Towards the end of the seventeenth century, and in the reign of Queen Anne, there was some little discussion, in which Bishop Beveridge and others took part[911], as to the propriety of retaining or renovating chancel screens.  In mediaeval times, these ‘cancelli,’ from which the chancel took its name, had been universal; and a few had been put up under the Stuart sovereigns, notwithstanding the offence with which they were regarded by those who looked upon them as one of ’the hundred points of popery.’

We find Archbishop Secker expressing his regret, not without cause, that chancels were not, as a rule, kept in much better order than other parts of the building.  Incumbents were by no means so careful as they should be, and lay impropriators, whether private or collegiate, were generally strangely neglectful.  ‘It is indispensably requisite,’ he added, ’to preserve them not only standing and safe, but clean, neat, decent, agreeable; and it is highly fit to go further, and superadd, not a light and trivial finery, but such degrees of proper dignity and grandeur as we are able, consistently with other real obligations[912].’

The condition and decoration of the Lord’s Table differed widely, especially in the earlier years of the period, in accordance with varieties of opinion and feeling in clergymen and in their congregations.  For the most part it was insignificantly and meanly furnished, and hemmed closely in by the Communion rails.  At the beginning of the century, it would appear that in the London churches a great deal of care and cost had been lately expended on ‘altar-pieces.’  In one church after another, Paterson records the attraction of a ’fine’—­a ’beautiful’—­a ’stately’—­a ‘costly’ altar-piece[913].  Many of these, however, would by no means approve themselves to a more cultivated taste than that which then prevailed.  Instead of the Greek marbles and rich baldachino which Wren had intended for the east end of St. Paul’s, the authorities substituted imitation marble, and fluted pilasters painted with ultramarine and veined with gold[914].  The Vicar of Leeds, writing to Ralph Thoresby in 1723, tells him that a pleasing surprise awaits his return, ’Our altar-piece is further adorned, since you went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over the middle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet.’  If, however, the reader cannot altogether admire the picture thus summoned before his eyes, he will at all events agree with the words that follow:  ’But the greatest ornament is a choir well filled with devout communicants[915].’  The painted ‘crimson curtains’ at the east end of Battersea Church, ’trimmed with amber, and held up by gold cord with heavy gold tassels,’[916] may serve as another representative example of the kind of ‘altar-piece’ which commended itself to eighteenth-century Churchmen.