P.S. There is no more occasion for these docks than for one at the foot
of Ludgate-hill.
* * * * *
The purpose of this correspondent may be answered, perhaps, by
publishing his well-founded lamentation over the final dissolution of
his church; his call upon me could not be declined. I did not get his
note till the very hour that the service was commencing, and hurried
from Ludgate-hill to the ancient “collegiate church of St. Katharine’s
by the Tower,” where I arrived just before the conclusion of prayers.
Numbers unable to get accommodation among the crowd within, were coming
from the place; but “where there’s a will there’s a way,” and I
contrived to gain a passage to the chancel, and was ultimately conducted
to a seat in a pew just as the rev. R. R. Bailey, resident chaplain of
the tower, ascended the curious old pulpit of this remarkable structure.
This gentleman, whose “History of the Tower” is well known to
topographers and antiquaries, appropriately selected for his text, “Go
to now, ye that say, to-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city,
and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain.” (James iv.
13.) He discoursed of the frailty of man’s purpose, and the insecurity
of his institutions, and enjoined hope and reliance on Him whose order
ordained and preserves the world in its mutations. He spoke of the
“unfeeling and encroaching hand of commerce,” which had rudely seized on
the venerable fabric, wherein no more shall be said--
“Lord, how delightful ’tis to see,
A whole assembly worship thee.”
To some of the many present the building was endeared by locality, and
its burial ground was sacred earth. Yet from thence the bones of their
kindred were to be expelled, and the foundations of the edifice swept
away. For eight centuries the site had been undisturbed, save for the
reception of the departed from the world--for him whose friends claimed
that there “the servant should be free from his master,” or for the
opulent, who, in his end, was needy as the needy, and required only “a
little, little grave.” Yet the very chambers of the dead were to be
razed, and the remains of mortality dispersed, and a standing water was
to be in their stead. The preacher, in sad remembrance, briefly, but
strongly, touched on the coming demolition of the fane, and there were
those among the congregation who deeply sorrowed. On the features of an
elderly inhabitant opposite to me, there was a convulsive twitching,
while, with his head thrown back, he watched the preacher’s lips, and
the big tear sprung from his eyes; and the partner of his long life
leaned forward and wept; the bosoms of their daughters rose and fell in
grief; matrons and virgins sobbed; manly hearts were swollen, and strong
men were bowed.
After the sermon “sixty poor children of the precinct,” for whose
benefit it was preached--it was the last office that could be celebrated
there in their behalf--sung a hymn to the magnificent organ, which, on
the morrow, was to be pulled down. They choralled in tender tones--
“Great God, O! hear our humble song,
An off’ring to thy praise,
O! guard our tender youth from wrong,
And keep us in thy ways!”
These were the offspring of a neighbourhood of ill fame, whence, by
liberal hands, they had been plucked and preserved as brands from the
burning fire. It seemed as though they were about to be scattered from
the fold wherein they had been folded and kept.
While the destruction of this edifice was contemplated, the purpose gave
rise to remonstrance; but resistance was quelled by the applications,
which are usually successful in such cases. “An Earnest Appeal to the
Lords and Commons in Parliament, by a Clergyman,” was ineffectually
printed and circulated with the hope of preventing the act. This little
tract says:--
“The collegiate body to whom the church and precinct pertain, and who
have not _always_ been so insensible to the nobler principles they now
abandon, owe their origin to Maud, wife of king Stephen--their present
constitution to Eleanor, wife of king Henry III.--and their exemption
from the general dissolution in the time of Henry VIII. to the
attractions (it is said) of Anne Boleyn. The queens’ consort have from
the first been patronesses, and on a vacancy of the crown matrimonial,
the kings of England. The fabric for which, in default of its retained
advocates, I have ventured now to plead, is of the age of king Edward
III., lofty and well-proportioned, rich in ancient carving, adorned with
effigies of a Holland, a Stafford, a Montacute, all allied to the blood
royal, and in spite of successive mutilations is well able to plead for
itself: surely then, for its own sake, as well as for the general
interests involved in its preservation, it is not too much to ask, that
it may, at least, be confronted with those who wish its
destruction--that its obscure location may not cause its condemnation
unseen--that no one will pass sentence who has not visited the spot, and
that, having so done, he will suffer the unbiassed dictates of his own
heart to decide.”
* * * * *