ppointed certain persons to oversee the work,
and expended several summs thus in repairs, mending the leads, securing
the roof, glazing several windows, and then fitting up the quire, and
making it pretty decent for the congregation to meet in. And this they
did, by taking the painted boards that came off from the roof of the
ladies chapel, and placing them all along at the back of the quire, in
such manner as they continue to this day.

"When the place was thus fitted up, and the devastations which the
souldiers had made in some measure repaired, one Mr. Samuel Wilson,
school master of the charter-house, in London, was sent down by the
committee of plundred ministers, as they were then called, to be
preacher, with a sallary of 160_l._ per an. in which employment he
continued untill the kings return. Then Dr. Cofin, the antient dean of
the church, after almost twenty years exile in France, return'd and
re-assumed his right again, in the year 1660, about the end of July. He
then after so long an interval renew'd the antient usage, and read
divine service first himself, and caused it to be read every day
afterward, according to the laudable use and custome, and settled the
church and quire in that order wherein it now continues.

"But though the church was thus delivered from public robbers and
spoilers, yet it was not safe from the injuries of private hands. For
some ten or twelve years after, certain thieves in the dead of the
night, broke into the church and stole away all the plate they could
find, viz.: a fair silver bason gilt, and the virgers two silver rods,
and a linnen table-cloth to wrap them in, which were never heard of to
this day. This was the same bason that had been plunder'd by the
souldiers, and recovered again, but irrecoverably lost now. Yet both
these losses were soon repaired, one by Dr. Henshaw, bishop then of the
place, who gave a fair new silver basin gilt; the other made up by Dr.
Duport, then dean, who furnisht the virgers again with the ensigns of
their office, by buying two new silver maces for the churches use.

"And thus is this history brought down at length within our own
knowledge and remembrance; where we have seen what various fortunes
this antient church has had, which now reckons at least one thousand
years from its first foundation. It has been often ruinated, and as
often re-edified. Once it was destroyed by Danes; twice consumed by
fire; it escaped the general downfal of abbies,