The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe: With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and SuperstitionsCoulthard, H. R. (Hugh Robert)
History
The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe: With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and Superstitions
The windows of the Church, before the pillage and vandalism let loose
upon it by the Reformation, were all of stained glass, of which several
beautiful fragments have come down to us, as the head of St. Veronica in
the chapel at the end of the north aisle, and the heads of the two
angels in the south window of the chapel, on the south side of the
Church. The Reformation, like all great upheavals, beneficent in
themselves, led to the unchaining of the spirit of fanaticism and
rapine. The spirit of liberty was fanned into a flame in France before
the Revolution by the noblest and purest spirits in the country; yet who
could blame them for the frenzied orgies of the Terror? The few
fragments of fifteenth century glass were discovered with the bones and
skulls of two almost complete skeletons in the walled-up staircase
leading to the Rood Loft, in the north wall of the Church, at the time
of the restoration in 1891. The probable solution seems that the
Commissioners, who visited Breage 22nd April, 1549, to ascertain that
the injunctions of Edward VI. were duly fulfilled, ordered the
destruction of the windows, as containing figures of the Saints and
emblems of idolatry. Possibly also stone tombs were destroyed and
desecrated, partly in a spirit of iconoclasm, and partly from the spirit
of plunder. We can imagine at this juncture some one more pious or
superstitious than his fellows gathering the fragments of beautiful
glass, and bones torn from their tombs within the Church, and placing
them in the cavity of the broken stairway in process of being walled
up.[28]
The granite support of the Credence Table and the Piscina in the chancel
were exhumed from the foundations of the Church during the restoration
and placed in their original situation: also the rose Piscina and the
pedestal on which it at present stands were unearthed at this time. The
pedestal in question, it may be stated, has nothing whatever to do with
the Piscina, the date of which is most probably coeval with the Church,
but is evidently the base of a font of Jacobean origin. The granite bowl
masquerading as a stoup in the porch is not of ecclesiastical origin at
all; its original use was evidently for grinding corn in primitive
times. It may be interesting to mention the discovery during the
restoration, beneath the floor of the Church, near where the pulpit now
stands, of six skeletons lying uncoffined side by side, the skulls of
all of them being perforated with bullet wounds; the teeth in each skull
were almost perfect, suggestive of violent and untimely deaths. The
story of this tragedy has long since faded into oblivion; possibly these
skeletons belonged to victims of some fierce act of military discipline
or retaliation in the Parliamentary Wars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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