Note 397 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
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.
Oliver Cromwell has been charged with despoiling the tomb of Henry V., but we read in Stowe's Annals: "A royal image of silver and gilt was laid upon his tomb, which Queen Catherine his wife caused to be made for him; but about the latter end of King Henry VIII., the head of the king's image being of massy silver, was broken off and conveyed clean away, with the plates of silver and gilt that covered his body." p. 363.
It is a common story amongst cathedral vergers, that Cromwell turned churches into stables. Like stories are told in the East, with judgments superadded. "It was related to us by our Tartar, that about fifty years ago, Tamr Pasha turned the church into a stable, and next morning all his horses were found dead."—Badger's Nestorians, i. 68.