Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/387

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and its Green Border-Land.
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conduct toward all that was then held so sacred, and all the defacing of sculpture, the mutilating of marble noses, and the destruction of carved images are generally laid to their charge. They doubtless did have a religious repugnance to all graven images, even of good men and women, and regarded them as under the ban of the second commandment of the Decalogue. It is quite possible that they have been made to bear many of the sins of the Cavaliers and Royalists in this respect. Between the two Lichfield Cathedral was left a splendid ruin. It had verified in its experience the truth of the declaration, "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Its wall and foss, instead of protection, brought great desolation upon it. But these were speedily repaired, after the Restoration, under Bishop Hacket; who not only gave munificently from his private means, but induced the nobility, gentry, and clergy of the diocese to follow his example.

During the Civil War the stained glass in the windows of the cathedral was totally destroyed, either out of wantonness or for the lead mouldings in which it was encased. This was a sad calamity to the eyes and hearts of all devout mediævalists. What was to be done? to sew new bits of cassimere into the rents of the venerable robe? to put young, bran new eyes into the eye-sockets five centuries old, to stare in the face of such solemn and august