Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:20:46.595Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘… This Congregation here Present …’: Seating in Parish Churches During the Long Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

W. M. Jacob
W. M. Jacob*
Affiliation:
London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Parish churches during the ‘long eighteenth century’ were meeting places for the whole community, elite and popular. Accommodating the hierarchically ordered and theologically aware society of England and Wales in church was not a simple matter. How might the elite and the popular, the squire and his relations, and his groom, and boot boy and the milk maid, and aspiring farmers and attorneys and their wives and sisters and cousins and aunts, along with day labourers and paupers, be included together as the body of Christ before God? People were sensitive about their social stratification.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 294 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gough, Richard, The History of Myddle, ed. Hey, David (Harmondsworth, 1981), 9.Google Scholar

2 See Turner, Victor W., The Ritual Process (Harmondsworth, 1969), 166.Google Scholar

3 For an illuminating discussion of this in an earlier period see Marsh, Christopher, ‘“Common Prayer” in England 1560–1640: the View from the Pew’, P & P 170 (2001), 66–94 Google Scholar, and idem, , ‘Sacred Space in England 1560–1640: the View from the Pew’, JEH 53 (2002), 300–5.Google Scholar

4 Amussen, Susan Dwyer, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988), 137–8.Google Scholar

5 Marsh, , ‘ “Common Prayer” in England’, 93.Google Scholar

6 Gough, , History of Myddle, 20.Google Scholar

7 Quoted in Addleshaw, G. W. O. and Etchells, Frederick, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship (London, 1948), 100.Google Scholar

8 See Carlson, Eric, ‘The Origins, Functions and Status of the Office of Churchwarden, with Particular Reference to the Diocese of Ely’, in Spufford, Margaret, ed., The World of Rural Dissenters 1520–1725 (Cambridge, 1995), 195–207.Google Scholar

9 Quoted in Snell, K. D. M., ‘Free or Appropriated Sittings: the Anglican Church in Perspective’, in Snell, K. D. M. and Ell, Paul S., eds, Rival Jerusalems: the Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000), 321–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 332.

10 Warne, Arthur, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century Devon (Newton Abbot, 1969), 56–7.Google Scholar

11 Obelkevich, James, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976), 109–10 Google Scholar [LAO South Carlton parish records].

12 Dillow, Kevin, ‘The Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements and Pew Disputes 1500–1740’, unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1990, 98.Google Scholar

13 Wiltshire Pew Rents, ed. Hurley, Beryl, Wiltshire Family History Society, 4 vols (Devizes, 1995-98), 3: 3 and 18.Google Scholar

14 Lincolnshire Archive Office, Boston 10/1, Vestry Minute Book, 1705–1776.

15 King’s Lynn Borough Archives, unnumbered, St Margaret’s Church Book, 1741.

16 For an illustration of such difficulties see Yates, Nigel, Holy Trinity: Church, Parish and People (Gosport [?], Gosport Society, 1980)Google Scholar. For a detailed account of the law and practice of ownership of pews, see Dillow, ‘Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements’, ch. 2.

17 For further examples of fundraising for church building and repairs by means of sale of pews and mortgaging pew rents, see Chalklin, C. W., ‘The Financing of Church Building in the Provincial Towns of Eighteenth-Century England’, in Clark, Peter, ed., The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600–1800 (London, 1984), 292–9.Google Scholar

18 Wiltshire Pew Rents, 2: 2.

19 Ibid., 1: 12, 16, 18, and 45.

20 Dillow, , ‘Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements’, 76–7.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 117.

22 Bingham, Joseph, Origines ecclesiasticae, or the Antiquities of the Christian Church, 10 vols (London, 1708-22), 3 Google Scholar: repr. in 9 vols (London, 1840), 2: 411–15.

23 Cave, William, Primitive Christianity, or the Religion of the Ancient Christians in the First Ages of the Gospel (6th edn, London, 1702), 89 Google Scholar, and Sir Wheler, George, The Protestant Monastery, or the Christian Oeconomicks, Containing Directions for the Religious Conduct of a Family (London, 1698), 100.Google Scholar

24 Quoted in Prey, Pierre de la Ruffiniere du, Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture and Theology (Chicago, IL, and London, 2000), 141.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 65.

26 Quoted in Dillow, , ‘Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements’, 132.Google Scholar

27 Wiltshire Pew Rents, 1: 45; 4: 26–7 and 64.

28 Local Censuses in Wiltshire: Pew Lists, ed. Hurley, Beryl, Wiltshire Family History Society (Devizes, 1994), 6, 11, 15, 33, 39, and 46.Google Scholar

29 Prey, Du, Hawhmoor’s London Churches, 140–1.Google Scholar

30 Port, M. H., Hampstead Parish Church: the Story of a Building through 250 Years, St John at Hampstead PCC (London, 1995), 9 and 13.Google Scholar

31 London Borough of Camden Local Studies Centre, St Giles in the Fields, Vestry Minute Book, 1771–1840.

32 Freeman, Leslie, Going to the Parish: Mortlake and the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Barnes and Mortlake History Society (Chippenham, 1993), 11.Google Scholar

33 Prey, Du, Hawksmoor’s London Churches, 141.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 143.

35 The Commission for Building Fifty New Churches: the Minute Books 1711–1727: a Calendar, ed. Port, M. H., London Record Society 23 (London, 1986), 60.Google Scholar

36 Wiltshire Pew Rents, 1: 5 and 13, and 4: 8; and Local Censuses in Wiltshire, 6.

37 Wiltshire Pew Rents, 3: 14.

38 Yates, Nigel, Buildings. Faith and Worship (Oxford, 1991), 38 Google Scholar

39 Dillow, , ‘Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements’, 199–210.Google Scholar

40 Amussen, , An Ordered Society, 137–44.Google Scholar

41 National Library of Wales SD/CCB(G), SD/CCCm(G), /LL/CC/G, B/CC/G.

42 Dillow, , ‘Social and Ecclesiastical Significance of Church Seating Arrangements’, 195.Google Scholar

43 Cases in the Court of Arches 1660–1913, ed. Jane Houston, British Record Society 85 (Chichester, 1972). I am grateful to Melanie Barber of Lambeth Palace Library for this reference

44 Snell, , ‘Free or Appropriated Sittings’, 34.Google Scholar