a paper found among secretary Cecil's MSS.[232-*], it appears that in
1564 some ministers performed divine service and prayers in the chancel,
others in the body of the church, and some _in a seat made in the church_;
and in the parochial accounts of St. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, A. D. 1577,
is an entry "for coloringe the curate's pew and dask;" but no public
notice of the modern reading desk, or, as it was called, the "reading
pew," occurs till 1603, when, in the ecclesiastical canons then framed, it
was enjoined that besides the pulpit a fitting or convenient seat should
be constructed for the minister to read service in; and in allusion to the
reading desk, Bishop Sparrow, in his Rationale of the Book of Common
Prayer, observes, "This was the ancient custom of the church of England,
that the priest who did officiate in all those parts of the service which
were directed to the people turned himself towards them, as in the
absolution; but in those parts of the office which were directed to God
immediately, as prayers, hymns, lauds, confessions of faith or sins, he
turned from the people; and for that purpose, in many parish churches of
late, the reading pew had one desk for the Bible, looking towards the
people to the body of the church, another for the prayer-book, looking
towards the east or upper end of the chancel. And very reasonable was this
usage; for when the people was spoken to it was fit to look towards them,
but when God was spoken to it was fit to turn from the people." And so he
goes on to explain the custom of turning to the east in public prayer.

In Bishop Wren's directions it was enjoined that the minister's reading
desk should not stand with the back towards the chancel, nor too remote
or far from it.

The double reading desk is still occasionally met with, as in East Ilsley
Church, Berkshire, where is a kind of double reading desk so that the
minister can turn himself either towards the west or south. In Priors
Salford Church, Warwickshire, is an old carved reading pew bearing the
date of its construction, 1616; and in St. Peter's Church, Dorchester,
Dorsetshire, and in Sherbourne Church, in the same county, are reading
pews which evidently, from the style and the carved work with which they
are covered, were constructed in the early part of the seventeenth
century.

The enclosing of the communion table in the church of Stow, in the county
of Norfolk, by rails, about the year 1622, is noticed by W