The Reformation emphasis on reading scripture and preaching was the impetus to sitting people down to listen, as opposed to the peripatetic dramas and processions of pre-reformation worship.  Ephraim Udell in 1641 lamented however that such seating arrangements scattered a congregation into ‘so many single societies of twos and threes’⁴, which led a number of Bishops to actively oppose church seating altogether.

Such arguments provide us with some of the more colourful minor episodes so beloved of local historians.  William Moreton was a notoriously contentious resident of Astbury.  The family grave lies at my feet where I robe.  In 1576 he also had a pew in Congleton Chappell (St Peter’s church in town).  Someone clearly had it in for the Moreton pew.  Records show that belligerents brought a horse into church in an effort to get it to defile where William sat.  Fortunately for him it ‘did not dunge in the said pewe but very nere unto yt’.  You can lead a horse, as they say!  The vandals were nothing if not persistent however and, for whatever reason the said seating had caused offence, it was ultimately ‘cast downe by nighte in the said chappell’ by person or persons unknown ⁵.

Spare a thought for the poor churchwardens at the centre of all this chaos, trying to establish order and decency in worship.  They were often abused by parishioners using ‘alehouse language’ and ‘the most lothsome fa*tinge stinckinge & scoffinge speache’.  In one pew dispute one George Chapman⁶ was accused before a church court of the use of ‘unreverent speeche in the time of divine service & said would the Churchwardens had kyst his A*se’ when they tried to restore order.