Identifier: vanishingengland00ditc (find matches)
Title: Vanishing England
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson), 1854-1930
Subjects: England -- Description and travel England -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : Methuen
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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of the contents ofthese churches? The contents usually went with thefabric to the spoliators. The halls of country-houseswere hung with altar-cloths ; tables and beds were quiltedwith copes ; knights and squires drank their claret out ofchalices and watered their horses in marble coffins. Fromthe accounts of the royal jewels it is evident that a greatdeal of Church plate was delivered to the king for his ownuse, besides which the sum of £30,360 derived from plateobtained by the spoilers was given to the proper hand ofthe king. The iconoclasts vented their rage in the destructionof stained glass and beautiful illuminated manuscripts,priceless tomes and costly treasures of exceeding rarity.Parish churches were plundered everywhere. Robberywas in the air, and clergy and churchwardens sold sacred CITIES AND ABBEY TOWNS 219 vessels and appropriated the money for parochial purposesrather than they should be seized by the king. Com-missioners were sent to visit all the cathedral and parish
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House in which Bishop Hooper was imprisoned,Wcstgate Street, Gloucester churches and seize the superfluous ornaments for thekings use. Tithes, lands, farms, buildings belongingto the church all went the same way, until the hand ofthe iconoclast was stayed, as there was little left to stealor to be destroyed. The next era of iconoclastic zeal 220 VANISHING ENGLAND was that of the Civil War and the Cromwellian period.At Rochester the soldiers profaned the cathedral byusing it as a stable and a tippling place, while saw-pitswere made in the sacred building and carpenters pliedtheir trade. At Chichester the pikes of the Puritans andtheir wild savagery reduced the interior to a ruinousdesolation. The usual scenes of mad iconoclasm wereenacted—stained glass windows broken, altars throwndown, lead stripped from the roof, brasses and effigiesdefaced and broken. A creature named Blue Dickwas the wild leader of this savage crew of spoliators wholeft little but the bare walls and a mass of bro

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