Dowsing, William ___ 1596-1668 ___ British ___ civilservant

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Dowsing was born in Laxfield, Suffolk, and when middle-aged was commissioned by the Earl of Manchester to carry out a 1643 Parliamentary Ordinance which stated that 'all monuments of superstition and idolatry should be removed and abolished'. In fact, most of the religious imagery in Suffolk's parish churches had been destroyed 100 years earlier by the Anglican reformers, but some (which would have been difficult or inconvenient to get rid of, like windows) survived, and would have been the target of Dowsing's mission. He visited over 250 churches in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk destroying stained glass windows, crucifixes on roofs, altars etc. or leaving instructions for them to be destroyed. Uniquely, he wrote a journal describing his activities.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Breaking superstitious pictures

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1643-1644 ___ religious

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext
etext
about

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Society of Antiquaries of London

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The journal of William Dowsing of Stratford
 

May 2006, June 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.