‘How the War Began’ by Thomas Jordan, 1663.
‘I’ll tell you how the war began:
The holy ones assembled
(For so they called their party then
Whose consciences so trembled).
They pulled the bishops from their seats,
And set up every widgeon;
The Scotch were sent for to do feats
With oat-cakes and religion.
They plucked communion-tables down,
And broke our painted glasses;
They threw our altars to the ground,
And tumbled down the crosses;
They set up Cromwell and his heir,
The Lord and Lady Claypole;
Because they hated Common Prayer,
The organ and the maypole.’
Three-hundred and fifty years ago, in September 1662, congregations in churches all over England were getting used to hearing services from the new Book of Common Prayer. The reintroduction of the traditional services of the Church of England, which had been done away with after Charles I’s defeat in the Civil Wars, marked the culmination of the Restoration.
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