Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/72

 "'That for the better providing and accomplishing the reperation of the bells, fencing the church-yard, and purchasing one decent and semely cuppe of silver for the use of the Communion, the organs should be sould to any of the parishe for the sume of 41., if any desired the same: otherwise the said organs should presentlye bee sould to hym whosoever would give 41. or more for the same.'"

Some idea of the devastation committed by the Puritans of the Commonwealth time may be gathered from a few passages extracted from "Mercurius Rusticus," 1647. At Westminster Abbey, we are told, the soldiers "brake down the organs and pawned the pipes at severall ale-houses for pots of ale. They put on some of the singing-mens surplices, and in contempt of that canonicall habite, ran up and down the church; he that wore the surplice was the hare, the rest were the hounds." At Exeter Cathedral they "brake downe the organs, and taking two or three hundred pipes with them, in a most scornefull contemptuous manner, went up and downe the streets piping