The reverence due to churches, and things once dedicated to the service of churches, was universal in the Middle Ages. Cloths, used as chrism cloths at Baptism or Confirmation, were to be devoted to ecclesiastical purposes or destroyed, and those who turned anything thus once offered to God to any secular use were considered gravely blameworthy. The gloss upon a Constitution of St. Edmund of Canterbury to this effect extends this prohibition of desecration to everything connected at any time with a church. Even the woodwork of a building, once dedicated, was to be destroyed, unless it was capable of being used for another ecclesiastical purpose. So too the “cloths used on the altar, the seats, candlesticks, veils, and sacred vestments too old to use,” were to be burnt and the ashes buried. The parishioners, as already pointed out, were bound by law and custom to provide for the repair of the nave of their parish church, and for the general upkeep of the church services. There was little need to compel them to fulfil this duty, for the churchwardens’ accounts and other documents, especially during the fifteenth century, when we have the fullest information, show us that over the entire length and breadth of England the people were gladly rebuilding and beautifying their parish churches. A few examples of this spirit may be of interest as showing what God’s house was to the entire people in pre-Reformation days. The labours of Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph on the diocesan registers of the Exeter diocese enable the inquirer into parochial manners and customs of the past to find ample material. In the register of Bishop Stafford of Exeter (1394-1419) an account of the rebuilding of the parish church of Broadhempston is given. The parishioners, about A.D. 1400, petitioned the bishop to be allowed to rebuild their church: they represented that it was in a ruinous condition and notoriously clumsily constructed. It was their wish, they said, to build it on a larger scale, and in a different part of the churchyard. To this the bishop assented, on condition of their promising to complete the new church within two years of pulling down the old, and he granted an Indulgence to all who should contribute to “so great and pious a work.” On the 22nd November, 1401, the work of the new church was apparently far enough advanced for use, for a licence was granted for one year to celebrate Divine service “in the church or basilica newly erected and constructed in the cemetery,” and this licence was twice renewed for the years 1402 and 1403.