During the same period, the new transept of our parish church, which had been the Davenants' family chapel, had become enriched with stately monuments, where the effigies of knight and dame rested under decorated canopies. The titles and armorial bearings of many a noble family were mingled with theirs on monumental brass and stained window; whilst the plain massive architecture of our hereditary portion of the church was not more contrasted with the rich and delicate carving of theirs than were we and our servingmen and maidens, in our plain, sad-colored stuffs, unplumed, unadorned hats, caps or coifs, and white linen kerchiefs, with the brocades, satins, and velvets, ostrich feathers and jewels, ribboned hosen and buckled shoes of the Hall. The contrast had gone deeper than mere externals, as external contrasts mostly do, in this symbolical world. In the Civil Wars, when no political principle was involved, it had chanced that the Draytons and the Davenants had seldom been on the same side. But at and after the Reformation the difference manifested itself plainly and steadily. The Davenants had recognized Henry VIII.'s supremacy to the extent of receiving from him a grant of the lands belonging to the neighbouring abbey. But it had probably cost them little change of belief to return zealously to the old religion, under the rule of Queen Mary; whereas the Draytons, adhering with Saxon immobility to the Papal authority when Henry VIII. discarded it, had slowly come round to the conviction of the truth of the reformed religion by the time it became dangerous; and we hold it one of our chief family distinctions that we have a name closely connected with us enrolled among the noble army in "Fox's Book of Martyrs." Indeed, throughout their history, our family had an unprosperous propensity to the dangerous side. The religious convictions, so painfully adopted and so dearly proved, had throughout the reign of Elizabeth given our ancestors a leaning to the Puritan side; deep religious conviction binding them from generation to generation to the noblest spirits of their times, whilst a certain almost perverse honesty and inflexibility of temper naturally drove them to resist any kind of pressure from without, and a taste for what is solid and simple rather than for what is elegant and gorgeous, whether in life or in ritual, inclined them to the simplest forms of ecclesiastical ceremonial.