USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Newport > Trinity church in Newport, Rhode Island; a history of the fabric > Part 6
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According to the record, only three pews were removed. These must have been in the middle of the front row. Their owners were allotted pews elsewhere, one of them, "the widow Norton," was to have the "south pew in the upper gallery at the west end of the Church." This "upper gallery" may have been put in to relieve crowding. It is strange that there is no other mention of it, and that no tradition of it seems to persist.
97 Only twelve of Wren's London churches are mentioned as having organs in 1709. (Wren Society Publications, x, 44.)
98 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, PP. 57, 58.
A. Suggested Original Arrangement at West End of Trinity with the Upper Gallery
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B. Suggestion of Munday's Setting of the Organ with the Pews behind it and the Upper Gallery
FIGURE 22
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The organ, then, could not be set back against the wall. It must be set forward. The depth of the old case is little over three feet. If we add to that the width of the old keyboard, now in the New- port Historical Society, and the space for the organist's seat, we shall have about four feet more, or say 7 feet 6 in all. This would leave only four feet for the upper gallery-hence the break for- ward in the center of the gallery and the placing of the organ well toward the edge of the gallery, as in St. Vedast's, Foster Lane.
This position of the organ (Figure 22B) left space for the line of pews against the wall as well as for the upper gallery. That there were pews behind the organ is shown by the vote of Easter Mon- day, April 19, 1772: "that an alteration be made in the galleries, by removing the negroes to the west end of the Church, provided it be agreeable to the proprietors of the pews behind the organ to exchange their pews for those to be built at the south side of the gallery, where the negroes now sit."99
There is no record of any provision for singers. None was nec- essary, since the separate choir was not common in parish churches, even in England as early as this, and the records of Trinity, es- pecially the account of the famous controversy over the refusal of the clerk to sing the organist's tune and of the organist to play the clerk's tune, show that the singing was carried on by the whole congregation. "On April 4, 1667," says Mr. Pepys, "To Hack- ney ... here I was told that at their church they have a fair pair of organs, which play while the people sing, which I am mighty glad of, wishing the like at our church in London." Still in 1714, it is said that "most Churches and Chappels are adorned with very good Organs, which accompany the Singing of Psalms, and play Voluntaries to the assemblies as they go out of the Churches."100
99 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 155.
100 J. Wickham Legg, English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement, pp. 185, 186.
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The Glidf D'Genre Bekdy late Lad Bhiop d' Clayne.
FIGURE 23 The West End with the Organ, in 1924
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The metrical psalms of Tate and Brady were not, however, substitutes for the regular psalms of the day in the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England, but were used, as they were authorized to be by the first convention of the Church in America, "before and after Morning and Evening Prayer and before and also after the Sermons, at the discretion of the Min- ister."
There was, thus, no separate choir at Trinity at this early date. In fact, there seems to be nothing in the records which implies anything of the sort till April 23, 1810, when it was "Voted: that the organ-loft be altered and enlarged, to accommodate the sing- ers and chanters of sacred music."101 On September 2, 1811, Mr. Levi Tower was to be requested to "set the psalms in his pew." He had already been asked to set the psalms till an organist could be obtained. It was probably at this time that the organ was set back in or near its present place, and that the pews and upper gallery disappeared (Figure 23).
The pews, which figure so often in the records, were, of course, a very important part of the church, which might almost be said to be built around them, so strongly had the Puritan notions of the importance of preaching laid hold of all early and even eight- eenth-century New England. It was to get more pews that the old church was abandoned and the new one built.
It was recognized and recorded by the minister, wardens, and vestry on Monday, December 6, 1725, that "the best and most practical method of raising Money to defray the necessary changes in the sd building was by laying out the Pews that may amt in the whole to the sum of money wanted to complete the whole Church as near as possible: and further, that the whole congregation should meet in sd Church on Wednesday morning next, where every one desirous of a Pew may be accommodated, he paying the price set 10I Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 276.
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upon sd Pew, ... to sign their names against the number of the Pews they choose. ... "102
This means that the pews were a part of the church and to be finished with it, and that a plan of them was already in existence, whereon each was numbered. The whole, or almost the whole, of the main floor was pewed. Five new pews are mentioned in the northwest corner, and for one of these the sum of fro was paid. The subscriptions obtained by the Rev. Mr. Honyman came to "near £1000 . . . though it is supposed the building will cost twice that money." That would leave at least another £1,000 to be raised by the sale of the pews, as was resolved at the vestry meeting.
The galleries were not completely "pew'd." It is probable the south gallery never was; it could not have been, at any rate, as we have seen, until 1772. The north gallery had a row of pews along the front with a passage behind them, and on this passage, against the wall, are narrow pews, perhaps merely closed-in benches in the manner of the galleries at St. James's, Piccadilly.
If we assume that it was intended that there should be sixty- four pews on the floor, and if for each gallery we assume thirteen, the number now in the front of the first five bays of the north gal- lery-the old church-we should then have thirty-two to add to sixty-four, or ninety-six, with perhaps five in the west gallery, or one hundred and three. This would give an average share per pew of a little under £10 in the £1,000 which was needed to double Mr. Honyman's collections. This agrees with the record that on May 2, 1732, John Norton paid £10 for the middle one of the five new pews lately built at the west end of the gallery. Later, £ 50 was paid for the ground rent of a pew on the floor at the east end.
The second Trinity, unlike its predecessor, had no pew "set apart for the use of the Governor," nor had it a governor's pew, with curtains, such as King's Chapel possessed. The church had, 102 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 40.
FIGURE 24 South Pew at West End
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however, and still has, two canopied pews, albeit the canopy is formed by the western gallery. These are the two pews at the en- trance from the tower, one on each side of the door. One-that on the south-was the wardens' pew, while the christening pew stood on the north.
For there was no font in the church. Following the custom of New England-Cromwell had legislated the font out of Common- wealth England-the church used the baptismal bowl, and after 1734, employed Nathaniel Kay's beautiful legacy made by Daniel Russell of Newport.
This christening pew was not peculiar to Trinity. The records of St. Paul's, Narragansett, mention "No. 24: the ffont Pew Built by M' Mee Sparran."103
Both these pews at Trinity are excellent pieces of joiner's work. The ceilings, as well as the backs against the west wall of the church, are elaborately panelled; the ceilings especially, which have the same motive as the underside of the sounding board. They follow in style the wardens' pew at Wren's St. Margaret Patten's, London,104 though with far less elaboration. They are now one pew each (Figure 24), as they originally were, but under the pressure of the desire for pews, the christening pew was divided in 1749 and Thomas Wickham and Evan Malbone were to have it, "they paying what the Minister, Church Wardens and Vestry shall think proper, either annually or as their property."105 The ward- ens' pew shared the same fate. On August 8, 1752, it was "Voted: that the vestry-room and Church Wardens' pew be con- verted into private pews, and that John Whipple, Secy. and Mr. John Bannister have the offer of them."106
103 Updike, History of the Narragansett Church, II, 473.
104 Wren Society Publications, x (Photographic Supplement), 51.
105 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 90.
106 Ibid., p. 103.
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An alley, or passage between the pews, crossed the church from east to west, connecting the two western doors. An alley also ran along each line of the piers to each of the eastern doors.
This cross alley, at the west end, was to be closed to gain more room, and four pews were allowed to be built in it, according to a vote of July 14, 1746. It was not, however, till 1758, apparently, that this was done.107 Already, on June 24, 1736, it had been voted: "that the two east doors on the north and south side of the Church be shut up and pews made there, and that two pews be made of each side of the steps of the altar, and that any person that purchases the side pews shall pay for the ground rent £50 each, and build the pew and make the window at each of their respective charges; and the other two end pews to be valued at £ 50 each likewise, and the purchasers to build their own pews."108
This vote, which has been misunderstood, is vital to the plan of the eastern end of the church. It has been assumed that the "east doors" were in the east wall of the church, opening toward Spring Street. This seems peculiar, since, as will be seen in Figure 6, this east wall was not more than six feet from the Sanford west line at one end and only a foot or so at the other. Moreover, though no one knows when Spring Street was laid out, it is hardly probable that it was built as early as this.
It will appear, if the vote is read carefully, with due regard to the plan of the church, that the words "on the north and south side of the Church," mean that one door was in the north wall, the other in the south, just as were the western doors of the church, so that the east door was symmetrical with the west door on each side. This was the arrangement at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Lon- don. A hint of this is given by a record of 1732 about William Weston's "account for the fence around the churchyard and the
107 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, pp. 84, 117.
108 Ibid., p. 67.
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FIGURE 25 Old Panel, Unpainted, and Marks of Chancel Steps
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gates thereto," and in another, of May 8, 1739, after the east doors were closed, ordering "that there be a pavement of flat stones from the westernmost gate to the Church door opposite to it." ''109
The record calls for three pews on each side of the church, one at each closed door and two at each side of the altar. It will be remembered that the east wall was flat and that the chancel or space within the rail projected into the church much farther than it now does, and that the steps were returned against the wall. Between these steps, which can be exactly located, and the north wall of the church, there is room for only two pews-the number which Daniel Ayrault shows on his plan of 1762. The other pew was opposite the door in the fifth or last bay, counting eastward from the west wall-not where the fifth window is, but at the end of the alley in front of the altar and thus symmetrical with the western entrance.
When the later pew at the north of the altar was taken out, the panelling exposed to view above the cuts for the steps (Figure 25) was bare of any paint and it was of a color, the depth of which could hardly have been acquired in six years, which seems to show that the pew had not covered that space with any upholstery and hence had not encroached upon the north steps of the railed-in space for the altar.
One of these pews figured in the famous case of Jones and Almy, which, while not now of great interest in itself, is of extreme im- portance for the light it sheds, not only on the tenure of pews, but on the crucial matter of the difference between New and Old England in the holding of the church itself and the relation of the rector thereto, which so stirred the congregations of King's Chapel and Christ Church. Our knowledge comes from a letter written by the Hon. Thomas Ward, Secretary of the Colony, to Mr. Rob- 109 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, PP. 54, 70.
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inson, possibly Matthew,110 which caused the church to give up its suit to recover one of these pews from the brother of William Jones, who built it, and to pay this brother, Mr. John Jones, "£75, old tenor, being the prime cost of the pews." Mr. Ward writes: "Ist Trinity Church ... altho' the Parson has recd Orders from the Bishop of London . .. altho' its Worship be according to the Forms &c. of the established Church in England .. . cannot in my opinion be looked upon as the Churches in England are, for there is neither Patron nor Glebe Land, neither has Mr. Hony- man ever been presented, instituted or inducted according to the laws of England. And in fact this Church was built by private persons by way of subscription, as is notorious. So the Property or Fee remains vested in the first Proprietors, or their heirs or as- signs."
There must have been many benches in the galleries, if not on the floor. The negroes sat in the south gallery, and in 1762 Daniel Ayrault records pews numbered from 10 to 29 in the galleries, of which fifteen were occupied, which is explained by the fact that the list applies to the lengthened church (Figure 26).
As a suggestion that the pews were also rented by people who did not own them there are two interesting records. George Gibbs, a noted merchant, "commonly" sat in a pew with Captain Nicholas White. On January 20, 1744, the vestry voted that "he be invested with the property of one-half thereof."11' Earlier than this, on September 11, 1741, the wardens were to "inform Capt. John Rouse that it is the desire of the vestry that he take the lock off his pew, and admit some person to sit therein, who will allow him something for it, and also contribute weekly."112 The pressure,
110 Updike, Memoirs of the Rhode Island Bar, p. 234. The letter in full is in Mason, An- nals of Trinity Church, pp. 81, 82.
III Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 79.
112 Ibid., p. 74.
FIGURE 26 Interior of Trinity Church, looking West
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FIGURE 27 The Pulpit and Chancel, 1936
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THE INTERIOR
therefore, must have been great, though the locking of pews was nothing new. An instance occurs in London in 1467, and Samuel Pepys once had to wait until the sexton opened the door for him.113 Apparently there were two classes, pew owners and those who sat wherever there was room-in a pew, if they were allowed to do so; otherwise on benches. The lack of seating space in both pews and benches was becoming unbearable, and means were used to remedy the distress.
There was, of course, no vestry at the east end of the church. The order already quoted, which converted the wardens' pew to a private one, included the "vestry-room" also, which may mean that it was at the south end of the wardens' pew, under the gallery stairs, where a small pew is actually shown in the Ayrault plan. 114 It certainly was not at that time in the tower, for on August 20, 1753, it was voted "to partition off a part of the belfrey for a vestry-room." The Ayrault plan shows this in the southeast cor- ner of the old tower, where, in the present tower, the stairs are placed.
The pulpit in Trinity is of the so-called "wineglass" shape, inherited from the medieval form (Figure 27) through the classi- cized examples of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth cen- turies. This form, whether of stone or wood, was a polygonal box standing against a wall or a pier. Its support was a short column, from which ribs were carried to the corners of the box. A flight of steps gave access to it, and over it was often a more or less elab- orate canopy, as is shown in the illustration of the example at Fotheringhay, which has one of Edward IV's time with another of the seventeenth century. This canopy was often a flat ceiling in Jacobean times and probably developed into our sounding board; or, to put it another way, our sounding board may perhaps have
113 Cox and Harvey, English Church Furniture, p. 284.
114 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 126.
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been not so much what its name implies as the remnant of the can- opy with which the medieval church dignified its pulpit. 115
The usual place for the pulpit was the north side of the nave. At St. Mildred's, Bread Street (Figure 3), the least altered of all Wren's churches, it is against the north wall. The position which was chosen at Trinity-the middle of the east end of the middle alley-would have been objected to, as hiding the view of the altar. It occurs in Wren's churches, but that does not prove that it goes back to his time. It appears in Christ Church, Newgate, but this pulpit was brought from the Temple Church, for which Wren originally designed it. St. Nicholas Cole Abbey also has its pulpit, or had it in 1849, in the "middle alley." A few churches in the colonies put the pulpit as the axis. Christ Church, Alexandria, does so, but it is against the east wall, with the altar in front of it. St. Peter's, Philadelphia, puts the pulpit in the central alley, but at the extreme western end116 (Figure 28).
The pulpit of Trinity consists of the pulpit proper, the compart- ment below this, in front, called the reading desk, and the desk a little lower for the clerk, or "clark," who led the responses and "set the tune" for the psalms.117 It is the only "three decker," as it is commonly called, now to be found in the country.
Four of Wren's churches still have the triple pulpit, St. Mil- dred's (Figure 3), where the clerk's desk is at one side, as are the stairs; St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and Christ Church, Newgate,
115 Perhaps the increase in preaching as a principal part of the service among the Puritans led to this development. The younger Wren, in the Parentalia, speaks of a "Sound-board or Sounding-board," as we do. In Wren's time, it was called-by the technical men at least- a "Type." Mr. Creecher's bill in 1679 for "Joyner's worke" at St. Stephen's, Walbrook, has an item: "For the Pulpit and tipe," and the carver's bill begins: "About ye Type . .. " and goes on: "The Body of the Pulpit ... " with finally: "Readers and Clarks Pew." The word was still known in England in the last century. Gwilt's Encyclopedia, edition of 1867, de- fines it as "the canopy over a pulpit."
116 Traces in the floor show that the old pulpit in Trinity, Brooklyn, Connecticut, was placed exactly as in the Newport church. This was, no doubt, due to Godfrey Malbone. 117 This desk may be later than the reading desk, into which it is not framed.
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TRINITY CHURCH IN NEWPORT
where the stairs are behind the pulpit; and St. Peter's, Cornhill, with stairs at the side.
The pulpit is very high. It has ten steps, which brings its floor about 7 feet 1 inch above the main floor. The top of the pulpit rail is 10 feet 71/2 inches from the floor, which brings it just be- low the middle of the gallery front. The preacher's eye would be from 12 feet 1 inch to 12 feet 9 inches from the floor, which is just below or just above the gallery rail, which was probably the point taken as an average.
There is no evidence as to any means of lighting the pulpit. The hour for evensong was kept very early in winter to avoid artificial light as much as possible. There were at first only two "candlesticks" in the church-one given by Mr. Thomas Drew, of Exeter; the other, possibly a copy of it, bought by the church. Another was added when the church was lengthened eastward.
No mention is made, by record or tradition, of an hourglass stand. The second King's Chapel had one, but they had perhaps gone out of fashion before the second Trinity was built.
The balustrade of the stairs to the pulpit seems curiously out of harmony with the rest of the joiner work. The rail is thin. It swings out at the bottom as if patterned after the Vernon house stair, but the scroll is small. The poorest details are the balusters and the brackets at the ends of the steps. The brackets are of a very unfortunate design, but the balusters are even worse. It does not seem possible that they can be original, but there is no evidence in the records. We have only their appearance and the statement of Mason, who was an architect, that the pulpit was "reached by a high flight of stairs, with spiral newel and balusters,"I "118 with the important fact that the Seventh-Day Baptist Meeting House, built in 1729, had an elaborate pulpit with twisted newels and
118 Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, p. 51. He is speaking, apparently, of this church as at first built in 1726.
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twisted balusters of different patterns. Mr. George C. Mason, Jr., Mr. Mason's son, also an architect, insisted that the same carpen- ter did the finishing work on both buildings.119 He based his opin- ion on identity of tools, which is almost, if not entirely, conclusive. The same is said of the Baptist Meeting House and the Ayrault house, in which, as we know, Munday had a hand.
Over the pulpit hangs the sounding board or "type," carried by an iron rod which runs through the garret floor and through a beam which is carried by two other beams to spread the weight. One of the rectors, feeling oppressed by the weight threatening him from above, asked that it be removed. This was done, though it had to be cut in two. Later, the rector, finding its absence made no difference, consented to its return.
The method of keeping the pulpit upright on a small post was quite simple, and was probably quite usual for free-standing pul- pits. It was employed at St. Paul's Chapel, New York. There was no cellar, so that the post of the pulpit was sunk in the ground to a depth which made it impossible for it to sway under any shifting of weight above. When the cellar was built, the post was cut off be- low the floor and the upper end remained in sight in the cellar ceil- ing for years. Additional posts were set under the pulpit in the nave and cased, adding nothing to the grace of the support. After some years, it was determined to get back to the original appearance. A heavy steel post with a steel platform secured to its top was sunk in concrete in a hole in the cellar. The box of the pulpit, with its floor, was secured to this plate. Then the old wooden post was cut in two, lengthwise, and hollowed out, so that it fitted around and covered the steel column. The unsightly added supports were taken down, the mouldings and such disturbed parts were put back, and the pulpit stood serene.
The same vote which disposed of the wardens' pew in 1752 119 Mason, The Georgian Period, 1, 31.
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ordered that the "vestry-room" also be made a private pew. This places the vestry under the gallery stairs at the south end of the wardens' pew, if, indeed, the galleries were not at that time reached by a stair in the tower. On August 20, it was voted "to partition off a part of the belfrey for a vestry-room." "Belfrey" here meant the tower, where the vestry appears in Ayrault's plan.
In the interior there is direct proof that the painting-whatever it was which was ordered in 1733-was not carried out. When, after the new altar rail was set up in 1928-1929, permission was finally obtained to take down the two pews at the sides of the chancel, the removal of these and the taking out of the background of the arch under the tablet to the Rev. Marmaduke Browne, brought to light the original panelling covered by this background and by the upholstery of the pew. It was unpainted-had never been painted-and the color was quite deep, the beautiful tone which pine takes under sunlight, a color which needed several years to bring it to the quality it had attained. It is still in place behind the arch fillings of the monument. The wood looked like hard pine more than soft, but it probably was a strongly grained soft pine.
The color which would have been used in 1726 or in 1733 might have been one of several-the "wainscot" color, grained or plain, which imitated oak; cedar color; walnut, which is probably what is still to be seen in the original columns enclosed within the Doric casings in the Colony House; "flake stone color," which was used in the interior of one of Wren's churches; or "marble," which occurs in the accounts of Whitehall. This last, in a native version, is still on a wall in the Wanton house.
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