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All Saints, Messing

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At first sight this is rather a gawky church, its freestone-dressed red brick tower peeping over trees at the village street, and beyond it a large late-Victorian nave, a result of earthquake damage and a rich and enthusiastic patronage. Pax Vobiscum, it says on the door, this church is open every day. The outer doors were wedged open, and I stepped inside to the inevitablly tunnel-like feel of the long aisleless nave. But my eyes were immediately drawn to the east and one of the county's jaw-dropping moments, for the chancel and south transept here constitute one of the best surviving examples in England of a Laudian worship space. Most of the fixtures, fittings and windows in the chancel date from the pivotal year of 1634, during the brief tenure of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud and his attempts, under the protection of King Charles I, to reintroduce sacramentalism into the Church of England. For more than eighty years communion had been celebrated at a Holy Table in the nave. Now, Laud brought the altar back into the chancel, railing it in against dogs and raising it up on steps. The puritans considered this was idolatrous, and created a heirarchy between priest and people. Laud was unbending, and the conflict was one of several factors that led inexorably to the English Civil War. The rails do not survive at Messing, but remarkably the glass of the east window does. It is likely it was removed soon after installation as at Peterhouse Chapel in Cambridge, and returned after the Restoration of the Monarchy. The glass depicts the allegorical figures of Faith, Hope and Charity with the Works of Mercy beneath. The furnishings of the chancel are richly appointed. The stalls are not choir stalls, but communion stalls in which Laud imagined communicants would kneel to receive the sacrament. The splendid carved royal arms are dated 1634, and warn underneath My sonne feare thou the Lord and the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change from Proverbs 24, as well as other Bible verses intended to enforce the point. The inlaid stone floor has an inscription from the new King James Bible. It is a fascinating insight into a model of the Church of England that lasted barely ten years before the triumph of puritanism extinguished it. Simon Knott, May 2020 Follow these journeys as they happen at Last Of England Twitter.

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