This chapter looks at the ways in which parliamentary legislation against images was enforced – the forms and organization taken by such enforcement, both official and semi-official. The main problem, in posing the questions ‘how’ and ‘how far’ was the legislation enforced, is the scarcity of evidence. Parish records, the main source for evidence of iconoclasm, are notoriously thin on the ground for the years of the civil war, and those which do survive were often poorly kept, giving little detailed information. It has not been possible to look at all the extant churchwardens' accounts and vestry minutes for the period, and although a comprehensive survey would no doubt turn up more interesting examples of iconoclasm, it is likely that this would not necessarily bring us nearer to a full picture, but simply increase the collection of fragments from which probabilities could be extrapolated.

More manageable sample areas have been chosen for this study: the five counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, and eight cathedral towns: Canterbury, Exeter, Gloucester, Norwich, Peterborough, Winchester, Worcester and York. Use is also made here of the work of Trevor Cooper and others in the recent edition of the journal of iconoclast William Dowsing, which reproduces not only the entire journal but the surviving churchwardens' accounts for Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincoln, Norfolk, and Suffolk. A further twenty-one sets of printed churchwardens' accounts from various parts of the country have also been consulted, as have other printed sources such as borough and quarter sessions records.