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In it, according to law, the minister had to read aloud from time to time articles of inquiry founded on the Queen's or the diocesan's injunctions, and to admonish wardens and sidemen to present offences under these articles at the next visitation.
Do you know anyone ordered by law to do penance, or excommunicate for not doing the same, who still continues unreformed? by virtue of this strict questioning by the ordinary put to them in written articles before each visitation, church wardens, and their coadjutors, the sworn men or sidemen, were compelled to exercise a continual supervision over their minister's conduct as well as over that of the parishioners generally.
Last, but not least in importance, in the churches of the market towns the archdeacon made his visitations and held his court; and on these occasions the sacred edifice rang with the unseemly squabbles of the proctors, the accusations of the wardens and sidemen or of the apparitor, and the recriminations of the accused in short, the church was turned for the time being into a moral police court, where all the parish scandal was carefully gone over and ventilated.
XIII. "PROPHECIES concerning the RETURN of POPERY," inserted in a book entitled 'Fair Warning: The Second Part. London, 1663. Oxoniensis, p. 194. XVI. "ARTICLES of VISITATION and ENQUIRY concerning MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL, exhibited to the Ministers, Churchwardens, and Sidemen of every Parish within the Diocese of Lincoln, in the first episcopal Visitation of the Right Rev.
Accordingly the act-books tell their interesting story of ministers on beginning service sending wardens and sidemen abroad to command men to come to church.
Just as the wardens were to look after the conduct of their minister, so the minister was required to fill the office of a censor upon the behavior of the wardens and to report to the ordinary their delinquencies as, indeed, the trespasses of any among his congregation, though the latter task was more particularly assigned to the wardens and sidemen.
But while they have one eye on the congregation lest they offend, wardens and sidemen must keep another on the minister while service proceeds or the sacraments are administered, in order that the rites be duly observed and the Rubric followed. The court's order was that the rector should acknowledge his error on the following Sunday "coram gardianis."
Before each visitation day, as has been said, the archdeacon's or the bishop's summoner went to each parish and gave warning that a court would be held in such and such a church on such and such a day. Pending that day wardens and sidemen drew up their bills of presentment.
We have a number of these articles of inquiry formulated by archbishops or bishops. Cf. Cardwell, Doc. The last named work hereinafter cited as Hale, Churchwardens' Prec. For numerous examples of excommunication for non-appearance, see Barnes' Eccles. Proc., 29 ff. Incumbents, wardens and sidemen were almost always in attendance. Schoolmasters usually so when there were such.
The ecclesiastical courts carried on their judicial administration of the parish largely, of course, through the medium of the officers of the parish. These were the churchwardens, the sidemen and the incumbent, whether rector, vicar or curate. First in importance were the churchwardens.
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