Arthur Dimock

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CHAPTER I.ToC

ITS FOUNDATION AND HISTORY TO THE ACCESSION OF DEAN COLET (61-1505).

Romano-British.—Tacitus, in his characteristically concise style, introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising against the foreign invaders. Colchester fallen, the ninth legion annihilated, nothing remained but to abandon the thriving mart of London itself for a time to the fury of the natives, before the Roman sway could be restored.

The ground rising both from the northern bank of the Thames, some three hundred yards distant, and from the eastern bank of the Fleet beck, forms an eminence. Here, to protect the riverside mart below, on or about the site of the present churchyard the Romans formed a camp; and looking down what is now Ludgate Hill, the soldiers could see the Fleet ebbing and flowing with each receding and advancing tide. Northwards the country afforded a hunting ground, and a temple to Diana Venatrix would naturally be erected. During the excavations for New St. Paul's, Roman urns were found as well as British graves; and in 1830, a stone altar with an image of Diana was likewise found while digging for the foundations of Goldsmith's Hall in Foster Lane. On such incomplete evidence rests the accuracy of the story or tradition that a temple of Diana occupied part of the site of the present Cathedral.

Suetonius himself restored order in London; and in spite of insurrections, she progressed during the next three centuries to become a centre of such importance, Roman highways spreading in different directions, that the accurate and impartial Ammianus Marcellinus concedes to her (circa 380) the style and title of Augusta. And it was during these three centuries of progress that Christianity obtained a firm footing, but when and how we know not. The picturesque story, which deceived even Bede, how that Lucius, "king of the Britons," sent letters to Eleutherus, a holy man, Bishop of Rome, entreating Eleutherus to convert him and his, must now be put down as a pious forgery.[2] Tertullian (circa 208) says that the kingdom and name of Christ were then acknowledged even in those parts inaccessible to the Romans; and we are probably on the safe side in asserting that missions had been successfully introduced into London by the end of the second century. Neither are we in much doubt or difficulty as to whence they came. Gaul, visited by missionaries from Ephesus, in turn sent others on; and the Church in London, as throughout these Isles, in Romano-British times can be safely described as a daughter of Gaul, and a granddaughter of the Ephesus of St. Timothy. Beyond we know little, if anything at all, more than that a Bishop of London, known by the Latinised name of Restitutus, was one of three British prelates at the Council of Aries (314). And while there is no reason to suppose otherwise than that the bishops, of whom Restitutus could not have been anything like the first, had their principal church erected in the neighbourhood, at least, of St. Paul's churchyard and dedicated to that saint, neither site nor name can ever be authenticated. When the Roman troops retired, so thoroughly did the invading savages destroy all records, that our knowledge of the British Church in London may be compared, not inaptly, to our knowledge of Thornhill's paintings in the concave sphere of the dome. We know that they exist; but even on a bright May day they are invisible from below.

Saxon, Angle, and Dane.—In the early years of the fifth century the Romans are stated to have finally abandoned this country. If certain lists are to be credited, Bishops of London of the original British series continued until the flight of Theorus in 586. These lists have now been rejected,[3] although as the taking of London by the East Saxons was not prior to the date above, there is reason in the suggestion that church and bishop were still in existence. In the pages of Bede, writing about a century later, we come across something more definite, which readers interested in St. Paul's may care to have.

"In the year of our Lord 604, Augustine, Archbishop of Britain, consecrated two bishops, viz., Mellitus and Justus; Mellitus to preach to the province of the East Saxons, who are divided from Kent by the river Thames, and border on the eastern sea. Their metropolis is the city of London, situated on the bank of the aforesaid river, and is the mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land. At that time Sabert, nephew to Ethelbert [Augustine's King of Kent] by his sister Ricula, reigned over the nation, though under subjection to Ethelbert, who had command over all the nations of the English as far as the river Humber. But when this province [East Saxons] also received the word of truth by the preaching of Mellitus, King Ethelbert built the church of St. Paul in the city of London, where he and his successors should have their episcopal seat."[4]

Bede, in one sense most interesting, becomes in a second sense most irritating. We would give much to know how long an interval had elapsed since the last bishop, whether this rude East Saxon building was erected on the ruins of another or on a different site, whether the name St. Paul's was a continuation or no. Bede is silent, ignoring the distressed and defeated Britons as an inferior race.Ethelbert may have given the endowment of Tillingham in Essex. "And if any one should be tempted to take away this gift, let him be anathema and excommunicated from all Christian society." Whether the deed with these lines originated with him or with some unknown and later donor, it is certain that the language has been respected; for when the valuable estates were alienated, this particular donation was reserved for the fabric fund; and in consequence the Dean and Chapter are by far the oldest county family in Essex.[5]

Sabert and Ethelbert were gathered to their fathers; and both were succeeded by pagan sons. London and the East Saxon province or kingdom—let us say Middlesex and Essex, with perhaps Herts—seem to have been ruled by the three sons of Sabert in commission, who, disregarding whatever thin veneer of Christianity they had found it convenient to adopt during their father's lifetime, boldly apostatised, and the East Saxons readily followed. Entering St. Paul's, as the bishop was celebrating, the three scoffed and mocked, "We will not enter into that laver, because we do not know we stand in need of it; but eat of that bread we will." Giving the bishop the alternative of compliance or expulsion, he withdrew after an episcopate of twelve years and retired across the Channel. Returning in answer to the entreaties of Laurentius, "the Londoners would not receive Bishop Mellitus, choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high priests." Eventually he succeeded Laurentius at Canterbury. And for a second time London relapsed into paganism.

Thus the good fruits of the mission of Augustine were completely lost. An interval occurs, and then Sigebert the Good, on a visit to King Oswy of Northumbria, was converted by the reasoning of his host, and baptised by Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne. Finan had no connection with Rome, but belonged to that remarkable body who traced their origin to Ireland and Iona. Sigebert took south with him two brothers, English by race, recommended by Finan, of whom one was Cedd; a third brother was the more famous Chad. The work of re-planting was at once set about with the help of Sigebert's example and protection. Up and down the province they went, and gained so many converts that Finan felt justified in consecrating Cedd bishop of the East Saxons. The new bishop now employed much of his time in training converts, natives of the province, for the priesthood, both at Ythancester, near Tillingham, and at Tilbury.[6] He acted as interpreter at the Whitby Conference, where he was won over to the continental method of reckoning Easter, and died shortly after of the plague (664). A later visitation of the pestilence is assigned as a cause of half of the diocese relapsing, while the other half, governed by Sebbe, remained faithful. King Wulfhere of Mercia—the then overlord—sent his own bishop Jaruman with a number of clergy, who effected a complete restoration. Mellitus, Cedd, Sabert, Sigebert, and Sebbe (said to have been buried at St. Paul's) now appear in the transept windows as founders of English Christianity.

Thus we find, after various vicissitudes and relapses, the Christian religion planted in the East Saxon province before the end of the seventh century. The succeeding centuries must be rapidly passed over. A staff of clergy was formed who came to be called canons; other endowments by degrees added; the services at St. Paul's maintained as a model for the diocese; parish churches and monasteries built. We must even pass over Bishop Erkenwald, the hero of so many stories, and whose shrine was the most popular in Old St. Paul's. In 962, just after Dunstan had left the bishopric for Canterbury, St. Paul's was burnt, and the same year rebuilt. Both before and after this London suffered from the ravages of the Danes.

The Primate Elfege, the victim of a drunken rabble, was buried at St. Paul's (1014), as was Ethelred the Unready (1017), and nearly fifty years later Edward the outlaw, the representative of the house of Cerdic and of Alfred.

William the Norman, bishop (1051-1075) in spite of the Confessor and his nominee the Sparrowhawk, occupied the see long enough to greet his countrymen on taking possession; and just before his death would be present at the great council held in his cathedral presided over by Lanfranc. Norman though he was, he was in touch with the citizens around his church, and earned their enduring gratitude and friendship by obtaining a fresh grant of their privileges, as he did for the cathedral. "I will," said the Conqueror, "the said church to be free in all respects, as I trust my own soul to be at the Judgment Day."

The Normans.—Maurice, of course a Norman, had been only recently elected bishop in the room of Huge de Orivalle, when the tenth century church of Bishop Elfstan was destroyed in a fire that consumed the greater part of the City (1086 or 1087).

He set to work to build another on a larger scale and after the approved Anglo-Norman method. Fresh ground was procured, and houses pulled down for the enlargement of church and churchyard. "Barges," says Mr. J.R. Green, "came up the river with stone from Caen for the great arches that moved the popular wonder, while street and lane were being levelled to make space for the famous churchyard of St. Paul's." Maurice died before the work was anything like finished, but Richard de Belmeis, a most munificent prelate, devoted his episcopal revenues for the purpose.

An earthquake in the second year of Rufus, followed two years later by a destructive November storm, impeded the progress, but in spite of all drawbacks and hindrances, builders and workmen toiled on, Henry I. exempting the stone from toll. "Such is the stateliness of its beauty," said William of Malmesbury, "that it is worthy of being numbered amongst the most famous of buildings; such the extent of the crypt, of such capacity the upper structure, that it seems sufficient to contain a multitude of people." It was the variation of an inch or two in the regularity of the arching of Maurice's new nave that afterwards sorely vexed Wren.

We have now come to a time when Domesday gives us some interesting information. A commencement had been made of endowing separate stalls. Certain of the estates were parcelled out in this way, partly because they may have been safer from alienation, partly that the canons might be responsible, if necessary, for the services of religion in the manors and townships in which their endowments, technically known afterwards as corpses, were situated. In Domesday, St. Pancras, Rugmere (in St. Pancras), and Twyford, in Willesden, appear, and may fairly be set down as the three original prebends, although the term "prebend" does not yet appear, neither do the distinctive names of the stalls. To these three some would add Consumpta-per-Mare in the Essex Walton, so called because the glebe was consumed by the encroachments of the sea. We will dismiss this obscure subject by anticipating a little, and stating that, what with parts of the old endowments and what with additions, by the end of the twelfth century the thirty prebends were complete. The names and inscriptions will be found in the account of the interior of the present Choir.

The two Caddingtons were a gift in Bedfordshire in the diocese of Lincoln; the remaining twenty-eight were in Middlesex and Essex. The corporate property of the Chapter by the same date must have reached 24,000 acres.[7]

The Conquest brought other changes in its train. Originally the bishop was head of the Chapter, and the canons his assistants. But, beginning not later than with Maurice, who held high office under the Crown, the bishops became more and more immersed in politics, and found no time to preside, while the Chapter would naturally raise no objection to greater independence. What our French neighbours now call a doyen, a senior from among the canons, took the bishop's vacant place, and became dean.

John de Appleby, so late as 1364, dean by virtue of papal proviso, was only allowed to summon the Chapter, and could not preside until he had obtained a prebend by exchange. A hundred and fifty years later Colet was a prebendary. I find no traces of archdeacons—London, Essex, Middlesex, or Colchester—prior to the Conquest, but these eyes of the bishop soon appear afterwards; and the Chanter becomes Precentor; the Sacrist, or keeper of the plate, vestments, and other valuables, becomes Treasurer; and the Master of the Schools, Chancellor. For the sake of convenience looking forward a little, these changes, begun in Norman times, were completed not long after.

The Plantagenets.—As in the tenth century and as in the eleventh, that evil demon Fire for a third time, "three days before the Christmas of 1136," partially destroyed, or at least seriously injured, St. Paul's, during a conflagration which reached from London Bridge to beyond the Fleet. In rebuilding, the then method was to throw a coating of the more refined Romanesque of the day over the older work;[8] and this is how I explain an obscure passage in Pepys—"It is pretty here to see how the late church was but a case wrought over the old church; for you may see the very old pillars standing whole within the wall of this."[9] The old pillars of the nave were restored, and furnished with graceful engaged columns, and vaulting shafts rising from the ground. As the choir was afterwards superseded by another, we cannot tell what was done to it.

We have now come to a time when it is impossible even to catalogue the numerous stirring events which the cathedral witnessed. William Fitzosbert the Longbeard, for thundering forth at Paul's Cross—where the citizens' folk-mote was wont to be held—against tyranny and corruption in high quarters, suffered the extreme penalty. But people in a higher position were soon to do the same. When John and Innocent formed their strange alliance against the national liberties, it was at St. Paul's that Stephen Langton produced the Charter of Henry I. Here John publicly handed over his kingdom to the Pope, and received it back as a vassal. Here came the counterblast, when Louis, son of King Philip II. of France, received the kingdom from the assembled magnates. After the death of John and Innocent the papal claims were upheld; and at a council in 1232, at which the papal legate presided, he took for his text, "In the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts."[10] The four beasts were not the four Evangelists, but four opposition prelates, including the two primates and the Bishop of London, Roger the Black. It was the great bell of St. Paul's which in the days of Simon de Montfort summoned the citizens to rise against their king.

Old St. Paul's completed.—Whilst the nave was constantly witnessing scenes like this, and whilst clergy and people were protesting against encroachments on their liberties from abroad or at home, a new and more magnificent choir, and a new or restored north aisle to either transept were in course of construction, the ways and means being found with the help of indulgences issued by various bishops, Scotch and Irish included, over a lengthy period.[11] In 1240 the king and the Cardinal Legate Otho attended the consecration of so much of the new work as was then completed; and Bishop Roger was supported by the Primate, Edmund Rich, and other prelates.

East of the cathedral was St. Faith's, one of those parish churches in which cathedral cities are notoriously prolific—churches with parishes of the size of an average meadow, or less.[12] Whether it be owing to greater wealth, or to greater subdivision of property, or to enthusiasm kindled at a religious centre, nowhere do donors and benefactors appear to have been more numerous than in these ancient cities, like London, Norwich, and Exeter. St. Faith's was pulled down, and the rights of the parishioners made good by allotting to them the new crypt underneath the site of their old church. About this time also the vaulting was renewed throughout, and various adornments added from time to time. In 1312 the choir was paved with marble at a cost of fivepence per foot; and three years later the old and ruinous steeple was superseded by a new one of wood covered with lead, rising, according to the lowest estimate—that of Wren—to a height of 460 feet, without the cross. The cross had a "pomel well guilt" set on the top, and contained relics of different saints, put there by Bishop Gilbert de Selgrave with all due solemnity, accompanied by an indulgence, for protection. Thus was finished Old St. Paul's, the most magnificent church in England, meet to be the cathedral of the capital, which London had now become.

MONUMENT OF JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER.
After Hollar.ToList

Wycliffe and Gaunt.—The Primate Sudbury and Bishop Courtenay tried John Wycliffe at the cathedral on a charge of heresy (February 13, 1377). This was in the days of rival popes at Rome and Avignon, and one or other or both had been described by the accused as "Antichrist, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and purse-kervers."[13] By an alliance almost as strange as that between John and Innocent, Wycliffe found himself supported by John of Gaunt, with whom was the Earl Marshal, Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Wycliffe and the Duke of Lancaster had this much in common, they both wished to confine the clergy to their strictly clerical duties, the latter through jealousy, the former for higher reasons. An immense concourse filled the cathedral. Courtenay was popular with the citizens, Gaunt was not; and Percy was strongly suspected of a wish to abolish the mayoralty, and as Earl Marshal to appoint a captain of his own instead. During an angry altercation Gaunt whispered loudly to a neighbour, "Rather than I will take those words at his [Courtenay's] hands, I would pluck the bishop by the hair out of the church." In the tumult that followed this insult Gaunt and Percy with difficulty escaped; the former fled across the river to Kennington, and his palace at the Savoy was sacked. Yet, in spite of all this, Gaunt was the only royal prince after the Conquest buried at St. Paul's. His tomb under the arch on the north side of the high altar, enriched by a noble canopy to which his spear, shield, and insignia were attached, contained effigies of himself and of his second wife, Constance of Castile. He had also a chantry.

Bishop Robert de Braybroke.—On Courtenay's translation to Canterbury, Braybroke became bishop (1382-1404). A thoroughly practical reformer, he held out the threat of the greater excommunication because "in our Cathedral not only men but women also, not on common days alone but especially on Festivals, expose their wares as it were in a public market, and buy and sell without reverence for the holy place.... Others play at ball or other unseemly games, both within and without the church, breaking the beautiful and costly painted windows, to the amazement of the spectators." He also attempted to regulate residence. Owing to the increased value of the corporate or common property divided amongst the residentiaries or stagiarii, residence was no longer reckoned a burden, but sought after. To keep the number down to two the canons in residence would admit no fresh colleague unless he spent during his first year from six hundred to a thousand merks in feasting and other useless expenditure. Braybroke put a check to this abuse, and by the arbitration of the king the practice of Salisbury was taken as a model.[14] It was after his death (October 15, 1414) that the Use of St. Paul in the religious services was superseded by the Use of Sarum.

The Petty or Minor Canons now received their charter of corporation immediately after the death of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II. Apparently when Becket's representative ventured on his dangerous errand, deed of excommunication in hand, the canons' vicars or vicars choral sang the services. In Braybroke's time we find a body intermediate between the canons and their vicars. They were twelve in number, were required to have good voices, and to understand the art of singing, and by their charter were to pray for their royal benefactor, as well as for the repose of the souls of his wife and ancestors. The first ranked as Sub-dean, taking for many purposes the dean's place in his absence, and the two next were the Cardinals. The Sacrist, the Almoners, and the Divinity Lecturers endowed by Bishop Richard de Gravesend and Thomas White were appointed from among them. They enjoyed their own common hall, and elected their own warder and steward; and two years after incorporation, drawing up their own Statutes, provided that they were to be read in Hall every quarter, and that no one was to shuffle his feet during the reading.[15]

The vicars choral either now or later had dwindled down to six, and seem to have been only in minor orders. The Petty Canons had their own endowments; but if the canons had to pay their own vicars, we need not be surprised at this diminution.

The Wars of the Roses.—With this period St. Paul's is closely associated. At St. Paul's the Yorkist leaders pledged their allegiance to the unhappy Henry VI. on the Sacrament—only to break it. After Barnet the dead bodies of the king-maker and his brothers were exposed, and after Tewkesbury the murdered corpse of Henry received similar treatment. Most striking of all is the grim figure of Richard of Gloucester. He it was who caused Jane Shore to be put to open penance on the ground that she had bewitched him, she "going before the Cross on a Sunday with a taper in her hand," says Stow, "out of all aray saue her kirtle only." Hastings, the successor of Edward in her affections, was implicated with her, and his offence read from Paul's Cross. At Paul's Cross, newly restored by the bishop, the younger Kempe, and while the boy king was a prisoner in the palace hard by, that worthless sycophant, Dr. Ralph Shaw, the preacher (May 19, 1483), took for his text, "The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundations" (Wisdom, iv. 3). His sermon went to prove to the citizens that Richard was the only, or at least the senior, legitimate member of the royal family. Richard was present to hear his own mother dishonoured; and the preacher, pointing dramatically to him, argued that, unlike his three elder brothers, he resembled the late Duke of York. But the people showed no sympathy, would not cry "Long live King Richard," and dispersed, fearing the worst for the poor lad immured in the bishop's palace.

The Clergy and Services.—We may now conveniently glance at these important subjects. The Bishop, who appointed all the dignitaries except the dean, was Visitor. At the great festivals he was usually present, and the bells were rung in his honour. How the Dean always, or nearly so, held another stall has been already stated; how he came to be presented by the Crown instead of elected by his brethren is uncertain; but the Chapter somehow practically lost their right of electing both bishop and dean, for either pope or king in effect appointed their diocesan. The dean was visitor of the homes of the clergy and of the chapter estates. To the four Archdeaconries of London, Essex, Middlesex, and Colchester was afterwards added the small one of St. Alban's on the dissolution of that important abbey, but without a stall in the choir.[16] The office of Precentor is explained by the name. The Treasurer was responsible for the very valuable treasures—jewels, vestments, relics, and the like—as distinct from the moneys. Lower in rank, but in reality of greater importance, came the Chancellor. He had jurisdiction over the old school of St. Paul's, and any others in the City with the exception of those of St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Martin's-le-Grand, and was secretary and keeper of the seals, receiving a pound of pepper for each deed sealed. The thirty Prebendaries (or rather twenty-nine when the dean was one) could only hold one stall each at St. Paul's, but any number of benefices elsewhere like the higher dignitaries; and it is by no means certain that in the thirteenth century John Mansell did not hold three stalls at St. Paul's simultaneously among his innumerable benefices which together, according to Matthew Paris, amounted to 4,000 merks per annum.[17] Of the prebendaries a varying minority in residence, stagiaries (stagiarii, perhaps a corruption of the more classical stationarii),[18] not only divided amongst themselves the balance of the common fund, but were not above partaking of a share of the capitular bakehouse and brewhouse. The dean, the three higher dignitaries, and the prebendaries constituted the Chapter, in certain matters the non-residentiaries having no jurisdiction, and, as recorded in their Visitations, exercised a very great authority over their various manors. Below the Chapter came the twelve Petty Canons, officers peculiar to St. Paul's and Hereford;[19] and there were over fifty Chantry Priests when suppressed. Besides their appointed daily masses they would divide amongst them the annual masses called obits, which amounted to about a hundred, and were expected to assist the Petty Canons. They spent their extensive leisure after the proverbial manner of idle and ignorant men. The Vicars Choral had dwindled down to six by Colet's time, were no longer in priests' orders, and eventually became laymen pure and simple. Space would fail us to enumerate the remaining official and semi-official officers. Among the latter were the twelve scribes, who sat in the nave for the service of the illiterate public, and were sworn to do nothing detrimental to the interests of the Chapter.

The Apostle's mass was sung the first thing in the morning, in earlier days by a Vicar Choral, and subsequently by a Petty Canon; and next came the two masses named after the Virgin and the Chapter, the Cardinals taking the latter. The other daily services were the usual Nocturns or Matins and the rest, ending with a combined evensong of Vespers and Compline. We do not know how the old Use of St. Paul's differed from that of Sarum. Besides the Conversion and Commemoration of St. Paul, the Deposition (April 30th) and the Translation (November 14th) of St. Erkenwald were red-letter days when, before the peal was sounded, the bells were rung two and two. On the eve of St. Nicholas (December 5th), patron saint of children, the choristers elected their boy bishop and his clerks. On St. John the Evangelist's Day (December 27th) at evensong the newly elected boy bishop in pontifical vestments, with his boy clerks in copes, walked in procession, and after censing the altar of the Blessed Trinity returned and occupied dignitaries' stalls, and any evicted dignitary had to take the boy's place as thurifer or acolyte, the boy bishop giving the benediction. The next day (Holy Innocents) this youth preached and took the earlier part of the mass. These choir lads were trained to act mysteries and, later on, stage plays.[20]

Each new Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Council, went in procession to St. Thomas Acon, and from thence to the cathedral. He paid his devotions at the tomb of Bishop William the Norman, in the nave, in gratitude for privileges obtained from the Conqueror, and then at the tomb of his predecessor, the Portreeve Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas, in a little chapel in the churchyard. On Whitsunday and the following Tuesday were great processions in which the Corporation joined, as they did on seven other festivals. At Whitsuntide, according to a sixteenth century account, a huge suspended censer was swung along the nave, and the descent of the Holy Spirit illustrated by the letting loose of a white pigeon. Those who are curious about the shrines, and particularly of St. Erkenwald's, the scene of so many reputed miracles of healing, and of the relics, which included a vase believed to contain some hair, milk, and a garment of the Virgin, are referred to Dugdale and other like works. Passing over Te Deums for victories like Agincourt and Obsequies for the dead—this latter a source of income to the officers—we will close this chapter with the wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, a lad of fifteen, to Catherine of Aragon, in November, 1501. The next spring Arthur died, and the king effected the betrothal of the widow of eighteen to his younger son Henry, aged eleven. Seven years later Henry VII. died, and lay in state at the cathedral.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER II.ToC

FROM THE ACCESSION OF DEAN COLET TO THE FIRE (1505-1666).

With the Florentine studies of John Colet, remarks J.R. Green, a purer Christianity awoke throughout Teutonic Europe. Born in 1466, a son of a distinguished citizen who was twice Lord Mayor, after seven years at Oxford he travelled with sufficient means to France and Italy, and whether at home or abroad studied in particular Greek. "The knowledge of Greek seems to have had one almost exclusive end for him,"[21] continues Green; "Greek was the key by which he could unlock the Gospels and the New Testament." Discarding the traditional mediÆvalisms, his faith rested simply on a vivid realisation of the Person of Christ; and whilst his active and lucid intellect exhibit him in many lights, everything else was subordinate to his faith. Returning to England, he lectured gratuitously at Oxford on St. Paul's Epistles, and formed a friendship with Erasmus. So Erasmus became the earnest pupil of an earnest master. Taking priests' orders, he was appointed Dean of St. Paul's and Prebendary of Mora (1505), and established a reputation as a preacher. In those days, and until Wolsey as legate gave the preference to Westminster, the two Houses held their sessions in the Chapter House and Nave of Old St. Paul's, as the opening ceremony still reminds us. Preaching at the opening in 1512, he startled Convocation by declaring, "All that is in the Church is either the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life." In vain his bishop, Richard Fitz-James, endeavoured to establish a charge of heresy: the Primate Warham and young Henry VIII. both admired and supported the Dean; and the Dean continued to show his preference for the New Testament in the original Greek rather than for the prevalent nonsense of the mediÆval schoolmen.

Where the consent of his Chapter was necessary, Colet's efforts at reform were obstructed. The profanation of the sacred building he could not stop: buying, selling, and promenading in the nave continued the order of the day. The Chapter would have nothing to do with his new statutes, but elsewhere he was more successful. The Chancellor's School was not in accordance with his views; and in spite of Bishop, Chancellor, and Chapter, out of his own means he built St. Paul's School, towards the east end of the churchyard, and endowed it; and leaving his colleagues out in the cold, left the management to the Mercers' Company. His theology was manifest in the image over the gate. It was neither Erkenwald nor Uncumber: it was not the Virgin or even St. Paul himself, but the Child Jesus with the simple and pregnant inscription, "Hear ye Him." The severity of his discipline, although a Pauline parent or pupil would now resent it, was adapted to those rough and hardy times, when people rose early and worked hard, and when corporal punishment was general and often, and irrespective of sex or age. William Lyly, an Oxford student who had studied in the East, was his first high master. As the original St. Paul's School became eventually absorbed in Colet's, this latter—now removed from its old home to stately buildings on the Hammersmith Road, and possessing (1899), as a high master, a worthy successor of Lyly[23]—is in one sense a new foundation of Colet's, yet in another is also a continuation of that venerable foundation under the charge of the Chancellor. Looked at in this latter aspect, it may assert an antiquity almost as great as St. Peter's, York, which claims—and not without reason—to be the senior boys' school in the country. Colet so looked forward to the different requirements of different ages that his statutes did not tie his school down to any cut and dried course of study; but let us hope place will always be found for the Greek Testament. What are we to think of the preacher who, while denouncing war, so pricked the conscience of Henry VIII. that the king sent to consult him? What of the Bible student who thought that the story of Creation was an allegory, and intended to teach the ignorant Israelites that the one God had created everybody and everything? What of the reformer who went beyond Erasmus in denouncing the profane excesses perpetrated in the name of religion at the shrine of Becket at Canterbury? Colet died of the "sweating sickness" at the early age of fifty-three, in 1519; and it is idle to speculate on his action had he lived until the breach with Rome. His monument in the south aisle of the choir perished in the Fire; and in the new Renaissance cathedral a second might well be erected to the memory of this great leader of the Renaissance in theology and learning, the greatest among many great occupants of the Dean's stall.

Reformation Principles Opposed.—The still smouldering doctrines of Wycliffe were now fanned into a flame; and Wolsey endeavoured to extinguish them without having resort to the stake Tyndal's New Testament, translated into English in 1526 at Worms, must have been speedily smuggled across the Channel. On the Shrove Tuesday of 1527 Wolsey attended St. Paul's, accompanied by some six-and-thirty prelates, mitred abbots, and other high dignitaries. Barnes of Cambridge, formerly a friar, and five others, "Stillyard men," were brought from the Fleet prison in penitential array, Barnes carrying a heavy taper, the rest faggots. Testaments and other forbidden books were in baskets by a fire in the nave. On their knees the penitents recanted; while Barnes declared that he deserved to be burnt. Fisher again preached; and the six pardoned offenders were taken inside the rails and made to walk round the fire, after which the books were burnt—by no means a solitary literary conflagration.Reformation Principles Advanced.—In order to raise money, Henry declared that as the clergy had acquiesced in the authority of Wolsey as legate, and as such acquiescence was contrary to the Statute of Provisors, all these benefices were forfeit to the Crown, and a heavy subsidy must be paid as ransom. The clergy of the diocese of London, considering that the arch-offender against this Statute was Henry himself, and next to him the prelates and great mitred abbots, attended a meeting at the Chapter House, and were assisted by a number of their parishioners. John Stokesley, Bishop designate,[24] who presided, and who had to see the assessment made, could neither keep order nor gain his point: "We never meddled, let the bishops and abbots pay." Fifteen priests and four parishioners were imprisoned, and, of course, Henry gained his point.

Throughout 1534 the deanery was vacant. The Bishop was directed to see that the appointed preachers at Paul's Cross taught that the Pope had no spiritual authority of divine right. Here as elsewhere it is remarkable with what ease and unanimity the papal jurisdiction based on the Petrine claims was done away with. No dignitary—and Bonner that year became Prebendary of Chiswick—no priest of humbler rank connected with the cathedral, either resigned or got into trouble on this important doctrinal question; although the execution of those two earnest men, John Fisher and Thomas More, who opposed the divorce and the abrogation of the papal claims, was followed by a pronouncement of excommunication, deposition, and an interdict on the part of Paul III. Yet at St. Paul's, nineteen Anabaptists—a sect whom no one pitied—were sentenced to be burnt, and of these a man and a woman suffered at Smithfield, and the remainder in the provinces. The next year (1536) Hugh Latimer, as earnest and good a bishop as Fisher and his exact opposite, preaching before Convocation, denounced abuses in the spirit of an age which did not hesitate to call a spade a spade. "Lift up your heads, brethren, and look about with your eyes; spy what things are to be reformed in the Church of England."

But more dramatic and more effective than the sonorous ring of honest Hugh's eloquence, was the sermon at the Cross (February 14, 1538) of Bishop John Hisley, Fisher's successor at Rochester, and formerly Prior of the Dominicans in London. His subject was an ingenious piece of mechanism, called the Rood of Grace, from Boxley in his diocese, a source of revenue from devotees. Now, this product of the mechanic's art does not seem to have had any resemblance to a Rood—i.e., a large cross or crucifix—but rather was shaped like a big doll; and Hisley demonstrated to his intelligent congregation of citizens how no inherent power, but a man standing inside, with the aid of wires, caused the rood to bow, and move its eyes and mouth.[25]

The exposure was followed next St. Bartholomew's eve by the removal of the Great Rood at the north door, and those of our Lady of Grace and of St. Uncumber. This last saint is supposed to be a foreign princess of early times, styled also in England St. Wilgeforte. A peck of oats was a favourite offering at her shrine in St. Paul's by those who wished for favours; and according to Sir Thomas More she owed her popular name because wives unhappy in their union so offered in the hope that she would uncumber (i.e., disencumber) them of their husbands. The disgrace of Thomas Cromwell put a temporary stop to actions of this nature; and we find Gardiner at the Cross denouncing both Rome and Luther. We further find Barnes, our quondam penitent, amongst those who replied from the same famous pulpit, and likening himself and Gardiner to two fighting cocks, only that the garden cock lacked good spurs. The result was that Barnes ended his chequered career at the stake, as did others.

Edward VI.—So long as Henry lived it was dangerous to uphold either the Petrine claims or the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and it was equally dangerous to oppose the doctrine of transubstantiation; but the Council of the child king would not have this latter doctrine, and was distinctly Protestant. The endowments of the chantries had been transferred to the Court of Augmentations in the autumn of 1545 (37 Henry VIII. c. 4) for the benefit of the king; but when at the beginning of 1547 Edward succeeded his father, St. Paul's still enjoyed her own. Somerset and his Protestant council not only wanted the property, but objected to masses for the dead, and a renewing Act was quickly passed, Edward's name taking his father's place. So went chantries and obits into the royal coffers, the list in Dugdale, as returned to the Court, filling ten folio pages; while but little commiseration was felt for the hard lot of these illiterate chaplains deprived of their livelihood. And this was not all. Besides any remaining roods and crucifixes, altars were demolished, tombs wrecked, plate, jewels, vestments and frontals sold. Elaborate gold and silver embroidered work found its way to Spanish cathedrals, and up to a short time ago was reported to be still there.[26] Pardon Haugh Chapel was desecrated, and the bones carted away to Finsbury; the Chapter House cloisters went to build Somerset House. The dean, William May, was an advanced Protestant; but so was not his bishop, Bonner. Bonner preached at the Cross upholding transubstantiation, and was deprived and imprisoned. It is to the credit of his successor, Ridley, that he supported Bonner's mother and sister at Fulham; "Our mother Bonner"—he was unmarried—taking the head of his table. Yet Ridley was one of the judges at St. Paul's who sent the Anabaptist woman Joan Bucher to the stake for heresy. During the first year or two of this reign, complains Dean Milman, "Sunday after Sunday the Cathedral was thronged, not with decent and respectable citizens, but with a noisy rabble, many of them boys, to hear unseemly harangues on that solemn rite" [the Sacrament]. Ridley, after his translation (1550) restored comparative order, and remained bishop long enough to witness the introduction of the Second Prayer Book.

Mary Tudor.—When poor Edward came to his untimely end, Ridley sided with the faction of Jane, and preached at the Cross, declaring both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate. For this he has been much censured; but so far as the two princesses went—of course this would not make Jane next of kin—he was but upholding the decisions of Ecclesiastical Courts. In spite of any weakness in her title—and we have seen how her mother had been married to Arthur at St. Paul's—Mary was proclaimed, the bells rung, the Lords went in procession to hear Te Deum chanted; Bonner went back, and Dean May was replaced by John Feckenham. Yet Mary's party by no means had everything their own way. Gilbert Bourne, Prebendary of Wedland, who had retained his benefice throughout the late reign and was now Chaplain to the Queen, preaching at the Cross, was rudely interrupted with cries and throwing up of caps; and had it not been for two of his brother canons, John Rogers of St. Pancras and John Bradford of Cantlers, and others, who conducted him in safety to the adjacent schoolroom, matters might have gone ill with Mary's champion. Gardiner recanted his former heterodoxy concerning the papal supremacy in a sermon; and Pole appeared as Legate. Ridley, Rogers, and Bradford were amongst those who suffered at the stake, while May escaped.

Of course the old services were reintroduced; and we turn from grave to gay in a record of one of these revived functions. A doe was offered on the Conversion and a buck on the Commemoration of St. Paul, both in connection with some quaint old-world land tenure. Our records tell us that Bonner wore his mitre, and the Chapter their copes, with garlands of roses on their heads. The buck—it was the Commemoration—was brought to the high altar, and at some time and place not exactly defined but within the choir, was slain; and the head, severed and raised on a pole, was borne before the processional cross to the west door. Here a horn was blown, and other horns in different parts of the City answered.[27]

Elizabeth.—After the death of Mary, as the diocese of London had been the chief sufferer from the persecutions, and as the excitement in the City ran very high, the sermons at the Cross were for a time wisely discontinued. The Primate Pole, the last Romanist at Canterbury and the last Legate openly accredited to an English sovereign, and many of his suffragans likewise, died about the same time; and it was left for Bonner to preside over a thin Upper House.

What was to be done with the bishop? To allow him to continue in his high office was tantamount to a grave scandal to religion, and his person was not safe from the fury of the populace. He was replaced by Edmund Grindal, and spent the remaining ten years of his life chiefly in the security of the Marshalsea, without any undue vigour or harshness. Mary's first dean, Feckenham, had been made abbot of the resuscitated regular foundation of Westminster, and his successor was quietly ejected in favour of the restored May, whilst a few of the other dignitaries lost their stalls. The Epistle and Gospel were first read in English, and eventually the Prayer Book was resumed; but the changes were made gradually; and, considering the provocation, no vindictive spirit was displayed.

In June, 1561, the beautiful spire was destroyed by fire caused by lightning or by a plumber's neglect, and the Chapter House seriously injured. We have no trustworthy plates prior to this fire, and the various estimates about the height of the spire and other matters are anything but infallible. Service was held at St. Gregory's, and the roof and other parts restored at a cost of £6,700, but the architecture was never the same afterwards. Of course the disappointed Romanists attributed the disaster to the Divine anger, and Bishop Pilkington, of Durham, preaching next Sunday at the Cross, to the still continued desecration.

It is difficult for us to understand why this desecration was allowed to go on. A pillory was indeed set up outside near the bishop's palace, and a man convicted of fighting nailed there by his ears, which were afterwards cut off; but this must have been an offence exceptionally outrageous. "What swearing is there," says Dekker, "what shouldering, what jostling, what jeering, what biting of thumbs to beget quarrels." At Bishop Bancroft's Visitation a verger complained that colliers with coal-sacks, butchers' men with meat, and others made the interior a short cut. Bishop Corbet, of Norwich, wrote:

The choir boys even during service time were on the alert for "spur money," a fine due for the wearing of spurs. "Paul's Walk" (the central aisle of the nave), said Bishop Earle, of Salisbury, "is the land's epitome.... It is the general mart of all famous lies." Shakespeare was thinking of his own time, as well as of the time of Henry IV. (2 Henry IV., act 1, scene 2) when he makes Falstaff engage Bardolph, out of place and standing at the servant-men's pillow to be hired. John Evelyn called the cathedral a den of thieves. Before, we have mentioned that this abuse existed in mediÆval times; the above authorities show that it still went on right up to the Fire. Doctrine might be purified, and rites reformed; Paul's Walk was neither purified nor reformed.

John Felton nailed the Bull of Pius V. excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth (Regnans in Excelsis) to the bishop's gate at night (May 15, 1570), and was hung on a gallows hard by. We pass on from this, and from Elizabeth's "tuning of the pulpit" and various other matters, to the Armada. By September some of the captured flags were displayed on high outside, and waved over the preacher at the Cross. The last Sunday in November was appointed for the State Thanksgiving, Aylmer being bishop and Nowell dean. The Queen was driven in a chariot drawn by four white horses. Bishop John Piers, of Salisbury, the Almoner, was the preacher. His sermon has not come down, but the Form of Prayer has—"Turning the destruction they intended against us upon their own head." At the conclusion, the Queen remained in the City to dine with the bishop.

After the death of the great Queen, the leading conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot[28] were executed outside the West Front. John King, Dean of Christ Church, styled by James "the king of preachers," was consecrated bishop in 1611; and the next year Bartholomew Leggatt was condemned as a heretic in the Consistory Court, and burnt at Smithfield; and a month later Edward Wightman suffered a like fate at Lichfield. But the Marian persecutions had made all good citizens sick of such sights, and henceforth, says Fuller, the king yielding to public opinion, "politically preferred that heretics, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in prison."

Inigo Jones.—A certain Master John Farley agitated in favour of the decaying and neglected fabric, and King James attended service in state to hear his favourite preacher, the bishop, plead for restoration from an appropriate text chosen by the king himself (March 26, 1620). After the service came a banquet at the bishop's palace, and after the banquet a meeting; and a Royal Commission was appointed before the end of the year on which the Lord Mayor was the first person named. Amongst other commissioners was Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the Royal Works. He had studied in Italy and was an enthusiastic student of the Italian Renaissance. Unfortunately the public was anything but enthusiastic, and only a small sum was contributed, which went in the purchase of stone. Matters came to a complete standstill; and shortly prior to his assassination the elder Villiers is reported to have stolen part of the stone for a watergate for his new town house.

The Commission died with the king, and Laud, becoming bishop, persuaded Charles to issue a new one. This time a handsome sum was collected, and work was commenced. As regards the exterior, the nave and west sides of the two transepts were cased throughout, and some repairs made to the east end.[29] The chief alteration in the interior was the adornment and restoration of the choir screen, at the expense of Sir Paul Pindar, and with the laudable object of putting an end to desecration. Inigo Jones added a noble classical portico to the West End as a successor to Paul's Walk. We forgive the lack of harmony with the Norman nave, when we recall the truly religious motive.

But evil days for the cathedral were approaching. In the House of Commons (February 11, 1629), Oliver Cromwell, Member for Huntingdon town, made his maiden speech in a Grand Committee on Religion. He complained that Dr. Alablaster had preached flat Popery at Paul's Cross, and that the Doctor's bishop, Neile of Winchester, would not have it otherwise.[30] Alablaster was High Church, and the Third Parliament of Charles was not.

The Civil War.—The outbreak of the Civil War put an end to the Commission, and the moneys were confiscated.[31] The Long Parliament acquired the supremacy in the City, and from 1643 Inigo Jones ceased to act as surveyor, dying before the Restoration. The whole staff was expelled, and their revenues sequestrated; and Dr. Cornelius Burgess was appointed preacher, some of the more eastern bays of the choir being walled in by a brick partition as his chapel or conventicle. The chief fault to be found with Burgess is that he was out of place in a cathedral, otherwise there is much to be said in his favour. Even in those times, when religious fanaticism went mad, he behaved with discretion, and courageously headed the petition of London ministers against the execution of the king. Hugh Peters figures in the crypt, and other parts were assigned as meeting-houses. It is better to pass over as quickly as may be the behaviour of the soldiery and populace. "Paul's Cathedral," says Carlyle, "is now a Horseguard; horses stamp in the Canons' stalls there [but the choir was mainly reserved for Burgess and his sermons], and Paul's Cross itself, as smacking of Popery ... was swept altogether away, and its leaden roof melted into bullets, or mixed with tin for culinary pewter."[32] Its very name, the Cross, was against it; and thus fell, never to be restored, the most famous pulpit in England, which through successive generations had been part and parcel of English history. Carlyle also tell us that Trooper Lockyer, of Whalley's Horse, "of excellent parts and much beloved," was shot in the churchyard for mutiny, "amid the tears of men and women."[33]

Monuments which had escaped earlier vandals were now defaced and destroyed; the scaffolding was seized; part of the roof on the south side fell in, and the lead was used for water-pipes. The new portico was hacked about and turned into stalls for wares, and, in a word, Inigo Jones' work more than undone. Other doings of the soldiery are unfit for publication.[34]

The Restoration.—Juxon was translated to Canterbury, and the munificent and much-abused Gilbert Sheldon received London, only in turn to succeed Juxon again three years later. At the beginning of the Civil War the deanery had become vacant, and Richard Steward designated for the vacancy. It was an empty appointment, and was afterwards changed for another of a like kind, and Matthew Nicolas became nominally dean. This preferment took actual effect from the summer of 1660, when Nicolas was installed dean and prebendary of Caddington Major, such of the other dignitaries as survived resuming their stalls, and vacancies were filled up. Another bay was added to the Burgess conventicle, and the cathedral services were resumed. But the sad condition of the fabric called for action, and in 1663 another Commission was appointed, and Christopher Wren appointed surveyor. Taking example from his uncle's cathedral at Ely, he suggested an enlargement of the area at the junction of the four members of the cross, and subscriptions were raised.

The Plague.—There is a gap in the subscription list after March, 1665: the pestilence was already at work. As the summer advanced its ravages were intensified; and the City, fortunate in escaping earlier attacks, suffered so severely that the pest-houses proved insufficient; and Harrison Ainsworth is responsible for a story which may probably be depended on in its main outlines. The Lord Mayor and City authorities, in conjunction with the College of Physicians, obtained the consent of Dean Sancroft (the second from Nicolas) and his chapter for the conversion of the cathedral into a lazar-house; and a meeting was held in the Chapter House, at which the Primate Sheldon was present. Sheldon employed himself, co-operating with the Lord Mayor, in making provision for the victims. "Chapels and shrines," says Ainsworth, "formerly adorned with rich sculptures and costly ornaments, but stripped of them at times when they were looked upon as idolatrous and profane, were now occupied by nurses, chirurgeons and their attendants; while every niche and corner was filled with surgical instruments, phials, drugs, poultices, foul rags and linen."[35] After its chequered career, Old St. Paul's was destined to be used last of all as a hospital.

The Fire.—The house and Navy office of Samuel Pepys were in Seething Lane, Crutched Friars, near where Fenchurch Street Station now is. About three in the morning of Sunday, September 2, 1666, Samuel and his wife were called by their servant Jane, who told them of a fire visible in the south-west towards London Bridge. After looking out, not thinking it a great matter, the couple returned to bed; but getting up at seven Pepys heard a far worse account, and instead of attending morning service went to the Tower, and called on his neighbour Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant. Robinson told him that the house of Faryner, baker to the king, in Pudding Lane had just caught fire, that Fish Street was in flames, and the church of St. Magnus destroyed. These were near the north end of London Bridge, as the Monument and St. Magnus both remind us.

The origin of the Fire Pepys learnt later (February 24, 1667). Faryner's people had occasion to light a candle at midnight; they went as usual into their bakehouse to light it, but as the fire had gone out, had to seek elsewhere. This striking a light in an unusual place by Faryner, his son and daughter, is asserted to have been, somehow and all unknown to them, the origin of the Fire. "Which is," says Pepys, "a strange thing, that so horrid an effect should have so mean and uncertain a beginning." About two in the morning, when the family were upstairs and asleep again, the choking sensation of smoke woke them up, just in time to escape and tell the tale.

ST. PAUL'S IN FLAMES.
Originally engraved by Hollar for the title of Dean (afterwards Archbishop) Sancroft's sermon on the Great Fire.ToList