Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION. lxxxvii
cost of £8 13s. The pulpit was removed from the centre and erected
at the side of the church. The altar was replaced on the raised
platform at the eastern end, and was arrayed as in the chapel
royal. Candlesticks with wax lights were also provided at the cost
of the society and placed upon the altar. A description of the
church after the alteration is to be found in a letter from Mr. W. Davy
to his friend F. Gawdy,1 dated i6th November, 1637, in which the
writer, among other topics, refers to this subject. " The Temple
church," he says, " is locked up, that none are suffered to walk
there as they have used to do, and at divine service, morning and
evening, wax candles burning upon the communion table and the
pulpit removed to the side of the church." The use of the white
surplice, and the reading of the whole of the morning and evening
service before the sermon had been ordered in 1633-34. And now
the removal of the pulpit so as not to obscure the view of the
altar, the latter being re-established at the east end with lights
burning thereon, seemed to the ultra protestants to be steps towards
the revival, not only of the ceremonies of Edward VI., but also of
those of Queen Mary. The master of the fine office was not,
however, interfered with, and S. Ann's Chapel still continued to
be the receptacle for judicial records and writs, until it was burnt
with its store of parchment in the fire of 1678.2 I do not know what
was done as to Sir J. Fenner's £100. It was not, however, a solitary
gift. In 1637-38 Mr. Alston left £20 to beautify the church where he
was buried on the Inner Temple side, and in 1649 a sum of ,4" to was
left for the same purpose by Mr. Wylde, brother of the chief baron.
The Temple church as it stood before the consecration of the
oblong portion in 1240, did not consist, as is usually supposed,
solely of the round. There was attached to it a chancel about
50 feet in length to the eastward, the foundations of which still
remain under the pavement of the present building. Whether this
chancel was erected at or about the same time as the circular
building, or whether the round was added to a still older church
standing on the spot before 1185 is matter for conjecture.' As it
1)1).245, 357
11. 294
" Hist. MSS. Corn.," tenth Rep., App. ii. (1885) ; " Gawdy MSS.," p. 166.
2 " Autobiog ra phy of Roger North," p. 39.
" The Architecture, Embellishments, and Painted Glass of the Temple Church,"
by W. Essex and Sydney Smirke, 4t0, 1845, p. i.