The efforts of the more sober leaders were directed to change, it is true, but to gradual not revolutionary change. The restraint of the zealous, however, was in some churches very difficult; certain quarters of the City were far more Protestant than others: Blackfriars, for instance, became an early centre of Puritanism; at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, on the other hand, we find the church-wardens quietly obeying every new ordinance, but keeping the old things in boxes ready for a possible return to the old order. The Dissolution of the Houses brought with it certain unexpected accompaniments. The servants of the Commissioners took away the sacred vestments and used them either for their own common wear or for saddlecloths, thus inflicting wanton insults on the faithful and bringing into contempt, with the desecration of the vestments, the very doctrines of which they were symbolical. Again, there were the relics and the images which the people had so long adored; it is true that the Church would not acknowledge the adoration of an image, but that was the practice of the common people, as it is at this day in every Roman Catholic Church. Thus sacred objects came to be treated with the utmost scorn: reliquaries were emptied and the relics thrown away; images of the Virgin were deprived of their lovely vestments, and sent about the country, shapeless lumps of wood, or brought to London to be publicly burned. In some cases an ancient and venerable fraud was discovered and pitilessly exposed. Who could resist contempt for the priests and monks who had for many generations of simple believers made the head on the Holy Rood of Boxley incline benignantly and roll its eyes upon the kneeling multitude? With all these aids to disbelief who can wonder if the wave of Protestant indignation mounted steadily higher; if the fiery spirit of Reform seized upon town and country, upon the sober merchant and the hot-headed ’prentice? We hear of the young men reading the Bible aloud in the churches, shouting the words they read; of girls who carried the English Primer with them to church and studied it during the singing of Matins; of men who insulted the Consecration of the Host; who attacked the priest who carried it through the streets. It is certain that London itself, almost from the beginning, was for the Reformation. (_See_ Appendix V.) [Illustration: POPISH PLOTS AND TREASONS _From the beginning of the Reign of Queen_ Elizabeth. _Illustrated with Emblems and explain’d in Verse._ _Figure 1._