In reading the history of the building of this fabric, we cannot help noticing that even the great Gothic builders could not leave well alone. Then, as now, Fashion was the ruling power. Having a Norman church, they altered it into an Early English one; then they pulled down a good deal of this to get a more Decorated building; and finally they changed the windows in order to give the whole a Perpendicular appearance: side by side with other reasons that actuated them, they did their best to keep their cathedral in the fashion.
In the sixteenth century, Henry VIII., the great destroyer of religious houses, made but little difference to the fabric of this cathedral, but he laid his hands on the valuables. The shrine of St. Chad was denuded of its jewels, and everything which could be turned into money was taken away, much of it was fortunately returned for the "necessary uses" of the cathedral, but the services and ritual must have been much impaired and their beauty diminished. During that century, however, the cathedral gradually recovered, and we know that early in the next the services were again very much on the same scale of magnificence as they had been when the good bishops Patteshull and Weseham directed the diocese.
The next event in the history of the building is one which is necessarily referred to many times in this book. The siege of Lichfield Cathedral is probably the most famous incident in its long career; not only on account of the immense injury done to the fabric itself, to its monuments and its decorations, but also on account of the "miraculous intervention" on behalf of the holy building, an intervention which, viewed with nineteenth-century scepticism, does not appear to have done the cathedral any obvious good, but which at the time appears to have been treated with all the deference due to a genuine miracle.
The great Civil War began on August 22, 1642, when Charles I. set up his standard at Nottingham. At Lichfield, as everywhere else in England, there were partisans of both sides. The cathedral group was naturally for the king, while others, for one reason or another, joined either the Royal Party or the Parliamentarian. After Edgehill, which was fought in the autumn, matters became more and more serious in the Midlands; and finally, in February 1643, the Royalists at Lichfield, hearing that at any moment an outbreak might take place, garrisoned the close, which ever since the days of Walter de Langton had been strongly fortified. They hoisted the king's flag on the great steeple, and waited the result. They had not long to wait. With March Lord Brooke, one of the fiercest of anti-churchmen, arrived in command of a strong body of Roundheads, and on the 2nd the siege commenced.