The Battle of Adderley Aisle and Family Chapels in Post-Reformation England
Via a well-documented rivalry between two families in Shropshire over a chapel in the parish church at Adderley, this paper explores the political and cultural significance of family chapels in the post-Reformation Church. In doing so, it takes into account the considerable levels of investment and expenditure associated with them, and their function as sites of dynastic conflict.
This instance of a parochial set-to over the building of one particular chapel can be located in the context of a long history of gentry appropriation of the most sacred and prestigious locations at the east end of parish churches for their burial sites and chantry chapels. This process was accelerated by the Reformation abolition of the doctrine of purgatory and the massive increase in gentry ownership of advowsons. Monuments became larger and more assertive; box pews and screens hived off privatised space within churches; and there was a proliferation of displays of family heraldry.
Secular considerations are very much to the fore in this reading of the cultural codes and normative languages associated with these chapels. The use of archival material in the form of church notes collected by antiquaries interested in matters of heraldry and descent, scripts prepared for the conduct of heraldic funerals, and bills and depositions for cases in the Court of Chivalry and Star Chamber necessarily imparts a highly secular and honour-oriented slant to our perspective. At the same time, this raises questions about the subsisting spiritual and religious functions of these chapels. Contemporaries would not necessarily have drawn hard-and-fast distinctions, in this context, between 'secular' and 'religious'.
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This page was last updated on 2 October 2024
