a fair linen cloth (at
the time of the ministration); the ten commandments were to be set upon
the east wall, over the table; the font was not to be removed, nor was the
curate to baptize in parish churches in any basins.

In the Visitation Articles of Archbishop Parker, A. D. 1569, we find
inquiries were to be made whether there was in each parish church a
convenient pulpit well placed, a comely and decent table for the holy
communion, covered decently and set in the place prescribed; and whether
the altars had been taken down; also whether images and all other
monuments of idolatry and superstition were destroyed and abolished;
whether the rood-loft was pulled down, according to the order prescribed;
and if the partition between the chancel and church was kept.

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.

We occasionally, though rarely, meet with ancient charity-boxes of a date
anterior to the Reformation: the churches of Wickmere, Loddon, and
Causton, in Norfolk, still r