Stanford Rivers: Sexual Discrimination and the 1638 Visitation

It is clear that the ecclesiastical visitation, made to each church in the archdeaconry of Essex
in 1638, was intended to ensure conformity to the doctrines favoured by Charles I and Laud.
The following injunction is written at the beginning of the visitation book:
I pray you, sett down in the latter end of evry order that the congregation bare both in
service and sermon tyme, that the people stand up at the creed and the gospelI and that all
people come up to kneele at the rayle to receive the Communion and the minister shall
publish the order in church”.
In this context “bare” means to remove one’s hat, certainly nothing more radical! Puritans,
especially the extreme fringe represented by the Quakers, refused on principle to doff their
hats in church, or indeed in the presence of any authority. Puritans were accustomed to
receiving the sacrament standing, often in the body of the church where the communion
table would be placed in defiance of Laudian doctrine.
The entry for Stanford Rivers starts by issuing instructions for the proper arrangement of the
communion table and altar rails, and suggest that the rail at that time ran round three, or,
possibly, all four, sides of the altar. Chancel and nave were to be provided with ceilings (so
presumably both were still open to the rafters) and various books were to be provided
(including the Book of Homilies, a collection of “model” sermons). The church lacked a table
of the degrees of marriage (a painted board listing the relatives you were not allowed to
marry), a font cover (usually lockable, as there were concerns about the possible theft of
holy water) and a hood for the minister. Both the chancel and nave were already pewed, as
there are instructions that some of the higher pews were to be reduced to the level of the
rest. Similar instructions are to be found in the visitation records of most of the neighbouring
churches but there was one which appears to be unique to Stanford Rivers:
“the churchwardens to place the parishioners, the men on one side of the church, the
women on the other, the better sort next unto the chancel and the rest according to their
quaiiitye".
Segregation by social class was, of course, entirely normal and it was customary to allocate
the pews that were near the chancel to the better houses. It is easy to forget that
seventeenth century society was highly hierarchical and that the position of the occupant’s
pew was a visible demonstration of his or her social position. There was even a visible
hierarchy amongst the servants, who stood by the pew door of their master or mistress.
Transgressions of the traditional seating arrangements led to bitter and vituperative disputes
in the church courts. By the eighteenth century the normal arrangement in parish churches
was for particular pews to be allocated to particular properties, so that everyone from one
household sat together, though segregation by sex continued to be common in
nonconformist chapels.
Though segregation of men and women was commonly practised in the early Christian

church, it was steadily abandoned in the face of social pressures and the desire for
household pews by the 17 th century, in spite of opposition by some divines who wrote of the
“promiscuity” of allowing the sexes to mix in church. What was being insisted on at Stanford
Rivers was an attempt by Laudian divines to return to the practices of the earlier church,
even though they were swimming against the inexorable social pressures for families to sit
together. Why was there an attempt to segregate the congregation in Stanford Rivers?
The rector at this time was John Mainwaring who was ultra loyalist to the establishment. In
1627 (before he came to this parish) he had asserted that the king was not bound to observe
the laws of the realm, that the authority of Parliament was not necessary for raising taxes
and that those who refused to pay what the king demanded (with or without Parliamentary
sanction) offended against the laws of God. He was summoned to appear before the House
of Lords, fined £1000, imprisoned during the pleasure of the House and suspended from the
ministry for 3 years. Instructions were given that his printed sermons were to be burnt.
Charles I’s response was to prorogue Parliament (which annulled this sentence) and to
present him to the well endowed living of Stanford Rivers. This action provoked a tart and
ominous comment from Oliver Cromwell. “Mainwaring, so justly accused for his sermons by
this House, was preferred to a rich living. If these are the steps to church preferment, what
may we not expect?" it seems very probable that Mainwaring would have supported
anything in line with strict Laudian doctrine in his parish. Perhaps the church authority hoped
that, by establishing segregation in Stanford Rivers, a precedent could be established which
could be used to persuade adjoining parishes to conform. If this was the plan, it was to be
thwarted by Laud’s imminent downfall, and the social pressures of the time would have
regained the upper hand in Stanford Rivers.