I went into a City church the other day to hear a sermon that has
been going on for three hundred and twenty years!
St. Mary Aldermary (not Aldermanbury) is an attractive Wren church
tucked away on the north side of Queen Victoria Street. When I
entered I found about forty middle-aged men and twelve women. They
were sitting dotted about the church listening to a clergyman who was
leaning earnestly over the pulpit talking about sin, the devil, and
St. Paul. It was luncheon-hour in the City. It was also raining
with ghastly persistence, and I thought at first that this
congregation of fifty numbered many who might have sought refuge from
the weather. A second glance assured me that this was an unworthy
thought; here was an audience of devout, middle-aged City men with
every mark on them of regular attendance. The rows of bald or
grizzled heads were inclined towards the speaker, every word was
followed with deep interest, save in one corner, where a little old
man in a frock coat appeared to slumber.
"And what does St. Paul say...."
The voice echoed round the church, and I smiled to think that I was
listening to one of the longest sermons on record--a sermon that has
been in progress for three hundred and twenty years! It happened
like this.
* * *
There was once an ancient church in Watling Street called St.
Anthonie's or vulgarly, St. Antholin's. It must have been an
interesting church. It was full in its later period of Presbyterian
fire and fury. It was also full of epitaphs, one of which I cannot
resist quoting. It covered the bones of Sir Thomas Knowles, Mayor of
London about 1399:
_Here lyeth graven under this stone
Thomas Knowles, both flesh and bone,
Grocer and alderman, years forty,
Sheriff and twice mayor, truly;
And for he should not lye alone,
Here lyeth with him his good wife Joan.
They were together sixty year,
And nineteen children they had in feere._
Two hundred years after this remarkable epitaph, St. Antholin's
became notorious as the head-quarters of the Puritan clergy. The
bell used to ring at unearthly hours of the morning, and all the High
Churchmen in Cheapside turned uneasily in their beds and perhaps
politely gnashed their teeth. In 1599 a group of citizens founded a
lectureship. They gave certain property in London which was to pay
for a daily lecture in the pulpit of St. Antholin's. The church
became famous as a lecture theatre. Lilly, the astrologer, used to
go there. Scott makes Mike Lambourne refer to it in "Kenilworth."
The great fire burned down the church but still the daily lecture
went on; it was rebuilt and the lecture was continued in the new St.
Antholin's; it was demolished in 1870, and the lecture was
transferred to St. Mary Aldermary, where I heard it yesterday!
The sermon ended. The congregation rose. The little old man in the
frock coat, who I imagined was deep in sleep, sprang to his feet and
boomed "Amen!"
"I've been here twenty-five years," said a verger, "and most of the
people you see here are regular attendants. That old man in a frock
coat was here when I came."
* * *
In a solicitor's office in Cannon Street I picked up the strings of a
romance that has been acted time and again in London. The property
bought in 1599 went on increasing in value, the St. Antholin lecture
increased from one a week to two a week. Still the property
increased in value, and funds accumulated till it was necessary to
have a sermon every day, except Saturday.
"The conditions on which the lectures are to be delivered are all set
down in the old deeds," said one of the solicitors who administers
the lectureship. "The clergyman who preaches must be a rector in
charge of 2,000 souls, must not live more than seven miles as the
crow flies from the Mansion House, and must not have a stipend of
over £300."
Some of the clergy who took up this three hundred and twenty year old
sermon and carried it on for a while now wear bishop's gaiters.
So in the calm of these days the Puritanical fury of three hundred
and twenty years ago, filtered through three centuries, goes on and
on and on in the City of London! If the worthy old citizens came
back from the Shades they would not be able to find their old church,
but the Voice they subsidized still speaks, and the property they
left ... well, they would have the shock of their lives!