The fifth monarchy fever, in its fanatical symptoms, threatened much mischief to English society. As in the tenth century the notion then so common throughout Europe--that the end of the world had come, that the whole social fabric had crumbled away, and was to give place to an order of things just on the point of descending from heaven--proceeded from the existing confusion of the age; so the prevalence of fifth monarchy dreams, in the earlier part of the Commonwealth, was aided, no doubt, by the convulsions which had so rudely shaken the whole of the British Empire. The actual overthrow of the hierarchy, the peerage, and the throne, with the desolations of civil war, and the disturbance of the whole country, could not but throw the minds of many into a maddening whirl, and dash them completely off their balance. Fifth monarchism arose, in a great measure, out of the ruins of English monarchism. The enthusiastic visions which absorbed certain minds were, to a large extent, the effect of prevalent disorder. Men's brains were crazed by what they had recently witnessed, and their insanity created omens of other things, brighter or more terrible, which were yet to come. [Sidenote: 1653.] During the sittings of the Little Parliament, the fifth monarchy delusion reached its height; and to that delusion, though not to that alone, may be attributed, as to their cause, certain incidents which, although exaggerated by both Clarendon and Baxter, were not by any means imaginary. These writers speak of this period, as if the very existence of the Christian ministry, of rational religion, of the two Universities, and of Christian learning in general, were then on the point of complete extinction.[57] Things certainly were not in that condition. What was actually done in reference to the support of the clergy has been already described, and it can by no means be made to sustain the sweeping assertions of those authors; yet, notwithstanding, the interests of the great seats of education were placed in fearful jeopardy, as will appear when we have to notice the history of the University of Oxford at that time; nor can it be denied that the demolition of some noble ecclesiastical edifices had been contemplated even before the breaking up of the Long Parliament. The Norwich Corporation, so early as 1650, debated what should be done with the cathedral of that city; and in the same year, Yarmouth was seeking to share in the spoil.[58] Further still, on the 9th of July, 1652, it was referred to a committee by the House of Commons, to consider this question: "What cathedrals are fit to stand, and what to be pulled down." Such intended destruction betokened other spoliations, and the Long Parliament having set such an example, the Little Parliament had encouragement to proceed in a similar path.