the East India Company's birthday. In December, 1581, a young man came
to Placentia, bringing letters to the Queen from her soldiers in
Ireland, where there had been war and great trouble. He was carefully
dressed and wore a new plush cloak, for this was, I think, his first
visit to Court, and the Queen loved to see everyone about her well and
beautifully dressed. Perhaps he had only just arrived; perhaps the
Queen had been out in her barge and was coming up from the riverside to
her palace; however it may have been, she came to a very muddy place in
the road, which is not at all surprising, since in December there is
often a great deal of rain. The Queen looked at the puddles and
stopped, and the young man sprang forward, swept his plush cloak from
his shoulders and spread it over the mud for her to step on that so she
might pass on without soiling her shoes. I feel sure you know the
young man's name--it was Walter Raleigh. Is it any wonder that he
became a great favourite with the Queen? An old story says that soon
after this he wrote with a diamond on the glass of a window in the
palace:--
"Fain would I climb, yet fear to fall."
{52}
And the Queen saw it, and wrote beneath it:--
"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all."
His heart did not fail him; he became captain of her Guard, and he rose
higher and higher in her service.
Raleigh was the first Englishman to think how splendid it would be if
some of his countrymen would go to America and make homes for
themselves there, and so build up a greater England beyond the seas.
He sent out ships to explore, and twice he sent out men to settle in
the new land. Some the Indians killed; some found the work of building
houses and clearing away the forests far harder than they had expected;
and the Indians often attacked them, and food was sometimes so scarce
they almost died of hunger. Do you wonder they lost heart and came
back to England? Thus it seemed that Raleigh's plan quite failed; but
it did not really, for about twenty years later, a company, like the
East India Company, was formed, called the Virginia Company. It sent
out some settlers who sailed from London in the year 1606, and they did
what Raleigh's men had failed to do--built themselves homes, and
cleared and tilled the land. Thus began the British Dominions beyond
the Seas.
One thing Raleigh did which must not be forgotten. The men he sent to
explore in America saw potatoes and tobacco growing there, and learnt
from the Indians how to use them. When they came home they showed
Raleigh the plants they had brought back with them. He tried smoking
tobacco, and I {53} think he must have liked it very much, for he used
to give his friends pipes with silver bowls and teach them how to
smoke. And he planted potatoes in the garden of a house he had in
Ireland; his were the very first Irish potatoes. A few years later
both potatoes and tobacco were growing in the garden of one of those
fine houses in the Strand of which I have told you; people thought them
very rare and curious plants.
Eight years before the great Queen died, Raleigh went himself to South
America, and sailed far up the River Orinoco. He found a fertile land
and friendly Indians, who told him wonderful stories of the great "city
of Manoa" which was (so they said,) rich beyond the dreams of man; El
Dorado, the Golden City, the Spanish called it. Raleigh never forgot
these stories; more than twenty years later they helped to bring him
back to America.
When Elizabeth died and James I. came to the throne he fell into
disgrace, for some people said he had plotted against the King; so he
was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. But he was not
killed; year after year he was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London.
How did he pass his days there? was he very dull and sad? I think not.
Part of the time his wife and son lived with him; he was very much
interested in the new science of chemistry, and he worked at it and
tried experiments in his cell; he began to write a wonderful History of
the World; and I think he thought and dreamed much about Manoa, his
Golden City, and the riches which lay hidden in South America. The
Spanish said these riches were {54} all theirs; but Raleigh did not
believe this, and he thought Englishmen could so easily get possession
of some of them. After many years he tried to persuade King James to
let him cross the Atlantic and sail up the Orinoco to find a gold-mine
he had heard of there; he said if only he might go and open it up, it
would bring great wealth to the King. Had he another hope, I wonder,
hidden away in his heart, of which he did not speak--that he might also
search for and find his Golden City? However this may be, he certainly
tried to persuade the King, and he succeeded, for James said, "Yes, you
may go," though he well knew that Raleigh could not go to South America
and bring home gold without offending the Spanish, and England was then
at peace with Spain. So Raleigh sailed away. After fifteen months he
came home with a sad tale to tell;--everything had gone wrong, the
Spanish had killed many of his men, and he had found no gold. James
sent him back to the Tower; and four months later, in the year 1618, he
was beheaded, because (so he was told,) he had once plotted against the
King. Thus died the last of the great men of Queen Elizabeth's Court
who had done so much for England.
How different London is now from the London of Queen Elizabeth's reign!
Old St. Paul's and its high tower,--I will tell you in the next story
what became of them. The Globe Theatre, too, has quite disappeared.
Busy shops have taken the places of the beautiful old houses in the
Strand; nothing now reminds us of them except the names of some of the
streets which turn off it; and Somerset House, the great building where
{55} now some of the business of the nation is carried on, is so called
because it stands on the place where the Duke of Somerset, who lived in
Edward VI.'s reign, began to build a palace for himself.
If you go down the river to Greenwich, will you see Queen Elizabeth's
pleasant palace? Ah, no. Sixty years after she died it was so out of
repair that Charles II. ordered it to be pulled down and a new one
built in its place. This new palace was not finished until William and
Mary's reign. Then there was a great war with France, and the Queen
begged the King to finish the palace and to turn it into a hospital for
sailors who had been wounded or crippled in one of the great
sea-fights. So it came to pass that, instead of Placentia, we now have
Greenwich Palace; you will find a picture of it facing p. 48.
Perhaps you are thinking, "At any rate the Tower has not changed, and
London still has a Lord Mayor." But even the Tower has changed, for in
Queen Elizabeth's time it was a royal palace as well as a prison. She
did not use it often; perhaps she did not like it, for she had been a
prisoner there herself when her sister Mary was Queen. Now our Kings
never live there; and prisoners are not kept there; and for more than a
hundred and fifty years no one has been beheaded there. I must tell
you of one other change, for I am sure it will interest all children.
In Queen Elizabeth's reign, if you had gone to see the Tower, you would
have been shown also the lions and other wild animals which, from very
early times, had been kept there in dens near the part which is called,
after them, the Lion Tower. Now you must go to the Zoological Gardens
{56} to see wild animals; there are none in the Tower; they were all
sent away to the Zoo not long before Queen Victoria began to reign.
======================================================================
[Illustration: NO. 15. THE FIRE OF LONDON]
From the Fresco by Stanhope A. Forbes, R.A., in the Royal Exchange
_By permission of the Artist and the Sun Insurance Office_
_See page_ 61
======================================================================
As for the Lord Mayor, he is still the first magistrate of London, and
he still takes the leading place in all London's affairs, just as he
did in Queen Elizabeth's reign. No, his work and duties have not
changed, except that, as London has grown greater and more important,
they have grown greater and more important also.
{57}
VII.
ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
The Cathedral of the City of London is called St. Paul's. In the
picture beside this page you can see its great dome and golden cross,
the top of which is nearly as many feet above the ground as there are
days in the year. For more than thirteen hundred years God has been
worshipped on the spot where St. Paul's now stands; before that, many
people think, a Roman temple stood there; and before that, again,
perhaps the ancient Londoners worshipped there the God Lud, of whom I
have told you; since that time the number of the years has grown from
hundreds to thousands.
======================================================================
[Illustration: NO. 16. ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER]
======================================================================
Let us fancy what this country was like more than thirteen hundred
years ago. The English had conquered it and given it their name and
language. The Christian Faith, which the Britons had learnt while the
Romans were ruling them, had been almost quite forgotten except in the
western part of the land; for in the east very many of the English had
settled, and they were heathen. Do you remember that Pope Gregory the
Great, when he was still just a simple priest, had seen some English
children in the slave-market at Rome, and thought they were fair as
angels? He never forgot these children, and when he became Pope he
sent his friend, Augustine, and some priests to England to teach its
people the Christian Faith. {58} These missionaries landed in Kent and
were kindly received by its King, Ethelbert, whose wife, Bertha, was
already a Christian. In time he was baptized; and the old historian
Bede tells us that he "builded in the Citie of London St. Paules
Church"; and its first Bishop was that Mellitus to whom the fisherman
Edric brought the message that St. Peter had consecrated his own abbey
on Thorney.
In time Ethelbert died, and Mellitus was made Archbishop of Canterbury;
then the men of London became heathen again. There is a curious old
tale about this, and though it is just a story, not real history, I
will tell it to you. Do you remember that the monks said Sebert, King
of the East Saxons, rebuilt St. Peter's Abbey? Do you not think, then,
that he must have cared enough about the Christian Faith to teach it to
his sons? Yet after his death they went back to the old Faith. It
chanced that one day, when Mellitus was holding the solemn service of
the Mass, they broke open the door of the church, rushed in and ordered
him to give them "white bread" such as he used to give their father;
they meant the Bread used in the Mass. How could Mellitus give it to
men who did not believe the Faith in which such Bread is a holy thing?
He refused, and in their anger they turned him out of London; and, as I
said, the Londoners went back to their old religion. Truly it took a
long time and much teaching to make them really Christians.
Near the end of the seventh century we hear of another Bishop of
London, called Erkenwald. He did much to make St. Paul's beautiful and
splendid. {59} And he cared for his people too,--the men, women and
children, who lived scattered about in the wild forests which then lay
round London; and in order that he might visit, help and teach them, he
used to drive in a cart from place to place over rough roads, and often
where there were no roads. He was so good that people said he was a
saint; and so when he died and his body was buried in St. Paul's, his
grave there was greatly honoured,--it was even said that miracles were
worked there. Is it there still? Ah, no; it was destroyed long ago,
as you shall hear presently. Yet London ought not to forget this old
Bishop since it is said that one of her streets is called after him,
for in his days it seems that the old Roman walls had fallen into
ruins, and it is said that Erkenwald built a new city-gate ever since
called, after him, Bishopsgate. If you look at a map which shows the
streets of London, you will find Bishopsgate and Bishopsgate Street
near Liverpool Street Station. This story shows us that Erkenwald was
a good citizen as well as a good Bishop.
The years passed on; the Normans came and conquered England; and now we
have come to real history.
Near the end of William I.'s reign, St. Paul's was burnt down, and the
Bishop of London of that day began to build in its place a cathedral so
grand and large that men thought it would never be finished, "it was to
them so wonderful for height, length, and breadth." Yet little by
little it grew until--but not for more than two hundred and twenty-five
years--it stood complete with its great steeple, {60} the highest in
Europe, towering up 520 feet into the air. This is the Cathedral to
which in later days Queen Elizabeth came to return thanks to God for
the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Here Sir Philip Sidney was buried.
Perhaps you remember that, as he lay dying on a battlefield in the
Netherlands, someone brought him a drink of cold water which seemed to
him the most delicious thing in all the world, so thirsty was he
because of his wounds. Then he saw a poor soldier looking at it with
longing eyes, and he would not drink it, "for," he said, "his need is
greater than mine; give it to him."
In the days of Oliver Cromwell the poor Cathedral was used as a barrack
for soldiers and as a stable for their horses. There is now in the
British Museum a printed paper ordering the soldiers not to play
nine-pins and other games there between nine o'clock at night and six
in the morning, because their noise and shouts while they played
greatly disturbed the people who lived near the churchyard. Long
before this the great steeple had been struck by lightning and burnt
down, and the whole Cathedral had fallen out of repair; thus, when
Cromwell died and Charles II. became King, there was much talk as to
what was to be done for it.
[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S. Burnt down in 1666.]
The summer of the year 1666--the year after the Great Plague--was very
hot; an east wind blew for weeks together, so the old crowded wooden
houses of the City must have been as dry as tinder, when, on September
2, a fire broke out in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane. At first, I
suppose, the neighbours watched it and thought it just such a fire as
they had {61} seen many a time before; but how could they have felt
when it spread from house to house, and leapt from street to street?
when days passed and still it spread? Some people ran about like
distracted creatures, not even trying to save their possessions; others
fled away to the fields outside the City, carrying with them all they
could. Imagine them huddling under the hedges for shelter and looking
back at the crimson sky, for an old writer tell us "all the sky was of
a fiery aspect like the top of a burning oven, and the light" was "seen
above forty miles round about for many nights." The melting lead of
the roof of St. Paul's ran "down the streets in a stream, and the {62}
very pavements were glowing with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man
was able to tread on them."
Five days the fire raged. When at last it died out, London lay in
ruins; 400 streets, 89 churches and 4 of the city-gates had been burnt,
besides the Cathedral, and in it the shrine of St. Erkenwald. Has any
city, I wonder, ever suffered so great a loss? Were the Londoners sad
and miserable when they looked at the ruins? For a time, perhaps, they
were; but soon they set themselves to build a new London with wider
streets and houses made of stone, which would not burn so easily; and
the man who advised and helped them most to do this was Sir Christopher
Wren. He drew the plans for, and saw to the rebuilding of, many of the
city churches, and above all of the Cathedral. Look again at its
picture facing page 57. The first of its stones was laid in June,
1675, and the last and highest in 1710; but it is not finished even
yet; month by month the work goes on. If you go into it, you will see
men busy covering its great walls and pillars with beautiful rich
colours.
Wren lived to be a very old man. Towards the end of his life he used
to come to London once a year to sit for awhile under the great dome
which he had planned and built, for he loved it, and I think it was to
him not only a beautiful, but also a solemn and a holy thing. When he
died his body was buried in the Cathedral; his name and what he did are
written over the north door, and also some Latin words which mean,
"Reader, if thou seekest his monument, look around."
St. Paul's has taken part in our life as a nation ever {63} since.
Here some of our greatest men are buried. Nelson and Wellington both
lie here, and so do some other great British sailors and soldiers, some
also of our statesmen and painters; and monuments have been put up here
in memory of others whose graves are far away. Here Queen Victoria
came in 1897 to return thanks to God for her long reign; and here every
day, and especially on Sundays and on all great national occasions,
solemn services of prayer and supplication, or of praise and
thanksgiving, are held.
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