the commission was made the excuse for digging up coffins in the hope
of finding treasure. Elizabeth soon perceived the evil that was being
done by the barbarous rage and greediness of her subjects, and
issued a proclamation under her own hand restraining all "ignorant,
malicious, and covetous persons" from breaking and defacing any
monument, tomb, or grave, under penalty of fine or imprisonment. This
checked, but did not wholly cure, the mischief; and, although in her
fourteenth year of sovereignty she issued another and sterner edict on
the subject, the havoc was perpetuated chiefly by a sect or party whom
Weever describes as "a contagious brood of scismaticks," whose object
was not only to rob the churches, but to level them with the ground,
as places polluted by all the abominations of Babylon. These
people were variously known as Brownists, Barrowists, Martinists,
Prophesyers, Solisidians, Famelists, Rigid Precisians, Disciplinarians,
and Judaical Thraskists. Some who overstepped the mark paid the penalty
with their lives. One man, named Hachet, not content with destroying
gravestones and statuary, thrust an iron weapon through a picture of
the Queen, and he was hanged and quartered. Another, John Penry, a
Welshman, was executed in 1593, and of him was written:

"The Welshman is hanged
Who at our kirke flanged
And at her state banged,
And brened are his buks.

And though he be hanged
Yet he is not wranged,
The de'ul has him fanged
In his kruked kluks."