The Journal of William Dowsing

A full scholarly edition of Dowsing's record of his and his deputies' activities in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, 1643-4.

During the Civil War, in late 1643 and 1644, the Suffolk puritan William Dowsing visited some hundred parish churches in Cambridgeshire, and about a hundred and fifty in Suffolk, smashing stained glass and other 'superstitious' imagery, ripping up monumental brass inscriptions, destroying altar rails and steps, and pulling down crucifixes and crosses. He dealt equally vigorously with the chapels of the Cambridge colleges, still fresh from their Laudian re-ordering. This modern edition of Dowsing's journal brings together, with commentary, the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk sections of his record of what he destroyed, never previously published together. Dowsing and his character and beliefs are set in context, with coverage of Dowsing and the administration of iconoclasm; the work of Dowsing and his deputies in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk; Dowsing and Cambridge University, and the arguments at PembrokeCollege; evidence of destruction in the other counties of the Eastern Association; the text and history of the journal. Contributors: JOHN BLATCHLY, TREVOR COOPER, JOHN MORRILL, S. SADLER, ROBERT WALKER.