In June, 1561, the beautiful spire was destroyed by fire caused by lightning or by a plumber's neglect, and the Chapter House seriously injured. We have no trustworthy plates prior to this fire, and the various estimates about the height of the spire and other matters are anything but infallible. Service was held at St. Gregory's, and the roof and other parts restored at a cost of £6,700, but the architecture was never the same afterwards. Of course the disappointed Romanists attributed the disaster to the Divine anger, and Bishop Pilkington, of Durham, preaching next Sunday at the Cross, to the still continued desecration.
It is difficult for us to understand why this desecration was allowed to go on. A pillory was indeed set up outside near the bishop's palace, and a man convicted of fighting nailed there by his ears, which were afterwards cut off; but this must have been an offence exceptionally outrageous. "What swearing is there," says Dekker, "what shouldering, what jostling, what jeering, what biting of thumbs to beget quarrels." At Bishop Bancroft's Visitation a verger complained that colliers with coal-sacks, butchers' men with meat, and others made the interior a short cut. Bishop Corbet, of Norwich, wrote:
"When I past Paules, and travelled in that Walke
Where all our Brittaine-sinners sweare and talke,
Ould Harry-ruffians, bankrupts, suthe-sayers,
And youth, whose cousenage is as ould as theirs."
The choir boys even during service time were on the alert for "spur money," a fine due for the wearing of spurs. "Paul's Walk" (the central aisle of the nave), said Bishop Earle, of Salisbury, "is the land's epitome.... It is the general mart of all famous lies." Shakespeare was thinking of his own time, as well as of the time of Henry IV. (2 Henry IV., act 1, scene 2) when he makes Falstaff engage Bardolph, out of place and standing at the servant-men's pillow to be hired. John Evelyn called the cathedral a den of thieves. Before, we have mentioned that this abuse existed in mediæval times; the above authorities show that it still went on right up to the Fire. Doctrine might be purified, and rites reformed; Paul's Walk was neither purified nor reformed.
John Felton nailed the Bull of Pius V. excommunicating and deposing Elizabeth (Regnans in Excelsis) to the bishop's gate at night (May 15, 1570), and was hung on a gallows hard by. We pass on from this, and from Elizabeth's "tuning of the pulpit" and various other matters, to the Armada. By September some of the captured flags were displayed on high outside, and waved over the preacher at the Cross. The last Sunday in November was appointed for the State Thanksgiving, Aylmer being bishop and Nowell dean. The Queen was driven in a chariot drawn by four white horses. Bishop John Piers, of Salisbury, the Almoner, was the preacher. His sermon has not come down, but the Form of Prayer has—"Turning the destruction they intended against us upon their own head." At the conclusion, the Queen remained in the City to dine with the bishop.
After the death of the great Queen, the leading conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot[28] were executed outside the West Front. John King, Dean of Christ Church, styled by James "the king of preachers," was consecrated bishop in 1611; and the next year Bartholomew Leggatt was condemned as a heretic in the Consistory Court, and burnt at Smithfield; and a month later Edward Wightman suffered a like fate at Lichfield. But the Marian persecutions had made all good citizens sick of such sights, and henceforth, says Fuller, the king yielding to public opinion, "politically preferred that heretics, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in prison."
Inigo Jones.—A certain Master John Farley agitated in favour of the decaying and neglected fabric, and King James attended service in state to hear his favourite preacher, the bishop, plead for restoration from an appropriate text chosen by the king himself (March 26, 1620). After the service came a banquet at the bishop's palace, and after the banquet a meeting; and a Royal Commission was appointed before the end of the year on which the Lord Mayor was the first person named. Amongst other commissioners was Inigo Jones, Surveyor of the Royal Works. He had studied in Italy and was an enthusiastic student of the Italian Renaissance. Unfortunately the public was anything but enthusiastic, and only a small sum was contributed, which went in the purchase of stone. Matters came to a complete standstill; and shortly prior to his assassination the elder Villiers is reported to have stolen part of the stone for a watergate for his new town house.
INIGO JONES' PORTICO.
After Hollar.[ToList]