Dr. Tenison, who then held S. James’s jointly with S. Martin’s, obtained the timbers of the chapel and used them in erecting the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Conduit Street,[187] which was also included in the enormous parish of S. Martin. S. Bennet, Paul’s Wharf,[188] was finished in this year; picturesque and characteristic in its red brick, stone carving, well suited to its situation, then less cramped and overshadowed than it is now.
Its rector, Mr. Peter Lane, had experienced all the greater perils that had lately befallen the City; presented to the living in 1662, he steadily ministered there through the terrible time of the plague, and was then burnt out by the Great Fire. He lived, however, to return and to minister for five years in the new church built by Sir Christopher. In this church Inigo Jones was buried, in the darkest days of the Rebellion.
The handsome Church of S. James’s, Garlickhithe, with its curious columnated steeple, and its projecting clock surmounted by a figure, is also of this date.
It was well that Sir Christopher had been able to get even this much of his numerous works finished, for the winter of 1683–4 was of exceptional severity. On December 23 the Thames was frozen over; on January 9, Evelyn[189] ‘went crosse the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to beare not only streetes of booths in which they roasted meate and had divers shops of wares, quite acrosse in a towne, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over.’ Evelyn himself drove across it to Lambeth to dine with Archbishop Sancroft, who had succeeded Sheldon in 1677. ‘London,’—says Evelyn a few days later in words which, alas, still describe but too vividly a genuine ‘London fog,’—
‘by reason of the excessive coldnesse hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steame of the sea-coale that hardly could one see crosse the streetes, and this filling the lungs with its grosse particles exceedingly obstructed the breath so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and other tradesmen worke, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents.’
In addition to this dismal state of things ‘the small pox was very mortal.’
For eight weeks no foreign posts reached the city, for ‘the very sea was so locked up with ice that no vessell could stir out or come in.’ It was not until April was advanced that there was any sign of spring. It was certainly no building weather, and must have sharply tried the rising Choir of S. Paul’s. Sir Christopher made a journey to Chichester on the invitation of the old Bishop, Guy Carleton, to examine the spire of the Cathedral. The whole building had suffered terribly under the wanton sack of Sir William Waller and his men, and required extensive repair.
Sir Christopher
‘for about two hours viewed the tower at the north west angle both without and within, and above and below, and observed the great want of repairs especially in the great western tower; made his report; proposing to clear away the ruin of the fallen tower; to pull down the south western tower; to shorten the nave by one arch, and to substitute a fair built west end of his own.’[190]
CHICHESTER SPIRE.