[Illustration:

NEWGATE, 1799

]

Within Newgate, where a “pavement” was constructed to keep the stalls

from the mud of the unpaved street, was the Market of the Shambles. Here

were two churches—St. Ewen’s, at the north-east corner of Warwick Lane,

and St. Nicholas Fleshambles in what is now King Edward Street, formerly

Butcher’s Lane or Stinking Lane. Both parishes were united to form that

of Christ Church after the Dissolution.

Newgate Market is generally spoken of as a meat market only, which in

later years it became; but formerly many other things were sold there.

It is the natural tendency of markets to admit goods for sale other than

those for which they were created.

Thus we find in the fourteenth century that wheat was sold in the “corn

market of Newgate”; that poulterers who were freemen had to sell their

fowls either in Newgate Market or else west of the Tun in Cornhill; that

cheese brought into the City by “foreigners” had to be sold in the

market between the Shambles and Newgate, and nowhere else; that

blacksmiths were forbidden to sell their goods except in the pavement of

Newgate or else by the Tun of Cornhill; and that pork was also sold in

the market. Further investigations would doubtless bring to light the

fact that it became a general market.

There was a great deal of trouble with the butchers. They were an unruly

class—we have seen how one of them was put to shame for impudence; they

persisted in pouring the blood from the shambles down the gutters; they

carried the offal through the streets, and threw it into the river at

the Temple. In 1369 strict ordinances were passed that animals should be

slaughtered outside the walls. As the butchers disobeyed the law it was

again proclaimed two years later, with the exception for the butchers of

East Chepe and the Stocks. I do not think, however, that the slaughter

of beasts was ever carried on without the walls. The market stood all

along Newgate Street, with a “Middle Row” of sheds, under which were the

stalls for the sale of grain, cheese, butter, poultry, etc., besides

that of meat. The butchers also had their stalls in Butchers’ Lane. The

Middle Row became like that in Holborn—a row of houses over shops. This

Middle Row must have made Newgate Street narrow and intolerably dark and

close. The Great Fire swept it away, and among the improvements made

after the Fire it was ordered “that the Ground where the Middle Row of

the Shambles stood and the ground of the four late houses in Newgate

Market between Warwick Lane End and the Bell Inn there shall be laid

into the streets” (Maitland).

Those who can remember Newgate Street before the butchers’ shops were

taken to Smithfield, can bear witness to the horrible appearance of the

street, lined as it was with butchers’ shops, where the passenger, who

never went through the street if he could avoid it, was jostled by

greasy blue smocks, and saluted on the cheek with ribs and legs of

bleeding ox flesh. The end of Newgate Street and of Paternoster Row

facing Cheapside was, in 1720, called Jackanapes Row, a modern name

given for some unknown reason. Passing along Newgate Street on the north

side we come to Christ’s Hospital.

CHRIST’S HOSPITAL

When we pass from the pre-Reformation schools to the great institution

of Christ’s Hospital, which has become indissolubly associated with the

name of Edward VI., the first Protestant king of England, we might

expect to find that we passed from darkness to light; from groping in

the dark after fragmentary hints of evidence, to an era of charters and

documents well known and well understood. Yet there is no great school

the history of which has been more misunderstood or misrepresented than

that of Christ’s Hospital. In 1898, at the laying of the foundation

stone of the new buildings at Horsham, Sussex, which are destined to

convert Christ’s Hospital from a London school into a “non-local” public

school, the Duke of Cambridge, as Chairman of the Governors of Christ’s

Hospital, gave the layer of the stone, the Prince of Wales, a succinct

version of the story of its origin.

“It was founded,” he said, “by the saintly King Edward the VIth, who,

besides assigning it a site in the City of London, with his own hands

inserted in the charter power to take lands in mortmain, which has

enabled the munificence of subsequent benefactors to provide for nearly

three and a half centuries for the nurture and education of children.”

So the historian of Cambridge University, Mr. J. Bass Mallinger,[13]

speaking of Edward VI. had said: “Upwards of 30 Free Grammar Schools

founded at this time have permanently associated the name of Edward VI.

with popular education”; and among the thirty free grammar schools

founded by him, he includes Christ’s Hospital.

Carlisle, in his _Endowed Grammar Schools_, made a more cautious

statement.

“The precise endowment of the institution by the Royal Founder is not

known. It is certain that part of the premises which it now comprises,

commonly called Grey Friars and the Cloisters, with a part of the

building, were given by Edward VI.”

A closer examination of the facts will show us that Christ’s Hospital

was not founded as a grammar school; that neither site nor buildings

were given by Edward VI.; and that he did not inscribe a licence in

mortmain with his own hand. Christ’s Hospital was founded as a Foundling

Hospital and Ragged School for gutter children of both sexes, by the

inhabitants of London, by means of public subscriptions and rates, on a

site and in buildings already acquired by the City from Henry VIII., and

Edward VI.’s contribution to it consisted of a piece of parchment, some

confiscated church linen, and his name.

Perhaps the most startling revelation to those who have heard so often

of the magnificence of the foundation of Edward VI., is to find that

Christ’s Hospital at first had no endowments beyond its sites and

buildings, and never received a penny of income from the property

comprised in Edward’s charter.

Christ’s Hospital is alone among the great public schools in that it has

entirely departed from the class and the objects for which it was

originally intended. Winchester and Eton, Westminster and St. Paul’s

were intended always for the same class or classes which now frequent

them. The scholars were meant to be, and were, taken from the poorer

members of the upper middle class, squires, parsons, barristers,

merchants, and the like, “who could not, without help, send their sons

to the University”; the commoners or paying boys from the richer members

of the same class. Christ’s Hospital, unlike these, was intended for the

poorest of the poor. Its foundation was not due, like that of the other

ancient public schools, to any single founder, or to any desire to

further education. It was a part of a great scheme to put down

pauperism, and so effect by voluntary and charitable effort what in

Elizabeth’s day and since has been effected, or attempted, by compulsion

and the Poor Law. It was intended to rid the streets of London of the

curse of sturdy rogues and vagabonds, on principles which were strictly

in accordance with the doctrines of political economy, and would be

highly approved by the Charity Organisation Society. It aimed at getting

rid of the poor by setting those who were merely unfortunate to work,

while making things unpleasant for the undeserving and idle, and by

bringing up their children in the way they should go to earn their own

living.

[Illustration:

CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, FROM THE CLOISTERS, 1804

]

The establishment of Christ’s Hospital is inextricably mixed up with

that of the other “Royal Hospitals,”[14] St. Bartholomew’s and St.

Thomas’s Hospital and the Bridewell. It may be traced to a movement to

rid London, and especially the parish churches, of the crowds of poor,

some sick and diseased, some mere idle “rogues and vagabonds.”

Historians like Father Gasquet in his _Henry VIII. and the Monasteries_,

following some older authors, _laudatores temporis acti_, write as if

beggary and vagrancy were a special product of the Reformation Era, and

were caused by the suppression of the monasteries. This is putting the

cart before the horse. It could easily be shown that hundreds of years

earlier the State made efforts to put them down. But for the present

purpose we need go no further back than the first part of the sixteenth

century. In London an Act of Common Council,[15] passed in 1518, before

Luther had ever been heard of beyond Wittemburg, and long before the

suppression of monasteries had even been dreamt of by Henry, directed

that for getting rid of “all mighty beggars, vagabonds, and all other

suspect and evil-disposed persons out of this city, every alderman in

his ward shall get two or three persons in each parish to form lists of

all persons living on alms, and certify them to the Common Council.”

But, while the monasteries and friaries, and especially the latter—those

great schools of pauperism and seminaries of beggary—were continually

creating new swarms of the poor they were supposed to relieve, any real

diminution of beggary was hopeless. We find the Common Council in 1533,

before the suppression, vainly trying to abate the evil by the

institution of a voluntary poor-rate, directing the aldermen to “weekly

depute some honest persons of every parish to gather the devotions of

the parishioners, and the same to be delivered at the church doors to

poor folk,” so as to prevent them crowding into the churches, carrying

their disgusting sores and infection with them.

Almost immediately after the dissolution of the monasteries, August 1,

1540, the City began to negotiate with Henry VIII. for the purchase of

the “four houses and churches of Friars,” the Black, White, Grey, and

Austin, because they were the finest buildings in the City after St.

Paul’s and St. Martin-le-Grand. The Grey Friars’ Church was no less than

300 feet long. The City urged that they would be “a very great comfort,

aid and refuge for the avoiding and eschewing” of plague and sickness.

They offered “a thousand marks esterling (£666 : 13 : 4), if they can be

gotten no better cheap, down for them.”[16] Sir Richard Gresham was the

negotiator, and had to inform the court of aldermen that His Highness

thought the citizens “pinchpence” to offer so little, and refused. At

last, however, in 1547, they came to an agreement, not for all the

houses unfortunately, but for the Grey Friars only. They also acquired

St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which had been dissolved as part of the

Priory of St. Bartholomew, and Bethlehem or Bedlam Hospital, which,

being in the hands of the secular clergy, had not been dissolved. What

was paid for the grant does not appear in the documents; though that

something considerable was paid there is little doubt. On December 27,

1547, the City got a conveyance from Henry, confirmed by charter of the

same date, with a licence in mortmain precisely in the same words as the

one which, we are told, was so providentially invented by Edward VI.; as

was perhaps not surprising since the formula was some two centuries old.

Henry purported to make the grants of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and the

Grey Friars’ Church, cloisters, and conventual buildings with the whole

precinct, and all the houses in it, valued at some £50 a year, because

he considered “the miserable estate (the poor, aged, sick, sore and

impotent people), as well men as women, lying and going about begging in

the common streets of the City of London[17] and the suburbs of the

same ... to the great infection and [an]noyance of his grace’s loving

subjects.”

St. Bartholomew’s was to be a hospital or house for the poor. The Grey

Friars was not granted for a hospital but for a church. It was to be a

parish church for the Grey Friars’ precinct, Newgate and St. Sepulchre’s

parish, with a vicar; “a visitor of Newgate,” or prison chaplain, and

five other priests, partly curates, partly chantry-priests, all to be

appointed by the corporation of the City. The City, that is, “the Mayor

and Commonalty and citizens,” were given a licence in mortmain to hold

lands up to the value of a thousand marks a year for the purposes of

this grant. By the same grant they were made the custodians of the

Bethlehem Hospital.

The Common Council, on obtaining possession of the Grey Friars’ Church,

promptly gutted it[18] of all its famous and beautiful tombs, royal and

civic alike, stripping down its stall-work, and reducing the dimensions

of the nave. In fact, they emulated the Crown and nobility in the work

of plunder and destruction, not sparing their own ancestors.

At first efforts were made to maintain St. Bartholomew’s Hospital by

voluntary donations, “a weekly collection of the devotion of the

people,” but this was found not to “take any good success or semblance

of good contynnance,” and by an order of Common Council, September 29,

1547, “a moietie or half deale of one hole fiftene” was levied for its

support. In December 1543 certain dues levied in respect of the

measuring of leather up to 500 marks a year were granted to it; and the

other 500 marks to be paid out of the half-fifteenth[19] was assessed

instead on the Companies at the rate of £24 a quarter from the Mercers

down to 13s. 4d. a quarter from small Companies like the Glaziers.

In 1549 the City was already in treaty with the Protector Somerset[20]

“for the alteration of parcel of the foundacion of the house of the

poor.” Nothing, however, was done during his stormy reign, which ended

by his being sent to the Tower in January 1550. In the following Lent,

Lever,[21] the Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, preached some

famous sermons at St. Paul’s Cross, inveighing against the breach of the

Acts of dissolution both of monasteries and chantries, according to

which the proceeds were to be applied “for erecting of Grammar Schools,

the further augmenting of the Universities and better provision for the

poor.” He voiced, not merely the wishes of his own college and

university, but also those of the City of London. Edward VI.’s action

has been attributed to a sermon of Ridley “the martyr,” the Bishop of

London, in 1552. It seems doubtful, however, whether Ridley was the

prime mover or only an agent of the City. A letter of his own, intended

to be pathetic, but which surely must have had a ring of comicality even

to his contemporaries, goes to show that Lord Mayor Sir Richard Dobbs

was the originator of the movement.

“O Dobbs, Dobbs, alderman and Knight, thou in thy year didst win my

heart for evermore for that honourable act, that most blessed work of

God, of the erection and setting up of Christ’s holy hospitals and truly

religious houses which by thee and through thee were begun.... Thou

didst plead their cause (the cause of Christ’s ‘silly members’) yea and

not only in thine own person thou didst set forth Christ’s cause but to

further the matter thou broughtest me into the Council Chamber of the

City before the Aldermen alone, whom thou hadst assembled there together

to hear me speak what I would say as an advocate by office and duty in

the poor man’s cause.”[22]

The Bishop, in fact, acted as the Bishops of London now do, as a kind of

public orator and common vouchee of all charitable organisations; he was

not the originator or organiser.

The detailed story of the foundation is told in an account written by J.

Howes, “Renter” of Christ’s Hospital, in the form of a delightful

dialogue between Dignity (an Elizabethan alderman) and Duty, or Howes

himself.[23]

Dobbs, he tells us, with the Bishop and a few others, “devised a book”

to provide for the various classes of poor. “First[24] they devised to

take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men’s

children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late

dissolved house of the Grey Friars, which they devised to be an Hospital

for them, where they should have meat and drink and clothes, lodging and

learning, and officers to attend upon them. They also devised that there

should be provision made to keep the sick from the whole, and laid a

‘platte’ (a plot or plan) to have purchased Finsbury Court, and there to

have kept the children in fresh air in the time of sickness, because

they feared lest through the corrupt nature of the children, who might

infect one another, being packed up in one house, and so put the whole

city in danger of infection. Then the Governors devised that the sucking

children and such as were not able to learn should be kept in the

country and always at Easter brought home.” The lame and aged poor were

to be removed to St. Thomas’s Hospital, forthwith; the “Lazar” people

should be removed out of the streets, and have monthly pensions paid to

them to the end they should not annoy the King’s subjects resorting to

the City; and all the decayed poor citizens should be made known and

every one of them have weekly a pension according to his necessity. But

“all the idle and lusty rogues, as well men as women, should all be

taken up and conveyed into some house where they should have all things

necessary and be compelled to labour.” A committee of thirty was

appointed to collect statistics. They reported that the number to be

provided for was—

Fatherless children 300

Sore and sick persons 200

Poor men overburthened with their children 350

Aged persons 400

Decayed householders 650

Idle vagabonds 200

————

2100

————

They then set to work to provide ways and means.

The committee of thirty found close on £1500 themselves. The parsons

were set to work to extract weekly “pensions” from their parishioners;

boxes were distributed to the wardens of every Company. There was a

“devise that every honest householder in London should have a bill

printed, wherein there was a glass window left open for his name and for

his sum of money,” and the churchwardens were to get these filled in.

In February 1551[25] the City began to negotiate for the purchase of

“the Hospitall in Suthwarke,” the Hospital of St. Thomas à Becket in

Southwark, which until the Dissolution had been in the hands of

Augustinian canons. On the 25th March the Privy Council granted an order

for the purchase to be carried into effect. A detailed estimate of the

charges and net income of the hospital on the proposal to purchase is

extant at the Record Office.[26] From this it appears that the total

gross value of its possessions was £314 : 17 : 1: the charges for the

poor, the priests, and so on were estimated at £154 : 17 : 1, leaving a

surplus of about £160 a year. Of this, £36 odd was derived from land

estimated at twenty years’ purchase, and £123 from houses and cottages

taken at fourteen years’ purchase. The City paid £2461 : 2 : 6 down for

the grant of the endowment, with the hospital site and buildings thrown

in. The transaction was completed by Letters Patent of August 12 and 13,

1551, which included a licence in mortmain up to £46 a year above the

issue of the lands, _i.e._ £200 a year in all.

Having acquired St. Thomas’s Hospital for the sick poor, the City next

set itself to work to petition[27] the King for a grant of the old

palace of Bridewell. For the proposed inhabitants of this they had in

“readiness most profitable and wholesome occupations for the continuing

in godly exercise ... which is the guider and begetter of all wealth,

virtue and honesty.” This was followed up by a further grant of the

Savoy Hospital, founded by Henry VII. on the site of the old mansion of

John of Gaunt, and completed by Henry VIII. It was intended for old

soldiers and pilgrims.

We gather from Howes that the motives of the King in making the grant of

Bridewell, and of the revenues of the Savoy Hospital, to Christ’s

Hospital were not of the very highest order.

“What” [says Dignity] “should move the King to depart from so beautiful

a house as Bridewell was, so richly garnished, with so great charges,

and being so late builded, and to convert the lands of the Savoy to the

City?”

“The situation of Bridewell” [replies Duty] “was such that all the cost

was cast away; there was no coming to it but through stinking lanes or

over a filthy ditch, which did so continually annoy the house, that the

King had no pleasure in it. And therefore the King being required by the

citizens to converte it to so good a use God moved his heart to bestow

it to that use, rather than to be at any charge in keeping of it, or to

suffer it to fall down; and so not profitable to any. And this, I am

sure, was the reason that moved the King. For at that time it stood void

and was daily spoiled by the keepers. And now as touching the turning

over of the Savoy lands you shall understand that the Savoy was erected

by King Henry VIIth in the time of papistry chiefly for pilgrims,

wayfaring men, and for maimed and bruised soldiers that they might have

meat, drink and lodging for a time. The pilgrims being suppressed and so

no use of them, and as for such wayfaring men and soldiers as that house

did commonly harbour, [they] were none other but common rogues and idle

pilfering knaves, which they received in at night and every morning

turned out at the gates without meat, drink or clothes; and so lay

wandering all day abroad seeking their adventure in filching and

stealing, and at night came and were received in again. And so the Savoy

was nothing else but a nursery of all villany. The revenues and profits

of the rents came wholly to the use of the Masters, who were priests,

and officers of the house. And so the virtuous prince King Edward had

great reason in converting the lands to the City, where the poor

received the profits.”

The Savoy lands were worth £450 a year; but the institution was in debt

to the amount of £178, which the City had to pay off, and they also had

to pension the officers of the Savoy Hospital to the extent of £101 :

6 : 8 a year.

According to Howes, all the income from endowment went to St. Thomas’s

Hospital, the Bridewell was maintained by labour, and Christ’s Hospital

chiefly by the liberal devotion of the citizens; but if any one of these

three wanted then the other two did supply the lack.

Meanwhile on July 26, 1552, the City began to repair the Grey Friars for

the use of the poor children.

Separate committees of the thirty above-mentioned were appointed to

prepare or “make sweet” the various places for the poor. That for

Christ’s Hospital consisted of Mr. Roe, “which was afterwards Lord

Mayor,” as Treasurer, and Stephen Cobbe, John Blondell, Thomas Lodge,

Thomas Bartlett, Thomas Eaton, and Richard Grafton as “surveyors.” “The

late dissolved Grey Friars at that time[28] stood void and empty, only a

number of ‘whores and rogues’ harboured therein at nights; saving one

Thomas Bryckett, vicar of Christchurch, with whom the Governors

compounded and bought all his tables, bedsteads and other things; and

made out of his lodgings ‘a compting house and lodging for their

clerk.’” Then they appointed officers: a warden, clerk, steward, butler,

under-butler, cook, two porters; surgeon, barber, tailor, coal-keeper, a

“mazer” or bowl scourer, a matron, twenty-five sisters or nurses, a

porter, and a sexton. With them were also the schoolmasters in the old

triple division of grammar, song, and writing, with reading (assumed in

the ordinary grammar school to have been already mastered) added.

There was—

£ _s._ _d._

A Grammar Schoole Mayster, John Robynson, whose yearly

fee was 15 0 0

A Grammar Usher, James Seamer 10 0 0

A Teacher to wrighte, John Watson 3 6 8

Schoolmasters for the Petties ABC, Thomas Lowes and

Thomas Cutts, whose yearly fees to each of them was 2 13 4

A schule maister for musicke 2 13 4

A teacher of pricksonge whose yearly fee was 2 13 4

John Watson the writing master was also clerk, in which latter capacity

he received £10 a year. The status of the various teachers may be judged

from the fact that the head surgeon received the same stipend as the

head schoolmaster; the under-surgeon received £4 against the usher’s

£10, while the arts got £8. The “Absies,” _i.e._ ABC or elementary

schoolmaster, received 13s. 4d. a year more than the barber, and a great

deal less than the porters, who had £6 a year each.

The foundation was a stupendous charitable effort, the money it cost

being certainly underestimated by the common reckoning at twelve times

the then value, or £30,000 of our money. It included, for instance, “500

feather beds, and 500 pads of straw to put under the feather beds, and

as many blankets and 1000 pair of sheets” from one contractor alone. In

all, double that number was provided. But many “there were that brought

feather beds, coverlets, sheets, blankets, shirts and smocks, and

disbursed great sums of money, which never came to any public account.”

The “virtuous prince” himself was most generous. He issued a warrant

under his own hand “that all the linen belonging to the churches in

London should be brought and delivered to the Governors for the use of

the poor, reserving sufficient for the Communion Table, with towels and

surplices for the ministers and churches.” The linen, we are told, did

good service, “and especiale in St. Thomas Hospital.”[29]

In November 1552[30] no less than 380 children were taken into the

house. At first the “idle men and women” were also brought into Christ’s

Hospital “and put in what is now (_i.e._ in 1582) the schoolmaster’s

house, where they were kept from doing any further harm, although not

employed to any occupations, for the place served not.” When Bridewell

was obtained, the workhouse folk were removed there; but this was not

before midsummer 1554.[31]

The preparation of Christ’s Hospital was entirely done by voluntary

contributions. For St. Thomas’ the City granted £100, and “turned over”

to it “£50 a year of that which had been purchased from the King.” But

no endowment income was forthcoming for Christ’s Hospital. Nor is it

possible to ascertain how much capital was given for Christ’s Hospital

alone as the contemporary “State and charge of the new erected

Hospitals—A.D. 1553”[32] gives the cost of St. Thomas’ indistinguishably

mixed with that of Christ’s Hospital. The total was £2479 : 15 : 10,

towards which £2476 was received in subscriptions and donations.

Though Christ’s Hospital was in full working order from November 1552,

the legal foundation, which appears to have been delayed by the

conclusion of the arrangements about Bridewell, was not complete till

June 1553. An “Indenture of Covenants,” dated June 12, 7 Edward VI.

(1553), was made in English between the King and the mayor, commonalty,

and citizens of London, which was carried out by Letters Patent in Latin

on the 26th June. The patent contained grants of the manor of Bridewell,

the lands belonging to the Savoy Hospital, and the bedding in the same;

but not the hospital itself. It created the City Corporation a special

corporation with a separate common seal by the name of “the Governors of

the possessions, revenues and goods of the Hospitals of Edward the

Sixth, King of England, of Christ, Bridewell and St. Thomas the

Apostle,” and gave them a licence in mortmain to hold lands for the

purposes of the three hospitals up to 4000 marks (£3333 : 16 : 8) a

year.

The charter in the most distinct terms emphasises the poor law character

of the foundation, and states also with equal distinctness that the idea

did not originate with the King. “Whereas we pitying the miserable

estate of the poor, fatherless, decrepit, aged, sick, infirm and

impotent persons, languishing under various kinds of diseases, and also

of our special grace thoroughly considering the honest and pious

endeavours of our most humble and obedient subjects the Mayor and

Commonalty and citizens of our city of London, who by all ways and

methods diligently study for the good provision of the aforesaid poor

and of every sort of them”—such is the preamble to the grant. The

charter deals with every class of destitute poor: sick, aged, orphans;

the poor by misfortune; and rogues and vagabonds; the wilfully poor. The

preamble states as its object “that neither children yet being in their

infancy shall lack good education and instruction, nor when they shall

attain riper years shall be without honest callings and occupations, nor

that the sick or diseased when they be recovered and restored to healthe

may remain idle and lazy vagabonds, but that they in like manner may be

placed and compelled to labour.” In like manner the conclusion of the

charter is a grant to the corporation of power to search towns and

playhouses, and arrest ruffians, vagabonds, and beggars.

The story of the boy king inserting the licence in mortmain with his own

hands is absurd. The licence, occupying a good quarto page of close

print, is in the usual legal common form. The story arose, no doubt,

from an exaggerated version of Strype’s[33] tale that “space was left in

the patent for His Grace to put in what sum it pleased him” up to the

yearly value of which the City might hold lands in mortmain for the

hospitals, not Christ’s Hospital alone, but all together. “He looking on

the void place called for pen and ink, and with his own hand wrote this

sum, 4000 marks by the year.” Unfortunately for the story, in the patent

the sum is written in the same hand as the rest of the document, and the

sum had been previously settled, since it appears in the agreement

executed a fortnight before, and could not have been altered without a

breach of contract. In the agreement it is written in a different hand

to the rest of the document; but there is no reason to think that it was

Edward’s own hand, which it does not the least resemble. So much for the

legend of St. Edward the VI. It is as apocryphal as the picture, said to

be by Holbein, which hangs in the Great Hall of Christ’s Hospital and

shows Edward on his throne surrounded by the Council, giving the charter

to the Lord Mayor on his knees, while 15 boys and 15 girls of the

Hospital kneel in the foreground, the smallest boy and girl facing the

throne and holding up their hands in rapt admiration. It is a matter of

history that the poor boy-king died within a week of the date of the

charter—July 6, 1553,—and was invisible for many days before he died; a

passing glimpse of him being exhibited to assure the people that he was

still alive.

The foundation of Edward VI. nearly succumbed under his successor Mary.

When “she came out of Norfolk and was to be received into London, the

Governors set up a stage without Aldgate and placed themselves and the

children on the stage, and prepared a child of the Free School to make

an oracion to hir. But when she came near unto them she cast her eye

another way and neither stayed nor gave any countenance to them.” “She

did not like ‘the blewe boyes,’” said Howes; “but if they had been so

many Grey Friars she would have given them better countenance.”

According to him, “the Friars made great friends and great means to be

restored to that house because it stood whole, and was not spoiled, as

other houses were, but they never durst open their mouths to suppress

that house as long as Friar John was within the land.” He tells a famous

tale, “how Friars Peto and Perrin did their good wills to have subverted

all.” But Friar John, a Spaniard, was brought by the rest of the

Commissioners to have his opinion, who, “being there at dinner-time and

seeing the poor children set at the tables in the hall and seeing them

served with meat, he was so wrapt in admiration that suddenly he burst

into tears, and said in Latin to the company that he had rather be a

scullion in their kitchen than steward to their king.” “Alfonsus,” the

King’s Confessor, also supported them, while Dr. Story was made a friend

by having been given the lease of the house where he dwelt, which was

“parcel” of the Friars, for he thought that if the Friars were restored

that then they would bring his house in question; while the Bishop of

Chichester being tenant of the chief lodging of the Prior was also

friendly for the same reason. The children were therefore kept

undisturbed, though Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, when Chancellor,

“clapped Mr. Grafton fast in the Fleet for two days because he suffered

the children to learn the English Premier when they should have learned

the Latin Absies (A, B, Cs).”

There is plenty of evidence as to the class of children taken into

Christ’s Hospital. The most striking is a passage from Howes’ book. “A

number of the children,” he says, “being taken from the dunghill, when

they came to sweet and clean keeping and to a pure diet died

outright.... And a number of them would watch daily when the porters

were absent that they might steal out and fall to their old occupation.”

This is corroborated by the Court Book of the Hospital, which

unfortunately only begins in December 1556, with such entries as this:

May 10, 1557, “Graunted that a woman child left on Mr. Gunter’s stall in

Cornhill, and by him kept since Candlemas, should be admitted.” November

8, “a woman childe left in a pewe at St. Peter’s, Cornhill, admitted.”

March 14, 1557, a child “found in Thames Streete near the Bridge

admitted.” In the “Children’s Register,” beginning 1563, we come across

many names pointing to the foundling origin of the children. Richard

Nomoreknowen, five years old. He died in the sick-ward in 1570.

Augustine Old Change, six years old. “To service, March 30, 1567.”

“Dorothy Buttriedore” (she had evidently been deposited behind the

buttery door), “three years old. To service, 1570. Delivered to Mr. His

for his own, but received back. Delivered to Margaret Garraway for her

own, 1571; again to F. Tousbury, April 19, 1572.” “Jane Fridaiestreete,

aged six, sent to service 1568.” Perhaps the two quaintest names were

“Grace-That-God-sent-us,” “delivered out on the 19th, and died April 21,

1563,” and “Jane-that-God-sent-us,” sent to service 1568.

Stow says of Christ’s Hospital: “A full Courte shal be when xiij of the

Governours of this said Hospitall be assembled at the least, whereof two

shal be Aldermen, the one of them to be the President, with ten

Commoners besides the Thresorer; and what these xiij Persons or vij of

them at the leaste, the President being one of the Number, shal decree,

ordaine or agree upon, the same shal stand in Force, and shal not be

altered nor disallowed except by a like Courte to be called in that

behalfe.

“Item. That no Governour be taken into this Hospitall in the Place of

any that shal happen to die within the Year except it be at a full

Courte, to be holden as afore, for weighty Causes; and the Name of him

so admitted, to be presented to the Maior and Courte of Aldermen, before

he be called to receive his Charge.

“Item. That no Sale of Land, Tymber, or Wood, Lease, Alienation,

Buildinge, or Reparation be determined or done, of Lands or Tenements

geven to th’ onlye Use of Christ’s Hospitall, or in any wise belonginge

properlie to the same, except at a full Courte, to be holden in the said

Hospitall as before.

“Item. That no Reward be given to any Person above the Some of v

Shillings at once; which must be done by the consent of the Thresorer

and one of the Almoners at the least; except first the same be graunted

and determined in a full Courte, as before.

“Item. That there be no Leases lett in Reversion but one Year before the

ould Lease be expired; and that no such Graunt be made but by a full

Courte, as before, or els not; and that all the same Leases be drawn in

Paper by a Scryvenor, one of the Governours of the saide Hospitall,

before they be engrossed; and he to be allowed for every Draught

accordinge to the Quantitie: And the Clerke of the said Hospitall to

engrosse them, and to procure the Sealing of all such Leases before the

Lord Maior and Courte of Aldermen, in the Chamber of London, where the

Common Seal of the Hospitall doeth remaine.

“That noe manner of Bargaines be made for Timber, Tile, or such like, or

any other Necessaries for the saide howse, before the same be determined

at a full Courte, to be holden as before; and the Persons then and there

to be named and appointed which shal be the Doers thereof” (Stow,

Appendix II.).

In 1680 Sir John Frederick rebuilt the hall at his own expense; Sir

Robert Clayton rebuilt the east cloister and south front. In 1825 the

Hospital was largely rebuilt.

The two chief classes in the school are the Grecians and Deputy

Grecians; of which many of the former go on to the universities with

exhibitions. The Mathematical School was founded by Charles II. in 1672,

and the boys are called “King’s boys.” The King’s boys and Grecians are

the only boys who remain in the school after the age of fifteen. The

ancient costume, consisting of long blue gown, leather belt, yellow

stockings, combined with an absence of head-covering, makes the boys

conspicuous wherever they may be. The old customs of supping in public

in Lent, and the visit to the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday, are still

kept up. But the old English diet of bread and beer for breakfast was

done away with in 1824.

Among the most distinguished names of old scholars are those of S. T.

Coleridge, the poet (d. 1834), Charles Lamb (d. 1834), Leigh Hunt (d.

1859). The system of admission is by presentations by governors; the

Lord Mayor makes two presentations annually. A governor must give at

least £500.

For an account of the Grey Friars see _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p.

348.

[Illustration:

_Photo, R. W. Thomas._

AN EXCITING GAME, CHRIST’S HOSPITAL

]

CHRIST CHURCH

Christ Church, which unites the ancient parishes of St. Ewen’s and

St. Nicholas and part of St. Sepulchre, stands on the eastern part

of the noble Franciscan Church which was greatly destroyed by the

Fire.

On the suppression of the convent of the Franciscans, their Church

was named Christ Church and was made parochial. After the Great Fire

it was rebuilt by Wren between 1687 and 1704. St. Leonard’s, Foster

Lane, was annexed to this parish in 1672. The earliest date of a

custodian is 1225. The earliest date of a vicar is 1547.

The patronage of the church was given by Henry VIII. to the

governors of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, in whose successors it

continues.

The present building contains two side-aisles separated from the

nave by slender Corinthian columns. At the east part of the church

shelves are attached to the north and south walls, to hold loaves

for distribution among the poor. The steeple attains a height of 153

feet.

The original church of the Franciscans was a favourite place of

sepulture. Dame Mary Ramsey, a benefactress to Christ’s Hospital and

other institutions, was buried here in 1596, and a modern tablet

records her deeds on the north wall of the church. The two most

conspicuous monuments are those of the Rev. Samuel Crowther and the

Rev. Michael Gibbs, both of whom were vicars of the parish for many

years. Lady Venetia, wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, was buried here. Also

the celebrated Nonconformist, Richard Baxter, in 1691, and his wife

in 1681. On the east wall a tablet commemorates John Stock, who at

his death in 1781 bequeathed £13,000 to charitable purposes.

No large gifts are recorded in this parish by Stow: John Bankes was

donor of £1 for a sermon; Thomas Barnes was donor of £1 for a

sermon, and several others were donors of the same amounts.

There were two charity schools, one for fifty boys and one for forty

girls.

Some of the most notable vicars were: Sampson Price (1585-1620);

William Jenkyn (1613-1685); Robert Cannon (1663-1722), Prebendary of

Westminster; Joseph Trapp, D.D. (1679-1747); and William Bell

(1731-1816), Prebendary of Westminster.

=King Edward Street= was formerly Butchers’ Lane or Stinking Lane or

Chick Lane. The Franciscans, on their coming to London, were allotted a

piece of ground on the west side of this lane, probably the least

desirable place of residence in the whole city. When we read of shops

and tenements in the Shambles, this is the place intended.

=Roman Bath Street= comes next. This place was formerly called Pinnock’s

Lane, _i.e._ Pentecost Lane. Houses in Pentecost Lane are mentioned as

early as 1280. It contained the forbidden slaughter-houses. At the upper

end stood the Royal Bagnio. There were two Bagnios—this of Pinnock’s

Lane and another in Long Acre. The Royal Bagnio was opened in 1679; it

was simply a turkish bath, a place for sweating and hot bathing: for a

time it was very much esteemed as a preventative against some forms of

disease and a cure for headache. The Royal Bagnio contained one large

room with a cupola and several smaller rooms, the walls of which were

lined with Dutch tiles. The place was converted into a hot and cold

bathhouse, and finally closed and pulled down in 1876.

ST. SEPULCHRE

This church was rebuilt, Stow says, about the time of Henry VI. or

Edward IV., mainly by “one of the Pophames.” The greater part was

destroyed by the Great Fire, and in 1670 it was again rebuilt, by

whom is uncertain. It received considerable alterations in 1738,

1837, 1863, 1875, and again 1878-80. The earliest date of an

incumbent is 1249.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Roger, Bishop of

Sarum (1107-39), who gave it to the Prior and Convent of St.

Bartholomew, Smithfield ; Henry VIII., who seized it and so it

continued in the Crown up to 1609, when James I. gave the advowson

of the Vicarage to Francis Philips and others; the President and

Scholars of St. John’s College, Oxford, who presented to the

Vicarage in 1662, and in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 3400.

The church consists of a nave, chancel, and two side-aisles, and an

adjunct on the north side called the chapel of St. Stephen; it

measures 150 feet in length, 81 feet in width, and 149 feet 11

inches in height, to the summit of the tower. The organ was built by

Renatus Harris, and is considered one of his finest productions; its

case is said to have been the work of Grinling Gibbons.

A chantry was founded here by: John de Tamworth, who had a licence

from the King to assign one messuage and sixteen cottages in the

suburbs of London, for a chaplain to sing for his soul, on certain

days in this church, February 20, 1373-74. Here also was founded the

Brotherhood of Our Lady and St. Stephen, endowed by various persons

with rents, etc., which fetched £9 : 13 : 4 in 1548.

Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s tutor, and author of _Toxophilus_

and the _Scholemaster_, who died in 1568, was buried here, but has

no memorial. Here also the remains of Captain John Smith were

interred in 1631; he was Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New

England, and author of the _General History of Virginia_. His

monument has perished, but there is a replica of the original

inscription on a plate on the south wall. Sir Robert Peake, a

distinguished cavalier and engraver, was also interred here in 1667,

but no one else of eminence appears to have been buried in the

church.

In 1605 Robert Dowe gave £50 to the parish on condition that the

night before every execution a hand-bell, which he presented, should

be rung in front of the condemned prisoners’ dungeon, and an

exhortation given them. His donation has now passed into the hands

of the Charity Commissioners. No names of benefactors are recorded

by Stow. According to the Record of the Parish Clerk of 1732 the

donations of the poor, for ever, amounted to £250, besides which

there were forty-seven other donations of less value than £40 or £20

per annum. Richard Reeves left £100 per annum. In addition, the

stock of money given by eight persons was £500, and eight others

gave £128 : 15s. per annum to provide coals and fuel.

There were two charity schools, one for fifty boys and one for fifty

girls, and without the Liberty there were two for thirty boys and

twenty girls. There were also three almshouses, for eight poor

people, who had from 5s. to 15s. paid them every quarter by the

Company of Armourers.

Rowland Lee (d. 1543), D.D., Bishop of Lichfield, was a rector here;

also C. Blake (1664-1739), divine and poet; and John Rogers, who was

burnt at Smithfield, 1555.

=Giltspur Street=, which is alternately called by Stow Knightrider’s

Street, is obviously connected with the knights riding to Smithfield.

At the south end is a low building with the inscription, “The water

house erected 1791.” To the north of this are the schools, in a long low

building covered with rough stucco. Little wych-elms and limes shadow

the small playground before them. The row of houses succeeding are all

similar—plain, severe brick; in the middle is the White Hart Hotel.

Green Dragon Yard is closed by iron gates; the next court is very small.

Near Windmill Court is the Plough public-house. The houses here are

either brick or stucco; some old, some modern.

At the north end, on the Fortune of War public-house, at the corner of

Hosier Lane, is a quaint little stucco figure of a fat child about a

couple of feet high. This is _Pie Corner_, the spot where the Great Fire

ended.

=Cock Lane= is a filthy, narrow little street, and looks almost

deserted, as many of the buildings are untenanted. Bits of paper and

refuse bestrew the pavement, grimy old warehouses stand in melancholy

disorder with dirty little yards between. It is chiefly associated with

the ridiculous imposture known as the Cock Lane Ghost, which deceived

even Dr. Johnson. For Smithfield see p. 357.

Turning now to the streets south of Newgate, we find =Warwick Lane= is

mentioned in the Guildhall MSS. as early as 1206; by Riley (_Mem._) in

1313, and in the _Calendar of Wills_ in 1364; in Eldedene Street (Old

Dean Street) Hon. Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, had a town house.

In the _Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs_ a brief account of his

murder by the mob is presented.

Warwick Inn, Stow says, was formerly described as a messuage in Eldedene

Lane in 28th Henry VI., when Cecily, Duchess of Warwick, possessed it.

There were other houses in the Lane in the fourteenth century. It was in

this house that the Earl of Warwick maintained his following of 600 men

when he was in London.

We have already read (pp. 4, 6) of the beheading of Walter Stapleton,

Bishop of Exeter, in Cheapside; he was seized as he was riding towards

his hostel in “Eldedeaneslane” to dine there; and just then he was

proclaimed a traitor: upon hearing of which he took to flight and rode

towards St. Paul’s church, where he was met and instantly dragged from

his horse, and carried into “Chepe”: and there he was despoiled, and his

head cut off. Also one of his esquires, William Walle by name, and John

de Padington, warden of the said bishop’s manor, were beheaded the same

day in Chepe. On the same day towards Vespers came the choir of St.

Paul’s and took the headless body of the bishop into St. Paul’s, where

they were given to understand that he had died under sentence, upon

which the body was carried to the church of St. Clement [Danes].

About the same date is a grant by Godfrey de Acra, chaplain to the Dean

and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and to a perpetual chaplain who shall

celebrate for him and his benefactors in the chapel of St. James, in St.

Paul’s, of all his houses, rents, etc., in the parish of St. Faith,

“inter vicum veteris Decani versus occidentem et vicum Cecilie de Turri

versus orientem.” He made provision for the maintenance of the chaplain,

and for the distribution of the money on his anniversary: Thomas Fitz

Thomas, Mayor of London, and eleven others are named as witnesses

(Historical MSS., Com. Rep. IX. Pt. I. p. 9a).

Sir John Paston (1475) writes to his brother, John Paston, or to his

uncle, William Paston, in Warwick Lane. The street had, therefore, in

the fifteenth century received its new name after the great house of the

Earl of Warwick. In 1496 William Paston wills that all “godes moveable

in Warwikes Inn” shall be sold to pay his debts. When Charles V. came to

England in 1522, two houses in Warwick Lane were assigned to his

retinue—that of Mistress Lewes having a little entry, a hall, two

chambers, and three feather beds; the other that of Edward Sharnebroke

having one hall, four chambers, two parlours, a chapel, four feather

beds, with houses of office, and a stable for eight horses.

In the Historical MSS. Report IX. there are many deeds and documents in

which this street is mentioned. Roman remains have been found here.

In the street stood the _College of Physicians_ built by Wren.

The first house of the College was that of Linacre, physician to Henry

VIII., the founder of the College in Knightrider Street: the Physicians

then moved to Amen Corner and, after the Fire, to Warwick Lane, where

they continued until 1823 when the new College in Pall Mall East was

opened by Sir Henry Halford.

There were two famous inns in Warwick Lane, of which one was the Bell.

“Archbishop Leighton used often to say that if he were to choose a place

to die in, it should be an Inn; it looking like a pilgrim’s going home,

to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and

confusion in it. He added that the officious tenderness and care of

friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned

attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give

less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired; for he died [1684] at

the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane.”

[Illustration:

THE OXFORD ARMS, WARWICK LANE

]

The inn has gone, but Old Bell Inn Yard, now a railway booking-office

wagon yard, is there to mark the site. On the west side was an equally

famous inn, the Oxford Arms.

At the Oxford Arms Inn lived John Roberts, from whose shop issued the

majority of the squibs and libels on Pope. The inn was south of Warwick

House.

Views of this picturesque old inn have been preserved in the Crace

collection.

The Cutlers’ Hall adds vivid colour to Warwick Lane farther north by its

brilliant red brick, and its handsome frieze in relief. It is faced with

red sandstone. The next few houses look doubly grimy by contrast with

their neighbour.

THE CUTLERS COMPANY

An Ordinance of the Cutlers was enrolled in the Guildhall in the

year 1380. Their dissensions with the Sheath-makers were settled in

1408; and in 1413 we find (Riley, p. 597) the freedom of the City

withdrawn from one William Wysman because, being already a member of

the trade of Cutlers, he had joined that of the Coursers

(horse-dealers).

There are no means for supplying the exact date of the foundation of

the Company, but it would appear that it was in existence in the

year 49 Edward III., as at that time it was stated to have elected

two members of the Court of Common Council.

It would appear that the first charter granted to the Company was in

the reign of Henry V., 1415, which was confirmed by a charter of

Henry VI. in 1422. Charters were also granted by Henry VIII. in

1509, Philip and Mary in 1553, Elizabeth in 1558, and James I. in

1607. James II., in 1685, revoked these charters; but in 1668 the

Act of James II. was made void, and by a statute of William and Mary

in 1689 the charter of James I. was confirmed, and it was

subsequently reaffirmed by a charter of Queen Anne in 1703. The

charter, therefore, of James I., which was granted in 1607, is now

the governing charter of the Cutlers’ Company. The Company has no

means of furnishing an abstract of the earlier charters, nor would

this appear to be necessary, inasmuch as they are documents of

record.

The Cutlers were united some time with the Sheath- and Haft-makers,

a fact commemorated in their arms, the supporters of which are two

elephants.

In 1898 the number of the livery was 100; the Corporate Income was

£5350; the Trust Income £50.

On the south side of Cloak Lane, east of College Hill, is the old

site of Cutlers’ Hall. The history is retraceable to the twelfth

century. Lawrence Gisors, living, apparently, in the reign of Henry

III., possessed this land: his son Peter succeeded; Peter’s son

John, by will enrolled 1282, ordained that his houses in St.

Michael, Paternostercherche parish, should be sold to fulfil his

testament:[34] the site in question was presumably involved. Stow

records, without giving a date, that it afterwards passed to Hugonis

de Dingham; moreover, that in 1296 Richard de Wilehale confirmed to

Paul Butelar the edifices upon the same land. The boundaries at the

time were: the stream of Walbrook on the east; Wilehale’s own

tenement to the south; Paternoster-church Lane, now College Hill, on

the west. Butelar was to pay yearly “one clove Gereflowers[35] at

Easter, and to the prior and convent of St. Mary Overie, Southwark,

six shillings.” Simon Dolseley, pepperer, mayor 1359, owned it and

bequeathed it for life to his wife Johanna by will dated 1362.[36]

In the year 1451 Thomas Frill executed to the Cutlers Company a

conveyance of messuages in College Hill and Cloak Lane. The property

consisted of two houses: one became converted into the Company’s

Hall, and one served as a house for their beadle. The Fire of 1666

necessitated complete rebuilding. The new hall was erected in

1667-68; it received Maitland’s praise in 1739 as “convenient and

beautiful.” Allen, 1828, differs: in his eyes it was “a plain brick

building, totally devoid of architectural adornment.”

When the Cutlers’ old Hall was pulled down the present College Hill

Chambers was built upon its site.[37]

On the north-west corner of Warwick Lane is an effigy of Guy, Earl of

Warwick. He is dressed as a knight in armour, and the stone bears date

1668. The capital letters “G. C.” on one side, and below are the words—

Restored J. Deykes 1817 a ch. 492, Pennant’s _London_, 5th edit.

The last word and the date are only conjectural, being considerably worn

away.

=White Hart Street=, on the east side of Warwick Lane, connected it with

Newgate Market, the square afterwards called Paternoster Square. White

Hart Street was chiefly occupied by poulterers.

=Rose Street= connected Newgate Street with Newgate market.

=Ivy Lane= occurs in 1312, where an Inquisition was held as to a piece

of land between that and Warwick Lane. It was also called Fulk-mere-lane

or Folks-mare-lane. Riley (_Memorials_, p. xii.) thinks that Ivy Lane

was inhabited in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by wax

chandlers, who supplied wax tapers for St. Paul’s and the City churches.

The symbolic use of the lighted taper, borne through the streets by way

of punishment and penance, is not easy to understand in a country and an

age when, happily, ecclesiastical symbolism is little practised. There

was a club held at the King’s Head Tavern in Ivy Lane, 1749-65. Dr.

Johnson was a member. Every visitor to London turns out of St. Paul’s

Churchyard or Newgate Street to see the sign still remaining on the east

wall of Panyer Alley. It consists of a pannier with a boy sitting upon

it, and the inscription—

When you have sought the City round,

Yet still this is the highest ground,

with the date August 26, 1668. I believe that this is not the highest

ground. The site of the “Standard” in Cornhill is slightly higher.

Newgate Street formerly ended at Panyer Alley, where Blowbladder Street

began, which ran on into Cheapside, and is now included in it.

It is evident, by a glance at the map, that Newgate Street was here a

continuation of Cheapside. So far Stow’s statement about the continued

street from Aldgate to Ludgate is confirmed. But if we consider the

improvements effected here after the Fire, we shall understand that

there was at first no thought of a continuation of Cheapside into

Newgate.

Newgate Street, then, ended at Panyer Alley. What followed was a narrow

lane bending sharply to the south. Into this lane on the north ran

another narrow lane, now St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Panyer Alley was a

passage only wide enough for one person at a time, and there were many

of these narrow passages from one street to another. After the Fire,

Blowbladder Street was enlarged to the breadth of 40 feet. This increase

of width made it possible for Newgate Street to appear as a continuation

of Cheapside; the lane running through St. Martin’s-le-Grand was also

enlarged to the breadth of 40 feet; and Panyer Alley was enlarged to the

breadth of 9 feet and paved with freestone. Further, to block the

passage from Cheapside to Newgate, there stood outside Paternoster Row

the parish church of St. Michael le Querne.

=St. Michael le Querne= derived its name Querne, or Corn, from its

proximity to a corn-market. It was repaired in 1617, but burnt down in

the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St.

Vedast. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1274.

The church has always been in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of St.

Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 350.

Chantries were founded here: By Robert Newcomen, at the Altar of the

Blessed Virgin Mary about 1304, for himself and for Matilda his

wife—William Wilton was chaplain and died in 1370; by John Combe, at the

Altar of St. Katherine, for himself, and Petronella his wife—licence was

granted by the King, May 18, 1405; by John Lydat, whose will was dated

June 23, 1545—he gave £7 : 10s. for a priest for seven years; by John

Mundham before 1310.

John Leland, the antiquary, was buried here in 1552; his monument

perished in the Fire, but his great work, _The Itinerary_, still

remains. The church also contained a monument in memory of John Bankes

who died in 1630, leaving £6000 to be distributed amongst various

charities and parishes. In 1605 Sir Thomas Browne, author of _Religio

Medici_, was baptized here.

There were several bequests given to the poor for clothing and bread;

but no names are recorded by Stow.

Anthony Tuckney (1599-1670), Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and

Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, was rector here; also George Downham (d.

1634), Bishop of Derry.

ST. PAUL’S

By W. J. LOFTIE

St. Paul’s Church is the cathedral of the diocese of London, and was so

dedicated by its first founder. According to Beda, this was Ethelbert,

King of Kent, “who had command over all the nations of the English as

far as the river Humber.” His nephew, Sebert, King of the East Saxons,

held London in 604, when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury,

sent Mellitus to preach Christianity north of the Thames. He does not

seem to have succeeded very well, and after the deaths of Augustine,

Ethelbert and Sebert, Mellitus was expelled. From that time for sixty

years or more, we hear nothing of St. Paul’s, and the next bishops of

the East Saxons do not seem to have lived in London. They converted the

kings who made Rendlesham, Tillingham, and Tilbury their headquarters.

The City within the Roman wall was probably but sparsely inhabited. The

Anglo-Saxons disliked Roman sites, and especially hated the repair of

walls. There is a tradition that Erkenwald, or Archibald, the fourth

bishop, incited the Londoners to this task and himself built the

northern gate, since named Bishopsgate. Another tradition relates that

at his death, which is variously placed in 685 and 693, the citizens

buried his body in the cathedral. In 1148, it was translated into a

sumptuous tomb. Against the whole legend of St. Erkenwald, as it grew in

the Middle Ages, there is so much of inconsistent anachronism to be

alleged that we must pass it by, merely assuming that a bishop of that

name comes fourth on the list, that he was designated by Ini, King of

Wessex, a predecessor of Alfred, as “Erkenwald, my bishop,” and that he

made a serious effort to restore the bishopric to the “bishop’s stool”

of Mellitus.

Authentic history, however, does not begin till the time of King Alfred.

Even here we cannot be certain of the name of the bishop for whom the

King built or rebuilt the cathedral church, but it was probably

Heathstan, or Ethelstan, who died in 898. It is not even certain that

the old site was retained. When Alfred came to London he saw its

capabilities as a bulwark against the Danes: but the Roman wall was

empty. For thirty years, we read, London had lain desolate. Alfred

repaired the wall. He probably built the church. He revived as much as

he could the ancient memories. The two land gates were placed nearly,

though not exactly, on the Roman sites—one, Bishopsgate, opening on the

two great northern roads, and the other, Westgate, on the Watling

Street. It is possible that he repaired the bridge. The church was

placed in the triangular space cut off by the course of the Watling

Street from the bridge through the City, and when the wards were divided

this corner became the _Warda Episcopi_.

The bishop figures as an alderman in the first list of the wards which

has come down to us. It must have been drawn up about forty years after

the Norman Conquest, and is now preserved in the cathedral library. It

is a list of the City lands which belonged to St. Paul’s, arranged in

wards, of which twenty are enumerated. The first is the bishop’s. The

bishop, at this time always a Norman, or Frenchman, as he was called,

was probably but little acquainted with English, and his jurisdiction

was exercised by a deputy, called in Latin _prepositus_, that is

provost. A provost was the abbot’s deputy at Bury St. Edmund’s, and the

title was later also assumed by other laymen who acted for

ecclesiastical personages, as the provost of the Alderman of Portsoken,

who was the Prior of Aldgate.

When William the Conqueror granted to the citizens the brief charter

which is still at Guildhall, he addressed the bishop and the portreeve.

The King, that is, wrote to the alderman who had charge of the

ecclesiastical government, and to the alderman who had charge of the

civil government:—“William, King, greets William, Bishop, and Gosfrith,

Portreeve.” Bishop and Alderman William, a Norman who had been chaplain

to Edward the Confessor, had succeeded Bishop Robert, also a Norman, in

1051. He was succeeded by Hugh de Orivalle, another Norman, in 1075; so

we obtain approximately the date of the charter, namely, between 1066

and 1075. The date of the document in which we have mention of the

Bishop’s ward was after 1108, from internal evidence, but probably

before 1115.

The constitution of the cathedral was according to the system which has

been aptly named “the old foundation.” This pattern was followed in

other cathedrals throughout England wherever there was no monastery

attached to the church; and as the municipal government of London was

imitated in other cities, so the “Government Spirituell” of St. Paul’s

was taken as a model at York, Chichester, Exeter, Wells, Hereford,

Lincoln, and six or seven other churches where there were no monks. The

services were conducted by priests, who held estates both singly and as

a corporation. There were generally more canons than estates. At St.

Paul’s there were thirty, and a majority of them had each a manor

somewhere in the neighbourhood of London. There they lived like other

lords of manors, with their wives and children, much respected, no

doubt, for their “clergy,” or clerkly learning, in districts where none

of their neighbours could read or write, except, perhaps, the parsons of

the parish churches, who in many cases, like their patrons, had wives

and children. Their chief anxieties besides those common to a country

life were the fear of Danish incursions, and the chance of being able to

leave their prebendal stalls to their sons. The care of the estates,

both in the City and in places more distant from the church, constantly

occupied the chapter. To it we owe the list of wards mentioned above.

Newcourt tells us of a meeting of the canons in 1150, which was long

remembered as a settlement of various important questions. It was known

as the “Constitution concerning bread and beer.” Among the prebendal

manors some are described in Domesday Book as being “held by the Canons

for their food.” One of these is Willesden. There was a Canon of

Willesden, but apart from his estate the rest of the manor was held by

“villains,” their rent going towards the provision of bread and beer in

the bakery and brewery at St. Paul’s. It was resolved in 1150 to break

up the whole manor, in order to endow those canons who had previously

depended only on “surplice fees.” Mapesbury, Brondesbury, and Brownswood

may be named as being called from the first canons after this

arrangement. Walter Map, in particular, is remembered still for his

witty poems, in rhyming Latin, satirising the married clergy; and the

name may be seen on a prebendal stall (12th on south side) in St.

Paul’s.

[Illustration:

THE POST OFFICE, ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, AND BULL AND MOUTH INN, LONDON

]

The staff of the cathedral consisted first of the dean; next to him were

four archdeacons, London, Essex, Middlesex, and Colchester, to which, at

the Reformation, St. Albans was added, to be transferred with the

archdeaconries of Essex and Colchester to the new See of St. Albans in

1877. It should be observed that previously Essex came next after London

in dignity and before Middlesex, Colchester, and St. Albans, a little

historical point on which it would be easy to enlarge. After the

archdeacons came the precentor “likewise called Cantor,” whose office it

was “to look after the singing-men and singing”; the treasurer, whose

office does not seem to have existed till after the Conquest; and the

chancellor, who was at first called “magister scholarum,” and had charge

of education in the City, with the duty of appointing the master of St.

Paul’s School, “not,” says Newcourt, “that long after founded by Dean

Colet,” but that which was endowed by Bishop Richard Belmeis or Balmes

in the reign of Henry I. After these officers came the thirty canons, of

whom there are some further notes below. In 1845 the canons, generally

now described as “prebendaries,” were superseded by four canons

residentiary, who with the dean and the archdeacons form the present

chapter. They have no prebendal estates but are called canons. A college

of minor canons was formed at an early period, and incorporated by

charter of Richard II. in 1394. It consists of eight members, formerly

twelve, answering to the Vicars at Wells. The close stands in the

parishes of St. Augustine, St. Faith, St. Mary Magdalene, and St.

Gregory. The arms of the Dean and Chapter are “Gules, two swords, in

saltire, proper; in chief the letter, D. or.” One sword, on a shield, is

carved in many places and forms a kind of badge; the same sword,

emblematic of St. Paul, appearing also in the arms of the City, where it

is often mistaken for the dagger of Walworth.

It may be added here that there seems to be evidence that at first St.

Paul’s was one of the three or four City parish churches; that the Dean

and Chapter gradually divided the _warda episcopi_ into smaller parishes

and built churches on them, while the clergy of St. Paul’s ceased to

perform parochial functions. It is not now reckoned parochial, though in

rare cases marriages have been performed in it by special licence, and

there is a register which begins in 1697, the year of the opening of the

new church.

Before the Reformation the estates of the bishop, the dean, and the

canons were very extensive, and formed almost a semicircle round the

City, from Stepney on the east to Willesden on the west. Other estates

were in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, while there were

isolated holdings in all the City wards. The canons at first preserved

their prebendal estates with jealous care, residing on them and, as has

been said, hoping to leave them to their sons. After the enforcement of

the celibacy of the clergy as one of the consequences of King John’s

submission to the Pope, the canons leased away their estates until there

was nothing left. Thus, in 1315, Robert Baldock leased Finsbury to the

mayor and commons of London at £1 a year, and the lease was only

terminated by the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1867. The manor of

Portpoole formed the chief estate of the Lords Grey of Ruthin, and is

now Gray’s Inn. Rugmere, part of which is Bloomsbury, part St. Giles’s,

Wenlakesbarn, Ealdstreet, now Old Street, Hoxton, Cantlers, Islington,

and the rest, were all leased away, and are now, for the most part, the

principal endowments of wealthy noblemen. Cantlers, now Kentish town,

paid £80 a year to the lord of the manor, now presumably to the

Commissioners. The owner of the lease is the Marquis Camden. This is one

example only. As late as the middle of thirteenth century we find

mention of the families of canons. A very prominent member of the

chapter in 1145 was prebendary of St. Pancras, Osbert “de Auco,” who was

succeeded by his son, Robert, whose son, John, does not seem to have

become a priest; and Robert de Auco was succeeded at his death by

Walter, the son of the bishop. Before 1138 we meet with the names of

Wlured and his two sons, all canons. Gervase of Canterbury, a canon, had

a son, John. Richard, a canon, was son of Archdeacon Richard. The manor

of Caddington Major, now called Aston Bury in Bedfordshire, was held by

Roger the Archdeacon, son of Robert the Archdeacon. A little earlier we

find that Ralph Flambard, appointed Bishop of Durham in 1099, who

figures in the history of the Tower of London in the reign of Henry II.,

and who died in 1128, was prebendary of Tatenhall. His son, Elias, was

prebendary of Sneating, near Kirkeby in Essex, where he was succeeded by

William, son of Archdeacon Otho, at whose death Ralph, brother of Canon

Elias, a younger son of the Bishop of Durham, succeeded to the stall. Of

another of the married archdeacons, Nicholas Croceman, we read that he

held Oxgate, and that his son, another Nicholas, succeeded him in both

archdeaconry and canonry. One of the two Bishops Balmes had two sons,

Henry, prebendary of Mora, and Walter, of Newington, in the reign of

Henry II. The first bishop appointed by Richard I. was his treasurer,

the son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely; he was one of the most eminent of those

who held the See of London in the twelfth century, and figures as Bishop

Richard Fitz Neal. In short, before the beginning of the thirteenth

century we may assume that most of the secular clergy were married men,

and the enforcement of celibacy, no doubt, was one of the causes of the

unpopularity of the Church in London before the Reformation; while it

led indirectly to the alienation of the prebendal estates.

Old St. Paul’s is the name by which the building destroyed in the Great

Fire of 1666 is usually distinguished. All that is left of it may be

traced within the railings on the south side of the present cathedral.

The original church of Alfred and his successors perished in 962, and

the new building then set up was burnt in 1136. Old St. Paul’s may be

said, therefore, to date from the middle of the twelfth century, but it

was continually being altered and added to until 1633, when it was

completed by the construction of a magnificent portico at the west end

by Inigo Jones. The spire seems to have been the tallest in Christendom,

rising 520 feet to the eagle and cross, which contained a portion of the

true cross. It was finished in 1498, but was burnt in 1561 and never

rebuilt. The nave and choir each contained twelve bays united by a wide

transept. The arches of the nave and transept were Norman, of the east

end pointed, a great rose window terminating the Chapel of St. Mary, and

overlooking the west end of Cheap, on which it encroached. The

Corinthian pillars of the portico did not look incongruous with the

Romanesque nave and the similar little church of St. Gregory which stood

on the south side. The western towers, one of which was described as the

Lollard’s Tower, were low but massive. A bell tower was at the east end

of the churchyard until Sir Miles Partridge won it “at one cast of the

dice,” says Dugdale, from Henry VIII., and pulled it down. The famous

Paul’s Cross, where public sermons were preached, stood on the north

side of the choir, and a chapel, or charnel house, near it, “having

under it a vault, wherein the bones taken out of sundry graves in that

cemetery were, with great respect and care decently piled together.”

This chapel had a warden and an establishment of priests. Another

similar chapel was in “Pardon Church Yard,” a little to the westward,

and had a cloister painted with the Dance of Death, with “English verses

to explain the meaning, translated out of French by John Lydgate, a monk

of St. Edmond’s Bury,” says Dugdale. Over the cloister was a library.

Another cloister, of which some relics remain, was on the south side of

the nave and was built in 1332, together with a chapter-house. This

building occupied the site of a garden, south of which, between the

church and Paul’s Wharf, was a tilt yard, used by Lord Fitzwalter for

drilling the City Trained Bands. It is marked for us by Paul’s Chain and

Knightrider Street. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the

doctrine of masses for the dead attained a great height, and it is

believed that at least one hundred mass priests attended daily at St.

Paul’s. Churches were no longer built in the City but chantries

multiplied everywhere, especially after the Black Death in the middle of

the fourteenth century.

The church was very full of monuments. Some were shrines of legendary

saints, among which may be reckoned the supposed tombs of King Sebert

and Bishop Erkenwald, both held in great veneration. What Becket became

at Canterbury, the canons tried to make of Erkenwald at St. Paul’s, and

the shrine was covered with gold and precious stones. There were many

relics, including the arm of Mellitus, and most of the oblations seem to

have been preserved in the north aisle of the choir till Henry VIII.

sent them in cart loads to the Jewel Tower. (More may be read on the

subject in Sparrow Simpson’s _St. Paul’s and Old City Life_.) The

monuments included many chantries with altars, no fewer than

seventy-three being enumerated in the fourteenth century. The cost may

be estimated by what Dr. R. Sharpe tells us. A bequest of twenty-five

shillings secured three hundred masses. There were thirty-five of these

altars at the Reformation, employing only fifty-four priests owing to a

movement for uniting them, and there were fifty-four obits. The mass

priests and their dissolute lives had, no doubt, much to do with the

welcome accorded in London to the reforms of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

Among the finest monuments were those of John of Gaunt; Sir John

Beauchamp, which was usually called Duke Humphry’s; and of many of the

bishops, including Bishop William Kemp, Chishull, and others. After the

Reformation many “marble hearses” of great size and magnificence were

erected, among others to Dean Colet, Sir William Hewit, Sir Nicholas

Bacon, Sir William Cokain, the earl and countess of Pembroke, William

Aubrey, John Wolley, Sir Thomas Heneage, and especially to Sir

Christopher Hatton, the largest in the church. Fragments still survive

of some of them, and the curious effigy of Dean Donne (d. 1631), rising

like an Arabian genie from an urn, has been repaired and stands in the

south aisle of the choir.

The Fire of 1666 broke out on the 2nd September among the bakers’ shops

in Pudding Lane, a thoroughfare of Eastcheap answering to Bread Street

in Westcheap. It reached St. Paul’s on the 3rd, and is briefly described

by Pepys on the 7th as “a miserable sight,” the roofs destroyed, “the

body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth’s.” Evelyn speaks of the

scaffolds which were up for the repairs as hastening the ruin, and of

the melting lead running down the streets in a stream. He specially

laments the loss of Inigo Jones’s portico—immense stones calcined,

ornaments, columns, capitals of massy Portland stone flying off. “The

lead over the altar at the east end was untouched and among the divers

monuments the body of one bishop remained entire.”

Wren, after the Fire, found St. Paul’s completely ruined. The marble

portico was reduced to a heap of lime; the roofs had fallen in; the

choir had sunk. Nearly all the monuments had perished; and an attempt by

Dean Sancroft and the canons to repair a portion at the west end only

added to the general destruction. Nevertheless, it was not till June 21,

1675, that the first stone was laid of a new cathedral. Various

experiments had been made in the meanwhile, but they only demonstrated

the untrustworthy character of the foundations. Contrary to what we

often hear about the mediæval builders, it was abundantly evident that

here their moving principle had been to produce the greatest effect by

the cheapest means, stability being everywhere sacrificed to show. The

King, Charles II., and his brother, afterwards James II., hindered

Wren’s work in many ways, design after design being rejected as not

suitable for the Romanist worship they secretly hoped to re-establish.

Wren at length obtained leave to proceed with his task, but one of the

models he had prepared is still to be seen in the triforium. Many other

causes interfered to check the work, and it was long after both the

kings, as well as their successor, Queen Mary II., were dead, in 1697,

that the choir was ready for use. A celebration of the Peace of Ryswick

took the place of any form of consecration, such as would now be thought

needful, and the building was completed in most essential particulars by

1718, when Wren was superseded by a wholly incompetent architect named

Benson, chiefly remembered as building the unfortunate balustrade with

which he endeavoured to dwarf Wren’s dome. Wren had already been

overruled as to the decoration of the dome. Benson was dismissed in

1720. A silly story is constantly repeated as to St. Paul’s having been

completed by one architect, under one bishop, and with one clerk of the

works. But Bishop Henchman was in office when Wren began his work, and

was succeeded by Compton in 1675, who saw the choir finished. After him,

in 1713, came Robinson, who was still in office at the time of Wren’s

death. It was under this bishop that Wren was dismissed and subsequently

Benson, and a third architect, Robert Mylne, came in. So, too, several

clerks of the works were employed, among whom we may name Thomas Strong,

who died in 1681; his brother, Edward, who died in 1723; and Christopher

Kempster, who seems to have been told off by Wren to build St. Stephen,

Walbrook, which even more than St. Paul’s commemorates the genius of the

great architect. Kempster himself was the architect of the market-house

at Abingdon, often attributed to Inigo Jones; he died in 1715.

[Illustration:

_Photochrom Co., Ltd._

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

]

It is well, if possible, to approach St. Paul’s from the west. When it

comes into sight from the end of Fleet Street, the dome is seen to

advantage, rising clear of surrounding buildings on the top of a hill.

In this respect it surpasses the only cathedral church in England which

can be compared to it, namely Salisbury, which stands on low ground. If

we compare it with Lincoln or Durham we miss the magnificent central

feature. The dome competes, especially in a city, very successfully with

a spire. As we approach Ludgate Hill, the tower of St. Martin, 158 feet

high, offers a measure to the eye—the needlessly ugly railway viaduct

interfering much less than was feared at first. From Ludgate the two

western towers, supporting the double portico, are well seen, and are

esteemed as among the best of Wren’s compositions. The towers, of which

the southern carries the clock and the great bell, are 220 feet high.

The whole west front, as seen from the entrance of St. Paul’s

Churchyard, is 180 feet in height and the same in width. The lower

pillars of the portico are 40 feet high. The statue in the front was

sculptured by Francis Bird in 1712, mutilated by a lunatic in 1743, and

restored a few years ago. Between it and the steps, an inscription, cut

in the granite pavement, commemorates the fact that here the aged Queen

Victoria gave public thanks for the sixty years of her reign in 1897.

The exterior of the church shows two orders, the lower Corinthian, and

the upper, what Wren described as “a Composition.” In the tympanum over

the portico is a relief by Bird representing the conversion of St. Paul,

and on the pediment above are statues of St. Paul between St. Peter and

St. James. The railing, now removed from the front, is of iron, cast at

Lamberhurst in Sussex. The plan of the cathedral is cruciform, the

transepts north and south ending with graceful semicircular porticoes.

The east end has a semicircular apse. The cupola, which, as Gwilt says,

rises from the body of the church “in great majesty,” should be seen

from near the statue of Peel in Cheapside. A fountain within the rails

marks the site of Paul’s Cross. From the south a fine view can be

obtained from the little garden in which the foundations of the

cloisters and chapter-house have been uncovered. The gilt cross is 365

feet above the pavement. The colonnade round the dome is of the

composite order, consisting of 32 pillars standing on a circular

pedestal 20 feet high and 112 feet in diameter. The columns are not in

pairs as at St. Peter’s, but are placed at regular intervals, every

fourth intercolumniation being filled with masonry. A sense of stability

is thus gained without any sacrifice of lightness.

The best idea of the interior will be obtained by entering at the west

end. The great central door is only opened on state occasions; but by

either side door we find ourselves in a vestibule with the morning

chapel on the north and the consistorial court, which has been made a

chapel of the order of St. Michael and St. George, on the south. The

carved oak screens should be observed. At the entrance of the nave are

fine bronze candelabra. The nave consists of three bays clear, which we

enter from the vestibule. There are side aisles, the full width being

102 feet. The height of the central aisle is 89 feet. Beyond the nave,

which is 340 feet long, we see the area under the dome, 112 feet across.

Beyond this, the choir extends eastward 140 feet. A screen is seen

behind the communion table, beyond which in the apse there is a chapel.

The screen, erected from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner in

1888, takes the place of a baldacchino, which Wren is said to have

intended. The whole length from the west door to the apse is 500 feet.

The transept from the north door to the south is 250 feet long, or half

the length, and this simple proportion occurs throughout the building;

but the western towers are two-thirds the height of the cupola, being

exactly double the height of the adjacent roofs. The windows are 12 feet

wide and 24 feet high; the aisles are 19 feet in clear width by 38 feet

in height. The vestibule is a square of 47 feet and 94 feet high. So,

too, the space under the dome, which is 108 feet wide, is 216 feet high.

The side aisles lead to the dome and transepts by an ingenious but

simple plan, which Wren is believed to have adapted from that of Ely

Cathedral. The inner dome appears very high when we stand under it, but

it hardly rises above the colonnade of the outer dome. A cone of

brick-work which interposes between the outer and the inner dome carries

at its apex the ball and cross. The ball is 6 feet 2 inches in diameter,

but it is only to be attained by a long ascent from the whispering

gallery, 200 feet above the pavement. A curious echo may be remarked

here. Above the whispering gallery an ascent of 108 steps, some 70 feet,

takes us to the stone gallery, formed by the balustrade round the

external base of the dome, from which a fine view of the far-reaching

City may be obtained. A winding and difficult stair leads under the

outer dome to the golden gallery, about 100 feet higher, and a farther

climb of 45 feet is needed before we reach the ball, within which six

people may be seated. The best external view is from the golden gallery.

The same staircase by which we approach the dome takes us to the

triforium over the south aisle of the nave. At the western extremity is

the library, and in a room adjacent may be seen a large model which Wren

made of his first design for the church. In the gallery at the west end

is the collection of ancient records belonging to the Dean and

Chapter—some of which are dated as early as the reigns of the Saxon

kings, the immediate successors of Alfred.

A door into the south-west tower opens just beyond the library, and

admits to the so-called geometrical staircase.

The organ was originally constructed by the famous “Father Schmidt.” He

gave special attention to the wooden pipes. Some of his stops are still

in use, but the instrument which formerly stood across the entrance to

the choir and interrupted the view from the nave and the dome, has been

divided and greatly improved, while some of the pipes, which were

useless for want of room, are now placed in convenient spaces above the

stalls and even in the triforium.

Returning to the dome we may see and admire the choir stalls, carved in

wood by Grinling Gibbons. Beautiful wreaths of flowers, carved by him in

stone, may be found in many places on the vaulting. The iron work in the

gates, the doors of the choir and many other places well repays

examination. It was chiefly designed by Tijou. A pair of bronze

candelabra on the steps of the reredos are copied from an ancient pair

in a Belgian church, which are said to have been taken from old St.

Paul’s after the Fire.

In the south choir aisle are the altar tombs of Dean Milman and Bishops

Blomfield and Jackson. A statue of Bishop Heber is at the farther end,

and against a pier the (restored) monument of Dean Donne, from the old

church, representing him in his shroud rising from an urn. In a modern

chapel at the extreme east end is the altar tomb of Canon Liddon (d.

1890).

Very few of the monuments in St. Paul’s can be admired. Beginning at the

western end the first we meet is a recumbent figure on a marble

sarcophagus of Lord Leighton (d. 1896). Next is a low cenotaph to

General Gordon, murdered at Khartoum, 1885. The great Wellington

monument is still incomplete, but is the best example of English

sculpture in the church. It was first placed in the south-west chapel or

consistorial court, where it could not be seen. In 1895 Lord Leighton,

at that time President of the Royal Academy, formed a committee which

obtained leave to remove it to the middle arch on the north side of the

nave. It is now seen to great advantage, though wanting the equestrian

figure. The great Duke lies on his bier “with his martial cloak around

him.” The “cartouches” at either side bear his arms, above the marble

arch, which is supported over his head on composite columns. The shafts

are formed of oak leaves. Two bronze groups on the arch represent Virtue

trampling upon Vice, and Truth silencing Falsehood. Alfred Stevens, the

sculptor, died in 1875, aged 58.

In the third bay, against the north wall, is the singular but poetical

monument by Marochetti, of the brothers Lamb, successive Viscounts

Melbourne. The elder, William, was Queen Victoria’s first prime minister

and died in 1848. The younger, Frederick, Lord Beauvale, died five years

later. An ebony door, on which the names and dates are inscribed in

gold, is guarded on either side by the Angels of Death and of the

Resurrection, sculptured in white marble. The design and sentiment excel

the execution.

Several large monuments are in the south aisle of the nave, chiefly in

very bad taste. Almost every panel in both aisles has its tablet

commemorating naval or military heroes. The pulpit is a memorial of an

officer, Fitzgerald; and the tombs of several other men of Indian fame,

including three Napiers, are in the north transept, and compete in

poverty of design and sculpture with Bacon’s absurd figure of Dr.

Johnson, who was buried at Westminster, and his John Howard (d. 1790),

the first statue set up in the church. Somewhat better than its

neighbours is Rossi’s monument, in the north transept, of Lord Rodney

between figures supposed to represent Fame and the Historic Muse. Nelson

and Cornwallis face each other across the south transept, each

surrounded by allegorical groups, wholly inappropriate to the place.

There are also monuments of Sir John Moore, Sir Ralph Abercromby, Lord

Heathfield, Lord Howe, Sir Henry Lawrence, and many more of which it may

safely be said that not one is worthy either of the situation or of the

personage commemorated. Mr. Birch quotes the opinion that at St. Paul’s

the apostles are placed outside and the heathen divinities within. Much

more satisfactory is the brief inscription over the inner portico of the

north door which speaks of the career of Sir Christopher Wren “who lived

not for his own good but for that of the public,” and ends with the

words—“Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice”; to which we may add

Wren’s own saying, “Building is for eternity.”

The roof of the choir and of the apse beyond it now glow, as Wren

desired they should, with colour and gold. The designs by Sir William

Richmond, K.C.B., R.A., have been carried out under his personal

superintendence in English mosaic, which should be viewed with a strong

opera-glass. The faces of the principal figures represented will repay a

little trouble. The central figure at the east end is above life-size

but carefully adapted to the general proportions, already mentioned, of

the building. Each panel is a picture, and the scheme is worked out in

the stained glass of the windows, while the harmony of colour, form, and

proportion produces an effect upon the mind comparable only with that of

the best music. Unfortunately, the designs for the figures of prophets

and evangelists, under the dome, seem to have been made in ignorance or

defiance of the conditions by which Sir William Richmond has been

guided; while they are dull, heavy, and dark in colour. They were

produced some fifty years ago, and have a highly discordant effect.

Sir William Richmond’s work has been carried out in conformity with a

settled plan, based upon the proportions of the whole building. At the

east end, the roof of the apse shows the figure of Our Lord seated, with

uplifted hands. In the adjoining panels right and left are Recording

Angels, attended by winged cherubim. The lower rectangular spaces are

filled with figures of the Virtues and such scenes as the sacrifice of

Noah and the blessing of Abraham. Many other allusive and allegorical

subjects fill the panels of the vaulting as far as the entrance of the

choir, supplemented by abundant gilding and by marble inlay, all

carefully harmonised and subdued so as to produce a gorgeous but not a

garish effect. The stained-glass windows are similarly subdued to the

general scheme of colour, and the result gives great encouragement to

those who would see the dome similarly treated if not the nave and

transepts also—a work of such magnitude that few of us can hope ever to

see it accomplished.

* * * * *

A door in the south transept admits the visitor to the crypt, a very

interesting part of the church. It appeals to the architect and

scientific builder as well as to the historical student and the

sightseer. We can study Wren’s methods of construction here much more

readily than above, and can, moreover, see where he was eventually

forced to alter the plans with which he commenced operations, and which

were in his mind in the preparative work here apparent. First at the

foot of the steps we reach “the Artists’ Corner.” At the eastern end,

just where it is believed the high altar of Old St. Paul’s was placed,

is the grave of the great architect himself. It is inscribed with the

memorable sentence already quoted as over the northern entrance. Close

by are the graves of Reynolds, Turner, Landseer, and other great

painters including Lord Leighton and Sir J. E. Millais. Some eminent

architects are near—Mylne, who succeeded as surveyor of St. Paul’s, and

Cockerell who came after him. Goss, part of whose funeral ode on

Wellington is inscribed on his tombstone, and Boyce represent music. In

the crypt too were laid the scanty remains found in the Arabian desert

of Palmer and his companions, murdered in 1882. Sir Bartle Frere and

another great colonial statesman, Dalley, are both laid here. But to

most visitors no tombs or memorials are so interesting as those of

Nelson and Wellington. In a kind of chapel marked by its own candelabra,

and situated just under the choir, the lofty sarcophagus which contains

the body of the great Duke forms a conspicuous object in the view. It is

formed of a large block of red porphyry from Cornwall, standing on a

pedestal of the same stone, and a base of grey granite—all studiously

plain. The funeral took place in 1852, three months after Wellington’s

death; even then the sepulchre was not ready and the coffin rested for

some weeks on the Nelson tomb farther east. Beside the Duke are the

remains of Sir Thomas Picton, his comrade and lieutenant at Waterloo.

Picton was killed in the battle, and his body was brought home to his

house in Edwardes Street, now Seymour Street, Portman Square. Thence it

was removed to the vaults of the chapel of St. George, now altered, in

the Uxbridge Road, where it rested till 1859, when, nearly seven years

after Wellington’s funeral, it was brought here. The tomb of Nelson is

under the dome. He died on October 21, 1805, at the great victory of

Trafalgar, and his body was brought home and buried here. It had been

intended that his coffin should be enclosed in a black marble

sarcophagus which, lying unused in Wolsey’s Chapel at Windsor, was

presented by the King for the purpose. It had been sculptured by a

Florentine named Bernardo da Rovezzano, for Cardinal Wolsey, and

remained in the chapel. The wooden coffin, made of the mast of

_L’Orient_, blown up at the battle of the Nile, which had been presented

to Nelson by his friend Hallowell, of the _Swiftsure_, was too large to

go into the marble sarcophagus, which is still empty. It stands on a

fine base of black and white marble, and Nelson’s body is in the masonry

below. Beside Nelson sleep Collingwood (d. 1810), the second, and

Northesk (d. 1831), the third in command at Trafalgar.

To the west of Nelson’s tomb is preserved the funeral car or hearse made

for the burial of the Duke of Wellington—a monumental work in itself. It

was cast from cannon taken in the Duke’s victories, from designs by

Redgrave, and is so fine as to have led many critics to attribute it to

Stevens—wrongly, however, as Redgrave’s drawings are still extant.

Quite apart from the tombs here to be seen and the names of great men on

every side, this crypt is well worth a visit. We observe in it, the care

and attention to details which Wren bestowed upon every part of his

great design. He altered the axis of the new church, the east end of

which is slightly to the northward of that of old St. Paul’s. By this

means he obtained fresh ground for the more important parts of his

foundations. The great piers which support the dome do not stand where

those which supported the old central tower stood. At one place, said to

be near the north-east corner, he found that a gravel pit had been made

and “the hard pot earth,” on which he depended, had been removed. He

sunk a pit to where, at the very foot of the hill on which St. Paul’s

stands, he found a firm foundation, and laid upon it a mass of masonry,

10 feet square, on which he could rely. It was not his intention to

interrupt the view of the central aisle by placing the organ over the

entrance to the choir, but, in the crypt, we see that when he had to

comply with the taste of the time, he built “a row of columns and arches

to strengthen the floor for the extra weight it was called upon to

carry.”

The modest _Guide_, by Mr. Gilbertson, which is to be had at the ticket

office at the foot of the stairs to the dome, contains by far the best

account of the church. It is supplemented by a description of the

mosaics, mentioned above. For a magnificent series of views a volume by

the late Mr. Birch on the _City Churches_ may be named. There is no

modern history of the cathedral which can be recommended to the student

as, so far, the great collection of records preserved in the library has

not been used by historians. Milman and Longman do not seem to have been

aware of its existence. The late Dr. Sparrow Simpson, whose delightful

but desultory volumes have already been mentioned, made many extracts

from these manuscripts, but his example has hardly been followed.

The manuscripts were well catalogued in 1883, by Sir H. Maxwell Lyte,

for the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

=St. Faith= was situated under the choir of old St. Paul’s. In 1549,

Jesus Chapel in the cathedral being suppressed by Edward VI., the

parishioners of St. Faith’s were allowed to remove from their crypt

to this chapel. It continued so till St. Paul’s was burnt down, when

the parish was annexed to St. Augustine’s by Act of Parliament

(1670). The earliest date of an incumbent is 1277.

The patronage of this church has always been in the hands of: The

Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s—as far back as 1148; and in 1277

Robert le Seneschal was rector.

Houseling people in 1548 were 400.

A considerable number of monuments are recorded by Stow, but none

are of much note. The most interesting is that of Katherine, third

daughter of Edward, Lord Neville.

There was a table in the south aisle of the church with the names of

the benefactors, amongst whom were: John Sanderson, donor of £150,

and Elizabeth Underwood, donor of £70.

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

=St. Gregory by St. Paul’s= was situated on the south side of St.

Paul’s, near the west end, in the ward of Castle Baynard. The date

of its foundation is not known, but it is said that the body of

Edmund, King of the East Angles, who was put to death by the Danes

in 870, rested here for three years. It was burnt down by the Great

Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Mary

Magdalene, Old Fish Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is

1181.

It was a Rectory in the gift of the Prebendary of St. Pancras and

formed part of the manor of that prebendary. It was appropriated in

1445 to the minor canons of St. Paul’s, and so continued until the

church was annexed to St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, in 1666.

Houseling people in 1548 were 600.

A chantry was founded here by Robert Rosamonde, whose endowment

fetched £13 : 18s. in 1548, when Peter Jacksonne was priest, aged

thirty-nine years, “a teacher for children, and hath, for that he

was a religious person, a pension of £5 : 6 : 8 over and besides

this his stipend of £6 : 13 : 4.”

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

Stow.

There was a school in this parish for thirty boys and twenty girls,

purchased at the expense of Alderman Barber; and one almshouse, upon

Lambeth Hill.

John Hewitt, tried by Cromwell’s High Court of Justice and beheaded

in 1658, was rector here, and was buried in this church.

In =St. Paul’s Churchyard= the chapter-house first attracts our

attention, a square, plain, red-brick building, with a modern office for

the cathedral architect on one side; the top story was added in the last

twenty years of the nineteenth century. These additions are not so

noticeable as might be supposed, but are wonderfully harmonised by smoke

and weather already. The building is finished with Portland stone, and

the two semicircular projecting pediments over the two front doorways

are of the same material. In each of these there is a curious niche or

recess, which was evidently designed to receive a coat-of-arms, but no

coat-of-arms has ever been placed there. The age of the chapter-house is

indefinite. Mr. Penrose, the cathedral architect, judges it to have been

built shortly after the year 1700. There is negative evidence to show

that it did not exist before that date, for in a design of Wren’s,

showing the limits of old St. Paul’s, the frontage of houses to the

street is incompatible with the position of the chapter-house, and the

buildings are also marked as ordinary dwelling-houses. But this plan is

not altogether trustworthy, for it does not give the cathedral

foundations correctly, and may therefore be inaccurate in other

particulars. It is supposed, on account of this inaccuracy, to have been

one of the later plans, probably made about 1700, when the old

foundations had been built over and forgotten. It bears no date, and the

evidence must be taken for what it is worth. Knight, in his _London_,

gives a print dated 1701, and says that Wren repaired and restored the

chapter-house after the Fire, which is obviously incorrect.

Within the chapter-house all is simple and solid. A square wainscotted

hall, paved with plain white marble slabs, deep-set doors and windows in

the thickness of the walls, and a fine, wide, shallow-stepped staircase

with well-worked iron supports to the handrail. The character of the

balustrade changes above the first floor, and the handrail is supported

by spiral wooden balusters. The walls of the finely proportioned

chapter-room are all wainscotted, otherwise there is nothing to remark

upon. This room is occasionally lent to ecclesiastical conferences. In

one of the other rooms are eight panels, 2 feet 6 by 1 foot 9 inches,

enclosed in small gilt frames. These hang rather high up round the

walls. They are monotint, and are Sir James Thornhill’s original designs

for the frescoes in the dome of the cathedral. These designs are

excellently clear, and show what the now faded frescoes must have been.

The archdeacon of the cathedral has a suite of rooms in the

chapter-house, and the remainder of the house is carried out in the same

plain domestic style.

The north side of the churchyard consists of a row of dingy brick

buildings of various heights and ages. One or two are showing signs of

decrepid old age, others still flourishing, with the names of their

tradesmen occupants in mighty gilt letters across their smoky fronts.

The irregular roofs of tiles or slates, with fantastic little iron

railings high up, or windows peeping over the parapets, are sufficiently

original to be interesting. Every class of goods seems to find

representatives here—we see confectioners, milliners, bootmakers,

photographers, etc. The Religious Tract Society has one entrance in the

churchyard. On the east side we find all the houses modern, in the

modern style, with stone facings; they are chiefly occupied by

manufacturers.

We turn next to =Paternoster Row=.

In every large town on the Continent, wherever a cathedral has been

erected, there are streets occupied by shops where all kinds of

ecclesiastical things are made and sold, such as beads, crucifixes, wax

tapers, service books, meditations, and such like. Paternoster Row

served this purpose for St. Paul’s in the first instance, and, as there

is only one other street so called, namely, the lane of Paternoster in

the Riole, one may reasonably conclude that, with this other street, it

supplied all the churches and all the faithful of the City with these

things. We read of “Paternoster” meaning rosaries, and of a

“Paternostrer” or one whose trade it was to make rosaries, etc. There

are frequent references to both Paternoster “Street” of St. Michael le

Querne, and Paternoster Lane, or Paternoster Church Lane of St. Michael,

Paternoster Royal. Of the first, for instance, there are houses and

rents spoken of in wills of 1312 and 1321.

This is, in fact, one of the most ancient, as well as one of the most

interesting of the City Streets.

We can catch glimpses here and there of the actual residents of this

street, the place where they made the rosaries. They should have been a

quiet and God-fearing folk; but they were not. In 1381 one Godfrey de

Belstred was assaulted by three “Paternostrers” of this parish, whether

for purposes of robbery or in a quarrel does not appear; he was picked

up wounded, and carried off to die. In the same century we find persons

owning houses in this street; one, William de Ravenstone, Almoner of St.

Paul’s, leaves by will a house in Paternoster Row. Did his functions

permit him to live outside the precinct which sheltered such a goodly

company of ecclesiastics? About the same time William Russell—surely the

earliest mention of that illustrious name—bequeaths his house in the

Row; Garter King-at-arms has a house there; John de Pykenham,

Paternostrer, leaves various tenements to his wife, who claims as one of

them a house in the Row. William le Marbler, a vintner, has a house

there; the name shows that a man might by this time leave the trade of

his father, and take to another without changing his surname, just as

the name of Chaucer, who never belonged to the “gentle craft,” means

shoemaker. There are other instances of “Paternostrers,” all of whom

belong to the Parish, if not to the Row, which formed the most important

part of it.

[Illustration:

PATERNOSTER ROW (AS IT WAS)

]

The street, in fact, belonged to two parishes; one of these was the

parish of St. Faith under Paul’s (see p. 340). St. Faith’s parish

includes Paternoster Square, the Row, and Ivy Lane, with little fringes

or strips, on the north and south. The east end of the Row is in the

parish of St. Michael le Querne (see p. 326). This little parish, whose

church is now St. Vedast’s, Foster Lane, included no more than 250 feet

of the Row, with that part of Chepe west of Foster Lane, and the

buildings on the north-west of the cathedral precinct. If you stand now

on the site of the church, you will find it difficult to understand how

there could be room for a parish church and a graveyard on the little

space between the Row and the west end of Cheapside. By measurement,

however, you will ascertain that a line drawn from the shop at the end

of the Row to the corner of Cheapside is 130 feet in length, while a

line drawn perpendicular to the buildings is 110 feet. Now the mediæval

builders were ingenious in cramming churches and halls into small areas.

I have laid down the church as it might have been, and I put the present

statue of Peel at the crossing of the transepts if it was a cruciform

church. I do not think, however, that it was cruciform, but that it

consisted of a nave and chancel only, with a small burial-ground on the

north, and a tower on the east side. The Fire of 1666 left it rootless,

broke its windows, melted its glass, calcined its marbles, and destroyed

its woodwork. It also burned up the coffins with their contents in the

vaults. The parish was poor and small; the “Paternostrers” existed no

longer; the parishioners decided not to rebuild the church; they

amalgamated their parish with another; they widened the way that led

from Newgate Street into Cheapside; and the bones of the dead, which

were now so much grey powder, were trampled in the mud and dust of the

street.

When the Reformation came, the trade of the street was annihilated.

Fortunately for the poor “Paternostrers” the work of destruction was not

sudden; it took time for the old services and the old ceremonies, which

required their handiwork, to be abolished. What they did when the

accession of the Protestant party to power closed their shops; how they

got rid of their unsold stock, their piles of rosaries, beads,

crucifixes, candlesticks; what new trades they learned; what

bankruptcies and disasters fell upon them, no one knows. There is no

chronicle to tell of the immediate effects of the Reformation on the

trade and the common life of the City. It is, however, certain that the

Paternostrers had to try something else.

They vanish; the historian hears no more of them; they rejoiced, we may

be very sure, when Queen Mary brought back the ancient things; they

trembled when Queen Elizabeth showed herself as independent and as

masterful as her father.

But the place is central; it is a quiet and convenient place, retired

from the noisy market; it is essentially a street for business of a

quiet kind. Therefore the people who had formerly occupied the stalls of

Broken Cross, the Standard, and the Great Cross, changed their quarters

and took the small shops of the Paternostrers, where they sold paper,

parchment, ink, pens, and the like—being the forerunners of the

booksellers.

But the day of the booksellers was not yet. Paternoster Row was too

large for the stationers; the mercers, silkmen, and lacemen found out

the place and began to crowd out the stationers. It became the principal

place for the sale of these fashionable goods; in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries all the great ladies went to Paternoster Row for

their fineries; latterly the lane was thronged with carriages.

Then came the Fire.

After the Fire, according to Strype, the mercers migrated to Covent

Garden, Henrietta Street, and King Street. According to Defoe, the Row

was rebuilt after the Fire, for the convenience of these trades; “the

spacious shops, back warehouses, skylights, and other conveniences made

on purpose for their trade are still to be seen.” He goes on to say that

the other traders were then dependent on the more important shops:

lacemen were in Ivy Lane, button shops at the Cheapside end, shops for

crewels and fringe in Blowbladder Street. He says that this continued

for twenty years after the Fire, and that the mercers began then to

migrate to Covent Garden, where, however, they did not remain many

years. They then returned to the City and established themselves on

Ludgate Hill.

But all the mercers and silkmen did not desert the Row. In 1720 there

were still some “with many tirewomen.” It is at this period that we

first hear of booksellers in the Row. Their previous quarters, before

the Fire, had been St. Paul’s Churchyard not far off. After the Fire,

some of them went to the upper end of Paternoster Row, where there were

built “large warehouses for booksellers well situated for learned and

studious men’s access thither, being more retired and private” (Strype).

Others retreated, their stocks destroyed by the Fire, in an impoverished

condition, to the cheaper street of Little Britain, where they continued

for eighty years, when they began to flock into Paternoster Row.

“From the manufacture of paternosters to the publication and sale of

books is a long step. The Row, however, gradually lost all its mercers,

lacemen, and silkmen, and became the home of books, old and new. Other

booksellers there were in other parts, but not many—Dodsley, for

instance, in Pall Mall, Murray in Fleet Street, Newbery in St. Paul’s;

but the greater number had their shops, being booksellers as well as

publishers, in the Row. No longer did the coaches rumble along the

narrow street; posts placed across forbade the passage of coach or cart;

it became the most quiet street in all London. Gradually another change

fell upon the place: the booksellers’ shops disappeared, and with them

the throng of scholars who had been wont to meet and talk among the

books. The Row became a wholesale place, whither the ‘trade’ came to

buy; printers, bookbinders, and papermakers came for orders; and needy

authors came, hat in hand, in the hope of picking up a guinea.

“There is a book called _Travels in Town_, written in the year 1839. The

author, speaking of the output of books, boldly states that they had all

to pass through Paternoster Row—certainly an exaggeration, but by far

the greater number had to do so. The busiest day in the month was

Magazine day, when the new magazines were sold to the trade. About

400,000 copies left the Row that morning. When we consider the nature of

these magazines—the _Gentleman_, _Tait’s_, the _New Monthly_, the

_Metropolitan_, _Blackwood’s_, _Fraser’s_—there can be no doubt that

among the better class of readers the magazine occupied a much more

important place then than it does at present.