Iconoclastic Crusades.
In the city of Norwich, (January, 1644) the Puritan corporation appointed a committee to repair several churches, and take notices of scandalous pictures, crucifixes, and images:[390] whereupon they went to work, breaking windows, filing bells, tearing down carved work, stripping brasses off monuments, and pulling down the pulpit with its leaden cross in the green yard. Popish paintings, taken from the cathedral and other churches, were burnt in the old market-place, "a lewd wretch" (according to Bishop Hall) walking before the train with his cope trailing in the dust, and a service book in his hand, "imitating in an impious scorn the tune, and usurping the words of the litany."[391] There is further evidence of remorseless destruction in the journal of William Downings, of Stratford, a parliamentary visitor, appointed under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester, for demolishing superstitious pictures and ornaments within the county of Suffolk, in the years 1643 and 1644. But in some places the populace opposed the execution of the Parliamentary decree. At Kidderminster the Puritan churchwarden set up a ladder, which was too short to enable him to reach the crucifix on the top of the town cross; and, while he was fetching another, a mob assembled to defend what many admired only for the reason that their neighbours disliked it.[392] Baxter, then minister in the town, calls these defenders of crucifixes and images "a drunken crew," and declares that they beat and bruised two neighbours who had come to look after him and the churchwardens, and would have belaboured both in the same way, could they but have caught them.[393] If sometimes the iconoclasts were defeated, at other times they overcame their adversaries. A church near Colonel Hutchinson's house at Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire, had a painted window with a crucifixion, the Virgin Mary and the Evangelist John. The clergyman took down the heads of the figures, and laid them by carefully in his closet, and tried to persuade his churchwardens to certify that the Parliamentary order was executed; but they took care to call on the Colonel and bring him to see the church and the minister, who was at last compelled to blot out all the paintings and break all the glass which was tainted with superstition.[394]
1644, January.
Iconoclastic Crusades.
1644, January.
The amount of damage done in different parts of the country would depend on circumstances, on the disposition of the magistrates, and especially on the conduct of the military. It is certain that the havoc of Downings' iconoclasm is not a specimen of what generally took place. The state of numerous churches throughout the kingdom shews that Puritanism in many places touched them lightly, if at all. We know more about the cathedrals. These suffered severely. Peterborough, perhaps, was treated worse than any, the choir being stripped of its carved fittings and coloured glass, the cloisters being completely pulled down.[395] Part of the nave at Carlisle was destroyed, in order that guard houses and batteries might be constructed. The chapter house of Hereford was ruined, and 170 crosses torn up.[396] At Chichester, ornaments, monuments, and windows were destroyed. Sawpits were dug in the nave of Rochester. The lady chapel of Ely was cruelly shattered. Norwich Cathedral sustained much injury; and so did Lichfield, which the cavaliers turned into a citadel. Monuments were smashed at Gloucester and Lincoln. But, in Winchester, though Waynflete's chantry was defaced, the cathedral is said to have suffered less than it otherwise would have done, from the circumstance of the captain of the troop stationed there being an old Wykehamist. Though stalls were pulled down at Worcester, numerous monuments and effigies still remain within that edifice. Only painted windows were taken down at Exeter and Oxford; some of the latter being preserved after their removal. Notwithstanding what is reported in the Mercurius Rusticus, the ornaments of Westminster Abbey, which at the beginning of the conflict fell into Puritan hands, so far escaped violence, that it is said "a history of ecclesiastical sculpture, from the reign of Henry III. to the present day, might be fairly illustrated from the stores of that Church alone."[397] Other noble cathedrals were but slightly damaged. Salisbury was free from "material profanation."[398] There is no mention of harm done at Bristol, Durham, Chester, and York. Throughout England, tradition is constant in her story, that the violation of churches was the work of soldiers.
The excess to which ceremonial worship had been carried by the Laudian clergy, and the almost Popish reverence with which images and pictures had been regarded by some of them, inspired an intense Protestant indignation in numbers of Englishmen. They prized the Reformation, and thought they saw in the Anglo-Catholicism of their day a national defection from the faith of their fathers, like setting up the calves in Bethel and Dan, or the idolatrous service of Baal in Samaria. And whilst fearing the return of Romanism, with Romanism they identified things which have no necessary connection with it. Their zeal, though religious and disinterested, lacked wisdom, and had mixed up with it such alloy as commonly adheres to that passion in the breasts of mortals. It resembled the fierceness and fury of a noted reformer of Israel, who "brought forth the images out of the house of Baal and burned them;" nor was it untouched by a spirit of proud self-complacency like his when he cried: "Come see my zeal for the Lord of Hosts." Again and again, as we mark Puritan doings in cathedrals and churches, we are ready to exclaim: "The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously."[399]
Cromwell at Ely.
A broad construction was given to the meaning of orders for suppressing superstition and idolatry. In the month of January, 1644, when Oliver Cromwell was Governor of Ely, a Mr. Hitch officiated in the cathedral in the usual way. No express law, as yet, had been made against the Prayer Book or choral worship. But, interpreting the latter as "superstitious," and apprehending that its continuance would irritate his soldiers, Cromwell wrote to this clergyman and required him to forbear a service which he styled "unedifying and offensive." The clergyman persisted. The Governor,—wearing his hat according to custom,—with his men, entered the church, and found Mr. Hitch chaunting in the choir. "I am a man under authority," said Oliver, "and am commanded to dismiss this assembly"—the only authority, in fact, being the order about superstition, backed by the probability of a disturbance in case the service was continued. When Hitch determinately went on, Cromwell's words, "Leave off your fooling and come down, sir," broke up the cathedral worship, and shewed the sort of man the clergy had to deal with.