William Dowsing (1596-1668)

William may have attended the church at Baylham for a time - his first four children were possibly baptized there. But it was not his preferred place of worship, because his next six children all appear on the baptismal registers of St. Mary's in Coddenham. The minister there was the decidedly Puritan preacher Mathias Candler, and it was Candler who personally performed the baptisms of William Dowsing's last four children with Thamar.

Life in the 1600s was precarious, especially for newborns, infants and children, and the first three of William and Thamar's children died in infancy. The next six all appear on the Coddenham parish register, so William evidently preferred Candler's undoubtedly persuasive and doctrinally pure preaching to that of the minister at Baylham. One can imagine Dowsing seated in his regular pew with his large family, at the feet of Candler, as the minister preached with assured authority from the elevated pulpit. Today on the wall of St. Mary's church is a list of ministers and patrons of the church back to the 11th century. Beneath Matthias Candler's name have been added the words: "Eminent Puritan Divine and Genealogist." A commemorative stone slab to Candler is affixed to a wall outside.

The Dowsings had produced children at regular two-yearly intervals throughout their marriage, but daughter Sarah, born in the autumn of 1637, was to be their last. It's possible Thamar died in her delivery. 

Soon after his wife's death in May of 1640, William Dowsing moved from Coddenham. The reasons are not evident. Possibly the memories of the parish and of the losses to his family were too tender to remain, or there may have been practical reasons, such as the affinity of Puritan friends for his views, but his next home was to be in Stratford St. Mary, a parish on the border of the counties of Suffolk and Essex, to the south.

By 1641 Parliament was already debating the need for removal of "relics of idolatry" from churches throughout the land. Ever since his accession to the throne in 1625, King Charles 1 had quarreled with Parliament about his claim to govern as a divine right, without Parliament's consent. Puritans and other reformed groups deeply distrusted his leaning toward high church Anglican formality, which too closely mirrored traditional Catholic practices for their liking. Matters were made worse by the king's marriage to a French Catholic and other actions, such as the appointment of the autocratic William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury, making him England's leading cleric.

Parliament's orders of 1641 were intended to push back on changes that Laud was encouraging or introducing, which had dismayed Puritans during the past 20 years as they gradually eroded the full intent of the Reformation. A year later, in 1642, disagreement between King Charles and  the English Parliament over the  issue of sovereignty erupted into the First Civil War. Charles withdrew from London, soon setting up court in Oxford and declaring Parliament in rebellion.

In 1643, Parliament strengthened its ordinances, without royal assent, to forbid crosses and "superstitious inscriptions." It had already sought to destroy images of the Trinity, of saints - especially the Virgin Mary - crucifixes, and had banned Sunday sports and games. Physical changes to parish churches had also been ordered, including the taking down of communion rails and the removal of communion tables from the east end of churches.

It was at this time that William Dowsing received his charge from the second Earl of Manchester, a leader of the Puritan Party in the House of Lords, implying parliamentary authority to destroy from places of worship all those "monuments of idolatry and superstition" that had threatened to roll back the work of the great Protestant reformers. William was already known to Manchester, and had been appointed Provost Marshall of the Army for the Eastern Association. William took on the task of iconoclast - a destroyer of religious images and monuments - with such meticulous care that his name has ever since virtually defined the word. His name lives on, particularly, because he kept a meticulous journal of the 100-or-so churches he visited in Suffolk, together with the churches in Cambridgeshire and the Cambridge University colleges, detailing the orders that he issued. That journal has survived.

William was a widower when he took on his new role, and by the time he remarried in 1647 to Mary Cooper, it appeared the Civil War was over. The New Model Army had vanquished royalist forces and the king was under house arrest.

Over the years, civil war would erupt again, leading eventually to the king's execution, conflict between Parliament and the Army, and a Republican government under Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of England. After Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored and King Charles II came to the throne with the establishment of England's first constitutional monarchy.

William Dowsing's actions in 1643-1644 left a trail of destruction that casual students of history see only as vandalism. But perhaps the most incisive and well-researched work on William Dowsing's life and the journal he left behind is one to which several outstanding scholars contributed, and which is quoted below. In it, Cambridge University Professor John Morrill sums up Dowsing's character as follows:

"Dowsing was, as his library indicates, a sincere and godly man. He undertook the work of state iconoclast because he believed the Reformation was impeded by images that distracted the mass of the people from paying attention to the word of God; because many of the images perpetuated a false and discredited theology of Grace; and because he believed it was the duty of the Christian magistrate to enforce the second commandment, and that God might well withhold victory over the King until his graven images were destroyed. Perhaps...Dowsing simply felt in the presence of evil when he saw a carving of the persons of the Trinity or the Host of Heaven. He was no mindless vandal, but a man driven by personal conviction...Unless we grasp the bitterness of those years, of the sense that the Protestant cause and therefore God was being betrayed, then the release of pent-up energy in the early 1640s cannot be understood." (Extracted from Trevor Cooper (ed.), The Journal of William Dowsing: iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War, Woodbridge, 2001).

In Stratford, William and Mary produced five more children, and William lived until 1668. William's wife, Mary, outlived him by another ten years.