The bishops of this cathedral have been men of especial note. Among them may be named Bishop Schrope, who was translated from this See to that of York, and was celebrated for his resistance to the usurpations of Henry IV., in consequence of which he was beheaded in 1405, and was long revered as a martyr. Rowland Lee was appointed bishop of Lichfield in 1534. He solemnized the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, in the nunnery of Sopewell, near St. Alban's. During the establishment of the reformed religion he was mortified to see his cathedral at Coventry entirely destroyed, notwithstanding his earnest endeavors to save it. Ralph Bayne was one of the foremost persecutors of Queen Mary's reign, and caused women to be burnt at the stake. On the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, he refused to administer the sacrament to her, for which refusal an act of parliament deprived him of his See. William Lloyd was one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower by James II., for refusing to read the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience, as it was called; although the real intention of it was to undermine the Protestant religion, and to set up popery again in its place. John Hough, who was made bishop of this See in 1699, was, at the time of the Reformation, Master of Magdalen College at Oxford, and in like manner resisted the royal order. He was elected head of the college against the king's will, and so was forcibly ejected by the commissioners; but he was restored the next year. One of the most memorable of all the bishops is Hackett, who came here in 1661. It was he who did so much in the way of restorations, after the destructive work of Cromwell, who dealt roughly with the Lichfield Cathedral. All churches, as well as abbeys, monasteries, and priories, were Roman Catholic institutions, and they suffered greatly in the suppression of papal worship. Statuary was destroyed, no matter what its value. Pictures and frescoes were defaced, altars torn down, and everything reduced to Cromwell's ideas of a Protestant level. This involved the destruction of a vast number of shrines and monuments, those of bishops and prelates suffering especial desecration. The iconoclasm was thorough. Roofs were taken off, buildings dismantled, and their rebuilding or occupancy prohibited under severe penalties. This accounts for the many fine ruins in Great Britain; Melrose Abbey, Furness Abbey, and a thousand others, are now in decay in consequence of these desecrations.