good old knight who was a constant
frequenter of Gods publick service, three times a day, outlived his own
monument, and lived to see himself carried in effigie on a souldiers
back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, a crew
of souldiers going before in procession, some with surplices, some with
organ pipes, to make up the solemnity.

"When they had thus demolished the chief monuments, at length the very
gravestones and marbles on the floor did not escape their sacrilegious
hands. For where there was any thing on them of sculptures or
inscriptions in brass, these they force and tear off. So that whereas
there were many fair pieces of this kind before, as that of abbot
William of Ramsey, whose large marble gravestone was plated over with
brass, and several others the like, there is not any such now in all
the church to be seen; though most of the inscriptions that were upon
them are preserved in this book.

"One thing, indeed, I must needs clear the souldiers of, which
_Mercurius Rusticus_ upon misinformation charges them with, viz.:--That
they took away the bell clappers and sold them, with the brass they
plucked off from the tombs. The mistake was this: the neighbourhood
being continually disturbed with the souldiers jangling and ringing the
bells auker, as though there had been a scare-fire, (though there was
no other, but what they themselves had made,) some of the inhabitants
by night took away the clappers and hid them in the roof of the church,
on purpose only to free their ears from that confused noise; which gave
occasion to such as did not know it, to think the souldiers had stolen
them away.

"Having thus done their work on the floor below, they are now at
leasure to look up to the windows above, which would have entertained
any persons else with great delight and satisfaction, but only such
zealots as these, whose eyes were so dazzled, that they thought they
saw popery in every picture and piece of painted glass.

"Now the windows of this church were very fair, and had much curiosity
of workmanship in them, being adorned and beautified with several
historical passages out of scripture, and ecclesiastical story; such
were those in the body of the church, in the isles, in the new
building, and elsewhere. But the cloister windows were most famed of
all for their great art and pleasing variety. One side of the
quadrangle containing the history of the Old Testament; another, that
of the