must not be taken as examples of what others ventured upon.  But carelessness in all such matters went on increasing till about the seventh decade of the century.  After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be found against the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the white stockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, in which clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear.  A writer at the very end of the century pointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of his brother clergy to the distinctly anti-Christian purpose which had animated the French Convention in their suppression of the clerical habit.[1115]

If a modern Churchman could be carried back to the days of Queen Anne, and were at Church while service was going on, his eye would probably be caught by people standing up where he had been accustomed to see them sitting, and sitting down when, in our congregations, every one would be standing up.  Some people, following the common custom of the Puritans, stood during the prayers.[1116] Some, on the other hand, sat during the creed.[1117] In both these cases there was plain neglect of the rubric.  Where the Prayer-book was silent, uncertainty and variation of usage were more reasonable.  Thus some stood at the Epistle, as well as at the Gospel,[1118] and some whenever the second lesson was from one of the Evangelists.[1119] What Cowper calls the ’divorce of knees from hassocks,’ was perhaps not so frequent then as now.[1120] In pictures of church interiors of that date, the congregation is generally represented as really kneeling.  Still, it was much too frequent, and quite fell in with the careless, self-indulgent habits of the time.  Before the middle of the century it had become very general.  In one of the papers of the ‘Tatler,’ we find there were some who neither stood nor knelt, but remained lazily sitting throughout the service like ’an audience at a playhouse.’[1121] Sitting while the Psalms were being sung was, notwithstanding many remonstrances, the rule rather than the exception during the earlier part of the century.  The Puritan commission of 1641 had spoken of standing at the hymns as an innovation.[1122] Even Sherlock, in 1681, speaks of ’that universal practice of sitting while we sing the Psalms.’[1123] In 1717, Fleetwood speaks of standing at such times as if it were a singularity rather than otherwise.[1124] Hickes, on the other hand, writes in 1701, as if those who refused to stand at the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part ’stiff, morose, and saturnine votists.’[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on the one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of Queen Anne’s time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule which was henceforth generally recognised.  In 1741, Secker speaks of sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a mere careless habit.[1126]