of old buildings and parts of them comes the devastation caused by letting restorations by contract, with a clause in the specification requesting the builder to give a price for ‘old materials,’ such as the lead of the roofs, to be replaced by tiles or slates, and the oak of the pews, pulpit, altar-rails, etc., to be replaced by deal.  Apart from these irregularities it has been a principle that anything later than Henry VIII is anathema and to be cast out.  At Wimborne Minster fine Jacobean canopies have been removed from Tudor stalls for the offence only of being Jacobean.  At a hotel in Cornwall a tea-garden was, and probably is still, ornamented with seats constructed of the carved oak from a neighbouring church—­no doubt the restorer’s perquisite.

“Poor places which cannot afford to pay a clerk of the works suffer much in these ecclesiastical convulsions.  In one case I visited, as a youth, the careful repair of an interesting Early English window had been specified, but it was gone.  The contractor, who had met me on the spot, replied genially to my gaze of concern:  ’Well, now, I said to myself when I looked at the old thing, I won’t stand upon a pound or two.  I’ll give ’em a new winder now I am about it, and make a good job of it, howsomever.’  A caricature in new stone of the old window had taken its place.  In the same church was an old oak rood-screen in the Perpendicular style with some gilding and colouring still remaining.  Some repairs had been specified, but I beheld in its place a new screen of varnished deal.  ‘Well,’ replied the builder, more genial than ever, ’please God, now I am about it, I’ll do the thing well, cost what it will.’  The old screen had been used up to boil the work-men’s kettles, though ‘a were not much at that.’”

Such is the terrible report of this amazing iconoclasm.

Some wiseacres, the vicar and churchwardens, once determined to pull down their old church and build a new one.  So they met in solemn conclave and passed the following sagacious resolutions:—­

    1.  That a new church should be built.

    2.  That the materials of the old church should be used in the
    construction of the new.

    3.  That the old church should not be pulled down until the new
    one be built.

How they contrived to combine the second and third resolutions history recordeth not.

Even when the church was spared the “restorers” were guilty of strange enormities in the embellishment and decoration of the sacred building.  Whitewash was vigorously applied to the walls and pews, carvings, pulpit, and font.  If curious mural paintings adorned the walls, the hideous whitewash soon obliterated every trace and produced “those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasingly bestows.”  But whitewash has one redeeming virtue, it preserves and saves for future generations treasures which otherwise might have been destroyed.