“Gresham offered the shops rent-free, for a year, to such as would furnish them with wares and wax-lights, against the coming of the queen; and the proposal produced a very sumptuous display. Afterwards, the shops of the Exchange became the favourite resort of the fashionable of both sexes. The building was destroyed by the fire of 1666; and the divines of that day, according to their custom, pronounced this catastrophe a judgment on the avarice and unfair dealing of the merchants, and the pride, prodigality, and luxury of the purchasers and idlers, by which it was frequented and maintained.”
“Then the present Exchange is not the building erected by Sir Thomas?” said Ann.
“No, my dear,” replied Mr. Wilmot: “the first stone of the second fabric was laid by Charles the Second, who rode in state into the city for this purpose, in 1667. It bears the original title, and was erected in about three years, at the expence of £80,000.”
Mrs. Spencer remarked, that Gresham was a splendid benefactor to the city of London; for, besides the Royal Exchange, he left his magnificent residence in Bishopsgate-street, as a college for the benefit of the citizens of London. He thought that, as the inhabitants of that city possessed much money, a proportionate quantity of knowledge and learning should be diffused among them. He bequeathed annuities for public lectures in divinity, law, physic, and astronomy, geometry, music, and rhetoric: his house was appointed for the residence of the lecturer, and there the lectures were to be read. But Gresham College is now turned into the Excise Office.
“Did I understand you, Sir,” said Susan, “that the aisle of St. Paul’s was formerly used by the merchants of London, as a resort in which to transact business?”
“You may well ask the question, indeed,” answered Mr. Wilmot; “and, in replying to it, I shall first tell you, that, in the year 1441, the beautiful steeple of St. Paul’s was struck by lightning; (it was the loftiest in the kingdom;) and, together with the bells and roof, was utterly destroyed. Never did parties in religion run higher than about this period of the reign of Elizabeth. The manner in which this accident was commented upon, by adverse disputants, not only marks the temper of the times; but informs us to how many purposes this building, professedly devoted to divine worship, was appropriated.
“A papist immediately dispersed a paper, representing this accident as a judgment from Heaven, for the discontinuance of the meeting, and other services, which used to be performed in the church, at different hours of the day and night. Pilkington, bishop of Durham, who preached at Paul’s Cross, after the accident, was equally disposed to regard it as a judgment; but on the sins of London in general, and particularly on certain abuses, by which the church had formerly been polluted. In a tract, published in answer to that of the papists, he afterwards gave an animated description of the practices of which this cathedral had been the theatre; curious, in the present day, as a record of forgotten customs.
“He said, ‘No place had been more abused than St. Paul’s had been, nor more against the receiving of Christ’s gospel; wherefore it was more wonderful that God had spared it so long, than that he overthrew it now. * * From the top of the spire, at coronations, or other solemn triumphs, some, for vain-glory, had thrown themselves down by a rope, and so killed themselves, vainly to please other men’s eyes. At the battlements of the steeple, sundry times, were used their popish anthems, to call upon their gods, with the torch and taper, in the evenings. In the top of one of the pinnacles was Lollard’s Tower, where many an innocent soul had been cruelly terminated and murdered. In the middest alley was their long censer, reaching from the roof to the ground; as though the Holy Ghost came down in their censing, in likeness of a dove. In the arches, men complained of wrong and delayed judgments in ecclesiastical causes; and divers had been condemned there by Annas and Caiphas, for Christ’s cause. Their images hung on every wall, and pillar, and door, with their pilgrimages, and worshipping of them; passing over their massing and many altars, and the rest of their popish service.
“‘The south-side alley was for usury and popery; the north for simony; and the horse-fair in the midst, for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murders, and conspiracies. The font, for ordinary payments of money, as well known to all men as the beggar knows his dish; so that without and within, above the ground and under, over the roof and beneath, from the top of the steeple and spire down to the floor, not one spot was free from wickedness.’
“How the divines of that age reconciled these violents philippics against those who differed from them in religious views, with the injunction left by the apostle, in his masterly delineation of Christian charity, is not for me to determine,” said Mr. Wilmot. “You will observe, that the practice of making St. Paul’s a kind of exchange, for transactions of all kinds of business, and a place of meeting for idlers of all sorts, is here alluded to: it is frequently mentioned by writers of this and the two succeeding reigns; and when, and by what means the custom was put an end to, does not appear.