November 1.
All Saints.[405]
Inscriptions in Churches.
A remarkable colloquy between queen Elizabeth and dean Nowell at St. Paul’s cathedral on the 1st of November, 1561, is said to have originated the usage of inscribing texts of scripture in English on the inner side of the church-walls as we still see them in many parishes.
Her majesty having attended worship “went straight to the vestry, and applying herself to the dean, thus she spoke to him.”
Q.Mr. Dean, how came it to pass that a new service-book was placed on my cushion?
To which the dean answered:
D.May it please your majesty, I caused it to be placed there.
Then said the queen:
Q.Wherefore did you so?
D.To present your majesty with a new-year’s gift.
Q.You could never present me with a worse.
D.Why so, madam?
Q.You know I have an aversion to idolatry and pictures of this kind.
D.Wherein is the idolatry, may it please your majesty?
Q.In the cuts resembling angels and saints; nay, grosser absurdities, pictures resembling the blessed Trinity.
D.I meant no harm: nor did I think it would offend your majesty when I intended it for a new-year’s gift.
Q.You must needs be ignorant then. Have you forgot our proclamation against images, pictures, and Romish relics in churches? Was it not read in your deanery?
D.It was read. But be your majesty assured, I meant no harm, when I caused the cuts to be bound with the service-book.
Q.You must needs be very ignorant, to do this after our prohibition of them.
D.It being my ignorance, your majesty may the better pardon me.
Q.I am sorry for it: yet glad to hear it was your ignorance, rather than your opinion.
D.Be your majesty assured it was my ignorance.
Q.If so, Mr. Dean, God grant you his Spirit, and more wisdom for the future.
D.Amen, I pray God.
Q.I pray, Mr. Dean, how came you by these pictures?—Who engraved them?
D.I know not who engraved them,—I bought them.
Q.From whom bought you them?
D.From a German.
Q.It is well it was from a stranger. Had it been any of our subjects, we should have questioned the matter. Pray let no more of these mistakes, or of this kind, be committed within the churches of our realm for the future.
D.There shall not.
Mr. Nichols, after inserting the preceding dialogue, in “Queen Elizabeth’s Progresses,” remarks—
“This matter occasioned all the clergy in and about London, and the churchwardens of each parish, to search their churches and chapels: and caused them to wash out of the walls all paintings that seemed to be Romish and idolatrous; and in lieu thereof suitable texts, taken out of the holy scriptures, to be written.”
Similar inscriptions had been previously adopted: the effect of the queen’s disapprobation of pictured representations was to increase the number of painted texts.
Mr. J. T. Smith observes, that of these sacred sentences there were several within memory in the old church of Paddington, now pulled down; and also in the little old one of Clapham.
In an inside view of Ambleside church, painted by George Arnald, Esq. A. R. A. he has recorded several, which are particularly appropriate to their stations; for instance, that over the door admonishes the comers in; that above the pulpit exhorts the preacher to spare not his congregation; and another within sight of the singers, encourages them to offer praises to the Lord on high. These inscriptions have sometimes one line written in black, and the next in red; in other instances the first letter of each line is of a bright blue, green, or red. They are frequently surrounded by painted imitations of frames or scrolls, held up by boys painted in ruddle. It was the custom in earlier times to write them in French, with the first letter of the line considerably larger than the rest, and likewise of a bright colour curiously ornamented. Several of these were discovered in 1801, on the ceiling of a closet on the south side of the Painted Chamber, Westminster, now blocked up.
Others of a subsequent date, of the reign of Edward III. in Latin, were visible during the recent alterations of the house of commons, beautifully written in the finest jet black, with the first letters also of bright and different colours.
Hogarth, in his print of the sleeping congregation, has satirized this kind of church embellishments, by putting a tobacco pipe in the mouth of the angel who holds up the scroll; and illustrates the usual ignorance of country art, by giving three joints to one of his legs. The custom of putting up sacred sentences is still continued in many churches, but they are generally written in letters of gold upon black grounds, within the pannels of the fronts of the galleries.[406]