Under colour of these ordinances the beauty of the cathedrals and churches was injured to an extent hardly credible; the monuments of the dead were defaced, and brasses torn away, in the iconoclastic fury which then raged; the very tombs were violated; and the havoc made of church ornaments, and destruction of the fine painted glass with which most church windows then abounded, may in some degree be estimated from the account given by one Dowsing, a parliamentary visitor appointed under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester for demolishing the so called superstitious pictures and ornaments of churches within the county of Suffolk, who kept a journal, with the particulars of his transactions, in the years 1643 and 1644: these were chiefly comprised in the demolition of numerous windows filled with painted glass, in the breaking down of altar rails and organ cases, in levelling the steps in the chancels, in removing crucifixes, in taking down the stone crosses from the exterior of the churches, in defacing crosses on the fonts, and in the taking up (under the pretence of their being superstitious) of numerous sepulchral inscriptions in brass. Nor did the churches in other parts of the country, with some exceptions, escape from a like fanatical warfare; and, in this, many of our cathedrals suffered most. But this was not enough: our sacred edifices were profaned and polluted in the most irreverent and disgraceful manner; and with the exception of the destruction which took place on the dissolution of the monastic establishments in the previous century, more devastation was committed at this time by the party hostile to the Anglican church than had ever before been effected since the ravages of the ancient Danish invaders. But as to other alterations at this time effected. In January, 1644, an ordinance of parliament was published for the taking away of the Book of Common Prayer, which was forbid to be used any longer in any church, chapel, or place of public worship. In lieu of this the “Directory for the Publike Worship of God” was established: this contained no stated forms of prayer, but general instructions only for extemporaneous praying and preaching, and for the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the former of which was to be administered in the place of public worship and in the face of the congregation, but “not,” as the Directory expresses, “in the places where fonts in the time of popery were unfitly and superstitiously placed.” And at the administration of the Lord’s Supper the table was to be so placed that the communicants might sit orderly about it or at it; but all liturgical form was abolished, and the prayers even at this sacrament were such as the minister might spontaneously offer.