“At Sunbury we brake down ten mighty great angels in glass, at Barham brake down the twelve apostles in the chancel, and six superstitious pictures more there: and eight in the church, one a lamb with a cross on the back: and digged down the steps and took up four superstitious inscriptions in brass.” So writes one Dowsing, a fanatic, in a diary he kept of his doings, where he and his myrmidons scoured a hundred and fifty parishes. Bishop Hall of Norwich saved his windows by taking out the heads of the figures.
With such religious fervour abroad it can well be imagined that the altar vessels, the fine chalices and other ecclesiastical plate, came under the ban that had been pronounced against relics of a Church which, whatever may have been its dogmas, had always encouraged the fine arts and employed the genius of the craftsmen in creating edifices which stand among the noblest of man’s handiwork and in embellishing them with decorations as spiritual as the brain of the artist could conceive.
[Illustration: ELIZABETHAN CHALICE AND COVER.
Parcel-gilt. Inscription, “St. Martin’s in Exon.” London hall-mark, 1573.
(_In possession of Parish of St. Martin’s, Exeter._)]
[Illustration: CHARLES I CHALICE AND COVER.
Silver-gilt. Inscription, “St. Petrox in Oxon.” Exeter hall-mark, 1640.
(_In possession of Parish of St. Petrock, Exeter._)]
It is not surprising to find the commissioners appointed by Edward VI making as exhaustive an inquiry throughout the land as the valuers of a modern Chancellor of the Exchequer. They seized all the plate in the churches with the exception of chalices and patens, and these they weeded out if they considered the parish too small to have more than one or two. Hence it is rare to find pre-Reformation ecclesiastical plate, even chalices and patens, because the Church authorities preferred to melt it down and use the money for other purposes than to have it confiscated.
In 1547 by 1 Edward VI it was enacted that communion in both kinds should be administered to the laity. The old form of chalice and paten remained for a time, as even the Reformation with all its fury could not and did not wholly uproot all the most sacred and deeply seated ritual in connexion with religious observances. The subject of the change in the form of the chalice with its inverted cup and the introduction of the severer form of the open communion cup and the flagon, is a study in ecclesiastical and political history which cannot be further pursued here.