ning has been attempted to be explained.

Under the colour of removing monuments of idolatry and false feigned
images in the churches, much wanton spoliation and needless injury was
effected; and this to such excess that in 1560 a royal proclamation was
issued, commanding all persons to forbear the breaking or defacing of any
monument or tomb, or any image of kings, princes, or nobles, or the
breaking down and defacing of any image in glass windows, in any churches,
without consent of the ordinary. And in the same year, in a letter from
the queen to the commissioners for causes ecclesiastical, occasion is
taken to remark that "in sundry churches and chappells where divine
service, as prayer, preaching, and ministration of the sacraments be used,
there is such negligence and lacke of convenient reverence used towardes
the comelye keeping and order of the said churches, and especially of the
upper parte called the chauncels, that it breedeth no small offence and
slaunder to see and consider on the one part the curiositie and costes
bestowed by all sortes of men upon there private houses, and the other
part, the unclean or negligent order or sparekeeping of the house of
prayer, by permitting open decaies, and ruines of coveringes, walls, and
wyndowes, and by appointing unmeet and unseemly tables, with fowle
clothes, for the communion of the sacraments, and generally leavynge the
place of prayers desolate of all cleanlynes, and of meet ornaments for
such a place, whereby it might be known a place provided for divine
service." And the commissioners were required to consider the same, and in
their discretion to determine upon some good and speedy means of
reformation; and, amongst other things, to order that the tables of the
commandments might be comely set or hung up in the east end of the
chancel, to be not only read for edification, but also to give some comely
ornament and demonstration that the same was a place of religion and
prayer[223-*].

An ancient table, apparently of this period, of the commandments painted
on panel, but in language somewhat abbreviated, is still hung up against
the east wall of the south transept of Ludlow Church, Salop[224-*].

By the articles issued by royal authority in 1564, for administration of
prayer and sacraments, each parish was to provide a decent table, standing
on a frame, for the communion-table; this was to be decently covered with
carpet, silk, or other decent covering, and with