.) tile catalogue 
 
 92 
 
 Minton’s (Messrs.) tile catalogue 
 
 92 
 
 wall tiles 
 
 105 
 
 Mitre 
 
 63, 69 
 
 worn at the coronation of George III 
 
 64 
 
 Mompesson, William, rector of Eyam, Derbyshire ... . 
 
 12 
 
 Monmouth Priory, wall tiles at 
 
 105 
 
 Monograms 
 
 75, 76, 77 
 
 Monuments 
 
 107 
 
 Monumental crosses in brass 
 
 Ill 
 
 , modern 
 
 Ill 
 
 , (PI. IV.) 
 
 ’. Ill 
 
 in stone (PI. V.) 
 
 112 
 
 effigies in relief 
 
 108 
 
 in brass 
 
 109 
 
 , modern 
 
 110 
 
INDEX. 
 
 141 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Monumental crosses of wood 109 
 
 Morse 68 
 
 Mural monuments 112 
 
 Murano, pulpit in church of 44 
 
 N. 
 
 Neath Abbey, tiles from 93 
 
 , pavement at (PI. X.) 133 
 
 Nichols’s (Mr. J. G.) Decorative Tiles 92 
 
 Norman wall painting 14 
 
 North Creake Church, Norfolk, monumental tiles at 105 
 
 O . 
 
 Offertory basin 84 
 
 Oldham’s (Mr.) Irish Tile Pavements 92 
 
 Oxford Tiles^ by Mr. W. A. Church 92 
 
 P. 
 
 Pall, funeral 
 
 , of 14th and 15th centuries 
 
 — , archiepiscopal, origin of 
 
 Pastoral staff 
 
 in modern use 
 
 Perranzabuloe, Church of 
 
 Pews 
 
 anciently not usual in churches 
 
 impropriety of high 
 
 old forms of 
 
 P£enula, the original of the chasuble 
 
 Polychrome 
 
 a design for, in a parish church 
 
 examples of, from illuminated MSS. 
 
 on chancel screens 
 
 Pulpit 
 
 119 
 
 120 
 63 
 
 69 
 
 70 
 9 
 
 45 
 
 46 
 45 
 
 47 
 68 
 10 
 21 
 20 
 38 
 44 
 
 71 
 
 E. 
 
 Ranworth Church, Norfolk, painted rood screen at (Pi. II.) 
 
 Rationale, ornament on breast of priest 
 
 Reading Abbey, tiles from 
 
 desk 
 
 Reredos 
 
 in illuminated MS 
 
 Ring, episcopal 
 
 Rochester Cathedral, tile pavements at 
 
 Rochet 
 
 Rock’s (Dr.) Church of our Fathers 
 
 Rood screen, or chancel screen 
 
 128 
 
 69 
 
 93 
 
 41 
 
 ... 70, 72 
 
 20 
 
 69 
 
 99 
 
 ... 63, 69 
 
 68 
 
 35 
 
142 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Koofs, coloured, in illuminated MS 20 
 
 Romsey Abbey, tiles from 93 
 
 Rubens indebted to mediaeval artists 19 
 
 Rubric on clerical vestments, from first Prayer-book of Edward VI. ... 65 
 
 Ruskin’s (Mr.) Stones of Venice 50 
 
 S. 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral, pavement of ehapter-liouse 131 
 
 muniment-room 131 
 
 Sandals, episeopal 63 
 
 Seats (see Pews) 45 
 
 Sedilia 32 
 
 at Little Coggeshall, Essex 32 
 
 Seals of Kings of England 32 
 
 Singing, congregational 39 
 
 South Elmham Church, Suffolk, wall paintings at 18 
 
 St. Apollinarisberg, fresco paintings in church at 22 
 
 St. Christopher, painted in churches 18 
 
 at South Elmham Church, Suffolk 18 
 
 at Wells, Somerset 18 
 
 St. George and Dragon, painted on church wall 18 
 
 St. Gwithian’s, Cornwall, Church of 9 
 
 St. Mark’s, Venice 8 
 
 St. Michael, painted on church walls 18 
 
 at Beckley, Oxfordshire 19 
 
 St. Nicholas Church, Lynn 44 
 
 St. Paul’s Cathedral, hangings at, in temp. Edward VI 55 
 
 St. Peter, Cornhill, modern chancel screen at 36 
 
 St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, wall painting at 16 
 
 Stained glass 23 
 
 Stalls, in illuminated MS 20 
 
 Stanton Harcourt Church, Oxfordshire, wall paintings at 18 
 
 Stole 63, 67 
 
 , origin of 63 
 
 Stoke-by-Nayland Church, Essex 48 
 
 Spoon, for use at the communion 83 
 
 Surplice 63, 66 
 
 Sutton Church, Ely, monumental brass in 110 
 
 T. 
 
 Tabernacle, adornment of 1 
 
 called “ parish church ” of the Israelites (note) 2 
 
 Temple Patrick, Galway, Church of 9 
 
 Textile Fabrics 50 
 
 Tile Pavements 90 
 
 arrangement of, in 13th and 14th centuries 96, 98 
 
 -, at various places 100 
 
 -, in illuminated MSS 101, 104 
 
 90 
 
 Tiles, manufacture of ... 
 
INDEX. 
 
 143 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tiles, works upon 92 
 
 Tower curtain 56 
 
 Tunic 63, 67 
 
 U. 
 
 Upwell Church, Norfolk, brass in 68 
 
 W. 
 
 Wall hangings 51 
 
 painting 13 
 
 in illuminated MS 20, 21 
 
 Waller (Messrs.), modern monumental brasses by 110, 111 
 
 Wallingford Castle, Church of, tiles from 93 
 
 Waltham Abbey, restored font at 117 
 
 Wells Cathedral, wall paintings at 128 
 
 Church, Somerset, wall paintings at 18 
 
 West Walton Church, Norfolk, wall paintings at 16, 98, 127 
 
 Westerham Church, Kent, brass in 66 
 
 , chalice at 83 
 
 White Ladies Nunnery, Salop, monumental tile-cross at 105 
 
 Wickham Bishop’s Church, Essex, alms-box at 122 
 
 Winchester Cathedral, tiles from 94 
 
 , paving of presbytery 96 
 
 Wood- WORK 28 
 
 Worcester Cathedral, monumental tiles at 105 
 
 London : Printed by John Crockfobd, 29, Essex Street, Strand. 
 
On ihe^Sth and 22nd of every Month, 
 
 Clerttiii ^nxml, 
 
 M (!yliiittji null flninKsitti: (PjirnnirlB; 
 
 AEECORD OF ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE AND ART; 
 
 TTie Journal of the Church of England and Ireland, 
 and of the Colonies, and organ of intercommunication for 
 the Clergy and Laity of the Establishment. 
 
 24 Pages and 72 Columns, price 8i., Stamped 9c?. ; Subscribers will 
 be supplied by post on the day of publication for 12s. only 
 FOR THE YEAR, being a reduction of more than 30 per cent. 
 
 A Copy as a Specimen sent to any person enclosing Nme Postage 
 Stamps to the Publisher, at the Office, 29, Essex Street, Strand. 
 
 The Clerical Journal provides for the Clergy and Members of the Established 
 Church a cemplete record of the progress of Religious Literature and Art, 
 Home and Foreign; and a complete collection of the facts and news relating 
 to The Church and the Universities, which are of interest to aU. It expressly 
 avoids controversy and speculation, leaving these to the Journals that are the 
 organs of particular sects and parties. 
 
 Its usual CONTENTS comprise:— 
 
 I. Masterpieces of Modern Pulpit Eloquence and Religious Writing ; 
 (Nos. I. to IV. have appeared, and others will follow.) 
 
 II. The Pastor and His Duties: (Nos. I. to VI. of this Series 
 
 have appeared, and others wnll follow.) 
 
 III. Chapters on Churchyards, Illustrated: (Chapters I. to V. have 
 
 appeared, and others wall follow.) 
 
 IV. The Church — Sayings and Doings : being a Summary of 
 
 Ecclesiastical Topics, with comments thereon. 
 
 V. The Universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Ireland, and 
 Scotland), their Sayings and Doings. 
 
 VI. The Irish Ecclesiastical & University World : Sayings & Doings. 
 
 VII. The Scotch Ecclesiastical World, its Sayings and Doings. 
 
 VIII. Ecclesiastical Antiquities. 
 
 IX. Reviews and Notices of the New Religious Publications, clas- 
 sified thus : — 
 
 1. Theology. 
 
 2. Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 3. Biblical Literature. 
 
 4. Religious Biography. 
 
 5. Scriptural Geography and 
 
 Topography. 
 
 6. Sermons. 
 
 7. Devotional Books. 
 
 8. Sacred Poetry. 
 
 9. Sacred Music. 
 
 10. Ecclesiastical Law. 
 
 11. Church Politics. 
 
 12. Religious Periodicals. 
 
 13. Miscellaneous. 
 
 X. Foreign Religious Literature. A fortnightly Summary; and 
 reviews of foreign Theological Books. 
 
 XL Ecclesiastical Art and Architecture, and Religious Paintings. 
 
 XII. Ecclesiastical Music : being criticisms on new Sacred Music, and 
 opinions on new Organs, &c. 
 
 XIII. Memoirs of Church Dignitaries and Eminent Clergymen 
 
 recently deceased. 
 
 XIV. Correspondence of the Clergy on Church matters and interests. 
 
 XV. Notes and Queries on Ecclesiastical Literature, Ecclesiastical 
 
 Law, Antiquities, &c. &c. 
 
 XVI. Church News of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Colonies, 
 collecting all the most important Intelligence relating to the 
 Church and the Clergy. 
 
XVII. Ecclesiastical Preferments and Appointments in England, 
 Ireland, and Scotland. 
 
 XVIII. University & Collegiate News of England, Ireland, & Scotland. 
 
 XIX. Obituary. 
 
 XX. List of New Books, Religious and Educational. 
 
 XXI. Advertisements of and to the Clergy and Churchmen, as for 
 Curates, Benefices, Advowsons; of Education, New Books, &c. 
 
 Orders and Advertisements to he sent to the Office of The Clerical 
 Journal, 29, Essex Street^ Strand. Post-office Orders to be made 
 payable^ at the Strand Post-office, to Mr. John CrocTcford. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING ARE 
 
 OPINTIONS OF CLEKGYMEN- AND OTHEES 
 
 IN FAVOUR OF 
 
 Cltnral laiiraitl, anii anJ) Initositg 
 
 WHICH HAVE BEEN EXPRESSED IN COMMUNICATIONS ADDRESSED TO THE PUBLISHER . 
 
 Archibald, Rev.J., Avenhury Vicarage, near Bromyard. — “The Clerical Journal" 
 appears to me to be a work much wanted at the present time.— May, 1853. 
 
 Armagh, the Yen. the Archdeacon of. — I wish your Journal every success. It 
 is both a useful and interesting publication.— March, 1854. 
 
 Baylie, Rev. J., Bloxwick Parsonage, Walsall. — I consider “The Clerical 
 Journal" a highly interesting publication. — 21s# February, 1854. 
 
 Bennett, Rev. Theophilus, M. A ., Withington, Manchester. — I highly approve of 
 the moderate tone of “The Clerical Journal,” and hope it may, under 
 God, be made the means of bringing about what I earnestly desire — 
 viz., a union of all Orthodox Churchmen. — 17#/i January, 1854. 
 
 Bishop, Rev. D. G., Huntingford. — “The Clerical Journal” leads me to hope 
 that it will fulfil the design for which you have imdertaken its publication, 
 and I heartily wish you success. — May, 1853. 
 
 Boutell, Rev. C., Hampton, Middlesex. — “The Clerical Journal” will, I firmly 
 believe, prove a very valuable auxiliary to the “ Church” as one establish- 
 ment, and will do much to diminish the sad evils arising from parties in 
 or of the Church. — June, 1853. 
 
 Bui'gess, Rev. H., Blackburn {Editor of “Kitto’s Journal of Sacred Literature.”) 
 —I like “The Clerical Journal” in most respects.— J/ay, 1853. 
 
 Buscoe, Rev. J. W., M.A., Finnea, County Westmeath. — I wish to express mj'' 
 humble approval of the manner in which “The Clerical Jounial” is got 
 up. It is calculated to be very useful to Clergymen. — May, 1853. 
 
 Canham, Rev. H., Temple, Bristol.— 1 am much pleased with “The Clerical 
 Journal.” — Septembers, 1853. 
 
 Chaplin, Rev. Wm., Kendal.— I am much pleased with the fair and candid 
 reviews of one or two works, not considered orthodox. — Septembers, 1853. 
 
 Chrisiian, E., Esq., 10, Whitehall-place, London.—! find “The Clerical Journal" 
 very interesting. — January, 1854. 
 
 Church Review and Ecclesiastical Register (a Quarterly Review of high standing, 
 published at Connecticut, U. S. A.), for January, 1854. — We like the 
 specimen number before us; and shall be glad to welcome it to our 
 editorial table regularly. It will, we hope and trust, be learned without 
 dullness ; Catholic, without being Romish or latitudinarian ; and moderate 
 in tone, with no lack of zeal, and furthermore, be abundantly sustained. 
 
 The Churchman (a New York weekly newspaper devoted to the Church). — 
 “The Clerical Journal," as our readers have .already been told, takes side 
 with no school or party in the Church, but stands for the whole Church 
 against all sorts of assailants without and within. — Wth March, 1853. 
 
 Clarke, Rev. J., Erskine, Low Harrogate.—! think your paper a great boon, and 
 rejoice in its doubled issue. — July, 1853. 
 
 Clarke, Rev. Thomas, Spring Vale, Broomhall, Sheffield.—! highly approve of 
 your publication as a Journal for Ecclesiastical matters. I feel assured that 
 it will and must make its way, and become more appreciated by the Clergy 
 as it becomes better known.— 1853. 
 
Cox, Mr. George, Publisher, 18, King-street, Covent-garden. — A valuable journal. 
 — \lth Jan., 1854. 
 
 Coombs, Rev. Wm., Llanrwst, Denbighshire.— “Clerical Journal” to 
 be such, that all parties in the Church of England may support it on the 
 broad pidnciple of avoiding dogmatism and party spirit. -September, 1853. 
 
 Crump, Rev. Wm., The Vicarage, Rowley Regis, Dudley. — Allow me to express 
 my great satisfaction in perusing the “Journal,” and admiration of the 
 ability with which it is conducted.— iVbw. 28, 1853. 
 
 Darwail, Rev. L., Criggion Parsonage, near Shrewsbury.— I hail with much 
 pleasure the appearance of your new Journal, and wish it every success. 
 I feel satisfied it will be of great utility to those for whose perusal it is 
 principally intended. — May, 1853. 
 
 Davy, Rev. W. //., Chichester. — I may be allowed to congratulate you upon 
 having made so good a staid, and would wish all success to your under- 
 taking so long as it is carried out according to the spirit which is so pro- 
 minently put forward of impartiality, and freedom from bias toward one 
 extreme as the other.— Jfay, 1853. 
 
 Drake, Rev. William, Coventry. — I cannot help saying hov/- much I approve the 
 conduct of “The Clerical Journal.” — December 26, 1853. 
 
 Dublin, the Right Rev. the Archbishop of.— 1'he Archbishop highly esteems “The 
 Clerical Journal.” — Letter from the Ven. Archdeacon of Dublin, March, 1854. 
 
 Edmonstone, Rev. G., Potterne, Z>m>rs.— The publication cannot fail to have my 
 unqualified good opinion and perfect approval. — October 12, 1853. 
 
 Elliott, Rev. Joshua, Wolsingham, Darlington.—! am much pleased with the 
 “ Journal,” and wish you every success. — September 22, 1853. 
 
 Fowler, Rev. J. C., The Manse, Ratho, by Edinburgh. — I think “The Clerical 
 Journal an admirably-conducted paper. — YUh March, 1854. 
 
 Harrison, Rev. J., Horton, Bradford, Yorkshire.— 1 am well pleased with “The 
 Clerical Journal.” Tliere is little fear of its greater circulation if it 
 continue to be conducted as it has commenced. — 10^^ March, 1854. 
 
 Hobson, Rev. A. W., Hornchurch, Romford. — That you avoid advocacy of mere 
 party views, political and religious, is the feature in “The Clerical 
 Journal” which pleases me, and from which I hope it will never deviate. 
 — September 6, 1 853. 
 
 Howell, Rev. E., Kelbrook, Colne.— Yom: “Journal” gives me great satisfaction . 
 Go on as you have begun. — September 28, 1853. 
 
 Hutchenson, Rev. Wm., Checkley Rectory, near Cheadley. — I am much pleased 
 with the arrangement of the publication and the talent with which it is 
 conducted. — Nov. 29, 1853. 
 
 Hutton, Rev. F., Edd’s Hill, West Bromwich, Staffordshire.- - “The Clerical 
 Journal” has fully borne out myliighest anticipations. — Wth March, 1854. 
 
 Hutton, Rev. Francis, Ely — “ The Clerical Jounial” promises fairly to supply 
 the wants of all parties of the Church.— 1853. 
 
 Hyde, Rev. Arthur, Mohill, Ireland. — There cannot be a more satisfactory 
 testimony to the value of your Journal than the wish of its subscribers 
 to see it oftener.— 1853. 
 
 Isaacs, Rev. A. A., 16, Lincoln' s-inn-fields.— l have warmly recommended it.-<- 
 October 20, 1853. 
 
 Johnson, Rev. James S., Manse of Cambuslang, by Glasgow , — The admirable 
 manner in which “The Clerical Journal,” in so fhr as it has proceeded, 
 has been conducted, and the guarantee thereby afforded for its further 
 usefulness, entitle you to every encouragement to prosecute your plan. 
 Such a Journal as yours has long been felt a desideratum. — July, 1853. 
 
 Jones, Rev. Newton, Rainford, Lancashire. — I have been very much pleased 
 with “The Clerical Journal,” and I trust it may continue to realize that 
 wide support v/hich it so well deserves. — June, 1853. 
 
 Killaloe, Ven. Archdeacon of, Lot^sha Glebe, Borrisokane,—! am greatly pleased 
 with “The Clerical Journal.”— 10/* March, 1854. 
 
 Langton, Rev. Henry, Ilemel Hempstead. — I much approve of the plan of “ The 
 Clerical Journal,” and think it will be a very useful publication.— 17/* 
 February, 1854. 
 
 Laurence, Rev. R., Tonbridge, Kent . — I am very much pleased with the 
 “Journal,” and hope you will be able to preserve the same moderateness 
 and impartiality. — August 2, 1853. 
 
 Leslie, Rev. E., Annahill Rectory, Hillsborough, Ireland. — I cannot withhold my 
 feeble testimony in commendation of the great ability and judicious 
 treatment of the different subjects which it brings before its readers. 
 The writers for “ The Clerical Journal ” are, undoubtedly, men of con- 
 siderable talent, and well deserve encouragement from the members of 
 the Church of England.— J/dy, 1 853. 
 
 Lester, Rev. J. W., Ashton Hayes Parsonage, near Chester. — “The Clerical 
 Journal” is really an admirable paper ; precisely the publication a large 
 and growing class in our Church greatly wanted, and which no other 
 periodical in any way attempted to supply. — Nov. 26, 1853. 
 
 Mackay, Rev. Dr., Stoneyfield, Inverness, A. A— Your “Journal ” is excellent- 
 just the thing we wanted. — Aug. 5, 1853. 
 
Malcolm, Rev. O., Todenham, Gloucestershire.— I find your “ Clerical Journal ” 
 very satisfactory. — 2%th February, 1854. 
 
 Marline, Rev. J. M., Linton, Staplehurst, Kent. — I have done everything in my 
 power in this neighbourhood to promote the circulation of “The Clerical 
 Journal.” — Oct. 11, 1853. 
 
 Massingham, Rev. J. D., Incumbent of St. PauVs, Derby.— \ am much pleased 
 with the manner in which “ The Clerical Journal ” is conducted, the fair 
 spirit evinced, and the absence of party feeling.— February, 1854. 
 
 Morley, Rev. T. A., St. PauVs. Bury. — I am much pleased with “The Clerical 
 JournaL” — lOth March, 1854. 
 
 Myers, Rev. T., Sherriff Hutton Vicarage, near York. — I think its reviews so 
 very good, and so remarkably “fair,” that I wish well to “The Clerical 
 Journal.” — i^th June, 1854. 
 
 Nightingale, Rev. Thomas, Southampton. — I much value “The Clerical Journal,” 
 and I shall take every opportunity of recommending it to my friends.— 
 July, 1853. 
 
 O'Brien, Rev. Dr., Richmond House, Cork. — I cannot forego the pleasure of 
 expressing to you the high gratification which I derive from the reading 
 of your admirable “Journal.” The reviews of books would alone render 
 it a valuable work to Clergymen, especially in the provinces ; and the 
 Christian tone which pervades the entire, proves that truth may be 
 spoken without charity being violated. I recommend your Journal 
 wherever I go, to Clergy and Laity, as the fulfilment of a long wanted, and 
 (by many) eagerly desired source of Church intelligence. — Aug. 25, 1853. 
 
 Paul, Rev. John, Burntash, Lee, Kent. — “The Clerical Journal” is very much to 
 my satisfaction.— J/ay, 1853. 
 
 Pocock, Rev. G. H. T., Mundesley, North Walsham, Norfolk. — Your “ Journal” is 
 most excellent. — September 23, 1853. 
 
 Phillips, Rev. G., Penmowe iSecfory.— “The Clerical Journal” is a very excellent 
 paper, and deserves a wide circulation. — bth May, 1854. 
 
 Potter, Rev. Alfred, Thanks for the immense fund of information 
 
 it has contained. — hth May, 1854. 
 
 Procter, Rev. Henry, Portadown. — I shall gladly continue to subscribe to “ The 
 Clerical Journal,” which I think interesting and useful.— March, 
 1854. 
 
 Scrivener, Rev. F. H, Falmouth. — Your “ Journal” fills up a void in periodical 
 criticism. — Augusts, 1853. 
 
 Sharpe, Rev. W. L., Norwich. — I think your paper, “The Clerical Journal,” 
 must give general satisfaction. — May, 1853. 
 
 Stirling, Rev. Arch., Roslin. — I take this opportunity of expressing my cordial 
 satisfaction with “ The Clei'ical Journal.” — July 25, 1853. 
 
 Surridge, Rev. J., Greystead Rectory, near Hexham.— I have derived much 
 pleasure from the perusal of “ The Clerical Journal.” The information it 
 supplies is both useful and interesting. — %th March, 1854. 
 
 Sworde, Rev. John, Thetford, iVbr/oZL— “The Clerical Journal” is carried on 
 with so much spirit that I was wishing for a more fi’equent publication of 
 it. — July, 1853. 
 
 Tuting, Rev. Thos., Slanford-le-Hope, Romford. — I think your paper promises 
 to be very useful to the rising generation of clergymen. I refer prin- 
 cipally to such articles as “The Pastor and his Duties.” — October 5, 
 1853. 
 
 Voysey, Rev. R., Kingston College, Hessle, near Hull. — “The Clerical Journal” 
 is a most valuable paper ; and its enlargement, and consequently in- 
 creased importance, a source of great satisfaction. — July, 1853. 
 
 Ward, Hon. and Rev. F., KiUinchy, Ireland. I have been a subscriber from 
 the commencement, am much pleased with it, and wish you every 
 success. — \0th March, 1854. 
 
 Watson, Rev. W., Oundle. — Allow me to express my very great satisfaction in 
 “The Clerical Journal.” — August 1, 1853. 
 
 Welch, Rev. W. F., Hertingfordhury, Hertford. — I much approve of the spirit 
 in which “The Clerical Journal ” is conducted, and it has my best wishes 
 for its success. I have long been hoping for the appearance of such a 
 periodical. — July, 1 853. 
 
 Wesley, Dr., Winchester, Cathedral.— 1 must express my pleasure at the liberal 
 spirit displayed in the musical criticism of the paper, and at the fact of 
 there being one influential Journal which seems inclined to treat church 
 music in a large and judicious point of view. — September 24, 1853. 
 
 Williams, Rev. Thomas, Saint Asaph. — I have been much pleased with “The 
 Clerical Journal,” and hope it will become better known. — 21sZ Feb. 1854. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. R. Otxvay, Poole, Dorset. — “The Clerical Journal” entirely 
 realizes my anticipations. — May, 1853. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. R., Newbliss, County Monaghan. — I have the very highest opinion 
 of your admirable “Journal,” — October!^, 1853. 
 
 Wyatt, Rev. A. M., Goedgen, Monmouth.— I am much pleased with your 
 “ Clerical Journal,” and am sure it will give satisfaction to all your sub- 
 scribers.— /wZy 26, 1853. 
 
LIST OF THE COHTEHTS 
 
 OF THE FIRST TWENTY NUMBERS OF 
 
 ®-l]t €knal |0ttnral, aiili initoiti 
 
 Ctatidc. 
 
 (No. XXX. was published on the 22nd August, 1854.) 
 
 No. I. — The Church, its Sayings and Doings; the Scottish Ecclesiastical 
 World; the Restoration of Belief ; Beecher’s Lectures on Political Atheism; 
 Goode’s Vindication of the Doctrine of the Church of England; Neander’s 
 General History of the Christian Religion ; Rendell’s Treatise on the Pecu- 
 liarities of the Bible ; Clissold’s Spiritual Exposition of the Apocalypse ; 
 Bouchier’s Manna in the House ; Lewin’s Life and Epistles of St. Paul ; Layard’s 
 Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon ; Bonomi’s Nineveh and its Palaces • 
 Hymns for Public Worship; Gurney’s Church Psalmody; Hon. and Rev. 
 G. T. Noel’s Sermons ; Paul’s Christian Union ; Sulivan’s Senmons ; Galloway’s 
 Christian Holiness, <tec. ; Miller’s Lent Lectures; Stevenson’s Sermons, Plain 
 and Practical; Gibson’s Sermons on various Subjects; the Pew Question; 
 Deans and Chapters ; Commander M. Burrow’s Pitcairn’s Island ; History 
 of the Sabbath ; Clarke’s Illustration of the Morning Service of the Churcii 
 of England ; Religious Literature Abroad ; Nitzsch’s System of Christiai 
 Doctrine; the History and Antiquities of St. David’s; Miller’s Architecture, 
 &c., of the Iiliddle Ages ; Sayings and Doings of the Educational World ; 
 Notes and Queries; Correspondence; Church News; University and Col- 
 legiate News; Preferments and Appointments; Anniversaries in May and 
 June ; Obituary. 
 
 No. II. — The Church, its Sayings and Doings; the University of Oxford, 
 its Saj ings and Doings ; the University of Cambridge, its Sajdngs and Doings ; 
 the Scottish Ecclesiastical World ; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World ; Eccle- 
 siastical Arrtiquities, No. I. ; Bentley’s Three Churches ; Neander’s General 
 History of the Christian Religion ; Layard’s Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh ; 
 Bonomi’s Nineveh and its Palaces; Sinclair’s Beatrice, or the Urrknown Rela- 
 tives; the Perils of Fashion ; Bandinel’s Milton Davenarrt ; Lady Catherine 
 Long’s First Lieuteirarrt’s Story ; Castle Avon ; the Initials, by the Baroness 
 Tautphoeus; Cyrilla, by the Baroness Tautphoeus; Gwynne’s School for Fathers; 
 G Wynne’s School for Dreamers; Wormeley’s Amabel, or the Victory of Love ; 
 Kate and Rosalind, or Early Experiences ; Rosalie, or the Truth shall make 
 you Free ; Pulpit Oratory — Croly and Melville ; Ferguson’s Discourses on 
 Important Subjects; Religious Literature Abroad; Monthly Review of Art 
 and Architecture; the Educational World, its Sayings and Doings; Notes and 
 Queries ; Correspondence ; Church News ; University and Collegiate News ; 
 Preferments and Appointments ; Obituary. 
 
 No. HI. — Pulpit Masterpieces of the Nineteenth Century, No. I. ; the Church, 
 its Sayings and Doings ; the University of Oxford, its Sayings and Doings ; 
 the University of Cambridge, its Sayings and Doings ; the Scottish Ecclesiastical 
 World; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World; Darwall’s Church of England the 
 True Branch ; Davis’s Plain Protestant Explanations ; Dr. Wordsworth’s St. 
 Hippolytus and the Church of Rome in the Third Century; Dr. Davidson’s 
 Treatise on Biblical Criticism ; Bolton’s Evidences of Christianity ; Neale’s 
 Summer and Winter of the Soul ; Baillie’s Missionary of Kilmany : Kennaway’s 
 Law of Duty; the Christian in Business ; Murray’s Pitcairn; Burgess’s Select 
 Metrical Hymns and Homilies of Ephraem Syrus ; Monod’s St. Paul ; Hoare’s 
 Ordination Vows ; the Parables Prophetically Explained ; Havergal’s Sermons ; 
 Edmund’s Sermons ; Ashley’s Domestic Circle ; Gii’dlestone’s Lectures ; Jack- 
 son’s Sennons ; Vanderkiste’s Notes and Narratives; Cumming’sThe Finger 
 of God ; Religious Literature Abroad ; Hagenbash’s Compendium of the Histoiy 
 of Doctrines ; Giesler’s Compendium of Ecclesiastical History ; Monthly Review 
 of Art and Architecture ; Notes and Queries ; Correspondence; Church News; 
 University and Collegiate News; Pi-eferments and Appointments ; Obituary. 
 
 No. IV. — The Church, its Sayings and Doings; the University of Cam- 
 bridge, its Sayings and Doings ; the Irish Ecclesiastical World ; Arnold’s True 
 and False Religion ; Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians ; Trenche’s 
 Lectures on the Lessons on Proverbs ; De Saulcy’s Journey round the Dead 
 Sea ; Delessert’s Journey to the Accursed Cities ; Hymns for Public Worship; 
 Gurney’s Church Psalmody ; Dr. Hook’s Discourses on the controversies of 
 the day; Christmas Scenes in the Life of Christ; Bradley’s Sermons; the 
 Vicar and his duties ; Robinson’s Missions ; Robins’s Arguments for the 
 Royal Supremacy ; the Papal Supremacy ; Charity and the Clergy ; the Lay 
 Members’ Guide; the Churchman’s Year-Book for 1853; Religious Literature 
 Abroad ; Notes upon Ecclesiastical Matters ; Ecclesiastical Music ; Notes and 
 Queries; Correspondence; Church News; University and Collegiate News; 
 Obituary. 
 
No. V. — Masterpieces of Modern Pulpit Eloquence, No. II.; the Church, its 
 Sayings and Doings ; the University of Oxford, its Sayings and Doings; the 
 Scottish Ecclesiastical World; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World; Maurice’s 
 Theological Essays ; Felice’s History of the Protestants of France ; Saul, the 
 First King of Israel; Effendi’s Thistle and Cedar of Lebanon; Plumtre’s 
 Study of Theology; the Spirit’s Voice to the Churches; Eawstome’s Sermons; 
 Vinet’s Homiletics ; Joyce’s Last Glimpses of Convocation ; Garhett’s What 
 kind of Synod does the Church of England require? Religious Literature 
 Abroad; Notes upon Ecclesiastical Matters; Monthly Review of Art and 
 Architecture ; Opening of the Organ for the Chapel of Marlborough College, 
 Wilts; Wustemann’s Congregational Chant Book; Notes and Queries ; Cor- 
 respondence; Church News; University and Collegiate News; Obituary; List 
 of New Books. 
 
 No. VI. — The Pastor and his Duties ; the Church, its Sayings and Doings ; 
 the University of Cambridge, its Sayings and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical 
 World; Forster’s One Primaeval Language; MialTs Memorials of Early 
 Christianity; Jenour’s Rationale Apocalypticum ; Mrs. Thistlethwayte’s 
 Memoirs of Dr. Bathurst; Swedenborg and his Mission, by D. G. Goyder; 
 Lyde’s Ansyreeh and Ismaeleeh; Colonel Churchill’s Mount Lebanon; the 
 Diary and Houres of Ladye Adobe; Kate and Rosalind ; Moments of Conso- 
 lation ; Dr. Croly’s Church of England ; Pearson’s Church Expansion ; Mas- 
 singham’s the Church of England in relation to the State and the People ; 
 Family Adventures ; Sunlight in the Clouds ; some Providences in a Lifetime ; 
 the Shoemaker’s Daughters ; Loxley’s Childhood’s Daily Offerings, and the 
 Breathings of Flowers ; Little Things; Things to be Thought of; Cumming’s 
 Romanism not the Patron but the Persecutor of Science ; Religious Literature 
 Abroad; Notes upon Ecclesiastical Matters ; a Little Book of Names; Jebb's 
 Choral Responses and Litanies of the United Church of England and Ireland ; 
 Wesley’s Morning and Evening Cathedral Service; Lloyd’s Parochial Psalmist; 
 Weyman’s Melodia Sacra; Sebastian’s Selection of Psalm Tunes adapted 
 expressly to the English Organ with pedals ; a Manual of Psalm Tunes, for 
 Congregational Use ; Hymns for the Serrice of the Church ; Martin’s Hand- 
 book of One Hundred Chants ; Notes and Queries ; Correspondence ; Church 
 News; University and Collegiate News ; Obituary; List of New Books. 
 
 No. VII. — The Pastor and his Duties ; the Church, its Sayings and Doings ; 
 the Scottish Ecclesiastical World ; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World; Goode’s 
 Divine Rule of Faith and Practice; Scott’s Interpretation of the Apocalypse; 
 D’Aubignd’s HDtory of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century; Barnes’s 
 Notes on the Book of Daniel ; Schrivener’s Collation of MSS. of the Holy 
 Gospels; Booker’s Obsolete Words and Phrases in the Bible; Yvan and 
 Gallery's Insurrection in China; Papers respecting the Civil War in China; 
 Roberts’s Plain Sermons ; Writings of Thomas Carlyle ; the Herb of the Field ; 
 Thoughts and Questions on St. Luke’s Gospel ; Religious Literature Ahi-oad ; 
 Weiss’s Histoire des Rdfugids Protestants de France ; Baynes’s Evangelist of 
 the Desert; Monthly Review of Art and Architecture; Organ Peiformances ; 
 Notes and Queries; Correspondence; Church News; University and Collegiate 
 News ; Prefennents and Appointments : Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. VIII. —Modem Masterpieces of Pulpit Oratory; the Pastor and his Duties ; 
 the Church, its Sayings and Doings; the University of Cambridge, its Sayings 
 and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical World; Wilberforce’s Doctrine of the 
 Holy Eucharist; Hardwick’s History of the Christian Church during the 
 Middle Age ; Ruskin’s Stones of Venice ; the Turks in Europe, by B. St. John ; 
 the Greek and the Turk, by E. E. Crowe ; Bishop Burnet’s Discourse of the 
 Pastoral Care ; the Youth’s Safeguard against Popery, by Miss Christmas ; 
 Sketches from Sacred History; Religious Literature Abroad; what is a le^ti- 
 mate Choral Service? new Organ for St.John’s, Blackheath ; new Musical 
 Publications; Notes and Queries; Correspondence; Church News; Pre- 
 ferments and Appointments ; Testimonials of Respect ; University and 
 Collegiate News ; Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. IX- — The Church, its Sayings and Doings; the University of Oxford, its 
 Sayings and Doings; the Scottish Ecclesiastical World; the Irish Ecclesiastical 
 World ; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World ; the American Ecclesiastical World; 
 Kidd’s Doctrine of the Manifestation of the Son of God; Beamish’s Truth 
 Spoken in Love ; History of Religious Intolerance in Spain ; Historical Sketch 
 of the Jesuits; Dr. Cumming’s Sabbath Evening Readings; Palmer’s Disser- 
 tation on the Catholic Communion ; Parker’s Sermons on Theism, Atheism, 
 &c. ; Lamb’s Sermons on Passing Seasons; Naylor’s Confirmation Abused; 
 Emerton’s National Education; Simpson’s History of Mormonism; Jackson’s 
 Stories and Catechisings on the Collects; the Cross our Anchor, by the Rev. 
 E. Will, M.A.; Kelke’s Family Prayers; Religious Literature Abroad; Monthly 
 Review of Art and Architecture; Church Music; Notes and Queries; Cor- 
 respondence; Church News; University and Collegiate News; Obituary; List 
 of New Books. 
 
 No. X. — The Pastor and his Duties ; the Church, its Sayings and Doin^ ; 
 the University of Cambridge, its Sayings and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical 
 World; the “Parker” School of Theology ; Irving’s Egypt and the Bible; 
 
Strachney’s Hebrew Politics in the Time of Sargon and Sennacherib ; Butler’s 
 Practical Sermons ; Leask’s Lays of the Future ; Edge’s the Second Adam, a 
 Course of Lectures; Hilton’s Pastor Visiting from House to House ; Kelke’s 
 Churchyard Manual ; Green’s Popery or Protestanism ; Religious Literature 
 Abroad ; Taafe’s Vindication of the Doctrines of Swedenborg ; Church Music ; 
 Notes & Queries; Correspondence; Church News; Obituary; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XI. — Chapters on Churchyards; the Church, its Sayings and Doings ; 
 the University of Oxford, its Sayings and Doings ; the Scottish Ecclesiastical 
 World; the Irish Ecclesiastical World; the Parker School of Theology ; 
 Bosanquet’s Sacred and Profane Chronology ; Madder’s Life and Martyrdom 
 of Savonarola ; La Vdrite sur la Question des Lieux Saints ; Joyce’s Cossack 
 and the Turk ; Alton’s Drying up of the Euphrates ; Fowle’s Comfortable 
 Consolations for all who Mourn; a Sermon, &c., by the Rev. A. R. M. Wilshere; 
 two Farewell Sermons, by the Rev. M. Mitchell ; VUlage Sermons, by the Rev. 
 J. W. Colenso; Religious Literature Abroad; Tafe’s Vindication of the Doc- 
 trines of Swedenborg ; Monthly Review of Art and Architecture ; Church 
 Music; Notes and Queries; Correspondence; Church News; University and 
 Collegiate News ; Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XII. — Modem Masterpieces of Pulpit Oratory ; the Church, its Sayings 
 and Doings; the University of Cambridge, its Sayings and Doings ; the Irish 
 Ecclesiastical World; Tliomson’s the Atoning Work of Christ viewed in its 
 Relation to current Theories; Martineau’s Church History in England; Finch’s 
 Seven Seals Broken Open ; Davis’s Argument for the Verbal Inspiration of the 
 Holy Scriptures ; the Gospel of other Days ; Bishop Horsley’s Selected Charges ; 
 a Religious Journey in the East, by the Abbe de St. Michon; Smith’s Dis- 
 courses; a Sermon, by the Rev. C. Bowen; Pinnock’s Cleiical Papers on 
 Church Matters; Trevor’s Convocation of the Two Provinces; Wilkin’s Convo- 
 cation, a Charge, &c. ; Fraser’s Letter to a Convocation Man ; Dr. Jewel’s Apo- 
 logy of the Church of England ; Periodicals ; Religious Literature Abroad ; 
 Notes and Queries; Correspondence; Church News ; University and Collegiate 
 News ; Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XIII. — Chapters on Churchyards ; The Church, its Sayings and Doings; 
 the University of Oxford, its Sayings and Doings; the Scottish Ecclesiastical 
 World; Ne^vman’s History of the Hebrew Monarchy ; Free Thoughts on Na- 
 tural and Revealed Religion ; Dr. Lepsius’s Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and 
 the Peninsrda of Sinai; The Soul’s Life, by the Rev. E. Garbett, M.A. ; Ser- 
 mons (second series), by the Rev. F. Jackson ; Sermons, by the Rev. H. W. 
 Sullivan; Thirty Sermons, by the Rev. W. Drake, M.A.; Pinnock’s Clerical 
 Papers on Church Matters ; Hubert’s Poetical Scripture History ; WiUich’s 
 Income-Tax Tables ; Weldon’s Hazael; Clerical Education ; Religious Litera- 
 ture Abroad; Monthly Review ; Notes and Queries ; Correspondence; Church 
 News; University and Collegiate News ; Obituary; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XIV. — The Pastor and his Duties; Ecclesiastical Antiquities; The 
 Church, its Sayings and Doings ; the University of Cambridge, its Sayings 
 and Doings ; the Irish Ecclesiastical World ; the Colonial Ecclesiastical World ; 
 Kaye’s Account of the Council of Nictea ; Eadie’s Commentary on the Greek 
 Text ; Memoir of Anna Maria Clarke ; BaiTett’s Psalms and Hymns ; Short 
 Sermons at the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper ; the Evidences of Religion, 
 by the Rev. R. B. Kennard, M.A. ; Sermons, by the Rev. W. E. Rawstorne; 
 Cox’s Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties ; Religious Literature Abroad ; Le- 
 cerfs Protestantism and Society; Christmas Carols; Notes and Queries; Cor- 
 respondence ; Church News; University and Collegiate News; Obituary; List 
 of New Books. (A Supplement of Sixteen Pages is given with this number, con- 
 taining an important Essay on Church Furniture and Decoration, by the Rev. E. 
 L. Cutts, B.A.) 
 
 No. XV. — Chapters on Churchyards ; the Church, its Sayings and Doings; the 
 University of Oxford, its Sayings and Doings ; the Scottish Ecclesiastical World ; 
 Massy’s Secret History of Romanism ; Lord A. Hervey’s Genealogies of our 
 Saviour; Notices of Small Books; Musgrave’s Plain Hymns for Public Wor- 
 ship; Nature’s Balance, by J. Langdon H. Down; Religious Worship, Report, 
 &c. presented to Parliament; Farrar’s Ecclesiastical Dictionary; Notices of 
 Small Books; Religious Periodicals; Religious Literature Abroad; Church 
 Music ; Notes and Queries ; Correspondence ; Church News ; University and 
 Collegiate News ; Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XVI.— The Church, its Sayings and Doings; the University of Cam- 
 bridse, its Sayings and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical World; Beecher’s 
 Conflict of Ages; Heath’s Future Human Kingdom of Christ; Johnston’s 
 Israel after the Flesh ; IMedway’s Memoir of the Life and Writings of Dr. J. P. 
 Smith; Christianity in China ; Cautions for the Times, by the Archbishop of 
 Dublin; Dr. Pusey’s Sermon, Justification; The Russo-Turkish War in the 
 Light of Scripture ; The Mission and Destiny of Russia ; Moseley’s Russia in 
 the Right ; The Cross versus the Crescent ; Partition of Turkey, an Indis- 
 pensable Feature of the present Crisis; The Accession Service, &c. ; Jones’s 
 Letter on the Royal Supremacy^ <fcc. ; Sims’s Handbook to the Library of the 
 British Museum ; Help and Comfort for the Sick Poor ; Religious Literature 
 Abroad; Lecerfs Protestantism and Society; Monthly Review of AiT and 
 
Architecture; Notes and Queries; CoiTespondence; Church News; University 
 and Collegiate News ; Obituary ; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XVII. — The Church, its Sayings and Doings ; the University of Oxford, 
 its Sayings and Doings ; the Scottish Ecclesiastical World; Davis’ Moderate 
 Revision of the Prayer Book ; The Russo-Turkish War in the Light of Scrip- 
 ture ; The Mission and Destiny of Russia ; Moseley’s Russia in the Right; The 
 Cross versus the Crescent ; Partition of Turkey, an Indispensable Feature of 
 the present Crisis ; Williams’s Sermons; Asia and Australia described; Kyle’s 
 Ministration of Private Baptism; The Census of Great Britain — Religious 
 Worship; Gleadowe’s Daily Prayers; Colchester Castle not a Roman Temple ; 
 Wittis’s Two Sacraments; Churchman’s Year-book; Private Patronage of the 
 Church; Charities of London; Religious Periodicals; Religious Literature 
 Abroad ; Monthly Review of Art and Architecture; Church Music; Notes and 
 Queries ; Correspondence ; Church News ; University and Collegiate News ; 
 Obituary; List of New Books. (A Supplement^ containing a continuation of 
 Mr. Cutts's Essay on Church Furniture and Decoration, is given with this No.) 
 
 No. XVIII. — The Pastor and his Duties; the Church, its Sayings and 
 Doings; the University of Cambridge, its Sayings and Doings; the University 
 of Durham, its Sayings and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical World; Cheever’s 
 Powers of the World to Come ; Bartlett’s Pilgrim Fathers; Ebrard’s Biblical 
 Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews ; Bartlet’s Collections of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Historical Society; Tableau de I’Empire Ottoman — 
 D’Ohsson; Alcoran, traduit par Kazimerski; Blanche Neville; The Rugged 
 Path; A Peep into the Family of Mr. Delmas, Dale End; Amy Grant; Boone’s 
 Sermons; Cumming’s Sabbath Morning Readings on the Old Testament- 
 Book of Exodus; Cumming’s Sabbath Evening Readings on the New Testa- 
 ment — St. Mark; Cumming’s Christ our Passover; Cole’s Tracts on the Prayer 
 Book ; the Census of Great Britain— Religious Worship ; Letters of the 
 Madiai; Religious Literature Abroad ; Le Protestantisme et la Socidt^; Notes 
 and Queries; Correspondence; Church News; University and Collegiate 
 News; Obituary; List of New Books. 
 
 No. XIX. — ^The Church, its Sayings and Doings ; the University of Oxford, 
 its Sayings and Doings; the Scottish Ecclesiastical World; Whately’s En- 
 cyclopaedia Britannica ; Hall’s Land of the Forum and the Vatican ; Bonai*’s 
 Selection of Hymns for Sabbath Schools and Christian Families; Horne’s 
 Manual of Parochial Psalmody ; Slade’s Selection of Psalms and Hymns for 
 Public Worship ; a Sermon, by W. Symington, D.D. ; a Sermon, by the Rev. 
 H. Sulivan, M.A. ; The Census of Great Britain — Religious Worship ; The 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica ; Mackenzie’s Redeeming Love ; Religious Periodi- 
 cals ; Religious Literature Abroad ; Hengstenberg’s Christology of the Old 
 Testament ; Mannheimer’s Study of German Simplified : Monthly Review of 
 Art and Architecture ; Church Music ; Notes and Queries ; Correspondence ; 
 Church News; University and Collegiate News; List of New Books; Death 
 of the Bishop of Salisbury ; Obituary. {A Supplement is given with this No., con- 
 taining the conclusion of Mr. Cutts's Essay on Church Furniture and Decoration.) 
 
 No. XX. — The^ Church, its Sayings and Doings ; the University of Cam- 
 bridge, its Sayings and Doings; the Irish Ecclesiastical World ; The Patri- 
 archal Age, by George Smith, F.A.S. ; The Hebrew People, by George Smith, 
 F.A.S. ; The Gentile Nations, by George Smith, F.A.S. ; Memoir of Richard 
 ■\villiams; Tableau de I’Empire Ottoman, by D’Ohsson ; Alcoran, traduit par 
 Kazimerski; A Letter to Viscount Drumlanrig on the Parish Schools; Parish 
 School Statistics; A Voice from the Church ; Strictures on the recent Public 
 Meeting in Edinburgh ; Farquhar’s Arguments in Favour of Lay Represen- 
 tation ; Morning Thoughts; The Popular Poets of Britain ; Memoir of the late 
 Rev. A. Ross, with Selection of his Sermons ; Moberly’s Law of the Love of 
 God; Meek’s Heavenly Things; Kitto’s Daily Bible Illustrations; Coles’s 
 Tracts on the Prayer-book; Religious Periodicals; Report of the Incorporated 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts for 1853; Quarterly 
 Paper of Ditto, No. 77, Oct. 1853; The Monthly Record of Church Missions; 
 Joseph’s Memoirs of Convicted Prisoners; Wright’s late Revolution in Prussia; 
 Barton’s Religion in Heart and Life; Cousin’s Lectures; the Metropolis 
 Churches Fund; New Tracts; Rivington’s Catalogue, &c. ; Religious Lite- 
 rature Abroad; Hengstenberg’s Christology of the Old Testament; Clarkson’s 
 New Designs for Monuments ; Notes and Queries ; Memoir of Right Rev. 
 Edward Denison, D.D., Lord Bishop of Salisbury ; Correspondence ; Church 
 News ; University and Collegiate News; List of New Books; Obituary. 
 
 29, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, LONDON. 
 
3 3125 01499 6843