In Oxford there must have been much bewilderment and questioning among citizens and gownsmen when Lord Say and Seale, the new Lord-Lieutenant of the county appointed by the Parliament, came into the town on September 14, 1642, and ordered that the works and trenches made by the scholars should be demolished; yet next day he "sent a drumme up and downe the towne for volunteers to serve the King and Parliament." What did that mean? Almost any answer might have been given to the question. His lordship's opinions soon became clearer than his puzzling proclamation; on September the 24th he sent for the Heads of Houses to rebuke them for having "broken the peace and quiet of the University," so much broken it that "they had nowe left no face of a Universitie, by taking up armes and the like courses." He had before this interview "caused diverse popish bookes and pictures taken out of churches, and of papish houses, here and abroad, to be burned in the street over against the signe of the Starre, where his Lordship laye." We know not what is meant by "papish bookes and pictures," but the Puritan Lord Say may not have discriminated sharply between them and the books and ornaments of the High Party in the Church of England. For seven or eight weeks before the battle of Edgehill, Oxford swarmed with soldiers. It had been held for a fortnight by the King's men, who were succeeded by the Parliamentary troopers brought in by Lord Say. Some disturbances took place, in which the soldiers from Puritan London especially distinguished themselves: one of them, when flushed with wine presented by the Mayor "too freely," went so far as to "discharge a brace of bulletts at the stone image of Our Lady over the church St Mairie's parish, and at one shott strooke off her hed, and the hed of her child which she held in her right arme: another discharged his musket at the image of our Saviour over All Soule's gate, and would have defaced all the worke there, had it not been for some townsmen, who entreated them to forbeare, they replienge that they had not been so well treated here at Oxford as they expected: many of them came into Christ Church to viewe the Church and paynted windowes, much admiringe at the idolatry thereof, and a certain Scot, beinge amongst them, saide that he marvaylled how the Schollers could goe for their bukes to these paynted idolatrous wyndoes." From a Scot of that time this utterance was not surprising: bukes had been substituted for paynted wyndowes destroyed in his country many years before his visit to Oxford. But to the honour of the Puritans be it said, there were no serious outrages on person or property in Oxford, and that its citizens had to endure nothing more than fear and discomfort: in no other country in Europe at that time would a city occupied by troops have suffered as little as did Oxford in those two months.