The first siege began on March 2nd, 1643, which happened to be St.
Chad's Day, and it was recorded that during that siege "Lord Brooke who
was standing in the street was killed, being shot through the eye by
Dumb Dyott from the cathedral steeple." The cathedral was afterwards
used by Cromwell's men as a stable, and every ornament inside and
outside that they could reach was greatly damaged; but they appeared to
have tried to finish the cathedral off altogether, when in 1651 they
stripped the lead from the roof and then set the woodwork on fire. It
was afterwards repaired and rebuilt, but nearly all the ornaments on the
west front, which had been profusely decorated with the figures of
martyrs, apostles, priests, and kings, had been damaged or destroyed. At
the Restoration an effort was made to replace these in cement, but this
proved a failure, and the only perfect figure that remained then on the
west front was a rather clumsy one of Charles II, who had given a
hundred timber trees out of Needwood Forest to repair the buildings.
Many of the damaged figures were taken down in 1744, and some others
were removed later by the Dean, who was afraid they might fall on his
head as he went in and out of the cathedral.
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