church, although the minds of many were becoming prepared for the
change which afterwards ensued. And in the reign of his successor, Edward
the Sixth, a striking difference was effected in the internal appearance
of our churches; for many appendages were, not all at once, but by
degrees, and under the authority of successive injunctions, discarded.
Thus, by the king's injunctions published in 1547, all images which had
been abused with pilgrimage, or offering of any thing made thereunto,
were, for the avoiding of the detestable offence of idolatry, by
ecclesiastical authority, but not by that of private persons, to be taken
down and destroyed; and no torches or candles, tapers or images of wax,
were to be thenceforth suffered to be set before any image or picture,
"but only two lights upon the high altar before the sacrament, which, for
the signification that Christ is the very true light of the world, they
shall suffer to remain still." And as to such images which had not been
abused, and which as yet were suffered to remain, the parishioners were to
be admonished by the clergy that they served for no other purpose but to
be a remembrance. The Bible in English, and the Paraphrases of Erasmus
upon the Gospels, also in English, were ordered to be provided and set up
in every church for the use of the parishioners. It was also enjoined that
at every high mass the gospel and epistle should be read in English, and
not in Latin, in the pulpit or in some other convenient place, so that the
people might hear the same. Processions about the church and churchyard
were now ordered to be disused, and the priests and clerks were to kneel
in the midst of the church immediately before high mass, and there sing or
read the Litany in English set forth by the authority of King Henry the
Eighth. By the same injunctions all shrines, covering of shrines, all
tables, candlesticks, trindles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and
all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and
superstition, were directed to be utterly taken away and destroyed; so
that there should remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows, or
elsewhere within churches; and in every church "a comely and honest
pulpit" was to be provided at the cost of the parishioners, to be set in a
convenient place for the preaching of God's word; and a strong chest,
having three keys, with a hole in the upper part thereof, was to be set
and fastened near unto