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By Root 1268 0

and the right administration of the sacraments. Completion of the military alliance with the Covenanters coincided with an escalation of this second phase of iconoclasm, a campaign which was apparently more top-down than the relatively spontaneous reactions against Laudianism in 1640-42. On 26 August, the day that the Solemn League and Covenant was received at Westminster and immediately referred to the Westminster Assembly, the Lords approved an ordinance ‘for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all monuments of superstition or idolatry’. It had been in production since June, and the terms echoed the Commons order of 8 September 1641 and the remit of the Harley Committee. But it was also broader in scope, more detailed and conducted nationally on a legislative basis. It called for the removal of altar tables and tables of stone. Communion tables were to be moved away from the east end of the church and all rails removed; tapers, candlesticks and basins taken off the communion table and no such things to be used. Crucifixes and crosses, images and pictures of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and superstitious inscriptions were all to be removed. This was a far wider campaign than the attacks on Laudian innovations in 1640-42: Michael Herring, for example, the churchwarden of St Mary Woolchurch, London, had at that time been reprimanded for defacing superstitious inscriptions. In adding crosses, the saints and superstitious inscriptions the legislation went further than previous orders, and also embraced not just the interiors of places of worship but also churchyards and other places belonging to churches and chapels, and ‘any other open space’. The orders were not simply for removal either, but that these things should be defaced.22

It was this ordinance that set in train one of the more remarkable careers of the 1640s. Through the following spring an otherwise obscure man, William Dowsing, set about his own work in God’s cause with great energy. A working farmer of relatively modest means, Dowsing was clearly a godly man. He collected a serious library of religious books, the earliest acquisitions illegal imports from the Low Countries dealing with separatism. In his mid-forties by the time war broke out, he served as Provost Marshal to the Eastern Association armies from August 1643 – responsible for military discipline. In December of that year, however, he surrendered his commission in favour of appointment as commissioner for removing the monuments of idolatry and superstition from the churches of the Eastern Association. This he did, with tremendous commitment, and over the next four months he visited 200 churches. On 15 April he visited three churches near his home in Suffolk, removing fifty-six superstitious pictures. This was the end of his most vigorous phase: in the coming five months he visited barely thirty more.23 Perhaps his farm absorbed his energies over the summer, and by the autumn the Earl of Manchester’s command was no longer secure. Thereafter, this kind of purification became the responsibility of churchwardens. In a relatively brief period, however, the first third or half of 1644, a yeoman farmer had cleansed most of the churches in Cambridgeshire and, with at least eight deputies, most of those in Suffolk too. There are signs of his presence in Essex and Norfolk too.24

In all this Dowsing was careful to act within the law, interpreting the ordinances empowering him very carefully: what he took into account changed as the legislation changed, and he sometimes argued the case with local authorities. The actual work of destruction was often left in the hands of churchwardens, constables or respectable local gentlemen. Here, as in the destruction of Cheapside Cross or the activities of the Harley Committee, was iconoclasm shorn of any association with sedition or lawlessness. As with those measures too, here was an opportunity for godly solidarity. Dowsing, almost certainly an Independent by inclination, was acting under orders from Manchester, a godly man who inclined towards Presbyterianism.