the high altar, to the intent the parishioners
should put into it their oblation and alms for their poor
neighbours[215-*].

Hence the primary introduction of desks with divinity books, the litany
stool, and the charity box, yet retained in some of our churches. But as
much contention arose respecting the taking down of images, also as to
whether they had been idolatrously abused or not, all images without
exception were shortly afterwards, by royal authority, ordered to be
removed and taken away.

In the ritual the first formal change appears to have been the order of
the communion set forth in 1547 as a temporary measure only, until other
order should be provided for the true and right manner of administering
the sacrament according to the rule of the scriptures of God, and first
usage of the primitive church. In this the term _altar_ is alone made use
of; but in the first Liturgy of King Edward the Sixth, published in 1549,
the altar or table whereupon the Lord's Supper was ministered is
indifferently called _the altar_, _the Lord's table_, _God's board_.
Ridley, bishop of London, by his diocesan injunctions issued in 1550,
after noticing that in divers places some used the Lord's board after the
form of a table, and some as an altar, exhorted the curates,
churchwardens, and questmen to erect and set up the Lord's board after the
form of an honest table, decently covered, in such place of the quire or
chancel as should be thought most meet, so that the ministers with the
communicants might have their place separated from the rest of the people;
and to take down and abolish all other by-altars or tables. Soon after
this, orders of council were sent to the bishops, in which, after noticing
that the altars in most churches of the realm had been taken down, but
that there yet remained altars standing in divers other churches, by
occasion whereof much variance and contention arose, they were commanded,
for the avoiding of all matters of further contention and strife about the
standing or taking away of the said altars[216-*], to give substantial
order that all the altars in every church should be taken down, and
instead of them that a table should be set up in some convenient part of
the chancel, to serve for the ministration of the blessed communion; and
reasons were at the same time published why the Lord's board should rather
be after the form of a table than of an altar, expressing however in what
sense it might be c