England's 1547 Injunctions against images are a…

England's 1547 Injunctions against images are a more tightly drawn version of those of 1538 but they are more fiercely enforced, at first informally, and then by instruction.

All images in churches are to be dismantled.

Stained glass, shrines, statues are defaced or destroyed; roods and often their lofts and screens are cut down, bells are taken down; vestments are prohibited and either burned or sold.

Church plate is to be melted down or sold and the requirement of the clergy to be celibate is lifted.

Processions are banned; ashes and palms are prohibited.

Chantries, means by which the saying of masses for the dead are endowed, are abolished.

How well this is received is disputed; Dickens contends that people had "ceased to believe in intercessory masses for souls in purgatory"; others, such as Duffy, argue that the demolition of chantry chapels and the removal of images coincided with the activity of royal visitors.

The evidence is often ambiguous.