. Vanishing England . ) in ourPublique Schools, Colledge Halls, Libraries, and Cham-bers, mistaking, perhaps, ye liberall Artes for Saints (whichthey intend in time to pull down too) and having (againstan order) defaced and digged up ye floors of our Chap-pels, many of which had lien so for two or three hundredyears together, not regarding ye dust of our founders andpredecessors who likely were buried there ; compelled usby armed Souldiers to pay forty shillings a Colledge fornot mending what he had spoyled and defaced, or forthwith to goe to prison. We meet with the sad doings of this wretch
. Vanishing England . ) in ourPublique Schools, Colledge Halls, Libraries, and Cham-bers, mistaking, perhaps, ye liberall Artes for Saints (whichthey intend in time to pull down too) and having (againstan order) defaced and digged up ye floors of our Chap-pels, many of which had lien so for two or three hundredyears together, not regarding ye dust of our founders andpredecessors who likely were buried there ; compelled usby armed Souldiers to pay forty shillings a Colledge fornot mending what he had spoyled and defaced, or forthwith to goe to prison. We meet with the sad doings of this wretch Dowsing invarious places in East Anglia. He left his hideous markon many a fair church. Thus the churchwardens ofWalberswick, in Suffolk, record in their accounts :— 1644, April 8th, paid to Martin Dowson, that camewith the troopers to our church, about the takingdown of Images and Brasses off Stones o 6 paid that day to others for taking up the brassesof grave stones before the officer Dowson came i 1 o 1 St. Georges Church, Great Yarmouth 150 VANISHING ENGLAND The record of the ecclesiastical exploits of WilliamDowsing has been preserved by the wretch himself in adiary which he kept. It was published in 1786, and thevolume provides much curious reading. With referenceto the church of Toffe he says :— Will: Disborugh Church Warden Richard Baslyand John Newman Cunstable, 27 Superstitious picturesin glass and ten other in stone, three brass inscriptions,Pray for ye Soules, and a Cross to be taken of the Steeple(6s. 8d.) and there was divers Orate pro Animabus inye windows, and on a Bell, Ora pro Anima SanctasCatharinag. •Trinity Parish, Cambridge, M. Frog, Churchwarden,December 25, we brake down 80 Popish pictures, andone of Christ and God ye Father above. At Clare we brake down 1000 pictures superstitious. Coc/iie, there were divers pictures in the Windowswhich we could not reach, neither would they help us toraise the ladders. 1643, Jany 1, Edwards parish, we
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