'Comely uniformity': how the Laudians won the 'altar wars'

In 1660, with the monarchy restored and the nightmare of the 1650s over, and as the Laudian Mark Frank rejoiced in the "miraculous restoring" of a "comely uniformity" to the Church of England's worship, the Presbyterian polemicist Zachary Crofton lamented the re-emergence of the signs of Laudianism:

Bowing to the Communion Table Symbolizeth with the worship of Pagans and Papists; those known Idolaters, especially in that order in which it was of late (and beginneth afresh to be) used among us, in his Majesties Royal Chappel, Lambeth Chappel, the Cathedral and many Parish Churches, whilst the Table must be made in the frame of an Altar, railed in, and advanced as an holy Inclosure; fixed at the East end of the Church; and furnished with Altar-Furniture, and Coverings, and Candlesticks with Candles in them placed therein.

In the 1640s it had seemed as if the anti-Laudians had won the altar wars.  Parliament had decreed that rails must be destroyed, and the Holy Table removed from its altar-wise position at the east end.  But now, after the deluge, rails were returning, and the Holy Table was again placed at the east end.  As Crofton bitterly noted, it was to be seen in "many Parish Churches".  This was part of what John Morrill has described as the "spontaneity and responsiveness in the restoration of the old Church" during 1660, even before the return of the King.  

The theological context for the re-emergence of a Laudian ordering of the Holy Table quickly became apparent in the Restoration Church. In 1660, Eleazor Duncon's De adoratione Dei versus altare - originally delivered in Cambridge in 1634, in the midst of the 'altar wars' - was translated into English, with the subtitle revealing its Laudian commitment: That pious and devout ceremony of bowing towards the altar vindicated as lawfull, pious and laudable. Sparrow's decidedly Laudian A Rationale Upon the Book of Common Prayer was regularly reprinted after 1660, with its defence of railed altars:

Now that no man take offence at the word Altar, Let him know that anciently both these names Altar or holy Table were used for the same things, though most frequently, the Fathers and Councils use the word Altar. And both are fit names for that holy thing.

Daniel Brevint - the former Huguenot who had, with the encouragement of Cosin, received episcopal ordination in 1650, while episcopacy and the liturgy remained prohibited in England - published his The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice in 1673. This popular and thoroughly Laudian work was entirely unembarrassed about the use of the word 'altar':

Here, then, I come to God's Altar with a full Persuasion that these Words, This is my Body, promise me more than a Figure.

The return of railed altars and of a robust theological defence of the practice was clearly evident in the Restoration Church: but not immediately everywhere.  Perhaps what is most significant in the masterly study by Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547-c.1700, is their account of how the post-1660 Laudian victory in the 'altar wars' was achieved incrementally over decades.  While Restoration bishops in some places did actively encourage the immediate return of the Laudian ordering, the material challenges and concerns facing a Church which had been plundered and endured violent iconoclasm during the 1640s resulted in "more pressing matters" in the "reconstruction of the Restoration church".

Two events, however, ensured the Laudian victory.  Firstly, the 1666 Great Fire of London necessitated the reconstruction of 55 London churches.  In these churches, railed altar-tables were the norm.  Fincham and Tyacke point to the fact that Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who oversaw the reconstruction, was "a scion of a distinguished Laudian family".  Added to this, the three churchmen advising him - Sheldon of Canterbury, Henchman of London (an ally of Laud in the 1630s), and Sancroft as Dean of St. Paul's - were all Laudians.  What also needs to be recognised, however, is that no controversy accompanied this process. There were no 'altar wars' in the 1670s and 1680s as Wren's churches were completed.

The Laudian example set by Wren's churches new London churches, and the political background of the so-called 'Tory Reaction' of 1681-86, ensured that the provinces could now follow the London fashion, with bishops actively promoting railed altars during the 1680s. This was part of a wider agenda of - to use Laud's words from the 1630s - ensuring that "the external worship of God in this church might be kept in uniformity and decency, and in some beauty of holiness".  Against the forces of both Dissent and Popery, and in the face of the attempts by James II to mobilise both against the Anglican establishment, railed altars were emblems of a confident, popular, militant Anglicanism.

We might note the contrasts between the 'altar wars' of the 1630s and the process of the 1670s and 1680s.  Laud faced vicious (and paranoid) political opponents, entrenched opposition from a loud clerical element within the Church of England and, despite some notable lay support, a laity deeply uneasy about divisions in church and kingdom. The Laudians of the Restoration Church, however, knew that the spectre of 'Puritanism' had been damned by the nightmare of civil wars and Protectorate.  Widespread and popular lay identification with militant Anglicanism now ensured support for railed altars. As Fincham and Tyacke put it, "By the early 1680s evidence of grass-roots support for the railed altar becomes abundant", with court records and faculty petitions desiring the "ancient custome" of railed altars and the Holy Table in its "proper place againe". 

This is also suggestive of how the Laudianism of the Restoration Church was a chastened, wiser Laudianism in comparison to that of the 1630s.  The limits of clerical and episcopal authority were recognised; the need for lay support accepted; and significantly greater political skill was demonstrated in ensuring that railed altars were understood to be a means of securing Anglican uniformity and conformity, rather than allowing opponents to portray them as a divisive innovation. 

By 1700 railed altars were the norm, with support for them, after the departure of key high church figures to the Nonjuror schism, driven from 'below' rather than from 'above', from parishes rather than by bishops.  The extent of the Laudian victory is seen in the fact that popular support for railed altars continued in a Church of England with William III as Supreme Governor and Tillotson as Archbishop of Canterbury.  When Tillotson's fellow-Latitudinarian Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely, published in 1713 his The Christian Sacrifice: A Treatise Shewing the Necessity, End, and Manner of Receiving the Holy Communion, the frontspiece had a perfectly Laudian illustration of a railed altar (shown here).  It was no different at all to the depiction seen in the Laudian Wheatly's commentary on the Prayer Book (see the illustration below).  

The Laudians had triumphed.  And not just in the material terms of ordering of rails and altar: the Laudian triumph was much more complete than this alone.  The Laudians triumphed in their conviction that the railed altar was permitted by and compatible with the rubric at the opening of the Communion Office, regarding the positioning of the Holy Table.  Wheatly's commentary on the Prayer Book - first published in 1710 and then republished on numerous occasions throughout the rest of the century - represented the settled, conventional understanding of the 18th century Church when it set forth the Laudian position as common-sense, legal, and appropriate:

Now it is plain from this injunction [i.e. the Elizabethan Injunctions], as well as from the eighty-second canon of the church (which is almost verbatim the same), that there is no obligation arising from this rubric to move the Table at the time of the Communion, unless the people cannot otherwise conveniently hear and communicate. The injunction declares, that the holy Table is to beset in the same place where the Altar stood, which every one knows was at the East end of the chancel. And when both the injunction and canon speak of its being moved at the time of the Communion, it supposes that the minister could not otherwise be heard ... So that we are not under any obligation to move the Table, unless necessity requires ... whenever the churches are built so as the Minister can be heard, and conveniently administer the Sacrament at the place where the Table usually stands, he is rather obliged to administer in the chancel, as appears from the rubric before the Commandments, as also from that before the Absolution, by both which rubrics the Priest is directed to turn himself to the People.

The Laudians also triumphed in refuting the key allegation made by their opponents in the 'altar wars' of the 1630s, an allegation perhaps best demonstrated in the words of the Presbyterian controversialist Prynne:

It hath been a great Question lately raysed and much agitated among us, by some Innovating Romish spirits; In what place of the Church or Chancell the Lords Table ought to stand, specially at the time of the Sacraments administration; whether in the Body or midst of the Church, Chancell or Quire, or at the East end of the Quire Alterwise, where some now rayle it in, and plead it ought of right to stand?

That railed altars were not 'Romish' had been obvious not only from the sacramental theology of individual Laudians during the 1630s (refuting both transubstantiation and a repetition of the sacrifice of the Cross), but also in the pre-civil war high watermark of Laudian ambitions, the Canons of 1640:

And we declare that this situation of the holy Table, doth not imply that it is, or ought to be esteemed a true and proper Altar, whereon Christ is again really sacrificed: but it is, and may be called an Altar by us, in that sense in which the Primitive Church called it an Altar, and in no other. 

Such voices, however, were not heard over the din of the 1630s and amidst the violent iconoclasm of the 1640s.  Beginning in the Restoration Church, and then almost universally in the 18th century Church, the identification of the railed altar with 'Romish' doctrine was entirely discredited, with railed altars side by side with a clearly Reformed Eucharistic doctrine. Partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood in the holy Sacrament was understood in Receptionist or Virtualist terms.  The Sacrament was, following Taylor, a representative, commemorative sacrifice, terms which even Stephen Hampton in his study of the anti-Laudian Conformists of the 1620s and 1630s admits were an expression of "Reformed orthodoxy".  The Laudians were right: to term railed altars 'popish' was nonsense.

The final element of the Laudian triumph in the 'altar wars' was the proving correct of their conviction that railed altars would underpin and encourage a lively sacramental piety.  Laud had said that his concern for "uniformity and decency" was because "with the contempt of the worship of God the inward fell away apace". The "comely uniformity" of railed altars contributed to a rich, warm sacramental piety sustained throughout the 18th and into the early 19th centuries. This was a piety seen in the form for the consecration of churches used by Archbishop William King of Dublin (1703-29), which petitioned that "those who approach thine holy Altar" would be "fed with the Bread of Life".  It is this, above all else, which gives us reason to be thankful that the Laudians triumphed - and triumphed convincingly - in the 'altar wars'.