Companion to the Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture Being a Brief Account of the Vestments in Use in the Church, Prior to, and the Changes Therein in and from, the Reign of Edward VI

The first version of this three-volume work was published in 1829 as a question-and-answer book of 80 pages. The eleventh, and definitive, 1882 edition of this hugely popular, highly illustrated work, reissued here, was published at the urging of Sir George Gilbert Scott, and consists of two volumes on Gothic ecclesiastical architecture and a 'companion' volume on church vestments. Matthew Holbeche Bloxam (1805–88), a solicitor by profession, was an enthusiastic architectural historian with a passion for churches. In the preface, as well as explaining his reasons for another edition, Bloxam records his concern that some features he had recorded fifty years earlier no longer exist: 'In the so-called restorations of ancient churches, not a few historical features … have been ruthlessly, and in many cases needlessly, swept away.' Volume 3 discusses vestments, post-Reformation changes to church interiors, and funerary monuments.

1. Of the vestments in use in the church up to the reign of King Edward VI; 2. Of the changes in the internal arrangements of churches in and subsequent to the reign of King Edward VI; 3. Of the vestments prescribed by the church in and from the reign of King Edward VI; 4. Of ancient British, Roman, and post-Roman hypaethral sepulchral monuments, and Anglo-Saxon and medieval churchyard sepulchral monuments.