ABSTRACT
Before the Reformation private chapels were common and might be consecrated, thus permitting the celebration of the sacraments, though it was also possible for Mass to be celebrated in such unconsecrated places by episcopal licence.1 After the Reformation, consecration appears to have ceased, for there are no records of private chapels being consecrated during the Elizabethan period. Bishop Pilkington’s view that ‘honest places for Christian services had no need for hallowing’ best captures the feeling for simplicity that characterizes the period.2 More practically, no approved Protestant service of
* This paper was edited by Claire Gapper and Caroline Knight using notes prepared by the late Annabel Ricketts and her ‘The Evolution of the Protestant Country House Chapel, c.1500-c.1700’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2003). The editors have revised and expanded this material and provided footnotes for the full text. They would like to thank Margaret Aston, Pauline Croft and Andrew Spicer for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper and for providing invaluable advice and support. We are also grateful to Robin Harcourt-Williams, for making available to us the resources of the Hatfield House archive. 1 For medieval domestic chapels in general, see E.L. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People
consecration existed. In the early years of the seventeenth century, the creation of a Protestant consecration service was in its infancy with patrons, in conjunction with their bishops, playing an important role in creating services.3
