2-634-602 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The destruction of Cheapside Cross and the burning of the Book of Sports, May 1643 (1903). The Cheapside Cross (or Eleanor's Cross) in London was demolished on 2 May 1643, under an order from the Parliamentary Committee for the Demolition of Monuments of Superstition and Idolatry, led by the Puritan MP Robert Harley. The Declaration of Sports was a declaration of James I of England issued in 1617 listing the sports and recreations that were permitted on Sundays and other holy days. As the Puritans gained increasing influence in Parliament in run up to the English Civil War, hostility towards the Book of Sports grew. Parliament ordered the book publicly burned in 1643. From London in the Time of the Stuarts, by Sir Walter Besant. [Adam & Charles Black, London, 1903]