Those of the more exclusive sort were often built up with tall partitions, like Lady Booby's, 'in her pew, which the congregation could not see into.'[886] Sometimes they were curtained, 'sometimes filled with sofas and tables, or even provided with fireplaces;'[887] and cases might be quoted where the tedium of a long service, or the appetite engendered by it, were relieved by the entry, between prayers and sermon, of a livery servant with sherry and light refreshments.[888] Even into cathedrals cumbrous ladies' pews were often introduced. Horace Walpole tells an extraordinary story of Gloucester Cathedral in 1753. A certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewashing and otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head that the soul of a favourite daughter had passed into a robin. The Dean and Chapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind of aviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small corner cupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls was converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in the larger towns; and the new proprietary chapels erected to meet this increase were often commercial speculations conducted on mere principles of trade, most unworthy of a National Church. No reflecting Churchman could fail to be disgusted with a traffic in pews which in many cases absolutely excluded the poor.[891] Among the new churches there were in fact only one or two honourable exceptions to the general rule. A free church was opened at Bath, another at Birmingham;[892] it appears that all the rest of these 'Chapels of Ease' unblushingly gave the lie, so far as in them lay, to the declaration of our Lord that the poor have the Gospel preached unto them. Some time had yet to elapse before improved feeling could do much towards abating the unchristian nuisance. But energetic protests were occasionally heard. 'I would reprobate,' wrote Mrs. Barbauld (1790) 'those little gloomy solitary cells, planned by the spirit of aristocracy, which deform the building no less to the eye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each family within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the laziness of indulgence.'[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished,' remarked Dr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as those of the continent from these vile incumbrances.' Their injury to architectural effect was the least of their evils. They were fruitful, he said, in jealousies, and utterly discordant to the worship of a God who is no respecter of persons.[894]
Of the galleries, so often enumerated in Paterson's account of London Churches (1714) among recently erected 'ornaments,' little need be said, except that they were often wholly unnecessary, or only made necessary by the great loss of space squandered in the promiscuous medley of square and ill-shaped pews. It was an object of some ambition to have a front seat in the gallery. 'The people of fashion exalt themselves in church over the heads of the people of no fashion.'[895] A crowded London church in the old times, gallery above gallery thronged with people, was no doubt an impressive spectacle, not soon to be forgotten. To many the thought of galleried churches will revive a different set of remembrances. Dusky corners, a close and heavy atmosphere, back seats for children and the scantily favoured, to which sound reached as a drowsy hum, and where sight was limited to the heads of people in their pews, to their hats upon the pillars, and perhaps an occasional half-view of the clergyman in the pulpit, seen at intervals through the interstices of the gallery supports—such are the recollections which will occur to some. Certainly they are calculated to animate even an excessive zeal for opening out churches, and creating wider space and freer air.
And who does not remember some of the other special adjuncts of an old-fashioned church, as it had been handed down little altered from the time of our great-grandfathers? There were the half-obliterated escutcheons, scarcely less dismal in aspect than the coffin plates with which the columns of the Welsh churches were so profusely decorated. No wonder Blair introduces into his poem on 'The Grave' a picture of—
the gloomy aisles
Black plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons.[896]
And then, in the place of the ancient rood loft, was that masterpiece of rural art—
Moses and Aaron upon a church wall,
Holding up the Commandments, for fear they should fall.[897]
There was the glorified record of the past deeds of parish officials, well adapted to fire the emulation of a succeeding generation—
With pride of heart, the Churchwarden surveys
High o'er the belfry, girt with birds and flowers,
His story wrought in capitals: 'twas I
That bought the font; and I repaired the pews.[898]
There were the tables of benefactors conspicuous under the western gallery. The Lower House of Convocation in 1710 had issued special directions in recommendation of this practice. The bishops also—Fleetwood,[899] Secker,[900] and others—did not fail to enjoin it in their charges. And not without reason; for a great number of parish benefactions appear to have been lost by lapse or otherwise about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet smaller letters, and a less prominent position, might have served the same purpose, with less disfigurement, and less offence to the decent humility which best befits the deeds of Christian benevolence.
The great three-decked pulpit of the Georgian age is still familiar to our memories. To the next generation it will be at length a curiosity of the past. Nor must the mighty sounding-board be forgotten, impending with almost threatening bulk over the preacher's head, and adorned with the emblematic symbol of grace:—