ST. PAUL'S IN FLAMES.
Originally engraved by Hollar for the title of Dean (afterwards Archbishop) Sancroft's sermon on the Great Fire.[ToList]
There was a drought, and the flames spread on their mission of devastation, assisted by a breeze. St. Paul's and most of the hundred City churches were not likely to be used for worship that morning. "To see the churches all filling with goods by people who themselves should have been quietly there at the time." But service was held as usual at the Abbey; and just about sermon time, a newly elected king's scholar, Taswell, noticing a stir and commotion—he was standing by the pulpit steps—ascertained the cause. The news had spread that the City was in flames. Like most boys the prospect of something exciting coincided with his desire to escape a long sermon, so he hastened outside in time to see four boats on the river, the occupants of which had escaped in blankets. Let us hope that as he was not fully admitted, he escaped Busby's birch. All through the Sunday St. Paul's was safe—the distance from Pudding Lane was a little over half a mile—and even the east end of Lombard Street was intact. The parishioners of St. Gregory and St. Faith, lulled into a false sense of security, remained confident that even though the conflagration spread westward, and the surrounding houses caught fire, the flames would not leap across the vacant space of churchyard; and the booksellers accordingly began to store their goods in St. Faith's as though the crypt were a fireproof safe.[36] So it might possibly have been, and in spite of sparks, had the distracted Lord Mayor been firm enough to prevent the storing of books in the churchyard, and had the cathedral roof been in good repair. The flames gradually encircled the churchyard; the goods there took fire, and the flames caught the end of a board placed on the roof to keep out the wet. The Nemesis of neglect!
Our young friend Taswell first saw the flame at eight o'clock on the Tuesday evening at Westminster. It broke out at the top of St. Paul's Church, almost scorched up by the violent heat of the air and lightning too, and before nine blazed so conspicuous "as to enable me to read very clearly a 16mo. edition of Terence, which I carried in my pocket."
Pepys corroborates as to the day "Paul's is burned and all Cheapside," writing of Tuesday, September 4th; and under the same date, Evelyn adds: "The stones of St. Paul's flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied, the eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward." By Wednesday night the central section of the City was so burnt out that Pepys walked through Cheapside and Newgate market. "It is a strange thing," he remarks, "to see how long the time did look since Sunday." "Sad sight," he adds next day, "to see how the river looks: no houses nor church near it." Friday, the 7th, early: "A miserable sight of Paul's Church with all the roofs fallen in, and the body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth's; Paul's School also, Ludgate and Fleet Street."
We will conclude this with some more extracts from the evidence of Pepys. On the next Sunday, when it is interesting to observe the drought came to an end, he attended service twice, probably at St. Olave's, Hart Street, Mark Lane, in the neighbourhood of Crutched Friars. In the morning "Our parson made a melancholy but good sermon; and many and most in the church cried, specially the women. The church mighty full; but few of fashion, and most strangers. To church again, and there preached Dean Harding [Nicolas Hardy, of Rochester]; but methinks a bad, poor sermon, though proper for the time; nor eloquent in saying at this time that the City is reduced from a large folio to a decimo-tertio." The phrase "most strangers" is not surprising, as besides St. Paul's, some eighty-five parish churches were in ashes, including two without the walls but inside the Liberties. Our last extract is under date 12th November following, and illustrates how such remains as had hitherto escaped desecration were treated in the general disorder. Bishop Braybroke's efforts at reform have been already acknowledged: his tomb was behind the high altar towards the east. "In the Convocation House Yard [apparently the space within the Chapter House Cloisters] did there see the body of Robert Braybroke, Bishop of London, that died in 1404. He fell down in the tomb out of the great church into St. Fayth's this late fire, and is here seen his skeleton with the flesh on; but all tough and dry like a spongy dry leather or touchwood, all upon his bones. His head turned aside. A great man in his time, and Lord Chancellor. And now exposed to be handled and derided by some, though admired for its duration by others. Many flocking to see it."
Old St. Paul's, then, suffered the fate of its predecessors in the first week of September, 1666. By the Friday the conflagration had so far exhausted itself that Pepys was able to walk from Paul's Wharf to the churchyard. The City within the Walls was well-nigh burnt out, and of the eighty-three parish churches consumed only forty-eight were rebuilt; and these with the thirteen untouched left accommodation more than sufficient for the surrounding population. Our regret for the cathedral would have been greater, had this magnificent monument of mediæval genius—probably of its kind as fine as any in the world—been capable of a conservative restoration: it is to be feared that neglect, the destroyer, and the restorer had amongst them rendered this task well-nigh impossible.
So far as existing authorities guide us, it remains to describe the architecture.[37]
FOOTNOTES:
[21] "Short History," pp. 298, 299. Green says, "The awakening of a rational Christianity."