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
mediaevalisms, 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 mediaeval schoolmen.
[Illustration: DEAN COLET.
_After the portrait in Holland's "Heroologia," 1620._[22]]
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.
[Illustration: TOMB OF JOHN COLET, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.
_After Hollar._]
=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 L6,700, 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:
"When I past Paules, and travelled in that Walke
Where all our Brittaine-sinners sweare and talke,
Ould Harry-ruffians, bankrupts, suthe-sayers,
And youth, whose cousenage is as ould as theirs."
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 mediaeval 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.
[Illustration: INIGO JONES' PORTICO.
_After Hollar._]
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.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S IN FLAMES.
_Originally engraved by Hollar for the title of Dean (afterwards
Archbishop) Sancroft's sermon on the Great Fire._]
There was a drought, and the flames spread on their mission of
devastation, assisted by a breeze. St. Paul's and most of the hundred
City churches were not likely to be used for worship that morning. "To
see the churches all filling with goods by people who themselves
should have been quietly there at the time." But service was held as
usual at the Abbey; and just about sermon time, a newly elected king's
scholar, Taswell, noticing a stir and commotion--he was standing by
the pulpit steps--ascertained the cause. The news had spread that the
City was in flames. Like most boys the prospect of something exciting
coincided with his desire to escape a long sermon, so he hastened
outside in time to see four boats on the river, the occupants of which
had escaped in blankets. Let us hope that as he was not fully
admitted, he escaped Busby's birch. All through the Sunday St. Paul's
was safe--the distance from Pudding Lane was a little over half a
mile--and even the east end of Lombard Street was intact. The
parishioners of St. Gregory and St. Faith, lulled into a false sense
of security, remained confident that even though the conflagration
spread westward, and the surrounding houses caught fire, the flames
would not leap across the vacant space of churchyard; and the
booksellers accordingly began to store their goods in St. Faith's as
though the crypt were a fireproof safe.[36] So it might possibly have
been, and in spite of sparks, had the distracted Lord Mayor been firm
enough to prevent the storing of books in the churchyard, and had the
cathedral roof been in good repair. The flames gradually encircled the
churchyard; the goods there took fire, and the flames caught the end
of a board placed on the roof to keep out the wet. The Nemesis of
neglect!
Our young friend Taswell first saw the flame at eight o'clock on the
Tuesday evening at Westminster. It broke out at the top of St. Paul's
Church, almost scorched up by the violent heat of the air and
lightning too, and before nine blazed so conspicuous "as to enable me
to read very clearly a 16mo. edition of Terence, which I carried in my
pocket."
Pepys corroborates as to the day "Paul's is burned and all Cheapside,"
writing of Tuesday, September 4th; and under the same date, Evelyn
adds: "The stones of St. Paul's flew like grenades, the melting lead
running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing
with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them,
_and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help
could be applied_, the eastern wind still more impetuously driving the
flames forward." By Wednesday night the central section of the City
was so burnt out that Pepys walked through Cheapside and Newgate
market. "It is a strange thing," he remarks, "to see how long the time
did look since Sunday." "Sad sight," he adds next day, "to see how the
river looks: no houses nor church near it." Friday, the 7th, early: "A
miserable sight of Paul's Church with all the roofs fallen in, and the
body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth's; Paul's School also, Ludgate
and Fleet Street."
We will conclude this with some more extracts from the evidence of
Pepys. On the next Sunday, when it is interesting to observe the
drought came to an end, he attended service twice, probably at St.
Olave's, Hart Street, Mark Lane, in the neighbourhood of Crutched
Friars. In the morning "Our parson made a melancholy but good sermon;
and many and most in the church cried, specially the women. The
church mighty full; but few of fashion, and most strangers. To church
again, and there preached Dean Harding [Nicolas Hardy, of Rochester];
but methinks a bad, poor sermon, though proper for the time; nor
eloquent in saying at this time that the City is reduced from a large
folio to a decimo-tertio." The phrase "most strangers" is not
surprising, as besides St. Paul's, some eighty-five parish churches
were in ashes, including two without the walls but inside the
Liberties. Our last extract is under date 12th November following, and
illustrates how such remains as had hitherto escaped desecration were
treated in the general disorder. Bishop Braybroke's efforts at reform
have been already acknowledged: his tomb was behind the high altar
towards the east. "In the Convocation House Yard [apparently the space
within the Chapter House Cloisters] did there see the body of Robert
Braybroke, Bishop of London, that died in 1404. He fell down in the
tomb out of the great church into St. Fayth's this late fire, and is
here seen his skeleton with the flesh on; but all tough and dry like a
spongy dry leather or touchwood, all upon his bones. His head turned
aside. A great man in his time, and Lord Chancellor. And now exposed
to be handled and derided by some, though admired for its duration by
others. Many flocking to see it."
Old St. Paul's, then, suffered the fate of its predecessors in the
first week of September, 1666. By the Friday the conflagration had so
far exhausted itself that Pepys was able to walk from Paul's Wharf to
the churchyard. The City within the Walls was well-nigh burnt out, and
of the eighty-three parish churches consumed only forty-eight were
rebuilt; and these with the thirteen untouched left accommodation more
than sufficient for the surrounding population. Our regret for the
cathedral would have been greater, had this magnificent monument of
mediaeval genius--probably of its kind as fine as any in the
world--been capable of a conservative restoration: it is to be feared
that neglect, the destroyer, and the restorer had amongst them
rendered this task well-nigh impossible.
So far as existing authorities guide us, it remains to describe the
architecture.[37]
FOOTNOTES:
[21] "Short History," pp. 298, 299. Green says, "The awakening of a
rational Christianity."
[22] See Dr. Lupton's "Life of Colet," 1887.
[23] When I was living in the parish of Kensington, St. Paul's School
was, as I believe it still is, _facile princeps_.
[24] Assuming that the date of the meeting from Hall's _Chronicle_ is
correctly printed in Milman, November 7, 1530.
[25] "Chapters in the History," p. 169. Milman (p. 202) adds that the
hearers pulled the doll to pieces. The dean is made to say "Ridley,
now bishop of Rochester"; but Ridley was bishop 1547-1550, as Milman
elsewhere implies (p. 211).
[26] Milman, p. 216.
[27] My authorities for this well-nigh incredible story are in "St.
Paul's and Old City Life," p. 234.
[28] "Plot" I must continue to call it, with all due deference to
certain modern apologists.
[29] Horace Walpole (quoted in Longman, p. 69) says that Inigo Jones
renewed the sides with "very bad Gothic." Assuming the accuracy of the
prints in Dugdale, it is difficult to see where the Gothic comes in.
[30] Carlyle's "Cromwell," vol i., chap. iv.
[31] There is some confusion as to receipts and expenditure. I take
Dugdale to mean that under the Charles commission L101,000 was raised,
and L35,000 spent; but it seems uncertain whether we are to include
Sir Paul Pindar's liberality in this sum. Dean Milman estimates that
only L17,000 was confiscated. The enormous cost of the army caused a
chronic deficit.
[32] "Cromwell," vol ii., part v.: The Levellers.
[33] Ibid. Friday, April 27, 1649.
[34] "Gleanings," p. 283.
[35] "Old St. Paul's," chap. v. I have found no corroboration for this
interesting incident related by Ainsworth in detail.
[36] Yet the vacant space was in many places very narrow, and the
bishop's palace was actually connected with the south-east end of the
cathedral.
[37] My quotations from Taswell and Evelyn are taken from Milman,
chap. xv. I cannot explain Taswell's mention of lightning. Some assert
that St. Paul's caught fire on the Monday.