Francis Bond

“ We may take it therefore that seats in the chancel were required not only for the parish priest and the parish clerk, but in some cases for chantry priests as well.
But the above explanation does not cover the whole ground. There are often many more stalls than could be used as above. And in some churches there were no chantry priests at all, and yet there are stalls. Who else then occupied seats in the chancel? Some of the stalls probably, usually but a few, may have been occupied by laymen even so early as the thirteenth century. ”

“ At Ingham, a parish in the Norfolk Broads, there are ten stalls in the chancel; at Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, there are six stalls; and so with numerous others. How early parochial chancels had stalls is difficult to say. No existing examples are earlier than the thirteenth century. But a curious fact about the growth of our parish churches, to which attention has not hitherto been directed, may throw some light on the subject. In early Anglo-Saxon days the normal and most common type of parish church was one which had an aisleless nave and chancel. ”

“ An eminent organist like John Norfolk, who was in charge of a choir school, would expect and no doubt get a large salary. In village churches, however, the boys would be trained, sometimes by a chantry priest if he was under statutory obligation to do so, more often by the parish clerk. ”

“ In laying down regulations for the services in Ripon Minster Archbishop Greenfield says, "We permit no women at all, religious or secular, unless great ladies or ladies of high rank or others of approved honour and piety, to sit or stand in a stall or elsewhere in the choir while the divine offices are being celebrated." ”

“ But the enlargement of the chancel sometimes took place without any of the other alterations, and where that is so, i.e., where the church retains a comparatively small nave, the enlarged chancel bulks up very lofty and spacious, seemingly quite out of scale to the rest of the church: in some examples the chancel is actually loftier than the nave. A church with a chancel so disproportionate strikes the attention at once as one demanding explanation. Large numbers of such abnormally big chancels survive. ”

“ It is to be remembered moreover that though it may have been unusual for laymen to have seats in the chancel, yet it was by no means uncommon for them to stand or kneel there; there are enough representations of laymen so standing to establish that point satisfactorily: they are shewn standing or kneeling, sometimes with lighted tapers in their hands. At a St Martin's mass in France in the fourteenth century, [9] two women are shewn near the altar steps, one standing and attending to her duties, the other inattentive and seriously distracting the attention of an acolyte kneeling near. ”

“ Even to this day in some cathedrals it is the usage to allow women to sit only in the lower desks of the choir and not in the stalls above. Nevertheless in plenty of instances the pertinacity of women prevailed; and where the husband sat in the chancel, there the wife insisted on sitting beside him. ”

“ And many other good Churchmen at all times have retained the ancient usage of the exclusion of women from the stalls in the chancel. At Great Burstead, in Essex, in 1661, an applicant was authorised to build a pew at the entrance to the chancel for the use of himself and sons and companions and friends of the male sex; but to build another in the nave for his wife and her daughters and companions and friends of the female sex. ”

“ Again in 1255 in Lincoln diocese the patron or any other "venerable" person was allowed to sit and stand in the chancel. Archbishop Greenfield of York (1304-1315) found it necessary to make a rule against laymen intruding into the choir during service. So also at Ely, Simon Langham in 1364 wrote: "Lay people are not to stand or sit amongst the clerks in the chancel during the celebration of divine service, unless it be done to shew respect or for some other reasonable and obvious reason ”

“ In the ninth century a canon was passed at Mantes that women must not approach the altar or act as "server" to the celebrant or stand in the chancel. Among the canons of the time of King Edgar is one: "Docemus ut altari mulier non appropinquet dum Missa celebratur"; "a woman must not come near the altar at Mass." ”

“ The musical part of the service grew more and more ornate, especially in the last years immediately preceding the Dissolution; the parishes—village and town parishes alike—delighted in "the cheerful noise of organs and fiddles and anthems," and spent on music a very large part of the church income. The early years of the sixteenth century were a glorious time for church music ”

“ The workmanship of the best stalls is quite first rate. At All Saints', Hereford, the timber of the stalls is "good sound English oak, all either cleft or cut in the quarter, proving that the trees were converted into the smallest possible sizes before being sawn from either end, the very rough saw-kerfs meeting at an angle in the centre of the board." ”

“ As regards the occupancy of seats in the chancel it is quite clear that it has always been the wish of the Church that they should be reserved for the clergy and that no laymen should be admitted. It is equally clear that the Church has never been able to carry out the injunction. ”

“ Amongst other regulations it contains the provision that the chaplain is to attend in person in the choir of the church on every Sunday and Holy Day in his surplice, at matins, mass and vespers, and to take his part in the reading and chanting, as directed by the vicar, and in accordance with the constitutions of the Metropolitan Church. ”