The 18th Century
The Gothic church proceeded slowly towards ruin for over 200 years
after the Reformation; we can read of purchases and refurbishments. But by 1786 the
fabric was so decayed that only demolition and rebuilding would serve.
The period had produced some handsome furnishings, which survive: on the outside
of the tower, the popular quarterjacks, (James Paty's Roman soldiers of 1728, who
ring their quarter-hour bells with hammers), and Daniel Sutton's splendid seven-foot
gilded copper dragon vane also of 1728. Within, the chief survivor is the late 17th-Century
organ case housing the great Renatus Harris's 1708 organ, an instrument much rebuilt,
but retaining some of his original pipework. The frieze of cherubs' heads supporting
the organ gallery is of about the same date.
The humble little stone font is from the destroyed church of Saint Ewen on the opposite
side of Broad Street; so is the banner, now in a case over the North East vestry
door, well embroidered c. 1740 but now restored, of the Guild of Merchant Taylors,
with their device of Saint John Baptist's head in the middle. And the small bell
from the tower of Saint Ewen’s church, caste by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucestershire
in 1698, and formerly hung in Portland Wesleyan chapel.
Four hatchments (those rather glum diamond - shaped funerary armorials) of the Tyndall
and Schimmelpennick families and now restored are on the West wall and date from
both before and after the rebuilding. The Mayor's wrought iron sword-rest includes
the arms of Charles II, and there is one excellent memorial of 1681, the brass plaque
to the right of the north east door into the vestry; it commemorates the Reverend
Richard Standfast, M.A., incumbent of Christ Church, who died in 1681 in his 78th
year. He was of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King
Charles I, and "for his loyalty to ye King and steadfastnesse in the established
religion suffered fourteene yeares sequestration". It is not mentioned that while
Roundhead malice thus left him for fourteen years without a livelihood, his congregation
faithfully provided for him - no doubt for his secret ministry to them. At the Restoration
(1660), he was appointed to a Cathedral prebend, and, despite blindness, went on
for over twenty years as a good priest and "an able orthodox and diligent preacher"
. Two days before his death he dictated the ten lines of verse which conclude this
inscription. Another parishioner “faithful unto death to the king” was Robert Yeamans,
Sheriff in 1641-1642, who was hanged by the Roundheads in 1643 and secretly buried
by night in Christ Church.
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