The Very Stones Cry Out

St Martin's Tarrant Hinton

Throughout her post-reformation history as a Protestant Church, there have been individuals and groups within the Church of England who have tried to retain part of the catholic past. The Oxford Movement was one of the high points of that attempt; and by the mid-twentieth century, it even seemed as though there was a prospect of catholicism becoming the mainstream within Anglicanism. Now, with so many protestant novelties taking root, that dream is increasingly seen for what it always was, just so much romantic nonsense.

Font at the main South door

Yet always there have been witnesses to the catholic past.  Among the most effective witnesses are the buildings which survived, albeit stripped of much of their former beauty. Since arriving in Wiltshire I have been gradually discovering some of those witnesses. In neighbouring Dorset, Tarrant Hinton is fairly typical. A stone-built church mostly of the 15th Century, yet including evidence of long continuity - particularly through its Romanesque font. The walls which once would have been plastered and painted are stripped back to the bare flint and stone. The ancient stained glass has gone. The image of the Good Shepherd is modern, as are the crosses and crucifix. The brackets for images of the saints are empty. And yet, it survives.

At one time the parish probably had its own Rector. By the 1980s it had become part of a group of eight parishes.Today the Chase Benefice includes twelve former separate parishes, each with its own church, - one in private ownership - but only one full-time Rector, assisted by a number of retired clergyand various 'Local Licenced Ministers', most of them laypeople. It seems Tarrant Hinton has neither Churchwarden nor Pastoral Assistant, but the building is well cared for - it even has CCTV on the tower to deter would-be lead thieves from stripping the roof. The windows contain mostly non-representational glass, though St Edward (the Confessor) flanked by two other saints is in a South Aisle - so the Oxford Movement must have had its effect even here.

Remnants of an Easter Sepulchre

...UBI POSIT ERAT DOMINUM (DN)

For me, the most remarkable and most moving element in the church is a recess in the north wall of the  chancel. It is the frame of the former  Easter Sepulchre. That much is clear from the beaurifully carved  Latin inscription, Venite, Videte.... 'come and see where the Lord was laid'. On the wall above are two censing angels. Such sepulchres had a vital role in the Easter Triduum. Another such is at Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. There, carved sodiers sleep below the tomb slab. In other places, an actual tomb provided the resting place for the Corpus on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Classical Capital and Angel in a roundel beneath the frieze

The  quality of the carving, and the classical details show that this was a costly addition ot the church, made probably only a few years before the devastation of the 'reformation'. It reminds me of 'Voices from Merebath', when the Vicar provides new vestments which will also be made useless by the 'reformers'. How much art, how much beauty, how much scholarship, how much pastoral care, how much great architecture was vandalised, all so that Henry VIII could buy his supporters, fight off Catholic Europe, and marry his mistress. Ichabod, the glory is departed.

Worship: Catholic & Protestant

William Cobbett: Englishman

There is no excuse. I came to William Cobbett very late in the day. Yet at one time my grandparents lived in Botley in a house called Cobbett's Cottage, and my grandfather worked the kitchen gardens of the big house which once must have belonged to Cobbett. At last, I am remedying my omission. First I read Anthony Burton's biography of the great man, entitled simply "William Cobbett: Englishman." Now I am enjoying accompanying Cobbett on his "Rural Rides".

He made these journeys on foot and on horse-back in the first quarter of the 19th Century. The wars with the French were recently ended, there was terrible rural poverty. As he comments on the state of the crops through the counties where he travels he also notes the situation of the farm workers. Where the land is rich, it has been enclosed by wealthy land-owners, and the poor are treated as slave labour. They fare much better in the poorer lands, where it has not been worthwhile for the rich to take them in; so they are able to keep pigs and poultry and gather wood for their fires; Elsewhere, they are persecuted for daring to snare a rabbit or kill a deer, and the harshest of penalties are handed down to them by those landowners and their friends.

He is very harsh too on the Church of England with so many of its clergy in sinecures, living off tithes extracted from struggling farmers. Hatred of the French, and of Catholicism, was deeply engrained in England by this time; yet Cobbett often has a good word for both the Catholic Church and for France. Forgive a rather long extract from his visit to Tenterden in Kent.

"The church at this place is a very large and fine old building. The tower stands upon a base thirty feet square. Like the church at Goudhurst it will hold three thousand people. And, let it be observed, that, when these churches were built, people had not yet thought of cramming them with pews as a stable is filled with stalls. Those who built these churches, had no idea that worshipping God meant, going to sit to hear a man talk out what he called preaching. By worship they meant very different things; and, above all things, when they had made a fine and noble building, they did not dream of disfiguring the inside of it by filling its floor with large and deep boxes made of deal boards. Some were not stuck into pews lined with green or red cloth, while others were rammed into corners to stand erect, or sit on the floor. These odious distinctions are of  Protestant origin and growth. This  lazy lolling in pews we owe to what is called the Reformation. " ... "I often wonder how it is,that the present parsons are not ashamed to call the churches theirs! They must know the origin of them; and, how they  can look at them, and, at the same time, revile the Catholics, is astonishing to me."

The history of Pues

Something of the same feeling saw the Cambridge Camden Society publishing a paper read to them in 1841 on the History of Pues.  Like Cobbett a chief argument against Pues was that they "shut out the poor, who ought if there be any difference, to be first cared for in church, not last." The writer goes on to ask, "What is the History of Pues, but the history of the intrusion of human pride,and selfishness, and indolence, into the worship of God?" What we have come to call the Oxford Movement was just getting into gear and we should recognise Cobbett as one of its progenitors.

So to return to Cobbett. He was not only hard on the Church of England. "This evening I have been to the Methodist Meeting-house. I was attracted,fairly drawn all down the street, by the singing. When I came to the place the parson was got into prayer. His hands were clenched together and held up, his face turned up and back so as to be nearly parallel with the ceiling, and he was bawling away, with his 'do thou' and 'mayest thou' and 'may we' enough to stun one.  Noisy, however, as he was, he was unable to fix the attention of a parcel of girls in the gallery, whose eyes were all over the place while his eyes were so devoutly shut up. After a deal of this rigmarole called prayer, came the preachy as the negroes call it; and a preachy it really was. Such a mixture of whining cant and of foppish affectation I scarcely ever heard in my life." So, if you have not yet read Cobbett for yourself, ask Father Christmas for the Rural Rides. I wish he were around to comment on some of what we dare call worship today - in both Catholic and Protestant churches.