%0 Thesis
%9 Doctoral
%A Spraggon, J.
%B History
%D 2000
%F discovery:1349283
%I University of London
%P 296
%T Puritan iconoclasm in England 1640-1660
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1349283/
%X A study of Puritan iconoclasm in England during the period of the civil wars and  Interregnum, this thesis looks at the reasons for the resurgence of large-scale  iconoclasm a hundred years after the break with Rome. Initially a reaction to the  emphasis on ceremony and the 'beauty of holiness' under Archbishop Laud, the attack  on recent 'innovations' introduced into the church (such as images, stained glass  windows and communion rails) developed into a drive for further reformation led by the  Long Parliament. Increasingly radical legislation targeted not just 'new popery', but  pre-reformation survivals and a wide range of objects including some which had been  acceptable to the Elizabethan and Jacobean church (for instance organs and vestments).  Parallel to this official movement was an unofficial one, undertaken by Parliamentary  soldiers during the war, whose iconoclastic violence, particularly against cathedral  churches, became notorious. The significance of this spontaneous action and the  importance of the anti-Catholic and anti-Episcopal feelings that it represented is  examined. So too is the promotion of such feeling and of the cause of the reformation of  images through printed literature (both popular and learned).  A detailed survey is made of parliament's legislation against images, and the work of its  Committee for the Demolition of Monuments of Superstition and Idolatry, headed by  Sir Robert Harley. The question of how and how far this legislation was enforced  generally is considered, with specific case studies looking at the impact of the  iconoclastic reformation in London, the cathedral churches and at the universities.
%Z Thesis digitised by British Library EThOS