[Illustration: Hour-glass Frame, Shawell Church, Isle of Wight.]
To the close of the sixteenth century the mode of pewing with open
low-backed seats continued to prevail; the ends of these seats were not
covered with tracery or arched panel-work, but were plain, though they
sometimes terminated with a finial. In the nave of Stanton St. John
Church, Oxfordshire, are some old open pews or seats, apparently of the
reign of Henry the Eighth, the backs of which are divided diamond-wise,
and form a kind of lattice-work, and the ends terminate in grotesque
heads. In Harrington Church, Worcestershire, are some open seats of plain
workmanship, bearing the date of 1582. The church of Sunningwell,
Berkshire, is fitted up with a range of open seats on each side of the
nave, without any ornament, with the exception of a large carved finial at
the end of each seat. In Cowley Church, near Oxford, are open seats of the
date of 1632, which have at the ends finials carved in the shallow angular
designs of that period. All these seats are appropriately placed, or
disposed facing the east, and none are turned with the backs towards the
altar[230-*]. About the commencement of the seventeenth century our
churches began to be disfigured by the introduction of high pews, an
innovation which did not escape censure; for, as Weaver observes, "Many
monuments of the dead in churches in and about this citie of London, as
also in some places in the countrey, are covered with seates or pewes,
made high and easie for the parishioners to sit or sleepe in; a fashion of
no long continuance, and worthy of reformation[231-*].
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