All who did not attend their parish church, and take part in the services which those in authority considered to be most fitting, were regarded as bad citizens, and treated as such. We cannot wonder that the parish churches were allowed to go to decay. English people had spent much money on their churches right up to the time of the Reformation. Then they saw the gifts they and their forefathers had made abused or stolen. People were not disposed to do much for their churches after that. In some cases, especially in country places where the leading people were Catholics or Puritans, it seems as if they purposely let the parish church, to which they were compelled to go by law, get so thoroughly out of order that they might be able to say there was no church to go to.
Monument in Chelsea Church, London; date about 1630
Many of the houses built during Tudor times had secret chambers and hiding-places, which were known only to a very few persons. And such hiding-places were much used, in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, by priests, who ministered in secret to those who clung to the old faith.
But though the churches were much out of repair, in some of them stately and costly monuments were erected in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. They were different from the monuments set up before the Reformation, and were usually built against a wall. They were of various coloured marbles, the effigies lying under circular-headed canopies, supported by columns in the Italian style. The effigies of man and wife were usually represented clad in robes of state, coloured, their children kneeling round the tomb in various attitudes.
By and by, instead of the effigies being represented as lying on their backs, with hands clasped, they were shown lying on one side, supporting their heads on their hands. There are many such monuments, for instance, in Westminster Abbey, and in almost every old town church one or more can be seen.
It became a very common practice for one of the old chapels, built on to the parish church in mediæval times, to be set apart as the private burial-place of a great landowner. Many new chapels were built for this special purpose. In them we may see specimens of the different fashions in monuments from Tudor days, or earlier, right down to the present time.
CHAPTER XLIII
Building after the Restoration: Houses
The most notable architect after the Great Fire of London was Sir Christopher Wren, and his masterpiece is, of course, St. Paul's Cathedral. He designed, too, most of the city churches. The style was adopted in various parts of the country by various noblemen for building great houses. Brick was regarded as too mean a material for such very grand houses, and stone was used for facing them.