The enumeration of the jewels, and precious stones, and gold and silver ornaments presented to St. Paul's by its various pious benefactors, takes up twenty-eight pages of Dugdale's Monasticon.
The dimensions of Old St. Paul's in the year 1315 were:
| Feet. | |
| Length | 690 |
| Breadth | 130 |
| Height of nave | 102 |
| Length of nave | 150 |
The height of the gilt ball on the top of the dome, (which was large enough to hold ten bushels of corn inside) from the ground, was 520 feet and it supported a cross, which made the entire height to the top of the cross, 534 feet. The area occupied by the edifice of Old St. Paul's was three and a half acres, one and one-half rood and 6 perches. The walls of the present Cathedral are 1,500 feet in circuit, and enclose five-eighths of an acre, or about one-fifth of the space of the old St. Paul's. In fine, the present Cathedral is in every way inferior to the old one, and in some places it is very tawdy in decoration, while the Old St. Paul's was in many respects a finer cathedral than St. Peter's, and twenty feet deeper.
DESTRUCTION OF OLD ST. PAUL'S.
In 1561 the steeple of Old St. Paul's was burnt down, a few years after Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and it was subsequently decided to rebuild the Cathedral, and Inigo Jones, a far superior architect to Wren, was chosen for the task. In 1633, Archbishop Laud laid the first stone of Inigo Jones's Cathedral, which was destroyed by fire in 1666. In 1643 the building was finished at an expense of £100,000. This Cathedral was architecturally and in every way superior to that built afterward by Wren, but was as much inferior to the old Cathedral of the Middle Ages, which Wren sought to improve upon.
It is believed that modern European Freemasonry was first founded among the workmen who were employed in rebuilding St. Paul's, from the fact of a number of the stone masons meeting together during the work in a social fashion, and from this casual association it is stated that the Lodge of Antiquity, of which Sir Christopher Wren was Master, originated, the occasion being the laying of the highest or lantern stone of the Cathedral in 1710—and it is stated that from this Lodge of Antiquity all the other Lodges of modern Europe have sprung.
The Cathedral contains monuments to Nelson, who is buried in a wooden coffin taken from the mainmast of the French Admiral's ship captured at the battle of the Nile the very same ship in which the boy Casabianca, the Admiral's son, "stood on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled." Nelson lies close to Wellington, and other illustrious men. His coffin is enclosed in a sarcophagus made by order of Cardinal Wolsey for Henry VIII.
Wellington is buried in the crypt of the Cathedral, in a sarcophagus made of Cornish porphyry, and near him is his old subordinate, the Irish Sir Thomas Picton, who commanded the Fighting Fifth Division at Waterloo. Queen Anne, who used to come to St. Paul's in great state and procession to thank God for the victories won for her by the Duke of Marlborough, and whom she afterwards betrayed—has a bronze statue erected in the pediment of the Cathedral.