Peter Gaunt

“For example, early in 1642 in Norwich it was believed that local apprentices planned to attack the cathedral to remove the altar rails and the organ, in response to which the dean and chapter decided themselves to dismantle the rails but to save the organ. With rumours that the apprentices intended to attack on Shrove Tuesday, they took drastic measures to defend the cathedral, locking the doors and gathering prebendaries and choristers to defend the building, but also bringing in some musketeers, whose weapons were ‘ready charged with bullets and one of them had in his musket a bullet split in parts for to shoot the apprentices when they came’, some halberdiers, ‘expecting to run their halberds in any bodies that dare offer to come’, and some ‘pistol blades’, one of whom drunkenly boasted that he was ready to kill hundreds of apprentices. In fact, none appeared and, according to the mocking printed account of the event, the defenders ‘stood like so many Abraham Ninnies doing nothing but tell how many crows flew over the pinnacle’, the author concluding that ‘they would rather lose their lives than their organs, so fast are they glued to their pipes and popish trinkets’.12”
― Peter Gaunt, The English Civil War: A Military History