That shocks our senses with the name of King’s.”
Such is Dr. Holmes’s description. It is in the very heart of active Boston. After the Revolution it was long called “The Stone Chapel,” for in those early days stone churches were rare, and nothing bore the name of King. Royal biscuit was then called “President’s biscuit.” But after people were sure that no King George would return, the Chapel people, who were no longer in the habit of praying for the royal family, returned to “King’s Chapel” as the historical name of their church, and found again the neglected gilded crown and mitre, which had once adorned the organ, and restored them to the places from which they had been removed. After the service, which interested all the young people, they remained in the church to look at the curious old monuments. They were specially interested in that of Mrs. Shirley, the lovely wife of Governor Shirley. She died just as he was fortifying Boston against the largest fleet which France ever sent across the seas. This is the fleet of Longfellow’s ballad:
“For the admiral D’Anville
Had sworn by cross and crown,
To ravage with fire and steel
Our luckless Boston Town.”
While Shirley had the whole army of Massachusetts on Boston Common, and was bringing every resource to bear to resist the enemy, his heart was wrung day by day by the sickness and the death of the young bride, whose bust the children saw, and whose epitaph they translated.
Nathan told them that when the King’s Chapel was built there had been no quarries of stone opened. The stones for this building were split and hewed from boulders. By the time it was finished it was currently said and believed that there was not stone enough in the province for another church as big! He took them to the back of the church and showed them, on a little green, Franklin statue, placed in what was the yard of the school-house where he studied as a boy.
King’s Chapel was not popular with the puritan inhabitants of Boston. And, because the lower windows are square and look like port holes, the street boys of a century and a quarter ago nicknamed it “Christ’s Frigate,” somewhat irreverently. On the other side the street was once the school-house, where John Hancock and Sam Adams studied. And Nathan showed them where the “coast” was in winter, which was obstructed by the English officer whom the school boys called to account for his violation of their inalienable rights.
They went to church with their friend Mrs. Cradock, whom they had met at Nahant the day before, and from her house, in the afternoon, they went to Christ Church, which is the oldest church building in Boston now standing on the ground where it was built. It was the second Episcopalian church erected in Boston, and was built in 1723, several years before the present Old South. It is a brick edifice, and has long been known as the “North End Church.” In its day it was considered one of the chief architectural ornaments of the North End. The old steeple was blown down in the great gale of 1804, falling upon an old wooden building at the corner of Tileston Street, through which it crashed to the consternation of the tenants, who however escaped injury. The steeple was replaced from a design by Charles Bulfinch, which carefully preserved the proportion of the original. Its chime was the first in New England, and began to play its charming tunes in 1744.