108 A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



and by deep ditches, and fortifted with walls and bastions, rendered 

 it unhappily a proper place for a garrison. In the year 1643, Sir 

 Richard Dyott, and some of the principal nobility and gentry of the 

 country, under the Earl of Chesterfield, more remarkable for their 

 loyalty to their sovereign than their experience in the arts of war, 

 garrisoned this Cathedral, when it underwent the attack rendered 

 memorable by the death of Lord Brook, commander of the Parlia- 

 mentary forces. The loss, however, of that furious fanatic, and 

 professed enemy to the church, gave but little respite to the gar- 

 rison, the siege of which was continued, and soon after taken by 

 Sir John Gell, as appears in the following curious account : 



" The attempt upon Lichfield Close made by Robert Lord Brook, 

 wherein he lost his life, the manner whereof is not a little remark- 

 able, which was thus. This Lord being strangely tainted with 

 fanatic principles by the influence of one of his near relations, and 

 some schismatical preachers, though in his own nature a very civil 

 and well-humoured man, became thereby so great a zealot against 

 the established discipline of the church, that no less than the utter 

 extirpation of episcopacy, and abolishing all decent order in the 

 service of God, would satisfy him ; to which end he became the 

 leader of all the power he could raise for the destruction of the 

 Cathedral of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, in order 

 whereunto, when he had marched within half a mile of Lichfield, 

 he drew up his army, and there devoutly prayed a blessing upon 

 his intended work, withal earnestly desiring that God would, by 

 some special token, manifest unto them his approbation of their 

 design, which being done, he went on and planted his great guns 

 against the south-east gate of the Close, himself standing in a 

 window of a little house near there to direct the gunners in their 

 purposed battery : but so it happened, that there being two per- 

 sons placed in the battlements of the chiefest steeple to make shot 

 with long fowling-guns at the cannoneers, upon a sudden accident 

 which occasioned the soldiers to give a shout, this I^ord coming to 

 the door (compleatly harnessed with plate armour cap-a-pie) was 

 suddenly shot into one of his eyes ; but the strength of the bullet 

 so much abated by the glance thereof on a piece of timber, which 

 supported a pentiss over the door, that it only lodged in his brains, 

 whereupon he suddenly fell down dead.* Nor is it less notable 

 that this accident fell out upon the second day of March, which is 



* The spot on which he fell is now distinguished by a pavement of white peb- 

 bles, and a marble tablet with an inscription in memory df the event. 



