Churches after the Reformation
Not very long after the dissolution of the monasteries the churches
had a very bad time to go through. It is perfectly marvellous
how rapidly some people, who were in power, discovered that the
valuable ornaments and fittings in them were so very wicked and
superstitious, that the only thing to do was to seize them for
the use of the king as his private property. No attempt was made
to apply the money taken for the benefit of the parishes; it was
shamefully and shamelessly squandered. The buildings were very
badly treated, and everything in some of them that could be defaced
and destroyed was so treated. The changes made in religion under
the Tudor kings and queens were so many, and so violent, that
ordinary everyday people could not understand them, and deeply
religious people were driven in opposite directions. There was
bitter persecution for all who did not fall in with the will of the
Tudor sovereign, whether Catholic or Protestant, and good men had
to suffer and to die on both sides for their faith.
All who did not attend their parish church, and take part in the
services which those in authority considered to be most fitting,
were regarded as bad citizens, and treated as such. We cannot
wonder that the parish churches were allowed to go to decay.
English people had spent much money on their churches right up to
the time of the Reformation. Then they saw the gifts they and their
forefathers had made abused or stolen. People were not disposed to
do much for their churches after that. In some cases, especially
in country places where the leading people were Catholics or
Puritans, it seems as if they purposely let the parish church, to
which they were compelled to go by law, get so thoroughly out of
order that they might be able to say there was no church to go to.
[Illustration: _Monument in Chelsea Church, London; date about
1630_]
Many of the houses built during Tudor times had secret chambers and
hiding-places, which were known only to a very few persons. And
such hiding-places were much used, in the times of Queen Elizabeth
and King James I, by priests, who ministered in secret to those who
clung to the old faith.
But though the churches were much out of repair, in some of them
stately and costly monuments were erected in the sixteenth and
early part of the seventeenth centuries. They were different from
the monuments set up before the Reformation, and were usually
built against a wall. They were of various coloured marbles, the
effigies lying under circular-headed canopies, supported by columns
in the Italian style. The effigies of man and wife were usually
represented clad in robes of state, coloured, their children
kneeling round the tomb in various attitudes.
By and by, instead of the effigies being represented as lying on
their backs, with hands clasped, they were shown lying on one
side, supporting their heads on their hands. There are many such
monuments, for instance, in Westminster Abbey, and in almost every
old town church one or more can be seen.
It became a very common practice for one of the old chapels, built
on to the parish church in mediæval times, to be set apart as the
private burial-place of a great landowner. Many new chapels were
built for this special purpose. In them we may see specimens of the
different fashions in monuments from Tudor days, or earlier, right
down to the present time.