After the Great Fire, the number of City churches was reduced from 126
to 87. Those that were rebuilt were for the most part much larger and
more capacious than their predecessors. In many cases, Wren, the great
architect, who rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral and all the churches, in
order to get a larger church took in a part of the churchyard, which
accounts for the fact that many of the City churchyards are now so
small. Again, as the old churches had been built mainly for the purpose
of saying and singing mass, the new churches were built mainly for the
purpose of hearing sermons. They were therefore provided with pews for
the accommodation of the hearers, and resembled, in their original
design, a convenient square room, where the preacher might be seen and
heard by all, rather than a cruciform church. Some of Wren's churches,
however, though they may be described as square rooms, are exceedingly
beautiful, for instance, St. Stephen's, Walbrook, while nearly all are
enriched with woodwork of a beautiful description. It was the custom in
the last century to attend frequent church services, and to hear many
sermons. The parish church entered into the daily life much more under
George the Second's reign than it does now, in spite of our improved
services and our multiplication of services. In forty-four City churches
there was service, sometimes twice, sometimes once, every day. In all
of them there were evening services on Wednesday and Fridays: in many
there were endowed lectureships, which gave an additional sermon once a
week, or at stated times. Fast days were commonly observed, though it
was not customary to close shops or suspend business on Good Friday or
Ash Wednesday: not more than half of the City churches possessed an
organ: on Sunday afternoons the children were duly catechised: if boys
misbehaved, the beadle or sexton caned them in the churchyard: the laws
were still in force which fined the parishioners for absence from church
and for harbouring in their houses people who did not go to church.
Except for Sunday services, sermons, and visitations of the sick, the
clergy had nothing to do. What is now considered the work of the parish
clergy--the work that occupies all their time--is entirely modern.
Formerly this kind of work was not done at all; the people were left to
themselves: the clergy were not the organisers of mothers' meetings,
country jaunts, athletics, boys' clubs, and amusements. The
Nonconformists still formed an important part of the City. They had many
chapels, but their social influence in London, which was very great at
the beginning of the century, declined steadily, until thirty or forty
years ago it stood at a very low ebb indeed.
In the streets the roads were paved with round pebbles--they were
'cobbled': the footway was protected by posts placed at intervals: the
paving stones, which only existed in the principal streets before the
year 1766, were small, and badly laid: after a shower they splashed up
mud and water when one stepped upon them. The signs which we have seen
on the Elizabethan houses still hung out from every shop and every
house: they had grown bigger: they were set in immense frames of
ironwork, which creaked noisily, and sometimes tore out the front of a
house by their enormous weight. The shop windows were now glazed with
small panes, mostly oblong, and often in bow windows: you may find
several such shops still remaining: one at the top of the Haymarket: one
in Coventry Street: one in the Strand: there were no fronts of plate
glass brilliantly illuminated to exhibit the contents exposed for sale:
the old-fashioned shopkeeper prided himself on keeping within, and out
of sight, his best and choicest goods. A few candles lit up the shop in
the winter afternoons.
[Illustration: VIEW OF SCHOOL CONNECTED WITH BUNYAN'S MEETING HOUSE.]
To walk in the streets meant the encounter of roughness and rudeness
which would now be thought intolerable. There were no police to keep
order: if a man wanted order he might fight for it. Fights, indeed,
were common in the streets: the waggoners, the hackney coachmen, the
men with the wheelbarrows, the porters who carried things, were always
fighting in the streets: gentlemen were hustled by bullies, and often
had to fight them: most men carried a thick cudgel for self-protection.
The streets were far noisier in the last century than ever they had been
before. Chiefly, this was due to the enormous increase of wheeled
vehicles. Formerly everything came into the City or went out of it on
the backs of pack-horses and pack-asses. Now the roads were so much
improved that waggons could be used for everything, and the long lines
of pack-horses had disappeared from the main roads. In the country lanes
the pack-horse was still employed. Everybody was able to ride, and the
City apprentice, when he had a holiday, always spent it on horseback.
But for everyday the hackney coach was used. Smaller carts were also
coming into use. And for dragging about barrels of beer and heavy cases
a dray of iron, without wheels, was used. All these innovations meant
more noise and still more noise. Had Whittington, in the time of George
II., sat down on Highgate Hill (still a grassy slope), he would have
heard, loud above the sound of Bow Bells, the rumbling of the waggons on
Cheapside.
57. UNDER GEORGE THE SECOND.