ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



this shifting policy. He successively filled six bishoprics, namely those 

 of Rochester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Durham, Winchester and York. Neile 

 is said to have been anxious to maintain the beauty and dignity of wor- 

 ship in the churches of Hampshire and Surrey that had been so much 

 aimed at by Andrewes. He had the honour, when laymen began to sit 

 in judgment on the doctrines and practices of bishops, of being bracketed 

 with Laud (then Bishop of Bath and Wells) in a vote of censure passed 

 by the House of Commons, as inclined to Arminianism and favouring 

 popish doctrines and ceremonies. 



On the translation of Neile to York, in 1631, Walter Curie, who 

 had only held two previous bishoprics, was moved from Bath and Wells 

 to Winchester. He was in thorough sympathy with Archbishop Laud 

 and heartily supported him in putting down the gross irreverence that 

 had come about where the holy table was placed in the body of the 

 church. In the royal chapels and in most of the cathedrals the altars 

 had remained continuously in their old position. The rubric of the 

 Prayer Books of 1552, 1559 and 1603 had left the position apparently 

 optional, and puritan feeling in many parish churches had removed it to 

 the body of the church and had placed it east and west near the centre 

 of the building, 1 but it had been decided that the question of its posi- 

 tion was to be left to the ordinary. Laud's contention was that Elizabeth's 

 injunctions plainly ordered that the holy table in every church was to be 

 set in the place where the altar stood, 2 and he also pleaded the 8 2nd 

 canon. We can find no case of Hampshire resistance to the ordering of 

 the holy table being placed altarwise in the chancel and railed in, though 

 in some parts of England this was fiercely contested. 3 In Laud's metro- 

 political visitation of 1635, the see of Winchester is reported as being 

 ' well ordered.' 



In 1639, Bishop Curie held the last of his triennial visitations. 

 There is a copy extant of ' The Articles to be enquired of by the 

 Churchwardens and Sworn-men.' The queries are unusually elaborate 

 and exhaustive. There are eleven articles touching the church ; thirty- 

 three as to the ministry, service and sacraments ; two touching school- 

 masters; five as to the parish clerk and sexton; twenty-six as to parishioners; 

 and ten touching churchwardens and sworn-men.* 



In the days of the Civil War the great families of Hampshire were 

 divided in their allegiance to the king or the parliament. Some of the 

 most stirring incidents of the strife took place on Hampshire soil, notably 

 the thrilling sieges of Basing House. The parish churches suffered 



1 The rubric (which still stands) said : ' The Table shall stand in the body of the churche or in 

 the chauncell where mornyng prayour and evenyng prayour be apointed to be sayd.' It was held that 

 this meant that if the chancel was disused (owing to the considerable diminution of assistant priests) and 

 prayers said at the east end of the nave, the holy table should then be in the nave. 



8 This is clearly the case (Wilkins* Concilia, iv. 138). 



3 Laud's Works, iv. 121, 225-7, vi. 59-64. Bishop Davenant of Salisbury, of strong Calvinistic 

 leanings, thoroughly supported Laud's view on this question. On the whole controversy see Hacket's 

 Life ofWURams and Heylin's Life of Laud. 



* They are of particular interest with regard to the liturgical and parochial customs of the day 

 (British Museum, press mark 698, H. 20). The ' sworn-men ' were the sidesmen. 



II 89 12 



