alled an altar. In the second Liturgy of King Edward
the Sixth, amongst other important changes both of doctrine and
discipline, the word _altar_, as denoting the communion-table, was
purposely omitted.

The peculiar formation, frequently observable, of the old
communion-tables, seems to have originated from the diversity of opinion
held by many in the Anglican church, as to whether or not there was in the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper a memorative sacrifice; for by those who
held the negative they were so constructed, not merely that they might be
moved from one part of the church to another, but the slab, board, or
table, properly so called, was purposely not fastened or fixed to the
frame-work or stand on which it was supported, but left loose, so as to be
set on or taken off; and in 1555, on the accession of Queen Mary, when the
stone altars were restored and the communion-tables taken down, we find it
recorded of one John Austen, at Adesham Church, Kent, that "he with other
tooke up the table, and laid it on a chest in the chancel, and set the
tressels by it[218-*]."

It appears that texts of scripture were painted on the walls of some
churches in the reign of Edward the Sixth; for Bonner, bishop of London,
by a mandate issued to his diocese in 1554, after noticing that some had
procured certain scriptures wrongly applied to be painted on church walls,
charged that such scriptures should be razed, abolished, and extinguished,
so that in no means they could be either read or heard.

In the articles set forth by Cardinal Pole in 1557, to be inquired of in
his diocese of Canterbury, were the following: "Whether the churches be
sufficiently garnished and adorned with all ornaments and books
necessary; and whether they have a rood in their church of a decent
stature, with Mary and John, and an image of the patron of the same
church?" Also, "Whether the altars of the church be consecrated or no?"

But in 1559, the first year of the reign of Elizabeth, many of the
injunctions set forth in the reign of Edward the Sixth, as to the mode of
saying the Litany without procession, the removal and destruction of
shrines and monuments of superstition, the setting up of a pulpit, and of
the poor-box or chest, which latter was however "to be set and fastened in
a most convenient place," were re-established. By these injunctions it
appears that in many parts of the realm the altars of the churches had
been removed, and tables pla