Leaving the tower, we come next to the nave of the church, and approach an attractive study--one that has exercised the minds of many observers. Why should the size of the nave be often so utterly disproportionate to the congregation which it has to accommodate? Has the population changed inversely to such an extent since the church was built? One might rashly deem the riddle solved by a reference to acts enforcing conformity in religion, or to the half-truth that “all persons went to church in those days.” On rare occasions, perchance, the inhabitants did all go to church, at least those who were neither infantile nor bed-ridden. But these explanations are idle. Churches may be found, which, even if we allow that every adult in the village was a regular churchgoer, could never at any time have been quite filled at a purely religious service. Various answers have been given to the troublesome query. At Thaxted, in Essex, in whose church, as the natives say, all the parishioners might comfortably be put to bed, the excess of accommodation is thought to be explainable on the assumption that the builders provided for a growing population. The general facts, however, are strongly against this notion. William Cobbett, who will be admitted as a careful observer, though his conclusions were frequently hasty, exemplified both his strength and his weakness in discussing this subject. Over and over again, in his _Rural Rides_, and his _History of the Protestant Reformation_, he calls attention to churches, which, in his day, would hold three or four times the total number of the inhabitants in the respective parishes. From these facts, he deduces that the land in Mediaeval times supported a greater number of folk, and that the villages were larger and much more densely populated. Other writers, favoured with greater opportunities than were available to Cobbett, have, nevertheless, been betrayed into the same error. But the population theory is now so generally discredited, that it is unnecessary to rebut it directly by an appeal to the estimated populations of the country during each successive century. Besides, an estimated census of the population during the Edwardian period, for instance, can never be more than approximate, and may itself cause more controversy than the theory which it is warranted to disprove.