[Illustration: Old St. Paul’s Cathedral--South View.]
The elevated situation of the spot on which St. Paul’s is built, seems
to have pointed it out from very ancient times for religious or other
public purposes. Without adopting the very doubtful opinion of some
antiquaries, that the Romans during their occupation of the island had
erected a temple to Diana upon this eminence--an opinion which has not
even the support of tradition, and which Sir Christopher Wren, when he
dug the foundations of the present church, became convinced had no other
support--it seems to be clear that these foreigners used it for a
cemetery or burial place, if not for anything more sacred. On the
erection of the present building many Roman funeral vases,
lacrymatories, and other articles used in sepulture, were found at a
considerable depth under the surface. Next to these lay in rows
skeletons of the ancient Britons; and immediately above them, Saxons in
stone coffins, or in graves lined with chalk, together with pins of
ivory and box wood which had fastened their grave clothes. The earliest
building which is actually recorded to have stood on this site was a
Christian church, built about the year 610, by Ethelbert, King of Kent,
the first of the Saxon princes who was converted by St. Augustine. It
was dedicated to St. Paul, and the old historians tell us was indebted
for the latest improvements which it received to the liberality of St.
Erkenwald, the bishop of the diocese, who died in 681. However, it could
scarcely have been a very magnificent or extensive edifice, if it be
true, as is related, that upon its being accidentally burned down in
961, it was rebuilt the same year. After this it was again destroyed by
fire in the year 1087; when the Norman bishop, Maurice, who had just
been appointed to the see, resolved to undertake its restoration, on a
much larger and more splendid scale, at his own expense. Both he and his
successor De Belmeis, each of whom presided twenty years over the
diocese, are said to have devoted all their revenues to this great work;
but it was not finished till the time of Bishop Niger, the fourth after
De Belmeis, in the year 1240. In 1135, indeed, the uncompleted building
had again caught fire, and been nearly burned to the ground. When the
fabric, which might thus be called ancient, even while it was yet new,
at last stood ready for consecration, it exhibited a mass 690 feet in
length by 130 in breadth, surmounted by a spire 520 feet in height. Some
additions, which were made to it after this, were not completed till
1315, in the reign of Edward II., the ninth king after him in whose
reign the first stone of the pile had been laid.
This was the building we now call old St. Paul’s, the immediate
predecessor of the present cathedral. It was one of the largest edifices
in the world, and in its best days, before it was deformed by the
successive repairs to which it was subjected, and the various foreign
incumbrances under which it was long buried, it was no doubt a grand and
imposing structure. But, from the causes we have mentioned, its form in
the course of time underwent so many changes that at last it presented
the appearance of little else than a heap of incongruity and confusion.
The spire was of timber; but in 1315 it was found to be so much decayed
that the upper part of it had to be taken down and replaced. It was upon
this occasion that a ball, surmounted by a cross, was first fixed upon
the termination of the spire.
The first accident which befel the church was the consequence of a
violent tempest of thunder and wind which burst over the metropolis on
the 1st of February, 1444. The lightning having struck the spire set it
on fire; and although a priest succeeded in extinguishing the flames, a
good deal of damage was done, so that it was not till the year 1462 that
the gilded ball with the cross again made its appearance on the summit
of the building. A much more serious disaster than this, however,
happened about a century afterwards. On the 4th of June, 1561, a plumber
who was employed in making some repairs, thoughtlessly left a pan of
coals burning within the spire while he went to dinner; the flames from
which caught the adjacent wooden work, and in no long time set the whole
building in a blaze. In spite of every thing that could be done, the
conflagration continued to rage till it had consumed every thing about
the church that was combustible, and reduced it to a mere skeleton of
bare and blackened walls.
With such ardour, however, did the Queen (Elizabeth), and, it may be
said indeed, the whole nation, promote the scheme of restoring the
sacred edifice, all ranks contributing to the pious and patriotic work,
that in the space of about five years it was again opened for worship.
But it never recovered its ancient splendour: the spire, in particular,
was not rebuilt at all; and from the shortness of the time spent in the
restoration altogether, it is probable that other parts of the work were
hurried over without much attention either to strength or beauty. By the
end of the reign of Elizabeth accordingly, the structure had fallen into
sad decay; so that it was found in 1608 that it could not be repaired
under a cost of considerably more than twenty thousand pounds. It was
not, however, till 1633, in the reign of Charles I., that the repairs
were actually begun, the interval having been spent in attempts to
collect the necessary funds by subscription. Meanwhile the cathedral was
every year becoming more ruinous. The money subscribed at last amounted
to above a hundred thousand pounds, and then the celebrated Inigo Jones
having been appointed to superintend the work, it was, as we have said,
proceeded with.
We shall now mention some particulars to show the extraordinary state of
neglect and ruin into which this once proud edifice had been by this
time allowed to fall. Towards the close of the sixteenth century it is
stated, that the benches at the door of the choir were commonly used by
beggars and drunkards for sleeping on, and that a large dunghill lay
within one of the doors of the church. The place indeed was the common
resort of idlers of all descriptions, who used to walk about in the most
irreverent manner with their hats on even during the performance of
divine service. More than twenty private houses were built against the
walls of the church, the owners of several of which had cut closets out
of the sacred edifice, while in other instances doors had been made into
the vaults which were converted into cellars. At one of the visitations
the verger presented that “the shrouds and cloisters under the
convocation-house are made a common lay-stall for boards, trunks, and
chests, being let out unto trunk-makers; where, by means of their daily
knocking and noise, the church is greatly disturbed.” One house, partly
formed of the church, is stated to have been “lately used as a
play-house;” the owner of another, which was built upon the foundation
of the church, had contrived a way through a window into a part of the
steeple, which he had turned into a ware-room; and a third person had
excavated an oven in one of the buttresses, in which he baked his bread
and pies.
The first thing which Jones did was to clear away these obstructions,
after which the work of restoration proceeded slowly but with tolerable
regularity till the commencement of the civil wars in 1642. In 1643, not
only all the revenues of the cathedral, but the funds which had been
collected for repairing it, together with all the unused building
materials, were seized by the Parliament. The scaffolding was given to
the soldiers of Colonel Jephson’s regiment for arrears of pay; on which,
no man hindering them, they dug pits in the middle of the church to saw
the timber in. Another part of the building was converted into a barrack
for dragoons and a stable. Public worship, nevertheless, was still
celebrated in the east end and a part of the choir, which was separated
from the rest by a brick wall, the congregation entering through one of
the north windows which was converted into a door. At the west end Inigo
Jones had erected a portico of great beauty, consisting of fourteen
columns, each rising to the lofty height of forty-six feet, and the
whole supporting an entablature crowned with statues. These statues were
thrown down and broken in pieces; and shops were built within the
portico, in which commodities of all sorts were sold. The wood-cut, at
the head of this article, represents the cathedral as it was drawn by
Hollar in 1656.
In this state things continued till the restoration. Soon after that
event, the repairing of St. Paul’s again engaged the thoughts of the
king and the public; and subscriptions to a considerable amount having
been once more obtained, the work was recommenced on the 1st of August,
1663. Three years afterwards, however, (in September, 1666,) before it
had been nearly completed, the great fire, which consumed half the
metropolis, seized in its progress westward upon the scaffolding by
which the cathedral was surrounded, and after an awful conflagration,
left it a mere mass of ruins. History has recorded no finer instance of
national spirit than the noble courage and alacrity with which the
citizens of London, and the English government, and people generally,
rose from this terrible calamity and applied themselves to restore all
that it had destroyed. In the plans which were immediately taken into
consideration for rebuilding the city, St. Paul’s was not forgotten. Sir
Christopher Wren, who had been employed in superintending the previous
repairs, was ordered to examine and report upon the state in which the
foundations of the building were, and so much of the walls as was left
standing. At first it was thought that a considerable portion of the old
church might still be found available; but this idea was eventually
given up; and on the 21st of June, 1675, the foundation-stone of the
present building was laid. From this time the work proceeded without
interruption till its completion in 1710. The same great architect, Sir
Christopher Wren, presided over and directed the work from its
commencement to its close. For this, all that he received was £200
a-year; and the commissioners had even the spite and meanness, after the
building was considerably advanced, to suspend the payment of one half
of this pittance till the edifice should be finished, under the pretence
of thereby better securing the diligence and expedition of the
architect. In fact, it was with no small difficulty that Sir Christopher
at last got his money at all. The whole expense of rebuilding the
cathedral was £736,000, which was raised almost entirely by a small tax
on coals. The church of St. Peter’s at Rome, which is indeed a building
of greater dimensions, but to which St. Paul’s ranks next even in that
respect among the sacred edifices of Christendom, took one hundred and
forty-five years to build, was the work of twelve successive architects,
and exhausted the revenues of nineteen successive popes. It is worthy of
remark, that St. Paul’s was begun and completed not only by one
architect, and one master mason, Mr. Thomas Strong, but also while one
bishop, Dr. Henry Compton, presided over the diocese.
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