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George Herbert and the architecture of Anglican worship
Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002 by Davidson, Clifford
More would be known about the reconstruction of the church if Herbert's letter of March 1632 to Nicholas Ferrar had been copied in full in the manuscript in the Cambridge University Library43 that contains John Ferrar's collection of biographical materials concerning his brother. Unfortunately, instead of the descriptive matter we would like to have had, the copyist wrote: "So he goes on in his discourse of the building of the Church, in such & such a forme as Nicholas] F[errar] advised, dr letting N.F. know, all he had, & would doe, to gett moneys to proceed in it" (Works, p. 378). A second surviving letter thanks Nicholas Ferrar for his assistance at Leighton Bromswold, but again the specifics ` for the ordering of things, to that business" are omitted (Works, p. 379). Herbert's rebuilding program thus involved a close collaboration with Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding. He himself did not direct the actual work, for the task of supervision was apparently left to John Ferrar, who wrote to his brother Nicholas in 1632: "We have 18 Masons and Labrores at worke at Layton Church and we shall have this weeke 10 Carpenters."44
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ably was responsible for the removal of the wainscot.47 On the other hand, the elaborate lectern, the pulpit, the low screen separating chancel and nave, and the uniform seating remain. If the steps up to the altar were part of the original design agreed upon by Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar, they would have added a Laudian feature that was particularly disliked by Puritans of all types, but of course especially by the most radical sort.48 During the 1640s, the iconoclast William Dowsing went about Cambridgeshire and East Anglia not only smashing painted glass windows and ordering wall paintings to be covered over even if their only offense was the display of the name "Jesus," but also insisting on lowering chancels which had been recently raised to comply with Archbishop Laud's injunctions.49
found anathema.53 There were apparently no religious pictures or paintings and no crucifix, though clearly Nicholas Ferrar-and probably Herbert also-had no objection to depictions of the crucified Christ.54 In spite of the quasi-monastic piety of the Ferrar family in observing the canonical hours and even in walking to the chapel twoby-two in the manner of monks or nuns, they were, like Herbert, not of the Laudian party, and described themselves as both Puritan and Protestant-designations that Lynette R. Muir and John A. White consider related to "Nicholas' political stance rather than his ecclesiastical position. "55
III
My musick shall finde thee, and ev'ry string shall have its attribute to sing; That all together may accord in thee, And prove one God, one harmonic. (lines 39-42)
Thereupon Herbert was said to have "playa and sung" a stanza from his poem "Sunday"-the stanza which asserted that on this day the gate or door of heaven "stands ope" (line 32).
Joseph Summers notes that approximately a quarter of Herbert's poems in The Temple concern music in some way,63 and in general the understanding of sacred song in the poems implied the quality of joy which also appears in descriptions of worship at Little Gidding.64 So too Richard Hooker had commented about "musical harmonie whether by instrument or by voice" that it reflected the most divine aspect of a person; further, some "draweth to a marvelous grave and sober mediocritie," while other music "carryeth as it were into ecstasies, fillinge the minde with an heavenlie joy and for the time in a maner severinge it from the bodie."65 As such it would be more than "an ornament to Gods service" or merely a pleasurable experience "which, mingled with heavenly mysteries, causeth the smoothnes and softnes of that which toucheth the care to conveye as it were by stelth the treasure of good things into mans minde."66 Herbert had a more significant program in mind for sacred song and instrumental music performed within the acoustical confines of the church building, which he conceived primarily as a space for singing, praying, and listening to the proclamation of the Word in readings and sermon.
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