When Braybrooke, half a millennium ago, was elevated to the episcopal bench, London was a comparatively small city, encircled by two miles of walls, gates, and ditch, with but one bridge over the Thames—that built by Peter of Colechurch, with its movable centre for the passage of vessels. The Tower was the Court and king's residence; with Baynard's Castle, in Thames Street; the magnificent Palace of the Savoy, the Monastery of the Knights Hospitallers, in Clerkenwell, and many another noble edifice lay in ruins, demolished by the Wat Tyler insurgents; the city was crowded with monasteries and churches; and the streets presented a mingled crowd of nobles, monks, friars, priests, and merchant burghers.
His cathedral was that which had risen on the ruins of the one destroyed by fire in the reign of the Conqueror, which had been 200 years in course of erection, and now stood forth a grand building, covering four acres of ground, with its Norman nave, two transepts, its pointed Gothic choir, its spire, 510 feet in height, and its beautiful Ladye Chapel, majestic in its magnitude, and beautiful in some of its details; with St. Paul's cross outside, where, every Sunday, some eloquent friar or priest addressed the citizens; and where many a memorable political sermon has been preached. On the northern side, near Warwick Lane, stood his residence, the Bishop's palace, described as being "a stately and spacious pile."
Internally he found the ecclesiastics in a lax state of discipline, and "the house of God a den of thieves." The cathedral was devoted more to secular than to religious uses. "The south alley for usury, the north for simony, and a horse fair in the midst, for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murthers, and conspiracies; and the font for the payment of money;" which were associated with the shooting of arrows, ball playing, and deeds even more reprehensible than these. These abuses he set himself to correct, and effected a great reformation. The sacred edifice was also a sort of theatre, where mystery and miracle plays were performed, the stage consisting of three platforms, the upper representing the Creator, surrounded by angels; the second occupied by apostles, saints, and martyrs; and the lower presenting the mouth of hell, vomiting flames and smoke, and resounding with the shrieks of the lost. But it pleased the taste of the age that the monarch of the nether regions should correspond with the clown of the modern pantomime; and in the midst of solemn passages, the devil, with a troop of his imps, would issue forth, to perform all sorts of antics, and regale the ears of the audience with drolleries, filth, and what would now be considered blasphemy. With these representations the bishop did not interfere, considering them the only mode of appealing to the hearts and consciences of the ignorant multitude; unless, indeed, he sanctioned the petition of St. Paul's Players to Richard II., to prohibit ignorant and inexperienced persons from "acting the History of the Old Testament to the prejudice of the clergy of the Church." A favourite device of these plays was the descent of a white dove from an aperture of the roof, with the swinging of censers, to represent the descent of the Third Person in the Trinity.
On the surrender of the chancellorship by Sir Richard Scrope, 1382, "Robert Braybrooke, Bishopp of London," says Speed, "was made chancellor in his place. This act of the King's was displeasant to the whole realme, and one of the first things by which hee fell into dislike, it being among the infelicities of King Richard that those times were too full of sower and impatient censors for a Prince of so calme a temper, and as yet unseasoned in yeares, but hee onely held the office a yeare."
The distinguishing characteristic of Braybrooke's career was his unrelenting persecution of the Lollards. It was enacted, 5 Richard II., that any person preaching against the Catholic Faith should be imprisoned until he could "justify himself;" and 2 Henry IV. that all persons "suspected" of heresy should be imprisoned until they were "canonically purged," or until they abjured their errors, and that if they persisted in their heresy they should be delivered to the secular arm and "burnt to death before the people." Toleration was a word not known in that age. The oppressed ever cried out for liberty of conscience, whether Romanist or Reformer, but when they became the dominant power they were alike intolerant; and the cruelties of the bishop to the Lollards must be ascribed to the spirit of the age, backed by his own intense conviction that the Romanist was the one "sole Apostolic Church," and that to destroy the enemies who were beleaguering her was doing a service to God.
The bishop appears to have always been on friendly terms with the citizens of London, and was, with the Duke of Gloucester, instrumental in the reconciliation of King Richard and the Corporation after their serious quarrel about a loan of £1,000, afterwards heading a procession of 400 citizens on horseback to tender their submission, on which occasion a fountain of wine was set playing at the door of the cathedral, and the streets presented an animated spectacle, with streaming banners and tapestries hanging in front of the houses, the whole enlivened with instrumental music.
Notwithstanding his conservative sentiments, he welcomed the landing of Bolingbrooke, assisted actively in the deposition of Richard, was one of the signers of the document consigning him to perpetual imprisonment, which meant death, within the walls of "bloody Pomfret," and crowned the usurper; afterwards conducting a service in St. Paul's, at which King Henry was present, when the corpse of the murdered Richard was exposed there, to certify to the citizens that he was really dead, and obviate the possibility of revolts in his name.
Bishop Braybrooke died in the year 1404 (his epitaph says 1405), and he was buried in the Ladye Chapel of his cathedral, under "a faire marble stone inlaide with letters made every one of a several piece of brasse." Two-and-a-half centuries after his burial the cathedral was destroyed in the great fire of London, and on the removal of the rubbish for the rebuilding the tomb was found open, with the slab broken. "The body," as Camden states, "was found entire, the skin still inclosing the bones and fleshy parts; only in the breast there was a hole (made, I suppose, by accident) through which one might view and handle his lungs. The skin was of deep tawny colour and the body very light, as appeared to all who came to view and touch it, it being exposed in a coffin for some time without any offensive smell: and then reinterred."