| OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON. 1730. | KING’S CHAPEL, BOSTON. |
| CHRIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA. 1727. | ST. PETER’S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA. 1761. |
the deacons, who sat facing the congregation. This was usually a foot or two above the level of the other pews, and was reached by two or three steep, narrow steps. On a still higher plane was a pew for the ruling elders, when ruling elders there were. The magistrates also had a pew for their special use. What we now deem the best seats, those in the middle of the church, were in olden times, the free seats.”
“In front, on either side of the pulpit (or very rarely in the foremost row in the gallery), was a seat of highest dignity, known as the ‘fore seat,’ in which only the persons of greatest importance in the community sat.”
Not only in New England, but in the other Colonies as well, seats and pews in the galleries seem to have been preferred as the most desirable by persons of quality and consideration in the community next to the specially exalted seats belowstairs.
In many places, particularly in the Middle and Southern Colonies, the churches were regarded as the most dignified places of sepulture for persons of consequence, and their gravestones, with the armorial bearings and inscriptions almost effaced by the treading feet of generations of worshippers, are to be seen in the aisles and chancel pavements. The chancel was esteemed the most honourable place of burial and as an instance of this may be mentioned the grave of General Forbes, the hero of Fort Duquesne, in the chancel of Christ Church, Philadelphia. John Penn, one of the Proprietaries, is buried at the foot of the chancel steps. It is interesting in this connexion to note, by way of exception, that Judge Moore of Moore Hall, the stout old Pennsylvania Loyalist, and the person of greatest consequence in the parish of St. David, Radnor, directed that he and his wife, the Lady Williamina Wemyss, should be buried at the threshold of the church. Emblazoned hatchments were frequently used at the time of funerals and some of them are still preserved in our old churches. As in England, during much of the eighteenth century, it was the fashion in the Colonies to bury persons of note at night by the light of torches.