became a matter of other than local history. Titley seems to have held his own, and the altar was still against the east wall after his death in 1633.[78] During Titley’s incumbency some additions were made to the church. Possibly the east window, of a very plain Perpendicular type, resting on a fourteenth-century sill, was inserted at this time.[79] A clerestory was added to the chancel about 1628, when the roofs of the church were lowered; and it is much to be regretted that this was destroyed at a nineteenth-century restoration, in that spirit of iconoclasm which imagines that, by destroying post-mediæval masonry and furniture, it is restoring churches to their “original state.” In 1640 the Chancellor of the diocese presented the church with an organ; but although the Corporation approved, the Puritans opposed the gift for the time successfully.[80] The organ was erected, but probably was not used; and the great event of the year was the re-hanging of the bells and the blocking up of the ground floor of the tower by a wooden ringers’ gallery. Three times between 1601 and 1640 had plague visited the town; and early in 1643 came the scourge of civil war. The Royalists were the first to occupy the town, their troops being quartered in the tithe-barn of the prebendaries, to the south-east of the churchyard, and close to the site of the Castle. In spite of a temporary repulse, they held Grantham till May 22, 1643, when Cromwell won his first battle on a field to the north of the town. “Belton fight” was followed by the battle of Winceby, in October. The year before the Corporation plate had been seized by order of Parliament, but was fortunately restored to the town. This year Fairfax demanded a vote of £300 from the Corporation, who did as they were told; but the town refused to pay, and the Alderman and some of the Comburgesses were sent to Nottingham Castle. Released in 1644, they formed a Royalist faction in and outside the town, corresponding with the garrison at Belvoir, and taking part in the guerilla warfare of the countryside. But in 1646 came the end of the war. Belvoir and Newark castles were surrendered, and their fortifications slighted. Under Puritan rule the Royalist burgesses were deprived of their rights; but the town returned to something of its old quiet and prosperity. The woodwork of the church had been destroyed by the soldiers during the Civil War, who used it for fuel, and probably the state of the building was rather dreary. When in 1648 an Alderman was elected in church, the deprived Royalists took the occasion to brawl. The weekly lectures were restored in 1646, and, somewhat earlier, the poorly paid vicars had their stipends augmented by the sequestration of the Salisbury prebends. In spite of this, one of the vicars found it more agreeable to his conscience to be non-resident. In 1651, the Mercers’ Company, trustees of an investment left by Lady Campden to form the endowment of