The "popishly inclined" county of Hereford was at one with its Bishop, but so unprepared for war that Lord Stamford, with two troops of cavalry and a single infantry regiment, entered Hereford under the orders of the Earl of Essex and quartered himself in the Bishop’s palace. Here he remained till December 14th without, however, any serious plundering in the town itself. In April 1643, Waller took the city for the second time, and again without much resistance, a condition of the surrender being the immunity of the Bishop and cathedral clergy from personal violence and plunder. On his leaving Hereford the place was retaken by the Royalists, and became an asylum for fugitive Roman Catholics. So it went on, being held first by one side and then by the other. In the autumn of 1645 Hereford was besieged by Lord Leven with the Scottish army, who were driven off by Colonel Barnabas Scudamore with heavy loss. The cathedral at this time suffered considerable injury during the siege. The defenders used the lead from the chapter-house roof to cover the keep of the castle, and possibly also to make bullets. Finally, on December 18th, through the treachery of Colonel Birch, the governor of the city, Hereford was once more taken, and this time the whole place was overrun by a rabble of plundering soldiery. No doubt much damage had been done in the cathedral during the Reformation, but despite the protests of an antiquarian captain, one Silas Taylor, far greater mischief was perpetrated in this military loot. "The storied windows richly dight" were smashed to bits, monumental brasses torn up, the library plundered of most valuable MSS., and rich ornaments stolen. Some while after the Restoration, an appeal was made by the cathedral clergy to the nobility, baronets, knights, esquires, and gentry of the county for help towards restoring the cathedral, though it is not known with what welcome the appeal was received. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century much harm was done to the cathedral by the zeal of Bishop Bisse, one of those irritating people who mean well but act abominably. He spent much, both on the palace and the cathedral, employing in the alterations of the former the stones of the chapter-house, which had been doubtless much injured but not irreparably so. In the cathedral itself he erected a mass of masonry intended to support the central tower, which was, however, nothing but a hideous architectural blunder. In itself it was ugly to behold, and actually weakened by lateral pressure that which it was intended to support. He also presented an elaborate altar-piece and Grecian oak screen with scenic decoration above, boards painted to represent curtains, and wooden imitations of tassels which hung immediately over the heads of the ministering priests as they stood at the altar. These were found later on to be hung on rusty nails by twine "little better than pack thread." [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT (FROM AN OLD PRINT).]