Catalogue description Counterpart, Sign. and seal (as Wright's) of Mic. Packwood. Witnesses as above and...

Counterpart, Sign. and seal (as Wright's) of Mic. Packwood. Witnesses as above and Steven Parker.

The vicar mentioned here (DR429/174) Robert Proctor, seems to have left no impression on the history of the church; yet his vicariate (1638-43) occupied a remarkable time of civil and religious strife. I know not what part he played in the matter of the alteration of the position of the Communion table, which, after having been railed in and placed altarwise in the chancel, on an elevation of three steps, in the days of the Laudian supremacy, was, in 1641, restored to its ancient place.

The proviso that the rent should be paid (DR429/175) in the Mayor's Walk may represent an ancient custom or a change of the same. I should incline to the idea that the more ancient practice was for the rent to be paid within the church itself. In the fifteenth century the priest of a church in Wiltshire received his lord's rent on Sunday between Matins and Mass (Addy, Church and Manor, DR429/198).