CHURCHES AFTER THE REFORMATION
1. 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.
2. 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 that
there was no church to go to.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 in
Westminster Abbey, and in almost every old town church one or more can
be seen.
6. It became a very common practice for one of the old =chapels=, built
on to the parish church, to be set apart as the private burial-place
of a great land-owner. 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.
=Summary.=--Much was destroyed in the churches during the violent
changes made in the form of worship. In some cases the churches
were let go to decay, so that there might be no church to go to.
There were secret chambers built in many Tudor houses, where those
in danger might hide.
It was a great time for setting up splendid monuments in the
Italian style, usually brilliantly coloured and ornamented.