St. Paul’s Church is the cathedral of the diocese of London, and was so dedicated by its first founder. According to Beda, this was Ethelbert, King of Kent, “who had command over all the nations of the English as far as the river Humber.” His nephew, Sebert, King of the East Saxons, held London in 604, when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, sent Mellitus to preach Christianity north of the Thames. He does not seem to have succeeded very well, and after the deaths of Augustine, Ethelbert and Sebert, Mellitus was expelled. From that time for sixty years or more, we hear nothing of St. Paul’s, and the next bishops of the East Saxons do not seem to have lived in London. They converted the kings who made Rendlesham, Tillingham, and Tilbury their headquarters. The City within the Roman wall was probably but sparsely inhabited. The Anglo-Saxons disliked Roman sites, and especially hated the repair of walls. There is a tradition that Erkenwald, or Archibald, the fourth bishop, incited the Londoners to this task and himself built the northern gate, since named Bishopsgate. Another tradition relates that at his death, which is variously placed in 685 and 693, the citizens buried his body in the cathedral. In 1148, it was translated into a sumptuous tomb. Against the whole legend of St. Erkenwald, as it grew in the Middle Ages, there is so much of inconsistent anachronism to be alleged that we must pass it by, merely assuming that a bishop of that name comes fourth on the list, that he was designated by Ini, King of Wessex, a predecessor of Alfred, as “Erkenwald, my bishop,” and that he made a serious effort to restore the bishopric to the “bishop’s stool” of Mellitus.

Authentic history, however, does not begin till the time of King Alfred. Even here we cannot be certain of the name of the bishop for whom the King built or rebuilt the cathedral church, but it was probably Heathstan, or Ethelstan, who died in 898. It is not even certain that the old site was retained. When Alfred came to London he saw its capabilities as a bulwark against the Danes: but the Roman wall was empty. For thirty years, we read, London had lain desolate. Alfred repaired the wall. He probably built the church. He revived as much as he could the ancient memories. The two land gates were placed nearly, though not exactly, on the Roman sites—one, Bishopsgate, opening on the two great northern roads, and the other, Westgate, on the Watling Street. It is possible that he repaired the bridge. The church was placed in the triangular space cut off by the course of the Watling Street from the bridge through the City, and when the wards were divided this corner became the Warda Episcopi.

The bishop figures as an alderman in the first list of the wards which has come down to us. It must have been drawn up about forty years after the Norman Conquest, and is now preserved in the cathedral library. It is a list of the City lands which belonged to St. Paul’s, arranged in wards, of which twenty are enumerated. The first is the bishop’s. The bishop, at this time always a Norman, or Frenchman, as he was called, was probably but little acquainted with English, and his jurisdiction was exercised by a deputy, called in Latin prepositus, that is provost. A provost was the abbot’s deputy at Bury St. Edmund’s, and the title was later also assumed by other laymen who acted for ecclesiastical personages, as the provost of the Alderman of Portsoken, who was the Prior of Aldgate.

When William the Conqueror granted to the citizens the brief charter which is still at Guildhall, he addressed the bishop and the portreeve. The King, that is, wrote to the alderman who had charge of the ecclesiastical government, and to the alderman who had charge of the civil government:—“William, King, greets William, Bishop, and Gosfrith, Portreeve.” Bishop and Alderman William, a Norman who had been chaplain to Edward the Confessor, had succeeded Bishop Robert, also a Norman, in 1051. He was succeeded by Hugh de Orivalle, another Norman, in 1075; so we obtain approximately the date of the charter, namely, between 1066 and 1075. The date of the document in which we have mention of the Bishop’s ward was after 1108, from internal evidence, but probably before 1115.

The constitution of the cathedral was according to the system which has been aptly named “the old foundation.” This pattern was followed in other cathedrals throughout England wherever there was no monastery attached to the church; and as the municipal government of London was imitated in other cities, so the “Government Spirituell” of St. Paul’s was taken as a model at York, Chichester, Exeter, Wells, Hereford, Lincoln, and six or seven other churches where there were no monks. The services were conducted by priests, who held estates both singly and as a corporation. There were generally more canons than estates. At St. Paul’s there were thirty, and a majority of them had each a manor somewhere in the neighbourhood of London. There they lived like other lords of manors, with their wives and children, much respected, no doubt, for their “clergy,” or clerkly learning, in districts where none of their neighbours could read or write, except, perhaps, the parsons of the parish churches, who in many cases, like their patrons, had wives and children. Their chief anxieties besides those common to a country life were the fear of Danish incursions, and the chance of being able to leave their prebendal stalls to their sons. The care of the estates, both in the City and in places more distant from the church, constantly occupied the chapter. To it we owe the list of wards mentioned above. Newcourt tells us of a meeting of the canons in 1150, which was long remembered as a settlement of various important questions. It was known as the “Constitution concerning bread and beer.” Among the prebendal manors some are described in Domesday Book as being “held by the Canons for their food.” One of these is Willesden. There was a Canon of Willesden, but apart from his estate the rest of the manor was held by “villains,” their rent going towards the provision of bread and beer in the bakery and brewery at St. Paul’s. It was resolved in 1150 to break up the whole manor, in order to endow those canons who had previously depended only on “surplice fees.” Mapesbury, Brondesbury, and Brownswood may be named as being called from the first canons after this arrangement. Walter Map, in particular, is remembered still for his witty poems, in rhyming Latin, satirising the married clergy; and the name may be seen on a prebendal stall (12th on south side) in St. Paul’s.

The staff of the cathedral consisted first of the dean; next to him were four archdeacons, London, Essex, Middlesex, and Colchester, to which, at the Reformation, St. Albans was added, to be transferred with the archdeaconries of Essex and Colchester to the new See of St. Albans in 1877. It should be observed that previously Essex came next after London in dignity and before Middlesex, Colchester, and St. Albans, a little historical point on which it would be easy to enlarge. After the archdeacons came the precentor “likewise called Cantor,” whose office it was “to look after the singing-men and singing”; the treasurer, whose office does not seem to have existed till after the Conquest; and the chancellor, who was at first called “magister scholarum,” and had charge of education in the City, with the duty of appointing the master of St. Paul’s School, “not,” says Newcourt, “that long after founded by Dean Colet,” but that which was endowed by Bishop Richard Belmeis or Balmes in the reign of Henry I. After these officers came the thirty canons, of whom there are some further notes below. In 1845 the canons, generally now described as “prebendaries,” were superseded by four canons residentiary, who with the dean and the archdeacons form the present chapter. They have no prebendal estates but are called canons. A college of minor canons was formed at an early period, and incorporated by charter of Richard II. in 1394. It consists of eight members, formerly twelve, answering to the Vicars at Wells. The close stands in the parishes of St. Augustine, St. Faith, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Gregory. The arms of the Dean and Chapter are “Gules, two swords, in saltire, proper; in chief the letter, D. or.” One sword, on a shield, is carved in many places and forms a kind of badge; the same sword, emblematic of St. Paul, appearing also in the arms of the City, where it is often mistaken for the dagger of Walworth.

It may be added here that there seems to be evidence that at first St. Paul’s was one of the three or four City parish churches; that the Dean and Chapter gradually divided the warda episcopi into smaller parishes and built churches on them, while the clergy of St. Paul’s ceased to perform parochial functions. It is not now reckoned parochial, though in rare cases marriages have been performed in it by special licence, and there is a register which begins in 1697, the year of the opening of the new church.

Before the Reformation the estates of the bishop, the dean, and the canons were very extensive, and formed almost a semicircle round the City, from Stepney on the east to Willesden on the west. Other estates were in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, while there were isolated holdings in all the City wards. The canons at first preserved their prebendal estates with jealous care, residing on them and, as has been said, hoping to leave them to their sons. After the enforcement of the celibacy of the clergy as one of the consequences of King John’s submission to the Pope, the canons leased away their estates until there was nothing left. Thus, in 1315, Robert Baldock leased Finsbury to the mayor and commons of London at £1 a year, and the lease was only terminated by the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1867. The manor of Portpoole formed the chief estate of the Lords Grey of Ruthin, and is now Gray’s Inn. Rugmere, part of which is Bloomsbury, part St. Giles’s, Wenlakesbarn, Ealdstreet, now Old Street, Hoxton, Cantlers, Islington, and the rest, were all leased away, and are now, for the most part, the principal endowments of wealthy noblemen. Cantlers, now Kentish town, paid £80 a year to the lord of the manor, now presumably to the Commissioners. The owner of the lease is the Marquis Camden. This is one example only. As late as the middle of thirteenth century we find mention of the families of canons. A very prominent member of the chapter in 1145 was prebendary of St. Pancras, Osbert “de Auco,” who was succeeded by his son, Robert, whose son, John, does not seem to have become a priest; and Robert de Auco was succeeded at his death by Walter, the son of the bishop. Before 1138 we meet with the names of Wlured and his two sons, all canons. Gervase of Canterbury, a canon, had a son, John. Richard, a canon, was son of Archdeacon Richard. The manor of Caddington Major, now called Aston Bury in Bedfordshire, was held by Roger the Archdeacon, son of Robert the Archdeacon. A little earlier we find that Ralph Flambard, appointed Bishop of Durham in 1099, who figures in the history of the Tower of London in the reign of Henry II., and who died in 1128, was prebendary of Tatenhall. His son, Elias, was prebendary of Sneating, near Kirkeby in Essex, where he was succeeded by William, son of Archdeacon Otho, at whose death Ralph, brother of Canon Elias, a younger son of the Bishop of Durham, succeeded to the stall. Of another of the married archdeacons, Nicholas Croceman, we read that he held Oxgate, and that his son, another Nicholas, succeeded him in both archdeaconry and canonry. One of the two Bishops Balmes had two sons, Henry, prebendary of Mora, and Walter, of Newington, in the reign of Henry II. The first bishop appointed by Richard I. was his treasurer, the son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely; he was one of the most eminent of those who held the See of London in the twelfth century, and figures as Bishop Richard Fitz Neal. In short, before the beginning of the thirteenth century we may assume that most of the secular clergy were married men, and the enforcement of celibacy, no doubt, was one of the causes of the unpopularity of the Church in London before the Reformation; while it led indirectly to the alienation of the prebendal estates.

Old St. Paul’s is the name by which the building destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 is usually distinguished. All that is left of it may be traced within the railings on the south side of the present cathedral. The original church of Alfred and his successors perished in 962, and the new building then set up was burnt in 1136. Old St. Paul’s may be said, therefore, to date from the middle of the twelfth century, but it was continually being altered and added to until 1633, when it was completed by the construction of a magnificent portico at the west end by Inigo Jones. The spire seems to have been the tallest in Christendom, rising 520 feet to the eagle and cross, which contained a portion of the true cross. It was finished in 1498, but was burnt in 1561 and never rebuilt. The nave and choir each contained twelve bays united by a wide transept. The arches of the nave and transept were Norman, of the east end pointed, a great rose window terminating the Chapel of St. Mary, and overlooking the west end of Cheap, on which it encroached. The Corinthian pillars of the portico did not look incongruous with the Romanesque nave and the similar little church of St. Gregory which stood on the south side. The western towers, one of which was described as the Lollard’s Tower, were low but massive. A bell tower was at the east end of the churchyard until Sir Miles Partridge won it “at one cast of the dice,” says Dugdale, from Henry VIII., and pulled it down. The famous Paul’s Cross, where public sermons were preached, stood on the north side of the choir, and a chapel, or charnel house, near it, “having under it a vault, wherein the bones taken out of sundry graves in that cemetery were, with great respect and care decently piled together.” This chapel had a warden and an establishment of priests. Another similar chapel was in “Pardon Church Yard,” a little to the westward, and had a cloister painted with the Dance of Death, with “English verses to explain the meaning, translated out of French by John Lydgate, a monk of St. Edmond’s Bury,” says Dugdale. Over the cloister was a library. Another cloister, of which some relics remain, was on the south side of the nave and was built in 1332, together with a chapter-house. This building occupied the site of a garden, south of which, between the church and Paul’s Wharf, was a tilt yard, used by Lord Fitzwalter for drilling the City Trained Bands. It is marked for us by Paul’s Chain and Knightrider Street. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the doctrine of masses for the dead attained a great height, and it is believed that at least one hundred mass priests attended daily at St. Paul’s. Churches were no longer built in the City but chantries multiplied everywhere, especially after the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century.

The church was very full of monuments. Some were shrines of legendary saints, among which may be reckoned the supposed tombs of King Sebert and Bishop Erkenwald, both held in great veneration. What Becket became at Canterbury, the canons tried to make of Erkenwald at St. Paul’s, and the shrine was covered with gold and precious stones. There were many relics, including the arm of Mellitus, and most of the oblations seem to have been preserved in the north aisle of the choir till Henry VIII. sent them in cart loads to the Jewel Tower. (More may be read on the subject in Sparrow Simpson’s St. Paul’s and Old City Life.) The monuments included many chantries with altars, no fewer than seventy-three being enumerated in the fourteenth century. The cost may be estimated by what Dr. R. Sharpe tells us. A bequest of twenty-five shillings secured three hundred masses. There were thirty-five of these altars at the Reformation, employing only fifty-four priests owing to a movement for uniting them, and there were fifty-four obits. The mass priests and their dissolute lives had, no doubt, much to do with the welcome accorded in London to the reforms of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Among the finest monuments were those of John of Gaunt; Sir John Beauchamp, which was usually called Duke Humphry’s; and of many of the bishops, including Bishop William Kemp, Chishull, and others. After the Reformation many “marble hearses” of great size and magnificence were erected, among others to Dean Colet, Sir William Hewit, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir William Cokain, the earl and countess of Pembroke, William Aubrey, John Wolley, Sir Thomas Heneage, and especially to Sir Christopher Hatton, the largest in the church. Fragments still survive of some of them, and the curious effigy of Dean Donne (d. 1631), rising like an Arabian genie from an urn, has been repaired and stands in the south aisle of the choir.

The Fire of 1666 broke out on the 2nd September among the bakers’ shops in Pudding Lane, a thoroughfare of Eastcheap answering to Bread Street in Westcheap. It reached St. Paul’s on the 3rd, and is briefly described by Pepys on the 7th as “a miserable sight,” the roofs destroyed, “the body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth’s.” Evelyn speaks of the scaffolds which were up for the repairs as hastening the ruin, and of the melting lead running down the streets in a stream. He specially laments the loss of Inigo Jones’s portico—immense stones calcined, ornaments, columns, capitals of massy Portland stone flying off. “The lead over the altar at the east end was untouched and among the divers monuments the body of one bishop remained entire.”

Wren, after the Fire, found St. Paul’s completely ruined. The marble portico was reduced to a heap of lime; the roofs had fallen in; the choir had sunk. Nearly all the monuments had perished; and an attempt by Dean Sancroft and the canons to repair a portion at the west end only added to the general destruction. Nevertheless, it was not till June 21, 1675, that the first stone was laid of a new cathedral. Various experiments had been made in the meanwhile, but they only demonstrated the untrustworthy character of the foundations. Contrary to what we often hear about the mediÆval builders, it was abundantly evident that here their moving principle had been to produce the greatest effect by the cheapest means, stability being everywhere sacrificed to show. The King, Charles II., and his brother, afterwards James II., hindered Wren’s work in many ways, design after design being rejected as not suitable for the Romanist worship they secretly hoped to re-establish. Wren at length obtained leave to proceed with his task, but one of the models he had prepared is still to be seen in the triforium. Many other causes interfered to check the work, and it was long after both the kings, as well as their successor, Queen Mary II., were dead, in 1697, that the choir was ready for use. A celebration of the Peace of Ryswick took the place of any form of consecration, such as would now be thought needful, and the building was completed in most essential particulars by 1718, when Wren was superseded by a wholly incompetent architect named Benson, chiefly remembered as building the unfortunate balustrade with which he endeavoured to dwarf Wren’s dome. Wren had already been overruled as to the decoration of the dome. Benson was dismissed in 1720. A silly story is constantly repeated as to St. Paul’s having been completed by one architect, under one bishop, and with one clerk of the works. But Bishop Henchman was in office when Wren began his work, and was succeeded by Compton in 1675, who saw the choir finished. After him, in 1713, came Robinson, who was still in office at the time of Wren’s death. It was under this bishop that Wren was dismissed and subsequently Benson, and a third architect, Robert Mylne, came in. So, too, several clerks of the works were employed, among whom we may name Thomas Strong, who died in 1681; his brother, Edward, who died in 1723; and Christopher Kempster, who seems to have been told off by Wren to build St. Stephen, Walbrook, which even more than St. Paul’s commemorates the genius of the great architect. Kempster himself was the architect of the market-house at Abingdon, often attributed to Inigo Jones; he died in 1715.

It is well, if possible, to approach St. Paul’s from the west. When it comes into sight from the end of Fleet Street, the dome is seen to advantage, rising clear of surrounding buildings on the top of a hill. In this respect it surpasses the only cathedral church in England which can be compared to it, namely Salisbury, which stands on low ground. If we compare it with Lincoln or Durham we miss the magnificent central feature. The dome competes, especially in a city, very successfully with a spire. As we approach Ludgate Hill, the tower of St. Martin, 158 feet high, offers a measure to the eye—the needlessly ugly railway viaduct interfering much less than was feared at first. From Ludgate the two western towers, supporting the double portico, are well seen, and are esteemed as among the best of Wren’s compositions. The towers, of which the southern carries the clock and the great bell, are 220 feet high. The whole west front, as seen from the entrance of St. Paul’s Churchyard, is 180 feet in height and the same in width. The lower pillars of the portico are 40 feet high. The statue in the front was sculptured by Francis Bird in 1712, mutilated by a lunatic in 1743, and restored a few years ago. Between it and the steps, an inscription, cut in the granite pavement, commemorates the fact that here the aged Queen Victoria gave public thanks for the sixty years of her reign in 1897.

The exterior of the church shows two orders, the lower Corinthian, and the upper, what Wren described as “a Composition.” In the tympanum over the portico is a relief by Bird representing the conversion of St. Paul, and on the pediment above are statues of St. Paul between St. Peter and St. James. The railing, now removed from the front, is of iron, cast at Lamberhurst in Sussex. The plan of the cathedral is cruciform, the transepts north and south ending with graceful semicircular porticoes. The east end has a semicircular apse. The cupola, which, as Gwilt says, rises from the body of the church “in great majesty,” should be seen from near the statue of Peel in Cheapside. A fountain within the rails marks the site of Paul’s Cross. From the south a fine view can be obtained from the little garden in which the foundations of the cloisters and chapter-house have been uncovered. The gilt cross is 365 feet above the pavement. The colonnade round the dome is of the composite order, consisting of 32 pillars standing on a circular pedestal 20 feet high and 112 feet in diameter. The columns are not in pairs as at St. Peter’s, but are placed at regular intervals, every fourth intercolumniation being filled with masonry. A sense of stability is thus gained without any sacrifice of lightness.

The best idea of the interior will be obtained by entering at the west end. The great central door is only opened on state occasions; but by either side door we find ourselves in a vestibule with the morning chapel on the north and the consistorial court, which has been made a chapel of the order of St. Michael and St. George, on the south. The carved oak screens should be observed. At the entrance of the nave are fine bronze candelabra. The nave consists of three bays clear, which we enter from the vestibule. There are side aisles, the full width being 102 feet. The height of the central aisle is 89 feet. Beyond the nave, which is 340 feet long, we see the area under the dome, 112 feet across. Beyond this, the choir extends eastward 140 feet. A screen is seen behind the communion table, beyond which in the apse there is a chapel. The screen, erected from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner in 1888, takes the place of a baldacchino, which Wren is said to have intended. The whole length from the west door to the apse is 500 feet. The transept from the north door to the south is 250 feet long, or half the length, and this simple proportion occurs throughout the building; but the western towers are two-thirds the height of the cupola, being exactly double the height of the adjacent roofs. The windows are 12 feet wide and 24 feet high; the aisles are 19 feet in clear width by 38 feet in height. The vestibule is a square of 47 feet and 94 feet high. So, too, the space under the dome, which is 108 feet wide, is 216 feet high.

The side aisles lead to the dome and transepts by an ingenious but simple plan, which Wren is believed to have adapted from that of Ely Cathedral. The inner dome appears very high when we stand under it, but it hardly rises above the colonnade of the outer dome. A cone of brick-work which interposes between the outer and the inner dome carries at its apex the ball and cross. The ball is 6 feet 2 inches in diameter, but it is only to be attained by a long ascent from the whispering gallery, 200 feet above the pavement. A curious echo may be remarked here. Above the whispering gallery an ascent of 108 steps, some 70 feet, takes us to the stone gallery, formed by the balustrade round the external base of the dome, from which a fine view of the far-reaching City may be obtained. A winding and difficult stair leads under the outer dome to the golden gallery, about 100 feet higher, and a farther climb of 45 feet is needed before we reach the ball, within which six people may be seated. The best external view is from the golden gallery.

The same staircase by which we approach the dome takes us to the triforium over the south aisle of the nave. At the western extremity is the library, and in a room adjacent may be seen a large model which Wren made of his first design for the church. In the gallery at the west end is the collection of ancient records belonging to the Dean and Chapter—some of which are dated as early as the reigns of the Saxon kings, the immediate successors of Alfred.

A door into the south-west tower opens just beyond the library, and admits to the so-called geometrical staircase.

The organ was originally constructed by the famous “Father Schmidt.” He gave special attention to the wooden pipes. Some of his stops are still in use, but the instrument which formerly stood across the entrance to the choir and interrupted the view from the nave and the dome, has been divided and greatly improved, while some of the pipes, which were useless for want of room, are now placed in convenient spaces above the stalls and even in the triforium.

Returning to the dome we may see and admire the choir stalls, carved in wood by Grinling Gibbons. Beautiful wreaths of flowers, carved by him in stone, may be found in many places on the vaulting. The iron work in the gates, the doors of the choir and many other places well repays examination. It was chiefly designed by Tijou. A pair of bronze candelabra on the steps of the reredos are copied from an ancient pair in a Belgian church, which are said to have been taken from old St. Paul’s after the Fire.

In the south choir aisle are the altar tombs of Dean Milman and Bishops Blomfield and Jackson. A statue of Bishop Heber is at the farther end, and against a pier the (restored) monument of Dean Donne, from the old church, representing him in his shroud rising from an urn. In a modern chapel at the extreme east end is the altar tomb of Canon Liddon (d. 1890).

Very few of the monuments in St. Paul’s can be admired. Beginning at the western end the first we meet is a recumbent figure on a marble sarcophagus of Lord Leighton (d. 1896). Next is a low cenotaph to General Gordon, murdered at Khartoum, 1885. The great Wellington monument is still incomplete, but is the best example of English sculpture in the church. It was first placed in the south-west chapel or consistorial court, where it could not be seen. In 1895 Lord Leighton, at that time President of the Royal Academy, formed a committee which obtained leave to remove it to the middle arch on the north side of the nave. It is now seen to great advantage, though wanting the equestrian figure. The great Duke lies on his bier “with his martial cloak around him.” The “cartouches” at either side bear his arms, above the marble arch, which is supported over his head on composite columns. The shafts are formed of oak leaves. Two bronze groups on the arch represent Virtue trampling upon Vice, and Truth silencing Falsehood. Alfred Stevens, the sculptor, died in 1875, aged 58.

In the third bay, against the north wall, is the singular but poetical monument by Marochetti, of the brothers Lamb, successive Viscounts Melbourne. The elder, William, was Queen Victoria’s first prime minister and died in 1848. The younger, Frederick, Lord Beauvale, died five years later. An ebony door, on which the names and dates are inscribed in gold, is guarded on either side by the Angels of Death and of the Resurrection, sculptured in white marble. The design and sentiment excel the execution.

Several large monuments are in the south aisle of the nave, chiefly in very bad taste. Almost every panel in both aisles has its tablet commemorating naval or military heroes. The pulpit is a memorial of an officer, Fitzgerald; and the tombs of several other men of Indian fame, including three Napiers, are in the north transept, and compete in poverty of design and sculpture with Bacon’s absurd figure of Dr. Johnson, who was buried at Westminster, and his John Howard (d. 1790), the first statue set up in the church. Somewhat better than its neighbours is Rossi’s monument, in the north transept, of Lord Rodney between figures supposed to represent Fame and the Historic Muse. Nelson and Cornwallis face each other across the south transept, each surrounded by allegorical groups, wholly inappropriate to the place. There are also monuments of Sir John Moore, Sir Ralph Abercromby, Lord Heathfield, Lord Howe, Sir Henry Lawrence, and many more of which it may safely be said that not one is worthy either of the situation or of the personage commemorated. Mr. Birch quotes the opinion that at St. Paul’s the apostles are placed outside and the heathen divinities within. Much more satisfactory is the brief inscription over the inner portico of the north door which speaks of the career of Sir Christopher Wren “who lived not for his own good but for that of the public,” and ends with the words—“Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice”; to which we may add Wren’s own saying, “Building is for eternity.”

The roof of the choir and of the apse beyond it now glow, as Wren desired they should, with colour and gold. The designs by Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., R.A., have been carried out under his personal superintendence in English mosaic, which should be viewed with a strong opera-glass. The faces of the principal figures represented will repay a little trouble. The central figure at the east end is above life-size but carefully adapted to the general proportions, already mentioned, of the building. Each panel is a picture, and the scheme is worked out in the stained glass of the windows, while the harmony of colour, form, and proportion produces an effect upon the mind comparable only with that of the best music. Unfortunately, the designs for the figures of prophets and evangelists, under the dome, seem to have been made in ignorance or defiance of the conditions by which Sir William Richmond has been guided; while they are dull, heavy, and dark in colour. They were produced some fifty years ago, and have a highly discordant effect.

Sir William Richmond’s work has been carried out in conformity with a settled plan, based upon the proportions of the whole building. At the east end, the roof of the apse shows the figure of Our Lord seated, with uplifted hands. In the adjoining panels right and left are Recording Angels, attended by winged cherubim. The lower rectangular spaces are filled with figures of the Virtues and such scenes as the sacrifice of Noah and the blessing of Abraham. Many other allusive and allegorical subjects fill the panels of the vaulting as far as the entrance of the choir, supplemented by abundant gilding and by marble inlay, all carefully harmonised and subdued so as to produce a gorgeous but not a garish effect. The stained-glass windows are similarly subdued to the general scheme of colour, and the result gives great encouragement to those who would see the dome similarly treated if not the nave and transepts also—a work of such magnitude that few of us can hope ever to see it accomplished.

A door in the south transept admits the visitor to the crypt, a very interesting part of the church. It appeals to the architect and scientific builder as well as to the historical student and the sightseer. We can study Wren’s methods of construction here much more readily than above, and can, moreover, see where he was eventually forced to alter the plans with which he commenced operations, and which were in his mind in the preparative work here apparent. First at the foot of the steps we reach “the Artists’ Corner.” At the eastern end, just where it is believed the high altar of Old St. Paul’s was placed, is the grave of the great architect himself. It is inscribed with the memorable sentence already quoted as over the northern entrance. Close by are the graves of Reynolds, Turner, Landseer, and other great painters including Lord Leighton and Sir J. E. Millais. Some eminent architects are near—Mylne, who succeeded as surveyor of St. Paul’s, and Cockerell who came after him. Goss, part of whose funeral ode on Wellington is inscribed on his tombstone, and Boyce represent music. In the crypt too were laid the scanty remains found in the Arabian desert of Palmer and his companions, murdered in 1882. Sir Bartle Frere and another great colonial statesman, Dalley, are both laid here. But to most visitors no tombs or memorials are so interesting as those of Nelson and Wellington. In a kind of chapel marked by its own candelabra, and situated just under the choir, the lofty sarcophagus which contains the body of the great Duke forms a conspicuous object in the view. It is formed of a large block of red porphyry from Cornwall, standing on a pedestal of the same stone, and a base of grey granite—all studiously plain. The funeral took place in 1852, three months after Wellington’s death; even then the sepulchre was not ready and the coffin rested for some weeks on the Nelson tomb farther east. Beside the Duke are the remains of Sir Thomas Picton, his comrade and lieutenant at Waterloo. Picton was killed in the battle, and his body was brought home to his house in Edwardes Street, now Seymour Street, Portman Square. Thence it was removed to the vaults of the chapel of St. George, now altered, in the Uxbridge Road, where it rested till 1859, when, nearly seven years after Wellington’s funeral, it was brought here. The tomb of Nelson is under the dome. He died on October 21, 1805, at the great victory of Trafalgar, and his body was brought home and buried here. It had been intended that his coffin should be enclosed in a black marble sarcophagus which, lying unused in Wolsey’s Chapel at Windsor, was presented by the King for the purpose. It had been sculptured by a Florentine named Bernardo da Rovezzano, for Cardinal Wolsey, and remained in the chapel. The wooden coffin, made of the mast of L’Orient, blown up at the battle of the Nile, which had been presented to Nelson by his friend Hallowell, of the Swiftsure, was too large to go into the marble sarcophagus, which is still empty. It stands on a fine base of black and white marble, and Nelson’s body is in the masonry below. Beside Nelson sleep Collingwood (d. 1810), the second, and Northesk (d. 1831), the third in command at Trafalgar.

To the west of Nelson’s tomb is preserved the funeral car or hearse made for the burial of the Duke of Wellington—a monumental work in itself. It was cast from cannon taken in the Duke’s victories, from designs by Redgrave, and is so fine as to have led many critics to attribute it to Stevens—wrongly, however, as Redgrave’s drawings are still extant.

Quite apart from the tombs here to be seen and the names of great men on every side, this crypt is well worth a visit. We observe in it, the care and attention to details which Wren bestowed upon every part of his great design. He altered the axis of the new church, the east end of which is slightly to the northward of that of old St. Paul’s. By this means he obtained fresh ground for the more important parts of his foundations. The great piers which support the dome do not stand where those which supported the old central tower stood. At one place, said to be near the north-east corner, he found that a gravel pit had been made and “the hard pot earth,” on which he depended, had been removed. He sunk a pit to where, at the very foot of the hill on which St. Paul’s stands, he found a firm foundation, and laid upon it a mass of masonry, 10 feet square, on which he could rely. It was not his intention to interrupt the view of the central aisle by placing the organ over the entrance to the choir, but, in the crypt, we see that when he had to comply with the taste of the time, he built “a row of columns and arches to strengthen the floor for the extra weight it was called upon to carry.”

The modest Guide, by Mr. Gilbertson, which is to be had at the ticket office at the foot of the stairs to the dome, contains by far the best account of the church. It is supplemented by a description of the mosaics, mentioned above. For a magnificent series of views a volume by the late Mr. Birch on the City Churches may be named. There is no modern history of the cathedral which can be recommended to the student as, so far, the great collection of records preserved in the library has not been used by historians. Milman and Longman do not seem to have been aware of its existence. The late Dr. Sparrow Simpson, whose delightful but desultory volumes have already been mentioned, made many extracts from these manuscripts, but his example has hardly been followed.

The manuscripts were well catalogued in 1883, by Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, for the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

St. Faith was situated under the choir of old St. Paul’s. In 1549, Jesus Chapel in the cathedral being suppressed by Edward VI., the parishioners of St. Faith’s were allowed to remove from their crypt to this chapel. It continued so till St. Paul’s was burnt down, when the parish was annexed to St. Augustine’s by Act of Parliament (1670). The earliest date of an incumbent is 1277.

The patronage of this church has always been in the hands of: The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s—as far back as 1148; and in 1277 Robert le Seneschal was rector.

Houseling people in 1548 were 400.

A considerable number of monuments are recorded by Stow, but none are of much note. The most interesting is that of Katherine, third daughter of Edward, Lord Neville.

There was a table in the south aisle of the church with the names of the benefactors, amongst whom were: John Sanderson, donor of £150, and Elizabeth Underwood, donor of £70.

Richard Layton (d. 1544), Dean of York, was rector here.

St. Gregory by St. Paul’s was situated on the south side of St. Paul’s, near the west end, in the ward of Castle Baynard. The date of its foundation is not known, but it is said that the body of Edmund, King of the East Angles, who was put to death by the Danes in 870, rested here for three years. It was burnt down by the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1181.

It was a Rectory in the gift of the Prebendary of St. Pancras and formed part of the manor of that prebendary. It was appropriated in 1445 to the minor canons of St. Paul’s, and so continued until the church was annexed to St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, in 1666.

Houseling people in 1548 were 600.

A chantry was founded here by Robert Rosamonde, whose endowment fetched £13: 18s. in 1548, when Peter Jacksonne was priest, aged thirty-nine years, “a teacher for children, and hath, for that he was a religious person, a pension of £5: 6: 8 over and besides this his stipend of £6: 13: 4.”

No monuments of any special note are recorded in this church by Stow.

There was a school in this parish for thirty boys and twenty girls, purchased at the expense of Alderman Barber; and one almshouse, upon Lambeth Hill.

John Hewitt, tried by Cromwell’s High Court of Justice and beheaded in 1658, was rector here, and was buried in this church.

In St. Paul’s Churchyard the chapter-house first attracts our attention, a square, plain, red-brick building, with a modern office for the cathedral architect on one side; the top story was added in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. These additions are not so noticeable as might be supposed, but are wonderfully harmonised by smoke and weather already. The building is finished with Portland stone, and the two semicircular projecting pediments over the two front doorways are of the same material. In each of these there is a curious niche or recess, which was evidently designed to receive a coat-of-arms, but no coat-of-arms has ever been placed there. The age of the chapter-house is indefinite. Mr. Penrose, the cathedral architect, judges it to have been built shortly after the year 1700. There is negative evidence to show that it did not exist before that date, for in a design of Wren’s, showing the limits of old St. Paul’s, the frontage of houses to the street is incompatible with the position of the chapter-house, and the buildings are also marked as ordinary dwelling-houses. But this plan is not altogether trustworthy, for it does not give the cathedral foundations correctly, and may therefore be inaccurate in other particulars. It is supposed, on account of this inaccuracy, to have been one of the later plans, probably made about 1700, when the old foundations had been built over and forgotten. It bears no date, and the evidence must be taken for what it is worth. Knight, in his London, gives a print dated 1701, and says that Wren repaired and restored the chapter-house after the Fire, which is obviously incorrect.

Within the chapter-house all is simple and solid. A square wainscotted hall, paved with plain white marble slabs, deep-set doors and windows in the thickness of the walls, and a fine, wide, shallow-stepped staircase with well-worked iron supports to the handrail. The character of the balustrade changes above the first floor, and the handrail is supported by spiral wooden balusters. The walls of the finely proportioned chapter-room are all wainscotted, otherwise there is nothing to remark upon. This room is occasionally lent to ecclesiastical conferences. In one of the other rooms are eight panels, 2 feet 6 by 1 foot 9 inches, enclosed in small gilt frames. These hang rather high up round the walls. They are monotint, and are Sir James Thornhill’s original designs for the frescoes in the dome of the cathedral. These designs are excellently clear, and show what the now faded frescoes must have been.

The archdeacon of the cathedral has a suite of rooms in the chapter-house, and the remainder of the house is carried out in the same plain domestic style.

The north side of the churchyard consists of a row of dingy brick buildings of various heights and ages. One or two are showing signs of decrepid old age, others still flourishing, with the names of their tradesmen occupants in mighty gilt letters across their smoky fronts. The irregular roofs of tiles or slates, with fantastic little iron railings high up, or windows peeping over the parapets, are sufficiently original to be interesting. Every class of goods seems to find representatives here—we see confectioners, milliners, bootmakers, photographers, etc. The Religious Tract Society has one entrance in the churchyard. On the east side we find all the houses modern, in the modern style, with stone facings; they are chiefly occupied by manufacturers.

We turn next to Paternoster Row.

In every large town on the Continent, wherever a cathedral has been erected, there are streets occupied by shops where all kinds of ecclesiastical things are made and sold, such as beads, crucifixes, wax tapers, service books, meditations, and such like. Paternoster Row served this purpose for St. Paul’s in the first instance, and, as there is only one other street so called, namely, the lane of Paternoster in the Riole, one may reasonably conclude that, with this other street, it supplied all the churches and all the faithful of the City with these things. We read of “Paternoster” meaning rosaries, and of a “Paternostrer” or one whose trade it was to make rosaries, etc. There are frequent references to both Paternoster “Street” of St. Michael le Querne, and Paternoster Lane, or Paternoster Church Lane of St. Michael, Paternoster Royal. Of the first, for instance, there are houses and rents spoken of in wills of 1312 and 1321.

This is, in fact, one of the most ancient, as well as one of the most interesting of the City Streets.

We can catch glimpses here and there of the actual residents of this street, the place where they made the rosaries. They should have been a quiet and God-fearing folk; but they were not. In 1381 one Godfrey de Belstred was assaulted by three “Paternostrers” of this parish, whether for purposes of robbery or in a quarrel does not appear; he was picked up wounded, and carried off to die. In the same century we find persons owning houses in this street; one, William de Ravenstone, Almoner of St. Paul’s, leaves by will a house in Paternoster Row. Did his functions permit him to live outside the precinct which sheltered such a goodly company of ecclesiastics? About the same time William Russell—surely the earliest mention of that illustrious name—bequeaths his house in the Row; Garter King-at-arms has a house there; John de Pykenham, Paternostrer, leaves various tenements to his wife, who claims as one of them a house in the Row. William le Marbler, a vintner, has a house there; the name shows that a man might by this time leave the trade of his father, and take to another without changing his surname, just as the name of Chaucer, who never belonged to the “gentle craft,” means shoemaker. There are other instances of “Paternostrers,” all of whom belong to the Parish, if not to the Row, which formed the most important part of it.

PATERNOSTER ROW (AS IT WAS)