in our churches. But
happily some treasures escaped, and the gifts of two or three
generations added others. Thus I find from the will of a good
gentleman, Mr. Edward Ball, that after the spoliation of Barkham
Church he left the sum of five shillings for the providing of a
processional cross to be borne before the choir in that church, and I
expect that he gave us our beautiful Elizabethan chalice of the date
1561. The Church had scarcely recovered from its spoliation before
another era of devastation and robbery ensued. During the Cromwellian
period much destruction was wrought by mad zealots of the Puritan
faction. One of these men and his doings are mentioned by Dr. Berwick
in his _Querela Cantabrigiensis_:--

"One who calls himself John [it should be William] Dowsing and by
Virtue of a pretended Commission, goes about y^{e} country like a
Bedlam, breaking glasse windows, having battered and beaten downe
all our painted glasses, not only in our Chappels, but (contrary
to order) in our Publique Schools, Colledge Halls, Libraries, and
Chambers, mistaking, perhaps, y^{e} liberall Artes for Saints
(which they intend in time to pull down too) and having (against
an order) defaced and digged up y^{e} floors of our Chappels, many
of which had lien so for two or three hundred years together, not
regarding y^{e} dust of our founders and predecessors who likely
were buried there; compelled us by armed Souldiers to pay forty
shillings a Colledge for not mending what he had spoyled and
defaced, or forth with to goe to prison."

We meet with the sad doings of this wretch Dowsing in various places
in East Anglia. He left his hideous mark on many a fair church. Thus
the churchwardens of Walberswick, in Suffolk, record in their
accounts:--

"1644, April 8th, paid to Martin Dowson, that came with the
troopers to our church, about the taking down of Images and
Brasses off Stones 6 0."

"1644 paid that day to others for taking up the brasses of grave
stones before the officer Dowson came 1 0."

[Illustration: St. George's Church, Great Yarmouth]

The record of the ecclesiastical exploits of William Dowsing has been
preserved by the wretch himself in a diary which he kept. It was
published in 1786, and the volume provides much curious reading. With
reference to the church of Toffe he says:--

"Will: Disborugh Church Warden Richard Basly and John Newman
Cunstable, 27 Superstitious picture