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‘My House Shall Be Called the House of Prayer’: Religion and the Material Culture of the Episcopal Household, c.1500 to c.1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Michael Ashby*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Extract

Over the past three decades, the study of material culture has become a pervasive feature of historical scholarship. From art to shoes, from porcelain to glass, ‘things’ are increasingly viewed as a useful medium through which to reconstruct what mattered to historical actors in everyday life. Taking its lead from this vast scholarship, this discussion examines how material culture was integrated into a programme of devotion, edification and religious instruction within England’s episcopal palaces, a group of buildings in which the relationship between the material and the spiritual was particularly fraught. Adopting a long chronological span, from 1500 to 1800, it analyses how that relationship evolved into the eighteenth century, a period noted for its proliferation of things and apparently ‘secular’ character.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2014

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References

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12 I am grateful to Mark Hart at the King’s School, Ely, for introducing me to the building and to Francis Young for sharing a draft of his book, A History of the Bishop’s Palace at Ely: Prelates and Prisoners (Ely, 2012). Aside from this, the existing literature on the Ely palace is slim, though basic outlines are provided in the following: Pevsner, Nikolaus, Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire (Harmondsworth, 2002), 3789 Google Scholar; Hussey, Christopher, ‘Ely Palace, Cambridgeshire’, Country Life 63 (1928), 8507; Cambridge, UL, Cam.b.987.42, Seaman-Turner, George, ‘The Old Bishop’s Palace, Ely’ (typescript, c. 1987)Google Scholar. The bishop’s former London residences, Ely House, Holborn (sold 1772), and Ely House, Dover Street, have received far more attention. In particular, the Holborn residence has been a subject of antiquarian interest since the eighteenth century: see Murray, Thomas Boyles, A Notice of Ely Chapel, Holborn, with some account of Ely Palace (London, 1840)Google Scholar. For the Dover Street house, see Hussey, Christopher, The Story of Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London (London, 1952).Google Scholar

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17 Ibid. 85.

18 Ibid. 84-5.

19 Churton, Life of Nowell, 401-2.

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28 Gold, Sidney, A Short Account of the Life and Work of John Rowell ([London], 1965), 4751.Google Scholar Although executed by Rowell, the glass was designed by Dr. John Wall (d. 1776), founder of the Worcestershire porcelain factory. Wall thought his design ‘strangely altered in execution’: see Lee-Milne, James, ‘Hartlebury Castle Revisited’, Country Life 150 (1971), 6725 Google Scholar, 740-3. Bishop James Perowne removed the glass in 1898.

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