The interior of the church is full of interest to the antiquary and the archæologist. For though the roof and arches are low, the pillars and windows poor, and the general architectural effect mean and disappointing, yet the floor and walls are crowded with inscribed and carved gravestones and memorial tablets of no ordinary character. These, as well as other relics of a bygone age, at once arrest attention.
To begin with the latter first; on a desk near the pillar as we enter is a black letter copy of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the Four Gospels, which at one time was ordered to be provided in every church at the cost of the parish. The copy is almost perfect, and has been carefully re-bound.
Then there is what the successive restorations have left of the fine Jacobean pulpit, with its date, "Ano. Dom. 1628," still upon it; and beside it, though unhappily upon the wrong side, is the elaborate hour-glass stand of hammered iron-work, consisting of oak leaves and acorns, alternately with vine leaves and bunches of grapes, together with three coats-of-arms, said to be those of the Smiths' and Farriers' Company. This is probably of the same date as the pulpit, if we may judge from the very similar iron frame-work which is attached to the pulpit in Hurst Church, and which bears the date 1636. The pulpit at Binfield has been sadly mutilated; its pedestal and staircase are gone; and its massive sounding-board has been relegated to the ignominious silence and seclusion of the vestry. But, in 1628, it must have been the handsomest pulpit of its kind in the neighbourhood.
On the floor of the sacrarium is a small brass, a half-length figure of a priest, represented with a stunted beard, and the apparels of the amice and albe ornamented with quatrefoils. Underneath is this inscription in Norman French:—
Water de Annesfordhe gist icy,
dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
It is one of the oldest brasses in the kingdom, for the said "Water" was rector of Binfield in 1361. Another remarkable fact about it is, that out of the seven inscriptions of this church recorded in 1664-6 by E. Ashmole in his "Antiquities of Berks," this is the only one which has survived the successive restorations. The other six have entirely gone.
BINFIELD CHURCH.
Immediately in front of the altar the floor is composed of a row of six black marble gravestones, each of which has a coat-of-arms elaborately sculptured at the head. That nearest to the centre is to the memory of Henry, fifth and last Earl of Stirling, of whose family we shall have more to say presently. The remaining five are remarkable as being all of them apparently placed to the memory of Papists who lived in the reign of Charles the II. Indeed, one of them, that, namely, nearest the north aisle, in memory of William Blount, "who dyed in the 21st yeare of his Age on ye 9th of May, 1671," has the letters, "C.A.P.D." engraved at the bottom in large capitals, which stand for the well-known pre-Reformation prayer, "Cujus Animae Propicietur Deus." And it is clear from the names of those commemorated in the other inscriptions that towards the end of Charles the II.'s reign there was a little colony of Papists residing at Binfield.