ABSTRACT
At Westminster the process of establishing a new form of church government was interminably slow but at the parish level it was generally a time of change and turmoil. In September 1641 an order had been approved for the removal of communion tables from the east end of churches, the pulling down of altar rails and the destruction of crucifixes, scandalous pictures, candlesticks and other idolatrous objects. In the provinces the most severe outbreaks of iconoclasm were generally the work either of parliamentarian troops or officially appointed visitors of churches. As the colonel of a regiment Sir William Springett exhorted his soldiers to despoil all idolatrous pictures and crosses. When searching the houses of Catholics ‘he destroyed all their crucifixes, reserving not one of them for its comeliness or costly workmanship’. In the royalist press there were frequent allegations that parliamentarian forces were conducting themselves with great barbarity in the name of religion.
