Note 389 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
1643, May 27.—Resolved, an ordinance for borrowing the plate in all cathedrals superstitiously used upon their altars.
1644, April 24.—Ordered, the mitre and crosier staff found in St. Paul's Church to be forthwith sold, and the brass and iron in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.—Parry's Councils and Parliaments.
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.