ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



tion in 1629 are of the comprehensive character that prevailed at that 

 period. They were formulated chiefly, as one might expect, to enforce 

 the canons of 1603. The instruments of divine service which the laity 

 were bound to provide in every parish church and chapel were the 

 Book of Common Prayer with the new calendar, the English Bible of 

 the new translation in the largest volume, two Psalters, two books of 

 Homilies, a decent font, a table of the Ten Commandments, a convenient 

 seat for the minister to sit in, a comely and decent pulpit, with cloth 

 and cushion for the same ; a comely communion table, with a fair linen 

 cloth to lay on the same, and some covering of silk, buckram, or other 

 suchlike for the clean keeping thereof ; a fair and comely communion 

 cup of silver with a silver cover, for the ministration of the Holy Com- 

 munion ; a chest or box for the poor, and the book of constitutions and 

 canons. The only vestment for the minister supplied at the charge of 

 the parish was a decent large surplice with sleeves, but the church- 

 wardens were required to state whether the minister usually wore the 

 surplice when he was saying public prayers and ministering sacraments, 

 and, if he were a graduate, did he also upon his surplice wear such 

 hood as was agreeable to his degree, and such decent apparel as was 

 appointed by the late constitutions. 1 When Potter was nominated to 

 the see of Carlisle by the influence of Archbishop Laud, people were 

 astonished at the selection, as the new bishop was suspected of puritan 

 inclinations. Fuller says he was known at Court as the penitential 

 preacher ; he afterwards came to be called the puritanical bishop. 3 But 

 there is no trace of puritanism in his articles of inquiry. One reads 

 them over with the reeling that he was steadfastly loyal to the church 

 as then understood, and wished to see the doctrine and worship as em- 

 bodied in her constitutional documents accepted and observed by the 

 people. 



When it was said of Bishop Potter that organs would blow him 

 out of the church, the satire may have been occasioned in allusion to 

 the revival of more stately and reverent methods of conducting Divine 

 worship with which the name of Archbishop Laud will be for ever 

 associated. But there was less fear in this isolated corner of the king- 

 dom than in any other diocese of a recrudescence of the ancient 

 solemnity in the church service. If the parish churches of the diocese 

 of Carlisle were no further advanced in point of ritual and reverence 

 than the cathedral, it cannot be said that the new ideas which at that 

 time began to fill men's minds had ever reached the northern counties. 

 There is a curious description of Carlisle cathedral in the autumn of 

 1634, in which three officers of the military establishment in Norwich, 

 whilst on a tour of pleasure from thence into the north, have left us 

 their impressions of its service. The cathedral was nothing so fair and 

 stately as those they had seen, but more like a great wild country 

 church ; and as it appeared outwardly so it was inwardly, neither 



1 Second Rep. of the Commissioners on Rubrics, Orders, etc. (Blue Book), pp. 506-8. 

 a Worthies of England, ed. 1684, p. 841. 



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