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Updated: May 29, 2025
Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading-desk rose in value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a premium: an inch of room in the front row of the gallery could not be procured for love or money; and some people even went so far as to assert, that the three Miss Browns, who had an obscure family pew just behind the churchwardens’, were detected, one Sunday, in the free seats by the communion-table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry!
I asked him in return, whether from his pulpit, or at any rate from his communion-table, he did not denounce adultery to his audience; and if so, why should it not be open to me to preach the same doctrine to mine. I made known nothing which the purest girl could not but have learned, and ought not to have learned, elsewhere, and I certainly lent no attraction to the sin which I indicated.
My friend Sir ROGER, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside of his church with several texts of his own chusing: He has likewise given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the communion-table at his own expence.
The hymn-books with the good old tunes which all the parish knew by heart were discarded, and Hymns Ancient and Modern were introduced. The communion-table was next raised and adorned with a richly embroidered cover, and on the following Sunday four magnificent branch candlesticks appeared upon it.
Not wishing peaceably to accept as a boon from the civil authority what they claimed as an indefeasible right, they suddenly took possession one Sunday night of the Cloister Church. It was in a state of utter confusion part monastery, part foundry, part conventicle. There were few seats, no altar, no communion-table, hardly any sacramental furniture, but a pulpit was extemporized.
The porch roof is, of course, modern. Belonging to the farm is a curious columbarium, constructed of mud, in which the nesting niches are said to number 900. Durston, a village 5 m. The Communion-table bears date 1635, and there are some carved bench-ends.
There were sheaves and baskets of vegetables in the chancel; fruit and flowers on the communion-table, with twenty-one tall candles burning above them; a processional hymn; and a long sermon. During the sermon, as the weather was hot and close, someone opened the door at the west end.
The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table, of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set up on the other end of the church above the chancel.
A clergyman, dressed in the Geneva gown and band, stood by the communion-table, and, with the Bible opened before him, and his clerk awaiting in the background, seemed prepared to perform some service of the church to which he belonged.
Into this little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls.
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