Illustrative Documents: Laud's Visitation Injunctions, 1635

Registrum Statutorum et Consuetudinum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Sancti Pauli Londiniensis. Originally published by Nichols and Sons, London, 1873.

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'Illustrative Documents: Laud's Visitation Injunctions, 1635', in Registrum Statutorum et Consuetudinum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Sancti Pauli Londiniensis, (London, 1873) pp. 423-424. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/st-pauls-register/pp423-424 [accessed 18 March 2024]

XX. ORDERS ENJOINED BY ARCHBISHOP LAUD UPON THE CATHEDRALS OF CHICHESTER, LICHFIELD, WORCESTER, AND GLOUCESTER, AT HIS METROPOLITICAL VISITATION. 1635. (fn. 1)

1. That none of your Prebendaryes, Residenciary or att larg, doe att any time come into your Choir to heare Divine Service or Sermons without a surplise or without square capps and hoods fitt for their degrees.

6. That you provide Copes fitting for the service of your Cathedrall by one a-year, untill you be sufficiently furnished with them.

1. That the two payer of organs in your Church which are much defective be speedily amended; and, if it will stand with the grace of your Church and be more convenient and vsefull for your Quire (as Wee conceive it will), that you putt them both into one, and make a chair organ (fn. 2) of them.

3. That William Vint,—Aspley, and Richard Adams, laymen, and having noe place in the Church, who showed themselves amongst your Petti-Canons in their Colledge, where they live as inmates on purpose to free themselves from vndergoing of offices in the Comonwealth, necessary for his Majesties service, be forthwith discharged from their dwelling or lodgings in the said Colledge, that they may liue publiquely amongst other laymen, and beare such offices as shall necessarily and fitly be imposed on them, as the Governors of that Colledg will answer it att their perill. And that noe men of the like condition be att any time received there againe.

5. That your Choristers be duly and diligently catechised, which hath been formerly too much neglected.

8. Item, in regard it is his Majestyes expresse pleasur that the Bodyes of Cathedrall Churches should not be pestered with standing seates, contrary to the course of Cathedralls, and the dignity of those goodly piles of building, Wee must and doe require you that all standing and fixt seates, aswell those where the Mayor and Aldermen's Wives vse to sitt as others betweene the pillas, to be taken downe, and other moveable ones fitted into their roome, according to such directions as Wee gaue to the Deane by our late letters written to him. But the seate where the Mayor and his bretheren vsed to sitt, as also that where the Deane and Prebends vsed to sitt in sermon tyme (because to our knowledge they are without all blemish to the Church, and more convenient then they can any where else be placed), Wee doe hereby require that they be left standing to the vse aforesaid.

13. Whether be there within the Church or the precincts or limitts thereof any usurers, contrary to the statute in that behalfe made, drunkards, adulterers, fornicators, incestious persons, symonists, open recusants of ether sect, or such as neglect to repaire to the Church for service, doe not receaue the Com[m]union thrice yearly, or are vehemently suspected of any of these crimes aforsaid, or any that be familiarly and dayly conversant with recusants and notorious papists, or harbourers and receivers of any such into your houses. (fn. 3)

6. That the foundation of our Church consisteth of a Deane, 6 Prebendaries, 6 Petty-Canons, 6 Lay-singing-men, 8 Choristers and their Master, a Schoole-mr and an Vsher, 4 Almes-men, 2 Sextons, 2 Porters, one Butler, one Cooke, one vnder Cooke. (fn. 4)

Footnotes

  • 1. Selected from a series of similar Orders preserved in MS No. 943 in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth.
  • 2. Chair Organ, the old name of that part of the instrument which is now called the Choir Organ.
  • 3. From the Articles of Enquiry at Gloucester.
  • 4. From the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester's Answers to the Articles exhibited in the Metropolitical Visitation of Archbishop Laud.