In concluding this brief survey of the material parts of pre-Reformation churches, it is impossible not mentally to contrast the picture of these sacred places, as revealed in the warden’s accounts, the church inventories and other documents, with the bare and unfurnished buildings they became after what Dr. Jessopp has called “the great pillage.” Even the poorest and most secluded village sanctuary was in the early times overflowing with wealth and objects of beauty, which loving hands had gathered to adorn God’s house, and to make it, as far as their means would allow, the brightest spot in their little world, and beyond doubt the pride of all their simple, true hearts. This is no picture of our imagination, but sober reality, for the details can be all pieced together from the records which survive. Just as a shattered stained-glass window may with care be put together again, and may help us to understand something of what it must have been in the glory of its completeness, so the fragments of the story of the past, which can be gathered together after the destruction and decay of the past centuries, are capable of giving some true, though perhaps poor, idea of the town and village parish churches in pre-Reformation days. “There is not a parish church in the Kingdom,” writes a Venetian traveller of England in 1500,--“there is not a parish church in the Kingdom so mean as not to possess crucifixes, candlesticks, censers, patens, and cups of silver.” What is most remarkable about the documents that have come down to us, and which are mere chance survivals amid the general wreck, is the consistent story they tell of the universal and intelligent interest taken by the people of every parish as a whole in beautifying and supporting their churches. In a real and true sense, which may be perhaps strange to us in these later times, the parish church was _their_ church. Their life, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, really centred round it, and they one and all were intimately connected with its management. The building was their care and their pride; the articles of furniture and plate, the vestments and banners and hangings, all had their own well-remembered story, and were regarded, as in truth they were, as the property of every man, woman, and child of the particular village or district. CHAPTER IV THE PARISH CLERGY