These embellishments were not destined to remain long undisturbed. In A.D. 1642, the Puritan troopers hewed the altar-rails to pieces and then "threw the Altar over and over down the three Altar steps, and left it lying with the heels upwards." This was only the beginning: we read that during the time of the Great Rebellion, "the newly erected font was pulled down, the inscriptions, figures, and coats of arms, engraven upon brass, were torn off from the ancient monuments, and whatsoever there was of beauty or decency in the holy place, was despoiled." A manuscript, compiled in 1662, and preserved in the Chapter library, gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest of the furniture, with the rail before it, and the screen of tabernacle work richly overlaid with gold behind it; goodly monuments shamefully abused, defaced, and rifled of brasses, iron grates, and bars." The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the Chapter library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar, describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the time of the Restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. "So little," says this document, "had the fury of the late reformers left remaining of it besides the bare walles and roofe, and these, partly through neglect, and partly by the daily assaults and batteries of the disaffected, so shattered, ruinated, and defaced, as it was not more unserviceable in the way of a cathedral than justly scandalous to all who delight to serve God in the beauty of Holines." Most of the windows had been broken, "the church's guardians, her faire and strong gates, turned off the hooks and burned." The buildings and houses of the clergy had been pulled down or greatly damaged; and lastly, "the goodly oaks in our common gardens, of good value in themselves, and in their time very beneficial to our church by their shelter, quite eradicated and _set to sale_." This last touch is interesting, as showing that the reforming zeal of the Puritans was not always altogether disinterested.