al in country places. In 1725, Swift, enumerating 'the plagues of
a Country Life,' makes 'a church without pews' a special item in his
list.[882] But 'repewed,' had been for many years past a characteristic
part of formula which recorded the church restorations of the
period.[883] There are plenty of allusions in the writings of
contemporary poets and essayists to the cosy, sleep-provoking structures
in which people of fashion and well-to-do citizens could enjoy without
attracting too much notice--

the Sunday due
Of slumbering in an upper pew.[884]

In Swift's humorous metamorphosis--

A bedstead of the antique mode,
Compact of timber many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use,
Was metamorphos'd into pews;
Which still their ancient nature keep,
By lodging folks dispos'd to sleep.[885]

Those of the more exclusive sort were often built up with tall
partitions, like Lady Booby's, 'in her pew, which the congregation could
not see into.'[886] Sometimes they were curtained, 'sometimes filled
with sofas and tables, or even provided with fireplaces;'[887] and cases
might be quoted where the tedium of a long service, or the appetite
engendered by it, were relieved by the entry, between prayers and
sermon, of a livery servant with sherry and light refreshments.[888]
Even into cathedrals cumbrous ladies' pews were often introduced.
Horace Walpole tells an extraordinary story of Gloucester Cathedral in
1753. A certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewashing
and otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head that
the soul of a favourite daughter had passed into a robin. The Dean and
Chapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind of
aviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hung
with green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small corner
cupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In
Ripon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls was
converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained
uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too
often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in
whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from
sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be
here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in
the larger towns; and