"Over this place, in the roof of the church, in a large oval yet to be seen, was the picture of Our Saviour seated on a throne; one hand erect, and holding a globe in the other, attended with the four evangelists, and saints on each side, with crowns in their hands, intended, I suppose, for a representation of Our Saviour's coming to judgment. Some of the company espying this, cry out and say, 'Lo, this is the God these people bow and cringe unto; this is the idol they worship and adore.' Hereupon several souldiers charged their muskets, (amongst whom one Daniel Wood, of Captain Roper's company was the chief) and discharge them at it: and by the many shots they made, at length do quite deface and spoil [the] picture.
"The odiousness of this act gave occasion (I suppose) to a common fame, very rife at that time, and whence Mercurius Rusticus might have his relation, viz.:—that divine vengeance had signally seized on some of the principal actors; that one was struck blind upon the place; by a rebound of his bullet; that another dyed mad a little after, neither of which I can certainly attest. For, though I have made it my business to enquire of this, I could never find any other judgment befal them then, but that of a mad blind zeal, wherewith these persons were certainly possest.
"Then they rob and rifle the tombs, and violate the monuments of the dead. And where should they first begin, but with those of the two queens, who had been there interr'd: the one on the north side, the other on the south side of the church, both near unto the altar. First then they demolished Queen Katherin's tomb, Henry the Eighth his repudiated wife: they break down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse,—overthrow the herse itself, displaced the gravestone that lay over her body, and have left nothing now remaining of that tomb, but only a monument of their own shame and villany. The like they had certainly done to the Queen of Scots, but that her herse and pall were removed with her body to Westminster by King James the First, when he came to the crown. But what did remain they served in like manner; that is, her royal arms and escutcheons, which hung upon a pillar, near the place where she had been interr'd [which] were most rudely pulled down, defaced and torn.
"In the north isle of the church there was a stately tomb in memory of Bishop Dove, who had been thirty years bishop of the place. He lay there in portraicture in his episcopal robes, on a large bed under a fair table of black marble, with a library of books about him. These men that were such enemies to the name and office of a bishop, and much more to his person, hack and hew the poor innocent statue in pieces, and soon destroy'd all the tomb. So that in a short space, all that fair and curious monument was buried in its own rubbish and ruines.
"The like they do to two other monuments standing in that isle; the one the tomb of Mr. Worm, the other of Dr. Angier, who had been prebendary of that church.
"In a place then called the new building, and since converted to a library, there was a fair monument, which Sir Humphrey Orm (to save his heir that charge and trouble), thought fit to erect in his own life time, where he and his lady, his son and wife and all their children, were lively represented in statues, under which were certain English verses written:—
"Mistake not, reader, I thee crave,
This is an altar not a grave,
Where fire raked up in ashes lyes,
And hearts are made the sacrifice, &c.