Note 422 — Chapter XIV

Weever, writing in 1631, complains of pews as a novelty. "They are made high and easy, for parishioners to sit or sleep in, a fashion of no long continuance, and worthy of reformation."

In the Visitation Books of the Archdeacon of Norfolk there are many presentments in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. against high-backed pews as nuisances. In 1638, some of the parishioners of Great St. Andrew's Church, Cambridge, were presented for not kneeling at the Sacrament, and excused themselves by saying their seats were so straight that, being filled, they could not kneel.—Hist. of Yarmouth, by C. J. Palmer, 127.