The famous Paul's Cross, like many others in various parts of the kingdom (afterwards converted to the same purpose,) was doubtless at first a mere common cross, and might be coeval with the Church. When it was covered and used as a pulpit cross, we are not informed. Stowe describes it in his time, "as a pulpit-crosse of timber, mounted upon steppes of stone, and covered with leade, standing in the church-yard, the very antiquitie whereof was to him unknowne." We hear of its being in use as early as the year 1259, when Henry III., in person commanded the mayor to swear before him every stripling of twelve years old and upwards, to be true to him and his heirs. Here in 1299, Ralph de Baldoc, dean of St. Paul's, cursed all those who had searched, in the church, of St. Martin in the Fields, for a hoard of gold, &c. Before this cross in 1483, was brought, divested of all her splendour, Jane Shore, the charitable, the merry concubine of Edward IV., and, after his death, of his favourite, the unfortunate Lord Hastings. After the loss of her protectors, she fell a victim to the malice of crook-backed Richard. He was disappointed (by her excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the severity of the church: she was carried to the bishop's palace, clothed in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted to the cathedral, and the cross, before which she made a confession of her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations of a youthful monarch, the handsomest man of his time. On his death she was reduced to necessity, scorned by the world, and cast off by her husband, with whom she was paired in her childish years, and forced to fling herself into the arms of Hastings. "In her penance she went," says Holinshed "in countenance and pase demure, so womanlie, that, albeit she were out of all araie, save her kirtle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the woondering of the people cast a comlie rud in hir cheeks, (of which she before had most misse) that hir great shame won hir much praise among those that were more amorous of hir bodie than curious of hir soule." She lived to a great age, but in great distress and miserable poverty; deserted even by those to whom she had, during prosperity, done the most essential services.
From this time the Cross continually occurs in history. "It was used not only for the instruction of mankind by the doctrine of the preacher, but for every purpose, political or ecclesiastical; for giving force to oaths; for promulgating of laws, or rather the royal pleasure; for royal contracts of marriage; for the emission of papal bulls; for anathematizing sinners; for benedictions; for exposing of penitents under the censure of the church; for recantations; for the private ends of the ambitious; and for the defaming of those who had incurred the displeasure of crowned heads."
Bishop King preached the last sermon here, of any note, before James I., and his court on Midlent Sunday, 1620. The object of the sermon was the repairing of the cathedral; and the ceremony was conducted with so much magnificence, that the prelate exclaims, in a part of his sermon,—"But will it almost be believed, that a King should come from his court to this crosse, where princes seldom or never come, and that comming to bee in a state, with a kinde of sacred pompe and procession, accompanied with all the faire flowers of his field, and the fairest rose (the Queen) of his owne garden!" The cross was demolished by order of Parliament in 1643, executed by the willing hands of Isaac Pennington, the fanatical Lord Mayor of that year, who died a convicted regicide in the Tower. It stood at the north-east end of St. Paul's Churchyard; a print of the cross, and likewise the shrouds, where the company sat in wet weather, may be seen in Speed's Theatre of Great Britain.
J.R.S.
ADA.
(For the Mirror.)
She stood in the midst of that gorgeous throng,
Her praise was the theme of every tongue;
Warriors were there, whose glance of fire