Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
From a painting by Sir G. Kneller in the National Portrait Gallery, London
(Page 38)

Up in the North, on the other hand, in Scotland and in Northumbria, where Christianity had been brought by St. Columba and his followers, who, as you remember, came from Ireland, it was a very much longer time before the Church would admit the Papal claims, though at last it did so. And St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, who founded the Northumbrian Church, being missionaries from the ancient British Church, which St. Columba represented, did not feel obliged to obey the Pope in the same way that St. Augustine did. It would take me too long to tell you about the differences that existed between the Church in the North and that in the South, the chief of which was that they did not keep the festival of Easter on the same day. The Church of St. Augustine, following the example of Rome, kept it on one day; the Church of St. Columba, following the example of the British and Eastern Churches, observed it some ten days later, as the Russians and Greeks do still.

But as time went on the rule of the Pope began to weigh heavily upon the English people. They thought that they had the right to elect their own Bishops and Archbishops, while the Pope thought that he had the right to do so, and at first he very often sent foreigners to fill the English Sees.

Sometimes, indeed very often, they were good men. The saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln came from Savoy. Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury was a Greek, who came from far-away Tarsus, the city of St. Paul. But some of them were bad men, haughty and insolent, who wanted to override English laws and English freedom. And when this happened the people were apt to rebel, and declare that only English Bishops should rule in the Church of England.

Things came to a crisis when, in the thirteenth century, a great many Italians came over to England, and were given some of the highest offices in the country. Among them were two brothers of good birth, Peter of Savoy and his brother Boniface. Peter, who had a grand house in the Strand, called Savoy House, was made a Privy Councillor, and was given the chief seat at the King’s Council Board. Boniface, who was a priest, was, by the wish of the Pope, made Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, Boniface of Savoy had mistaken his vocation. He was young, and handsome, and full of roistering spirits; he would have made a good soldier, and doubtless his men would have admired him for his reckless daring; but he was haughty, and insolent, and overbearing, and sadly lacking in common sense—not fit to be placed in the great position in which he found himself.

He brought with him a band of armed retainers, who, when they rode through the streets of London, robbed the stalls in the market-places as though they had been wild marauders, instead of the servants of a Christian Bishop. Their Master behaved no better than they did. There was in the City a monastery called St. Bartholomew’s, in Smithfield. He resolved to visit it, and, appearing at the gate with his men, demanded an entrance. For some reason the Prior resented this—perhaps Boniface’s insolent manner made him angry; perhaps he felt that it was the Bishop of London’s place to inspect his monastery, and not the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. At any rate, he refused to admit the Prelate.

And what do you think happened? Without more ado the Archbishop clenched his fist, and knocked the Prior to the ground. It was a foolish as well as a wicked act, for of course the news of what had been done spread through London, and the citizens began to say to each other that a man who could do a deed like that was not fit to be an Archbishop.

A little time afterwards, Boniface determined to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, and call upon the Bishop of London for his tithes or first-fruits. He may have been acting quite within his rights to do this: I do not know; but the citizens, at any rate, made up their minds that, if he came with his demands to their Cathedral Church, he would find out what they thought of him. So the big bell was rung, and they gathered round the Cross in their thousands. Archbishop Boniface heard of this in his Palace at Lambeth, and, although he would not be turned from his purpose, he put on a suit of armour under his robes before he ventured near the Cathedral. When he arrived there, he found, to his rage, that the citizens had closed the gates against him, and instead of being awed by his angry remonstrances, they jeered and hooted at him, and even threatened him with violence, so that at last he thought it wise to go home.

But worse was to follow. Now that an Italian Archbishop sat on the throne of Canterbury, a great many Italian priests came over, and were given the best livings in the Church. Their manners were no better than those of their countryman, and the citizens became so enraged at the behaviour of these foreigners, and at the unjust way in which the Pope had forced them upon them, that they determined that not one of them should set foot in the church that they looked on as especially their own.