Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

I am sure that there is no one who goes to London for the first time, no matter how hurried he may be, who does not try to visit at least three places—the Tower, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Of these three places, two are churches; but they are churches that are so connected with the history of our nation that they almost seem to stand at the heart of the Empire.

Their stories are linked together in a curious way, and yet they are quite distinct. As someone has said, ‘Westminster Abbey was ever the Church of the King and Government; St. Paul’s was the Church of the Citizens.’

When we come to study the history of Cathedrals, we find the way in which they came to be built is pretty much the same in most cases. A little church was raised to the glory of God, and a monastery was founded beside it, which became the home of a community of monks or nuns, ruled over by an Abbot or Abbess; and the church was known as the Abbey Church.

Then by-and-by, sometimes not till quite late, as at St. Albans, a ‘Bishop’s Stool’ was placed there, and the Abbey became a Cathedral.

But in the case of St. Paul’s Cathedral it is quite different. It was built for a Cathedral from the first. Its builder, instead of adding a monastery to it, as was usually done, built a monastery having its own Abbey on a little Island which stood in some marshy ground on the banks of the Thames, about a mile away.

This Island was called ‘Thorney Island,’ and the Abbey Church was dedicated to St. Peter, but soon it began to be spoken of as the ‘West Minster,’ or Westminster Abbey, by which name we know it to-day.

This was how it all came about. In the time of the early Britons there were Christian churches scattered up and down the land, and it is almost certain, from stones that were dug up when the foundations of the present Cathedral of St. Paul were being laid, that in those far bygone days a little church stood on the Hill of Ludgate, in the centre of Roman London. But, as you know, the Roman legions were recalled to Rome in A.D. 410 to help the soldiers there to drive back the vast hoards of Goths and barbarians who were pouring down from the north-west upon Italy; and when they were withdrawn from Britain, there were not enough fighting-men left to protect her shores from the next enemies who threatened her.

These were the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, fierce and heathen warriors who came from Jutland and from Germany, and landed on our coasts.

They conquered the British, and rapidly forced their way inland, ravaging and pillaging wherever they went; and in the confusion and misery that followed, Christianity was completely swept away for a time, to come again with St. Augustine and St. Columba some two hundred years later. You know too, perhaps, that when St. Augustine came to Canterbury and began to preach the Gospel there, the King of Kent, Ethelbert by name, soon became a Christian. This King Ethelbert was a very powerful monarch, and he was Overlord of the King of the East Saxons, who chanced to be his nephew, and who lived in what we now call Essex. Now, while St. Augustine preached to the men of Kent, a friend of his, named Milletus, preached to the East Saxons. And when at last their King became a Christian, his uncle Ethelbert suggested that, as Kent had its Bishop of Canterbury, with his Cathedral Church, it would be a good thing for the Kingdom of the East Saxons to have a Bishop of its own who would have his Cathedral Church also.

So, as London was the Capital of the East Saxons, he proposed to help King Siebert to build a church there; and Augustine, only too glad to find that the Faith was spreading, said that Milletus should be its first Bishop.

It was in this way that the first Cathedral of St. Paul was built, and, as we have seen, Siebert also founded the church and monastery of Westminster.

KING JOHN SIGNING MAGNA CHARTA. PAGE 18.
AFTER THE PAINTING BY ERNEST NORMAND IN THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON
By permission of the artist.

Now, although their King had been baptized, and had built two churches in their midst, the people of London did not want to become Christians; they were pagans, and were quite content to worship Thor and Odin, the gods of the tribes of the North. So for a long time the good Bishop Milletus preached to them in vain; and far away in Rome, Pope Gregory, who had hoped that the new Cathedral in London would become what we call the ‘Metropolitan Church’ of England—that is, the church where the Archbishop has his throne—was sadly disappointed, and had to become accustomed to the idea of Canterbury, which was a far less important place than London, having that honour.

Indeed, for a time it seemed as though, in spite of Church and Bishops, the new religion would be driven out. Ethelbert died, and so did his nephew Siebert, and the Kings who succeeded them either went back altogether to their pagan worship, or tried, as an East Anglian King did, to worship Thor and Odin and Christ all at the same time. I will tell you just one story about those troubled days, and it will show you what a terrible struggle went on between Paganism and Christianity, and how much we owe to these brave men, priests, and Abbots, and Bishops, whose names are almost unknown to us, on whom rested the responsibility of maintaining the Faith in England, and of whom, to their honour be it said, hardly one failed.One day Bishop Milletus was administering the Holy Communion in his church to the little congregation of Christians who still remained true to what he had taught them. It is probable that the altar stood then just where the high-altar in St. Paul’s stands to-day. Only the church would be much smaller and plainer, and the door would be locked to prevent unbelieving pagans entering and disturbing the service by irreverent jeering and laughter. Suddenly a loud knocking was heard, then the crash of falling wood. The young King and his friends had chanced to be passing, and, in a moment of heedless excitement, had determined to visit the Christian’s church, and see what amusement they could get there. Angry at finding the door locked against them, they had broken it down without further delay. Up the aisle strode the King, followed by his mocking companions, to where the old Bishop was engaged in distributing the consecrated Bread to the kneeling communicants. In those days white bread was a rarity, most of it being dark-coloured and unwholesome; and this white bread that was used for the Holy Communion was the whitest and purest of all; for, in order that it should be so, pious people, even the clergy themselves, used to grind the meal carefully with their own hands, and bake it into loaves, and bring it to the church as their offering.

‘Give me some of that white bread,’ cried the young King, stretching out his hand. ‘You gave it to my father Siebert; give it also to me.’

Perhaps he thought in his reckless insolence that the Bishop would obey. But King Siebert had been a baptized Christian, his son was a pagan and an unbeliever; so, King though he was, he could not be allowed to join with the Christians in their solemn Feast. And the brave old Bishop told him so, knowing full well that the refusal might cost him his life. The young King did not put him to death, however, though he was very angry—perhaps he was ashamed to do so—but it cost him his Bishopric, for he was driven out of the Kingdom, and had to leave to seeming ruin all the work that was so dear to his heart.

But it was only seeming ruin. He had done his work faithfully; he had laid the foundations, as it were; and, as has ever happened in the history of the Church, God saw to it that there were other men ready to step in, and build upon these foundations. Other Bishops were appointed—Bishop Cedd and Bishop Erkenwald—and in their days the Christian Faith began to take root again, and spread among the citizens of London, and they improved and beautified their Cathedral until it became famed for its riches and grandeur. Indeed, Bishop Erkenwald was such a famous preacher, and did so much for his church, that when he died he was buried in a golden shrine which people came to see, just as they visited the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Durham, and St. Thomas at Canterbury. As for stout old Bishop Milletus, although he was driven into exile for a time, he became in after-years Archbishop of Canterbury, and his bones lie in the Cathedral there.

Now, it is a curious thing how often those old churches that we are talking about were destroyed, either wholly or in part, by fire. And if there was one church that was fated to suffer more than another in this way, it was St. Paul’s. It was partly burned down in A.D. 951. By that time the Normans were in the country, and they set to work at once to rebuild it. When it was finished, it was a very splendid church indeed; but once more it suffered severely from a fire which broke out in the City, and destroyed everything from London Bridge to the Church of St. Clement Danes, which stands in the Strand.

Let us see what this Cathedral of the Middle Ages was like. It was the largest church in England, and was shaped like a cross, and, instead of having a dome, as the present Cathedral has, it had a great square tower in the centre, with a wooden spire, four hundred and sixty feet high. It stood in the middle of a churchyard, which was surrounded by a high wall. We still talk about ‘St. Paul’s Churchyard,’ although it is long years since anyone was buried there; but if we are in London, and take a bus along the crowded Strand, and up Ludgate Hill, we shall arrive at this old churchyard, and then we shall see the ‘St. Paul’s’ of to-day, and shall be better able to picture to ourselves the ‘St. Paul’s’ of the Middle Ages.

When we leave our bus, we find ourselves in an open space bounded on all sides by busy streets and fine shops. In the centre of this open space stands an immense church, with a huge dome rising from its centre, and on the top of the dome, standing clearly out against the sky, so far up that it can be seen from nearly all parts of London, is an immense gilded cross. In front of the church there are two great flights of steps, which lead down into a broad paved space, only separated from the street by a row of low stone pillars, while round at the sides lie pleasant gardens, with flagged walks, where pigeons flutter about, and where, in summer, hundreds of busy clerks, and shop-girls, and message-boys, come and sit in their lunch-hour, and get a breath of fresh air and a little sunshine.

‘But where is the old churchyard?’ you ask, looking round in amazement. I will tell you. These gardens, and the great space in front of the church, stand to-day where St. Paul’s Churchyard stood long ago, only there is no longer a wall round them, and although the name remains, the gravestones have long since disappeared. Let us try, however, to think that we are back in the Middle Ages, and imagine ourselves standing among the graves in the old churchyard. In front would be the great church, bigger than that which now rises before us, with its square tower and wooden steeple. At the north-east corner of it we should see a curious erection like a low, eight-sided tower, with a stone cross on the top of it. That was called ‘Paul’s Cross,’ and it was almost as important a place as the Cathedral itself.

As I said at the beginning, St. Paul’s Church was the Church of the Citizens. The Monarchs of the land might be crowned or buried at Westminster, but it was to St. Paul’s that the people crowded when they wanted to meet together and stand up for their rights. So there was a great bell in the Cathedral belfry, like the bell in St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, which was rung whenever a question arose which concerned the burghers of the city, and when its deep tones were heard, the people ran out of their houses, and thronged into the churchyard through the six gates which pierced its encircling wall, and crowded round Paul’s Cross; and the Aldermen, ascending by steps to the top of the eight-sided tower, stood under the Cross, and spoke to them. Here royal proclamations were made, quarrels were settled, grievances stated, and put to rights. Here, also, sermons were preached in the open air by famous preachers.

Indeed, I think that I may safely say that ‘Paul’s Cross’ was the centre of the public life of London. It has long since been pulled down, however; but if we go to the north-west corner of the gardens, we can still see the place where it stood, clearly marked on the pavement.

The Bishop’s Palace also stood within the wall, and two little churches, one of which was founded by Gilbert À Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury, who was a silk-mercer in Cheapside; while the other was a parish church—the Church of St. Faith—which was pulled down in after-years, and the people who went to Service there were allowed to worship in the crypt of the Cathedral instead.

It would only weary you to attempt to describe the interior of the old church. It would be very like the other Cathedrals of that time, which were all more richly adorned before the Reformation than they are now. All the accounts which we read of it show us that it was very magnificent, with rich carvings, and stained glass, and no less than seventy side-chapels and chantries, each with its own altar, and, richer than all others, the great Shrine of St. Erkenwald, with its ornaments and jewels.

PREACHING AT ST. PAUL’S CROSS.

I think that it will be much more interesting to talk of some of the scenes that took place there in these far-off days. Let us go back, for instance, almost eight hundred years, to the day when the news arrived in London that the King of England, Henry I., lay dead in France. He and his brother, William Rufus, were, as you know, sons of the great Norman Conqueror, and during their reigns the country had been well governed and prosperous. But when Henry died, no one quite knew what to do next. For the rightful heir to the throne was Henry’s daughter Maud, who had married a French Count of Anjou, who, as you remember, was the first of his race to be called ‘Plantagenet,’ because he was in the habit, as he rode along, of plucking a piece of broom (Planta genista) and sticking it in the front of his cap. Now, the English people did not love this Geoffry of Anjou, who was a greedy and selfish man, and they had no wish to have him for their King, as they would certainly have to do if his wife became Queen. So their thoughts turned to Maud’s cousin, Count Stephen of Blois, who, although his father was a Frenchman, had an English mother, and who had been brought up in England at his uncle’s Court. Most people wished to have him as their King; but no one dare suggest it until the citizens of London took matters into their own hands.

‘The country needed a Monarch,’ they said, ‘and if the Barons would not take the responsibility of electing one, they would.’ And without more ado the Portreve (or Lord Mayor) and Aldermen caused the great bell of St. Paul’s to be rung, summoning the burghers to a ‘Folk-mote’ or council; and when they had all gathered round the Cross in the churchyard, the matter was discussed, and it was agreed that it would be better for England that Stephen should be King rather than that Maud should be Queen; and straightway the city gates were thrown open to the Count, and the citizens swore allegiance to him, and he was crowned King of England.

Perhaps, after all, it would have been better if the citizens had chosen Maud, for, as history shows, Stephen did not turn out to be a very good King.

Another great decision that was made at a public meeting at St. Paul’s was the framing of Magna Charta—that great Charter which secured, for all time to come, justice and liberty to English freemen.In these old days, especially after the Normans came into the country, Kings were apt to think that might was right, and that they could do what they chose with their subjects. If a man displeased the King, or if he wanted to seize his land, he could simply throw him into prison and keep him there, sometimes until he died, without giving him even a trial. Then, too, if the Monarch wanted money, he simply forced the people to give it to him, and no one had any security that what was his to-day might not be the King’s to-morrow.

When Henry I. came to the throne, he wanted to please the people, because he had an elder brother living, who had gone to the Crusades, and he was afraid that unless he gained the affection of his subjects before his brother came back, they might choose the latter to be King instead of him. So he granted them a Charter, promising not to seize any of their property, nor to tax them unduly, nor to touch any of the lands belonging to the Church. He did not keep those promises very well, however, and his successors, Stephen, and Henry, and Richard, and John, did not keep them at all; and by the middle of King John’s reign the country was in a very bad state indeed. No heed was given to the advice or wishes of the great nobles, who ought to have had a voice in the government of the country, while the common people were so oppressed and down-trodden that they were ready to rise in rebellion. And they would have done so if it had not been for the wisdom and prudence of two great men—Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Marshal, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. Stephen Langton was a foreigner, whom the Pope had sent to Canterbury, but he was a good man, a real ‘Father in God’ to his people, and he believed that he was set over them to look after their bodies as well as their souls. When he found out how down-trodden the poor folk of England were, he made up his mind that such a state of things should not continue. So he began to inquire into the laws, and he found out about this old Charter, which had been granted by Henry I., but had never been kept, and had long since been forgotten. The wise Archbishop did not say anything, but he quietly set to work to find a copy of this Charter. After some trouble he discovered one, hidden away among the papers of an old monastery. He then summoned all the chief people in the country to meet him at St. Paul’s Cathedral. That was one of the most memorable assemblies in English history. All the powerful Nobles and Barons, all the stately Bishops and Priors, all the sober Aldermen of the great city, met together and listened with deep interest while the Archbishop read aloud to them the promises which had been made by Henry I., and recorded on the parchment which he held in his hand; then pointed out to them that these promises had never been kept, and that the people of England had a right to demand that they should be kept. He finished his speech by calling upon his listeners to band themselves together, and never rest satisfied till they had obtained redress from the grievous wrongs which had pressed upon them, and upon their poorer brethren.

The Archbishop’s words were not in vain. Nobles and Barons crowded round him, and, laying their hands upon their swords, took a solemn oath that they would insist upon the principles of Henry’s Charter being maintained, and would do their best to protect the liberties of the people.

This was just before Christmas-time, and when the King came to hold his Christmas Court in London, these same Nobles, armed to the teeth, and accompanied by the Churchmen and the principal citizens, appeared before him, and demanded that he should listen to their requests, and make proper laws to guard their liberties.

King John was frightened, but he did not want to give in; so, like the weak man that he was, he did not return a direct answer, but said that he would think over the matter, and meet them again at Easter. He thought that in this way he could put them off, and never give them an answer at all. But the people were determined, and formed themselves into an army, which they called the ‘Army of God, and of Holy Church,’ and all the clergy, and all the citizens of London, and Exeter, and Lincoln, supported them, and the King was obliged to yield.

So it came about that one June day a great assembly of people met on the banks of the Thames near Windsor. On one side was encamped the King, with a handful of followers, and on the other the great army of Barons, and nobles, and citizens had pitched their tents on a piece of marshy land known by the name of Runnymede. In the middle of the river was a small island, and on this island a few men chosen by the King, and a few men chosen by the Nobles, met to discuss matters; at least, they pretended to discuss matters, for everyone knew what the end would be. The King was powerless to resist the wishes of the great concourse of people gathered across the river, and before nightfall ‘Magna Charta,’ the ‘Great Charter,’ had been drawn up and signed.

I cannot tell you all the good things that were secured to Englishmen by this great deed, but there was one thing which, above all others, it gained for them—and gained for us as well—Justice. It is one of our proudest boasts that, by English law, no man, be he ever so poor or degraded, is condemned unheard; that every man is counted innocent till, by a fair trial, he is proved to be guilty. And the very foundation of our freedom rests on some words that were written that day on that old parchment: ‘We will sell to no man, we will not delay nor deny to any man, justice or right.’

But if the great bell of St. Paul’s could call the citizens to fight for their liberty as Englishmen against the oppression of the King, it could also summon them to fight for their liberty as Churchmen against the oppression of the Pope. We must always remember that when first Christianity was brought to England, in the time of the Romans, and the ancient British Church was formed, it did not owe allegiance to the Bishops of Rome as it did in later days. It was only after it had been swept away by the invasion of the Angles and Saxons, and then brought back again to the South of England by St. Augustine, who came direct from Pope Gregory of Rome, that the belief arose that it was right that the Church of England should be ruled by the Pope.

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
From a painting by Sir G. Kneller in the National Portrait Gallery, London
(Page 38)

Up in the North, on the other hand, in Scotland and in Northumbria, where Christianity had been brought by St. Columba and his followers, who, as you remember, came from Ireland, it was a very much longer time before the Church would admit the Papal claims, though at last it did so. And St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, who founded the Northumbrian Church, being missionaries from the ancient British Church, which St. Columba represented, did not feel obliged to obey the Pope in the same way that St. Augustine did. It would take me too long to tell you about the differences that existed between the Church in the North and that in the South, the chief of which was that they did not keep the festival of Easter on the same day. The Church of St. Augustine, following the example of Rome, kept it on one day; the Church of St. Columba, following the example of the British and Eastern Churches, observed it some ten days later, as the Russians and Greeks do still.

But as time went on the rule of the Pope began to weigh heavily upon the English people. They thought that they had the right to elect their own Bishops and Archbishops, while the Pope thought that he had the right to do so, and at first he very often sent foreigners to fill the English Sees.

Sometimes, indeed very often, they were good men. The saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln came from Savoy. Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury was a Greek, who came from far-away Tarsus, the city of St. Paul. But some of them were bad men, haughty and insolent, who wanted to override English laws and English freedom. And when this happened the people were apt to rebel, and declare that only English Bishops should rule in the Church of England.

Things came to a crisis when, in the thirteenth century, a great many Italians came over to England, and were given some of the highest offices in the country. Among them were two brothers of good birth, Peter of Savoy and his brother Boniface. Peter, who had a grand house in the Strand, called Savoy House, was made a Privy Councillor, and was given the chief seat at the King’s Council Board. Boniface, who was a priest, was, by the wish of the Pope, made Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, Boniface of Savoy had mistaken his vocation. He was young, and handsome, and full of roistering spirits; he would have made a good soldier, and doubtless his men would have admired him for his reckless daring; but he was haughty, and insolent, and overbearing, and sadly lacking in common sense—not fit to be placed in the great position in which he found himself.

He brought with him a band of armed retainers, who, when they rode through the streets of London, robbed the stalls in the market-places as though they had been wild marauders, instead of the servants of a Christian Bishop. Their Master behaved no better than they did. There was in the City a monastery called St. Bartholomew’s, in Smithfield. He resolved to visit it, and, appearing at the gate with his men, demanded an entrance. For some reason the Prior resented this—perhaps Boniface’s insolent manner made him angry; perhaps he felt that it was the Bishop of London’s place to inspect his monastery, and not the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. At any rate, he refused to admit the Prelate.

And what do you think happened? Without more ado the Archbishop clenched his fist, and knocked the Prior to the ground. It was a foolish as well as a wicked act, for of course the news of what had been done spread through London, and the citizens began to say to each other that a man who could do a deed like that was not fit to be an Archbishop.

A little time afterwards, Boniface determined to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, and call upon the Bishop of London for his tithes or first-fruits. He may have been acting quite within his rights to do this: I do not know; but the citizens, at any rate, made up their minds that, if he came with his demands to their Cathedral Church, he would find out what they thought of him. So the big bell was rung, and they gathered round the Cross in their thousands. Archbishop Boniface heard of this in his Palace at Lambeth, and, although he would not be turned from his purpose, he put on a suit of armour under his robes before he ventured near the Cathedral. When he arrived there, he found, to his rage, that the citizens had closed the gates against him, and instead of being awed by his angry remonstrances, they jeered and hooted at him, and even threatened him with violence, so that at last he thought it wise to go home.

But worse was to follow. Now that an Italian Archbishop sat on the throne of Canterbury, a great many Italian priests came over, and were given the best livings in the Church. Their manners were no better than those of their countryman, and the citizens became so enraged at the behaviour of these foreigners, and at the unjust way in which the Pope had forced them upon them, that they determined that not one of them should set foot in the church that they looked on as especially their own.

And they were in such deadly earnest that it actually came about that, when two of these priests attempted to enter the precincts one day, the people crowded into the churchyard and killed them on the spot. After this they rushed to Lambeth, and besieged the Palace there, uttering such threats that Boniface, the ‘Handsome Archbishop’, as they called him, was glad to escape as best he could, and fly abroad for safety. He never came back, and we can fancy that the Pope was more careful in future whom he sent to England, for the citizens of London had taught him a lesson, and shown him that he could not lord it over them with impunity.

Just one more story about these old days, and then we must come to the St. Paul’s that we know.

It was in the reign of King Edward III., and the Church of England had lost its first purity, and grown rich and corrupt. Many of the Bishops and clergy had forgotten what they had been made ministers of God for, and, instead of thinking about the needs of their people, they thought only of how much wealth they could heap up for themselves, and how luxuriously they could live.

The Reformation was yet a long way off, but there were two men in the country who wanted to put an end to this state of affairs, and they wanted to do so for two very different reasons. You have all heard of John Wyclif, the earliest of the English Reformers. He was one of those two men, and he wanted to weaken the power of Rome, because he saw that the poor people of this country were being robbed, in order to enrich the Pope and his favourites, who, as we have seen, were put into high places in the Church. So he began to point out the abuses that existed, and to urge people not to submit to them any longer.

The other man was a powerful Noble, ‘John of Gaunt—Time-honoured Lancaster,’ as Shakespeare calls him; and I am afraid that the reason why he wanted the power taken from the clergy was, that he hoped that when they could no longer collect great sums of money from the common people, he and his brother Nobles might be able to do so instead.

So when, one day, Wyclif was summoned to appear before the Bishop of London, Bishop Courtenay, to answer for the heretical notions which it was reported that he was spreading, the Duke of Lancaster espoused his cause, and stood by his side.

It must have been a curious scene—the grave Bishop in his robes, seated on his throne, with his advisers round him; the thin, worn priest from Lutterworth, with his pale, studious face and black gown; and the proud Noble, who was, at that time, one of the most powerful men in the country.Some of the citizens had crept into the church, to hear what the monk had to say, but they did not hear him say very much, for the Duke of Lancaster soon began to wrangle with the Bishop. He hated the clergy, because he was envious of their position and the power that they had over the simple folk, and his pride could not brook the questions that the Bishop put to his friend. At last he lost his temper altogether, and, after speaking very rudely to the Prelate, he threatened to drag him out of the church by the hair of his head. In an instant, the listening citizens sprang to their feet. They were not very interested in Wyclif’s reforms—probably, at that time, they did not know very much about them—but this powerful Duke was no friend of theirs, and they were enraged at the thought that he dared come into their Cathedral and threaten their Bishop. With one accord they rushed to the belfry and tolled the great bell, and when, as was their duty, crowds of other citizens gathered in the churchyard to see what had happened, they told them, in excited tones, that John of Gaunt was in the church with his followers, and threatening to lay hands on the Bishop.

Then a perfect tempest arose. Some of the crowd rushed into the church, declaring that they would murder the Duke; others went off to his Palace in the Strand, determined to break into it and pillage it, in order to punish him for his insolence. And they were in such deadly earnest that they would have carried out both threats had not Bishop Courtenay himself interfered, and saved his enemy from their violence.

Just before the Reformation the great church was at the very height of its glory—from an outward point of view, at least. We read that there were no less than one hundred and thirty clergy who were supposed to minister there, and that there were so many people connected with it—schoolmasters, schoolboys, singing-men, choir-boys, bedesmen, bookbinders, sextons, gardeners, bell-ringers, etc.—that employment must have been given to more than a thousand people. It all seems very grand and glorious; but if we read further, we find that it had grown just like the Temple in our Lord’s time: there was a great deal of outward magnificence, and yet the very purpose that the church had been built for—the Service and Worship of God, was in danger of being forgotten. Instead of being kept as God’s house, entirely for His Worship, we find that the great nave was the fashionable meeting-place of the good folk of London, and they used it as we should use a promenade to-day.

Francis Osborne, an old historian, writes: ‘It was the fashion in those days ... for the principal Gentry, Lords and Courtiers, and men of all professions, to meet in S. Paul’s by eleven of the clock ... and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three till six, during which time some discoursed of business, and others of news.’

Then came the Reformation; and, as always happens when a great change like that is taking place, people were so zealous to sweep away all the abuses that had crept in, that they ‘lost their heads,’ as we say, and did many wrong and unseemly things. It was right and needful that the Church should be reformed; but it was not right nor needful that all the splendid carving, and decorated stonework, and beautifully illuminated books, and gold and silver altar vessels, which had been given for the Service of God by pious men and women, should be broken by hammers, or burned, or carried away and melted down, to fill the pockets of worthless noblemen.It was right that the nave should no longer be the place of resort for all the fashionable loungers in the city; but it did not improve matters when the same nave was turned into cavalry barracks for Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers, and the rough men were allowed to play games and behave in any way that they liked in the church.

No, the history of that time is not pleasant reading; and we feel almost glad when we hear that, first of all, the wooden spire was struck by lightning, and set on fire, and then that the whole church was burned down by the Great Fire that devastated London in September, 1666; for then a new beginning could be made, and those unhappy old stories forgotten.

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