Whatever was now done in St. Paul's, worse things had been done there and elsewhere at the time of the Reformation.—See Strype's Cranmer, i. 251. Besides spoiling, embezzling, and taking away ornaments, he says, "they used also commonly to bring horses and mules into and through churches, and shooting off hand guns." It should be recollected, that the Puritans of the seventeenth century were familiar with such memories, and that reverence for sacred places had long been on the decline.
[390] Corporation Records in the Guildhall.
[391] Hard Measure, prefixed to Hall's Works, p. xviii. The proceedings at Norwich were of an infamous description, yet more shameful acts had been perpetrated by the Roman Catholic fathers of these very citizens. In 1272, we are told "Quam plures de familia, aliquos subdiacanos, aliquos clericos, aliquos laicos in claustro et infra septa monasterii interfecerunt; aliquos extraxerunt et in civitate morti tradiderunt, aliquos incarceraverunt. Post quæ ingressi, omnia sacra vasa, libros, aurum, et argentum, vestes et omnia alia quæ non fuerunt igne consumpta depradati fuerunt: monachos omnes, præter duos vel tres, a monasterio fugantes."—Anglia Sacra, i. 399.
[392] The following appears in the records of the Norwich Corporation: "Ordered that the churchwardens shall demolish the stump cross at St. Saviour's, and take the stones thereof for the use of the city."
[393] Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter, 24.
[394] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 80.
[395] This was in spite of orders "to do no injury to the church." Before these wars the cathedral suffered through neglect, as appears from a draft letter written by Archbishop Laud to the dean and chapter, in the name of the King, complaining that the dotations and allowances were very mean, and that there was "little left to keep so goodly a fabric in sufficient reparation."—State Papers, Domestic. (undated) vol. cclxxxi. 57.
[396] Mr. Britton asserts that numbers were removed when the cathedral underwent repairs in 1786. Two tons of brass were taken to the brazier's shop.—Winkle's Cathedrals, iii. 43.
[397] Poole's History of Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 260.
All the mutilation of statues must not be put down to the Puritan account, nor the destruction of the mosaic pavement in the choir. "One half of its eastern border was entirely destroyed when the altar-piece was put up at the commencement of the last century." The rest but narrowly escaped.—Neale's History and Antiquities of Westminster Abbey, p. 20.