the church, with a covering of silk, a stool and a cushion ; there was a burying pall kept safely in a long oaken box, a short surplice for funerals, a sleeveless surplice for the clerk. And here again we may notice that in a specially well-furnished church there is no mention of cross or candlesticks ; only the altar-piece of mahogany, which con- tained a picture of the Deposition, was surmounted by a pediment ' furnished with three sham tapers in candlesticks carved and gilt.' [1]
The interesting point in connection with this inventory is that it was made in the time of a rector, Dr. John Davey, who had no reputa- tion for singularity, and who afterwards, as Master of Balliol, was in no way distinguished from his predecessors.[2] The previous rector, from whom he probably inherited some of the unusual ornaments,[3] was equally insignificant. And yet it is difficult to believe in the face of the evidence given by such a keen observer as Cole of Bletchley that such cases were common, at any rate in this part of the country.
The Methodists secured several centres of influence in this county towards the close of the century. Wesley himself made a preaching excursion to Beaconsfield and High Wycombe in 1757,[4] and the latter became the chief scene of his labours and those of his followers from that time forward.[5] The county of Buckingham was soon made part of a ' circuit ' embracing also Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire.[6] It was under the influence of Wesley that Hannah Ball began her Sunday School at High Wycombe in 1769,[7] fourteen years before the similar effort made by Robert Raikes at Gloucester : it was in connection with the parish church, and she was careful to take the children there after their lessons. In 1777 a Methodist Chapel was first built at High Wycombe, and Wesley came to preach there ; it was on this occasion that he was unable to proceed with his sermon because a drummer had been hired to play just outside the window.[8] At Aylesbury there were Methodists also, though for some time they preached in the Baptists' meeting-house. [9] In 1768 Thomas Grove, one of the six students expelled from St. Edmund's Hall for holding private prayer-meetings, came back to his father's house near Wooburn and began to preach and hold religious exercises there : a congregation was formed which afterwards built a chapel at Core's End. [10] The Methodist influence also affected
- ↑ The genuineness of the inventory and other points connected with it have been discussed in a paper written on the subject by Dr. J. Wickham Legg for the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society. The inventory is on a loose sheet in the Churchwardens' Book of Bledlow, and was recently deposited for a short time in the British Museum, where it was seen by the writer of this paper.
- ↑ See the paper already referred to by Dr. J. Wickham Legg.
- ↑ Dr. Davey became Rector of Bledlow according to the returns of Wake and Gibson in 1775 ; but the alb appears in the Churchwardens' Book under 1771-2 ; the word 'altar' begins to be used in- stead of ' Communion Table ' in 1770. At the beginning of the book (which is dated 1702) the ' chalice ' of the inventory is called, as was usual at the time, the ' communion cup.' It seems that some new influence began to be at work about the church somewhere in the middle of the century. Dr. Wickham Legg suggests some connection with the non-jurors : this is of course merely conjectural.
- ↑ Tyerman, Life of Wesley, ii. 274.
- ↑ Ibid. 534, 614, etc.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 29.
- ↑ Parker, History of Wycombe, 164.
- ↑ Tyerman, Life of Wesley, iii. 241, 251.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 29.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 33, and Records of Bucks, iv. 21. The (Episcopal) Chapel at Loudwater was built and endowed in 1791. Lipscomb, History of Bucks, iii. 652.
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