NEXT time you suffer backache in a church pew, count your blessings. In pre-Reformation England, there was no significant concern that congregations should be provided with seating. Fixed pews were becoming more common, but were hardly widespread. Commonly during Mass, you either stood or knelt—or perhaps perched on your own stool or portable bench. The elderly and infirm might be able to rest against a stone ledge set into the walls. Hence, it is said, the expression ‘the weak go to the wall’ (referenced by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet).
The growing importance of the sermon changed things, a development underway in pre-Reformation times, but embraced dramatically in Protestant practice. Preaching marathons prevailed and congregations would no longer stand (quite literally)
