eserved in the Chapter library,
gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows
were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the
steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined
both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut
off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the
organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest of the
furniture, with the rail before it, and the screen of tabernacle work
richly overlaid with gold behind it; goodly monuments shamefully abused,
defaced, and rifled of brasses, iron grates, and bars."

The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard
Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the Chapter
library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar,
describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the
time of the Restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. "So little," says
this document, "had the fury of the late reformers left remaining of it
besides the bare walles and roofe, and these, partly through neglect, and
partly by the daily assaults and batteries of the disaffected, so
shattered, ruinated, and defaced, as it was not more unserviceable in the
way of a cathedral than justly scandalous to all who delight to serve God
in the beauty of Holines." Most of the windows had been broken, "the
church's guardians, her faire and strong gates, turned off the hooks and
burned." The buildings and houses of the clergy had been pulled down or
greatly damaged; and lastly, "the goodly oaks in our common gardens, of
good value in themselves, and in their time very beneficial to our church
by their shelter, quite eradicated and _set to sale_." This last touch is
interesting, as showing that the reforming zeal of the Puritans was not
always altogether disinterested.

After the Restoration some attempt was made to render the cathedral once
more a fitting place of worship, and the sum of L10,000 was devoted to
repairs and other public and pious uses. A screen was put up in the same
position as the former one, and the altar was placed in front. But, in
A.D. 1729, this screen no longer suited the taste of the period, and a
sum of L500, bequeathed by one of the prebendaries, was devoted to the
erection of a screen in the Corinthian style, designed by a certain Mr.
Burrough, afterwards Master of Caius Coll