"The first item is remarkable, as affording an instance of seats being made subject to sale at so early a period;" and proceeds: "it may be observed that the two sexes must have sat in different parts of the church, as, with only one exception, the seats are let to other persons of the same sex as before."
Llewellyn.
Separation of the Sexes in Time of Divine Service (Vol. ii., p. 94.).—A proof of the correctness of the remark advanced in this note is afforded by the practice followed in the little church of Covington, Huntingdonshire, where a few of the old open seats remain towards the western end, in which each sex still sits on its proper side, although the custom does not hold with respect to the pews which some of the farmers and others have erected for themselves at the eastern end.
Arun.
Separation of the Sexes at Church.—Many of your correspondents have taken up the separation of the living at church, but none have alluded to the dead. I extract the following from a deed of the 34th of Elizabeth:—
"But also in the two severall vawtes or towmbes in the sayd chappell, and in the sowthe syde of the same, and in the wall of the sayd church, ffor themselves only to bury in; that is to say, in the upper of the same, standing eastwards, to bury the deade bodyes of the men, being ancestors of the sayd A. B.; and in the lower, standing westwards, to bury the deade bodies of the women, being wyves or children female of his, the said A. B.'s ancestors."
Perhaps some of your correspondents can tell us whether such separate vaults were customary?
Vox Populi Vox Dei (Vol. i., p. 370.).—Your correspondent Daniel Rock states these words to have been chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Mepham, as his text for the sermon he preached when Edward III. was called to the throne; and in your Notices to Correspondents, Vol. iii., p. 254., you repeat the statement.
The prelate by whom the sermon was preached was not Simon Mepham, but his predecessor, Walter Reynolds, who was Archbishop of Canterbury when the second Edward was deposed, and when Edward III. was crowned, on February 1, 1327. This Walter Reynolds died on November 16, 1327, and Simon Mepham was appointed his successor on December 11, 1327. John Toland, in his Anglia Libera, p. 114., has this reference to the sermon which was preached by the Archbishop Reynolds on the occasion of the king's coronation:
"To Edward I. succeeded his son Edward II., who growing an intolerable tyrant, was in a parliament summoned by himself formally accused of misgovernment, and on his own acknowledging the truth of this charge, solemnly deposed. When his son, Edward III., was elected with universal consent, Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, preached the coronation sermon, and took these words for his text, "Vox populi Vox Dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God,"—so little did they dream in those days of the divine right of monarchy, or that all power did not originally derive from the people, for whom and by whom all governments are erected and maintained."