The latter inquiry is explanatory of the fact why, when the rood-lofts in
many churches were taken down, the screens beneath them, separating the
chancel from the nave, were left undisturbed.
By the injunctions of Grindal, archbishop of York, A. D. 1571, all altars
were ordered to be pulled down to the ground, and the altar stones to be
defaced and bestowed to some common use.
Pulpits of the reign of Edward the Sixth are rare, nor are those of the
reign of Elizabeth very common. The pulpit in Fordington Church,
Dorsetshire, of the latter period, is of stone, the upper part worked in
plain oblong panels; and a kind of escutcheon within one of these bears
the date 1592; the lower part or basement of this pulpit is circular in
form.
The richly embroidered and costly vestments and antependia or frontals, of
a period antecedent to the Reformation, were in some instances converted
into coverings for the altar or communion table, or into hangings for the
pulpit and reading desk. In Little Dean Church, Gloucestershire, the
covering for the reading desk is formed out of an ancient sacerdotal
vestment, probably a cope, of velvet, embroidered with portraits of
saints. The cushion of the pulpit of East Langdon Church, near Dover, is
made out of either an ancient antependium or vestment; the material
consists of very thick crimson silk, embroidered with sprigs, and in the
centre of the hanging are two figures supposed to represent the salutation
of the Virgin, who is kneeling before a faldstool.
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