142. LONDON
PAUL'S CROSS
On 7th March 1378, during the time when the Bishop of Carlisle was preaching at the cross, he was disturbed by a tumult arising out of a quarrel between certain trade corporations hard by in West Cheap. From that date onward, down to 1633, sermons at Paul's Cross were of very frequent occurrence.
In 1378 also, the Bishop of London excommunicated at Paul's Cross the murderers of Robert Hawle and two other victims, who had been sacrilegiously slain in the quire of Westminster Abbey during the solemnisation of High Mass on 11th August. On 12th July 1382 the Archbishop issued an order that the preacher at the cross, whoever he might be, on the following Sunday was to take advantage of the occasion, when the fullest number of persons should be gathered together for the sermon, to denounce publicly and solemnly two contumacious heretics, Nicholas Hereford and Philip Reppyingdon, "holding up the cross and lighting of candles, and throwing the same down upon the ground, to have been, and still to be so excommunicated by us."
In the same year, 1382, Paul's Cross suffered very great injury from tempest or earthquake; and on 18th May 1387 Archbishop Courtenay and other Bishops, desirous of repairing the damage, offered an indulgence to any of the faithful who should contribute toward that object. In two years' time the cross seems to have been put in order. Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, however, rebuilt it, some time between 1449 and 1470; giving it the aspect which illustrations have made familiar, viz., an octagonal pulpit of wood, raised on stone steps and roofed with a lead-covered cupola, surmounted by a large cross (Figs. [141] and [142]). The arms of Bishop Kempe were introduced in several places on the roof. From the time of the erection of this new pulpit-cross, the old name of High Cross, applicable to the different form of the earlier structure, seems to have died out of use.
Meanwhile, on Quinquagesima Sunday 1388, a great stir was caused by a Wycliffite sermon preached at Paul's Cross by R. Wimbledon. In 1401, under pressure from Archbishop Arundel, two Wycliffites, John Purvey, and a doctor of divinity, named Herford, recanted their errors at Paul's Cross.
In 1457 Bishop Pecocke, of Chichester, a prelate, so it would appear, of sadly "modernist" tendencies, made his submission at Paul's Cross, abjured his unorthodoxy, and submitted to the burning of his books at the same time and place. In a sermon at the cross, on 4th March 1461-62, the Bishop of Exeter urged the justice of the title of Prince Edward of York to the throne. In 1483 Jane Shore was compelled to do public penance at Paul's Cross; and on 19th June of the same year the Lord Mayor's brother, Dr Ralph Shaw, in his sermon at the cross, openly intimated that the validity of Edward V.'s right to the crown was questionable, and that there were substantial reasons (which did, in fact, ultimately prevail) why both of the young princes should be debarred from succession.
