Tales of English Minsters: St. Paul's

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

And they were in such deadly earnest that it actually came about that, when two of these priests attempted to enter the precincts one day, the people crowded into the churchyard and killed them on the spot. After this they rushed to Lambeth, and besieged the Palace there, uttering such threats that Boniface, the ‘Handsome Archbishop’, as they called him, was glad to escape as best he could, and fly abroad for safety. He never came back, and we can fancy that the Pope was more careful in future whom he sent to England, for the citizens of London had taught him a lesson, and shown him that he could not lord it over them with impunity.

Just one more story about these old days, and then we must come to the St. Paul’s that we know.

It was in the reign of King Edward III., and the Church of England had lost its first purity, and grown rich and corrupt. Many of the Bishops and clergy had forgotten what they had been made ministers of God for, and, instead of thinking about the needs of their people, they thought only of how much wealth they could heap up for themselves, and how luxuriously they could live.

The Reformation was yet a long way off, but there were two men in the country who wanted to put an end to this state of affairs, and they wanted to do so for two very different reasons. You have all heard of John Wyclif, the earliest of the English Reformers. He was one of those two men, and he wanted to weaken the power of Rome, because he saw that the poor people of this country were being robbed, in order to enrich the Pope and his favourites, who, as we have seen, were put into high places in the Church. So he began to point out the abuses that existed, and to urge people not to submit to them any longer.

The other man was a powerful Noble, ‘John of Gaunt—Time-honoured Lancaster,’ as Shakespeare calls him; and I am afraid that the reason why he wanted the power taken from the clergy was, that he hoped that when they could no longer collect great sums of money from the common people, he and his brother Nobles might be able to do so instead.

So when, one day, Wyclif was summoned to appear before the Bishop of London, Bishop Courtenay, to answer for the heretical notions which it was reported that he was spreading, the Duke of Lancaster espoused his cause, and stood by his side.

It must have been a curious scene—the grave Bishop in his robes, seated on his throne, with his advisers round him; the thin, worn priest from Lutterworth, with his pale, studious face and black gown; and the proud Noble, who was, at that time, one of the most powerful men in the country.

Some of the citizens had crept into the church, to hear what the monk had to say, but they did not hear him say very much, for the Duke of Lancaster soon began to wrangle with the Bishop. He hated the clergy, because he was envious of their position and the power that they had over the simple folk, and his pride could not brook the questions that the Bishop put to his friend. At last he lost his temper altogether, and, after speaking very rudely to the Prelate, he threatened to drag him out of the church by the hair of his head. In an instant, the listening citizens sprang to their feet. They were not very interested in Wyclif’s reforms—probably, at that time, they did not know very much about them—but this powerful Duke was no friend of theirs, and they were enraged at the thought that he dared come into their Cathedral and threaten their Bishop. With one accord they rushed to the belfry and tolled the great bell, and when, as was their duty, crowds of other citizens gathered in the churchyard to see what had happened, they told them, in excited tones, that John of Gaunt was in the church with his followers, and threatening to lay hands on the Bishop.

Then a perfect tempest arose. Some of the crowd rushed into the church, declaring that they would murder the Duke; others went off to his Palace in the Strand, determined to break into it and pillage it, in order to punish him for his insolence. And they were in such deadly earnest that they would have carried out both threats had not Bishop Courtenay himself interfered, and saved his enemy from their violence.

Just before the Reformation the great church was at the very height of its glory—from an outward point of view, at least. We read that there were no less than one hundred and thirty clergy who were supposed to minister there, and that there were so many people connected with it—schoolmasters, schoolboys, singing-men, choir-boys, bedesmen, bookbinders, sextons, gardeners, bell-ringers, etc.—that employment must have been given to more than a thousand people. It all seems very grand and glorious; but if we read further, we find that it had grown just like the Temple in our Lord’s time: there was a great deal of outward magnificence, and yet the very purpose that the church had been built for—the Service and Worship of God, was in danger of being forgotten. Instead of being kept as God’s house, entirely for His Worship, we find that the great nave was the fashionable meeting-place of the good folk of London, and they used it as we should use a promenade to-day.