mor was
frequently kept, and sometimes the parish powder barrels were
deposited;[12] here too, occasionally, country parsons stored their
wool or grain.[13]

Finally, in the parish church assembled vestries for the holding of
accounts, the making of rates and the election of officers. Overseers
of the poor held their monthly meetings here. Occasionally the
neighboring justices of the peace met here to take the overseers'
accounts or to transact other business;[14] and in the church also
might be held coroners' inquests over dead bodies.[15] Last, but not
least in importance, in the churches of the market towns the
archdeacon made his visitations and held his court; and on these
occasions the sacred edifice rang with the unseemly squabbles of the
proctors, the accusations of the wardens and sidemen or of the
apparitor, and the recriminations of the accused--in short, the church
was turned for the time being into a moral police court, where all the
parish scandal was carefully gone over and ventilated.[16]

The ecclesiastical courts carried on their judicial administration of
the parish largely, of course, through the medium of the officers of
the parish. These were the churchwardens, the sidemen and the
incumbent, whether rector, vicar or curate.[17]

First in importance were the churchwardens. Though legislation
throughout the time of Elizabeth was ever adding to their functions
duties purely civil in their nature, and though they themselves were
more and more subjected to the control of the justices of the peace,
nevertheless it is true to say that to the end of the reign the office
of churchwarden is one mainly appertaining to the jurisdiction and
supervision of the courts Christian.

The doctrine of the courts that churchwardens were merely civil
officers belongs to a later period.[18]

After a churchwarden had been chosen or elected, he took the oath of
office before the archdeacon. In this he swore to observe the Queen's
and the bishop's injunctions, and to cause others to observe them; to
present violators of the same to the sworn men (or sidemen), or to the
ordinary's chancellor or official, or to the Queen's high
commissioners; finally, he swore to yield up a faithful accounting to
the parish of all sums that had passed through his hands during his
term of office.[19]

Before each visitation day, as has been said, the archdeacon's or the
bishop's summoner went to each parish and gave warning that a court