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acquaint his Grace with what he had written, “only he would like 
to know, if Fort offers thirty pounds to St. Paul’s, whether it 
should be accepted,” and as to the Inhibition, if, writes the 
bishop, “you think fit to grant it after he has renounced his 
appeal, I cannot help it, only I will justify what I have done to be 
just and right.” From the favour of the Dean of the Arches and 
the hesitation of the Bishop, it almost seemed that this “idle 
fickle minded fellow” would be allowed to gain his cause, and he 
may be said to have partially done so, for after having offered 
thirty pounds he eventually cleared himself by a payment of 
twenty only, and this sum the bishop was afterwards charged 
with extorting from him “ against the law and for his own private 
lucre.”* 
Besides innovations in the discipline, Archbishop Laud also 
introduced “many Popish and superstitious ceremonies” into the 
services of the Church,t and the act of this now troubled time, 
which caused the greatest consternation, and which was afterwards 
brought forward prominently against him, was the alteration he 
made in the position of the Communion table. 
From the beginning of the Reformation, ‘“ even to his coming to 
be Archbishop,” it had stood within the chancel, table-wise, some 
distance from the wall, without any rail about it, and with the 
ends east and west. It was now by his orders to be placed altar- 
wise against the east wall, with the ends north and south, and 
“hedged in” with a costly rail. Uponthis “ altar,” asit was then 
to be called, was placed much “ Romish furniture never used iu 
his predecessors’ days, viz., two great silver candlesticks with 
tapers in them, besides basons, and other silver vessels;’ and in 
his own chapel at Lambeth was a picture of Christ receiving His 
Last Supper with His Disciples, in a piece of arras hanging just 
behind the midst of the Altar, and a Crucifix in the window 
* Articles against Bishop Pierce. 
+ Articles against Laud. 
