The first siege began on March 2nd, 1643, which happened to be St. Chad’s Day, and it was recorded that during that siege “Lord Brooke who was standing in the street was killed, being shot through the eye by Dumb Dyott from the cathedral steeple.”  The cathedral was afterwards used by Cromwell’s men as a stable, and every ornament inside and outside that they could reach was greatly damaged; but they appeared to have tried to finish the cathedral off altogether, when in 1651 they stripped the lead from the roof and then set the woodwork on fire.  It was afterwards repaired and rebuilt, but nearly all the ornaments on the west front, which had been profusely decorated with the figures of martyrs, apostles, priests, and kings, had been damaged or destroyed.  At the Restoration an effort was made to replace these in cement, but this proved a failure, and the only perfect figure that remained then on the west front was a rather clumsy one of Charles II, who had given a hundred timber trees out of Needwood Forest to repair the buildings.  Many of the damaged figures were taken down in 1744, and some others were removed later by the Dean, who was afraid they might fall on his head as he went in and out of the cathedral.

[Illustration:  “THE THREE LADIES”]

In those days chimney sweepers employed a boy to climb up the inside of the chimneys and sweep the parts that could not be reached with their brush from below, the method of screwing one stale to the end of another and reaching the top in that way being then unknown.  These boys were often cruelly treated, and had even been known to be suffocated in the chimney.  The nature of their occupation rendered them very daring, and for this reason the Dean employed one of them to remove the rest of the damaged figures, a service which he satisfactorily performed at no small risk both to himself and others.

There is a very fine view in the interior of the cathedral looking from west to east, which extends to a distance of 370 feet, and of which Sir Gilbert Scott, the great ecclesiastical architect, who was born in 1811, has written, “I always hold this work to be almost absolute perfection in design and detail”; another great authority said that when he saw it his impressions were like those described by John Milton in his “Il Penseroso”: 

  Let my due feet never fail
  To walk the studious cloisters pale,
  And love the high embossed roof,
  With antique pillars massy proof,
  And storied windows richly dight,
  Casting a dim, religious light: 
  There let the pealing organ blow,
  To the full-voiced quire below. 
  In service high, and anthems clear,
  As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
  Dissolve me into ecstacies. 
  And bring all heaven before mine eyes.