to a great extent almost necessary. But in themselves they were ill
becoming the place and time; and a statute passed in the first year of
our present sovereign has now made them illegal.[1075] The publication
just before the sermon of poor-rate assessment, and of days of appeal in
matters of house or window tax,[1076] must often have had a very
distracting effect upon ratepayers who otherwise might have listened
calmly to the arguments and admonitions of their pastor. John Johnson,
writing in 1709, remarked with much truth that it was quite scandalous
for hue-and-cries, and enquiries after lost goods, to be published in
church.[1077] Even in our own generation. Mr. Beresford Hope, telling
what he himself remembers, records how in the church he frequented as a
boy, the clerk would make such announcements after the repeating of the
Nicene Creed, or of meetings at the town hall of the executors of a late
duke.[1078]

It was chiefly in the earlier part of the period that an observer
visiting one church after another would have noticed the great
differences in points of order. Such departures from uniformity were
slight as compared to what they had been in the reigns of Elizabeth or
Charles the First, yet were sufficient to arouse considerable uneasiness
in the minds of many friends of the Church, as well as to point many
sarcasms from some of its opponents. There were some special reasons for
disquietude in those who feared to diverge a hand-breadth from the
established rule. Although since the Restoration, the Church of England
was undoubtedly popular, and had acquired, out of the very troubles
through which she had passed, a venerable and well-tried aspect, there
was, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, a wide-spread
feeling of instability both in ecclesiastical and political matters, to
an extent no longer easy to be realised. No one felt sure what Romish
and Jacobite machinations might not yet effect. For if the Stuarts
remounted the throne, Rome might yet recover ascendancy. The
Protestantism of the country was not yet absolutely secure. And
therefore many Churchmen who, if they consulted their feelings only,
would have been thoroughly in accord with the Laudean divines in their
love of a more ornate ritual, were content to stand fast by such simple
ceremonies as were everywhere acknowledged to be the rule. However much
they might have a right to claim as their legitimate due usages which
their rubrics see