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

lxxxviii INTRODUCTION.
now stands it is not in the form of an ordinary parish or cathedral
church. There is no structural division between the chancel and the
body or nave, so that it does not now lend itself to the design
of placing the altar in a recessed or isolated position at the east end of
the building. There was, however, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and for a considerable period in the seventeenth, a raised
platform at the eastern end, approached by steps and inclosed by
rails dividing the altar stone and the place for the priests from the
rest of the church. The actual position of the table, to which the
doctor objected, cannot precisely be ascertained ; but there is little
doubt that it had, prior to the death of King James, been moved
from its former elevated position to some spot within the body of the
church, where it stood upon the floor facing north and south, and that
the benchers in their newly erected pews sat on either side of the
table and received, in their seats, the holy communion as administered
to them, by the master or the curates. The moving of communion
tables from the body of the church where, in parish churches, they
usually stood facing north and south, to the eastern end where they
were placed altar-wise facing east and west, was one of the troubles
of this reign, and one among many smaller causes of the great
rebellion.' A distinction was drawn and recognized between
cathedrals and chapels royal on the one hand, and parish churches
on the other. In the former the tables stood habitually at the
eastern end facing east and west, and the doctor, in describing the
Temple church with substantial accuracy, argues with some force
that the rule which applied to cathedrals and royal chapels should
also be applied to the Temple church. The view, however, taken
by Laud and enforced by Dr. Micklethwaite, though in accordance
with law and the principles of the church of England, as has recently
been decided, was none the less a great scandal to the puritan members
of the society, and doubtless tended to ascerbate the strained relations
between them and the master.
The Clerk' s Book' contains an entry, which is shown by internal
I See Gardiner's " Personal Government of Charles I.," vol. i., p. 31 ; " Fall of
Monarchy," vol. i., p. 360, 399, 410 ; ibid., vol. ii., p. 24, where the subject is fully
discussed. Judgment of Archbishop Benson in Read v. Bishop of Lincoln, 1891, P.,
PP. 33-58-
' " Miscellanea," xxii. The book, a small MS., bound in parchment, is dated on
the outside 1653, being the date of Playford's appointment, his predecessor, Burton,