absolve them? Doth he keep secret such their confession ?". Visitation Articles of F. Turner, Bishop of Ely, 1686.

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1687.] "The Church of England refuses no sort of confession, either publick or private, which may be any way necessary to the quieting of men's consciences, or to the exercising of that power of binding and loosing, which our SAVIOUR CHRIST has left to His Church. ...... We exhort men, if they have any the least doubt or scruple, nay, sometimes though they have none, but especially before they receive the holy Sacrament, to confess their sins. We propose to them the benefit, not only of ghostly advice how to manage their repentance, but the great comfort of absolution too, as soon as they shall have completed it. When we visit our sick,

we never fail to exhort them to make a special confession of their sins to him that ministers to them: and when they have done it, the absolution is so full, that the Church of Rome itself could not desire to add anything to it."-Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, by Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, pp. 42, 43. 4to. 1688.

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1661-1844.] "If there be any of you who......requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God's Word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God's Holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution."-Communion Office in the Book of Common-Prayer.

[493]

Ibid.] "Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, &c."-Rubrick in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. Ibid.

Spoliation of Peterborough Cathedral.

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1643.] "The Cathedral church of Peterborough was very famous formerly for three remarkable things a stately front, a curious altar-piece, and a beautiful cloister. The first of the three doth still remain, a very goodly structure, supported with three such tall arches as England can scarce shew the like. The two last are since destroyed by sacrilegious hands, and have nothing now remaining but only the bare memory of them. In this place, I think I may say, began that strange kind of deformed reformation, which afterwards passed over most places of the land, by robbing, rifling, and defacing churches: this being one of the first which suffered in that kind. Of which you may take this following account from an eye-witness, and which, I suppose, is still fresh in the memory of many surviving persons.

"In the year 1643, about the midst of April, there came several forces to Peterborough, raised by the Parliament in the associated counties, in order to besiege Croyland, a small town some seven miles distant, which had a little before declared for the king, and then was held a garrison for him.

"The first that came was a foot regiment, under one Colonel Hubbart's command; upon whose arrival, some persons of the town, fearing what happened afterwards, desire the chief Commander to take care the soldiers did no injury to the church: this he promises to do, and gave order to have the church doors all locked up. Some two days after comes a regiment of horse, under Colonel Cromwell, a name as fatal to ministers as it had been to monasteries before. The next day after their arrival, early in the morning, these break open the church doors, pull down the organs, of which there were two pair. The greater pair, that stood upon a high loft over the entrance into the choir, was thence thrown down upon the ground, and there stamped and trampled on, and broke in pieces, with such a strange, furious, and frantick zeal, as cannot be well conceived but by those that saw it.

"Then the soldiers enter the choir; and there their first business was, to tear in pieces the Common-prayer Books that could

be found.

The great Bible, indeed, that lay upon a brass eagle for reading the lessons, had the good hap to escape with the loss only of the Apocrypha.

"Next they break down all the seats, stalls, and wainscot that was behind them, being adorned with several historical passages out of the Old and New Testament, a Latin distich being in each seat to declare the story. Whilst they are thus employed, they chance to find a great parchment book behind the cieling, with some 20 pieces of gold, laid there by a person a little before, as in a place of safety, in those unsafe and dangerous times. This encourages the soldiers in their work, and makes them the more eager in breaking down all the rest of the wainscot, in hopes of finding such another prize.

"The book that was deposited there was called Swapham, the ledger book of the church, and was redeemed afterwards of a soldier that got it, by a person belonging to the minster, for ten shillings, under the notion of an old Latin Bible.

"There was also a great brass candlestick hanging in the middle of the choir, containing about a dozen and a half of lights, with another bow candlestick about the brass eagle: these both were broke in pieces, and most of the brass carried away and sold.

"A well-disposed person standing by, and seeing the soldiers make such spoil and havock, speaks to one that appeared like an officer, desiring him to restrain the soldiers from such enormities. But all the answer he obtained was only a scoffing reply, to this purpose, See how these poor people are concerned to see their idols pulled down.'

"So the inhabitants of Peterborough at that time were accounted by these reformers, both a malignant and superstitious kind of people.

"When they had thus defaced and spoiled the choir, they march up next to the east end of the church, and there break and cut in pieces, and afterwards burn the rails that were about the Communion-table. The Table itself was thrown down, the Tablecloth taken away, with two fair books in velvet covers, the one a Bible, the other a Common-prayer Book, with a silver basin gilt, and a pair of silver candlesticks beside. But upon request made to Colonel Hubbart, the books, basin, and all else save the candlesticks, were restored again.

"Not long after, on the 13th day of July, 1643, Captain Barton and Captain Hope, two martial ministers of Nottingham or Derbyshire, coming to Peterborough, break open the vestry and take away a fair crimson satin Table-cloth, and several other things, that had escaped the former soldiers' hands.

"Now behind the Communion-table, &c. [See antè, p. 194, extract 402.]*

"Over this place in the roof of the church, in a large oval yet to be seen, was the picture of our SAVIOUR seated on a throne, one hand erected, and holding a globe in the other; attended with the four Evangelists and Saints on each side, with crowns in their hands intended, I suppose, for a representation of our SAVIOUR'S coming to judgment. Some of the company espying this, cry out and say, Lo, this is the god these people bow and cringe unto; this is the idol they worship and adore.' Hereupon several soldiers charge their muskets, (amongst whom one Daniel Wood, of Captain Roper's company, was the chief,) and discharge them at it; and by the many shots they made, at length do quite deface and spoil [the] picture.

"The odiousness of this act gave occasion (I suppose) to a common fame very rife at that time, and whence Mercurius Rusticus might have his relation, viz. that Divine vengeance had signally seized on some of the principal actors; that one was struck blind upon the place by a rebound of his bullett; that another died mad a little after: neither of which I can certainly attest. For, though I have made it my business to enquire of this, I could never find any other judgment befal them then, but that of a mad blind zeal, wherewith these persons were certainly possest.

"And now I am engaged in telling the story of their impiety and profaneness at Peterborough, it will be no great excursion to step out to Yaxley, a neighbouring town, and mention one thing

“The greatest ornament of the choir (and indeed of the whole church) was the high-altar, a structure of stone most exquisitely carved, and beautified with gilding and painting; it was ascended unto by about a dozen steps, and from its basis reared after the manner of a comely wall some six foot high, upon which were several curious pilasters supporting a fair arched roof, whereon were three goodly spires reaching almost to the top of the church, the whole frame dilating itself to each side, all gilded and painted, saving some void plain places, which were anciently filled up with plates of silver."-Ibid. p. 97.

+ See antè, p. 207, extract 416.

done there which was this-On the 10th of June, 1643, some of Captain Beaumont's soldiers coming thither, they break open the church doors, in the font, and then baptise a horse and

a mare, using the solemn words of Baptism, and signing them with the sign of the cross.

"But to return to our reforming rabble at Peterborough. When there was no more painted or carved work to demolish, then they rob and rifle the tombs, and violate the monuments of the dead. And where should they first begin, but with those of the two Queens who had been there interred; the one on the north side, the other on the south side of the church, both near unto the altar. First then, they demolish Queen Katherine's tomb, Henry the Eighth's repudiated wife: they break down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse; overthrow the herse itself, displace the gravestone that lay over her body, and have left nothing now remaining of that tomb, but only a monument of their own shame and villainy. The like they had certainly done to the Queen of Scots, but that her herse and pall were removed with her body to Westminster by King James the First, when he came to the crown: but what did remain they served in like manner, that is, her royal arms and escutcheons, which hung upon a pillar near the place where she had been interred, were most rudely pulled down, defaced, and torn.

"In the north aisle of the church there was a stately tomb in memory of Bishop Dove, who had been thirty years bishop of the place. He lay there in portraiture in his episcopal robes, on a large bed, under a fair table of black marble, with a library of books about him. These men, that were such enemies to the name and office of a bishop, and much more to his person, hack and hew the poor innocent statue in pieces, and soon destroyed all the tomb: so that in a short space all that fair and curious monument was buried in its own rubbish and ruins.

"The like they do to two other monuments standing in that aisle; the one the tomb of Mr. Worm, the other of Dr. Angier, who had been prebendary of that church.

"In a place then called the new building, and since converted to a library, there was a fair monument, which Sir Humphrey Orm (to save his heir that charge and trouble) thought fit to erect in his own lifetime, where he and his lady, his son and wife, and all their