London City

by Walter Besant

St. Paul’s Church is the cathedral of the diocese of London, and was so dedicated by its first founder. According to Beda, this was Ethelbert, King of Kent, “who had command over all the nations of the English as far as the river Humber.” His nephew, Sebert, King of the East Saxons, held London in 604, when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, sent Mellitus to preach Christianity north of the Thames. He does not seem to have succeeded very well, and after the deaths of Augustine, Ethelbert and Sebert, Mellitus was expelled. From that time for sixty years or more, we hear nothing of St. Paul’s, and the next bishops of the East Saxons do not seem to have lived in London. They converted the kings who made Rendlesham, Tillingham, and Tilbury their headquarters. The City within the Roman wall was probably but sparsely inhabited. The Anglo-Saxons disliked Roman sites, and especially hated the repair of walls. There is a tradition that Erkenwald, or Archibald, the fourth bishop, incited the Londoners to this task and himself built the northern gate, since named Bishopsgate. Another tradition relates that at his death, which is variously placed in 685 and 693, the citizens buried his body in the cathedral. In 1148, it was translated into a sumptuous tomb. Against the whole legend of St. Erkenwald, as it grew in the Middle Ages, there is so much of inconsistent anachronism to be alleged that we must pass it by, merely assuming that a bishop of that name comes fourth on the list, that he was designated by Ini, King of Wessex, a predecessor of Alfred, as “Erkenwald, my bishop,” and that he made a serious effort to restore the bishopric to the “bishop’s stool” of Mellitus.

Authentic history, however, does not begin till the time of King Alfred. Even here we cannot be certain of the name of the bishop for whom the King built or rebuilt the cathedral church, but it was probably Heathstan, or Ethelstan, who died in 898. It is not even certain that the old site was retained. When Alfred came to London he saw its capabilities as a bulwark against the Danes: but the Roman wall was empty. For thirty years, we read, London had lain desolate. Alfred repaired the wall. He probably built the church. He revived as much as he could the ancient memories. The two land gates were placed nearly, though not exactly, on the Roman sites—one, Bishopsgate, opening on the two great northern roads, and the other, Westgate, on the Watling Street. It is possible that he repaired the bridge. The church was placed in the triangular space cut off by the course of the Watling Street from the bridge through the City, and when the wards were divided this corner became the Warda Episcopi.

The bishop figures as an alderman in the first list of the wards which has come down to us. It must have been drawn up about forty years after the Norman Conquest, and is now preserved in the cathedral library. It is a list of the City lands which belonged to St. Paul’s, arranged in wards, of which twenty are enumerated. The first is the bishop’s. The bishop, at this time always a Norman, or Frenchman, as he was called, was probably but little acquainted with English, and his jurisdiction was exercised by a deputy, called in Latin prepositus, that is provost. A provost was the abbot’s deputy at Bury St. Edmund’s, and the title was later also assumed by other laymen who acted for ecclesiastical personages, as the provost of the Alderman of Portsoken, who was the Prior of Aldgate.

When William the Conqueror granted to the citizens the brief charter which is still at Guildhall, he addressed the bishop and the portreeve. The King, that is, wrote to the alderman who had charge of the ecclesiastical government, and to the alderman who had charge of the civil government:—“William, King, greets William, Bishop, and Gosfrith, Portreeve.” Bishop and Alderman William, a Norman who had been chaplain to Edward the Confessor, had succeeded Bishop Robert, also a Norman, in 1051. He was succeeded by Hugh de Orivalle, another Norman, in 1075; so we obtain approximately the date of the charter, namely, between 1066 and 1075. The date of the document in which we have mention of the Bishop’s ward was after 1108, from internal evidence, but probably before 1115.

The constitution of the cathedral was according to the system which has been aptly named “the old foundation.” This pattern was followed in other cathedrals throughout England wherever there was no monastery attached to the church; and as the municipal government of London was imitated in other cities, so the “Government Spirituell” of St. Paul’s was taken as a model at York, Chichester, Exeter, Wells, Hereford, Lincoln, and six or seven other churches where there were no monks. The services were conducted by priests, who held estates both singly and as a corporation. There were generally more canons than estates. At St. Paul’s there were thirty, and a majority of them had each a manor somewhere in the neighbourhood of London. There they lived like other lords of manors, with their wives and children, much respected, no doubt, for their “clergy,” or clerkly learning, in districts where none of their neighbours could read or write, except, perhaps, the parsons of the parish churches, who in many cases, like their patrons, had wives and children. Their chief anxieties besides those common to a country life were the fear of Danish incursions, and the chance of being able to leave their prebendal stalls to their sons. The care of the estates, both in the City and in places more distant from the church, constantly occupied the chapter. To it we owe the list of wards mentioned above. Newcourt tells us of a meeting of the canons in 1150, which was long remembered as a settlement of various important questions. It was known as the “Constitution concerning bread and beer.” Among the prebendal manors some are described in Domesday Book as being “held by the Canons for their food.” One of these is Willesden. There was a Canon of Willesden, but apart from his estate the rest of the manor was held by “villains,” their rent going towards the provision of bread and beer in the bakery and brewery at St. Paul’s. It was resolved in 1150 to break up the whole manor, in order to endow those canons who had previously depended only on “surplice fees.” Mapesbury, Brondesbury, and Brownswood may be named as being called from the first canons after this arrangement. Walter Map, in particular, is remembered still for his witty poems, in rhyming Latin, satirising the married clergy; and the name may be seen on a prebendal stall (12th on south side) in St. Paul’s.

THE POST OFFICE, ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, AND BULL AND MOUTH INN, LONDON

The staff of the cathedral consisted first of the dean; next to him were four archdeacons, London, Essex, Middlesex, and Colchester, to which, at the Reformation, St. Albans was added, to be transferred with the archdeaconries of Essex and Colchester to the new See of St. Albans in 1877. It should be observed that previously Essex came next after London in dignity and before Middlesex, Colchester, and St. Albans, a little historical point on which it would be easy to enlarge. After the archdeacons came the precentor “likewise called Cantor,” whose office it was “to look after the singing-men and singing”; the treasurer, whose office does not seem to have existed till after the Conquest; and the chancellor, who was at first called “magister scholarum,” and had charge of education in the City, with the duty of appointing the master of St. Paul’s School, “not,” says Newcourt, “that long after founded by Dean Colet,” but that which was endowed by Bishop Richard Belmeis or Balmes in the reign of Henry I. After these officers came the thirty canons, of whom there are some further notes below. In 1845 the canons, generally now described as “prebendaries,” were superseded by four canons residentiary, who with the dean and the archdeacons form the present chapter. They have no prebendal estates but are called canons. A college of minor canons was formed at an early period, and incorporated by charter of Richard II. in 1394. It consists of eight members, formerly twelve, answering to the Vicars at Wells. The close stands in the parishes of St. Augustine, St. Faith, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Gregory. The arms of the Dean and Chapter are “Gules, two swords, in saltire, proper; in chief the letter, D. or.” One sword, on a shield, is carved in many places and forms a kind of badge; the same sword, emblematic of St. Paul, appearing also in the arms of the City, where it is often mistaken for the dagger of Walworth.

It may be added here that there seems to be evidence that at first St. Paul’s was one of the three or four City parish churches; that the Dean and Chapter gradually divided the warda episcopi into smaller parishes and built churches on them, while the clergy of St. Paul’s ceased to perform parochial functions. It is not now reckoned parochial, though in rare cases marriages have been performed in it by special licence, and there is a register which begins in 1697, the year of the opening of the new church.

Before the Reformation the estates of the bishop, the dean, and the canons were very extensive, and formed almost a semicircle round the City, from Stepney on the east to Willesden on the west. Other estates were in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, while there were isolated holdings in all the City wards. The canons at first preserved their prebendal estates with jealous care, residing on them and, as has been said, hoping to leave them to their sons. After the enforcement of the celibacy of the clergy as one of the consequences of King John’s submission to the Pope, the canons leased away their estates until there was nothing left. Thus, in 1315, Robert Baldock leased Finsbury to the mayor and commons of London at £1 a year, and the lease was only terminated by the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1867. The manor of Portpoole formed the chief estate of the Lords Grey of Ruthin, and is now Gray’s Inn. Rugmere, part of which is Bloomsbury, part St. Giles’s, Wenlakesbarn, Ealdstreet, now Old Street, Hoxton, Cantlers, Islington, and the rest, were all leased away, and are now, for the most part, the principal endowments of wealthy noblemen. Cantlers, now Kentish town, paid £80 a year to the lord of the manor, now presumably to the Commissioners. The owner of the lease is the Marquis Camden. This is one example only. As late as the middle of thirteenth century we find mention of the families of canons. A very prominent member of the chapter in 1145 was prebendary of St. Pancras, Osbert “de Auco,” who was succeeded by his son, Robert, whose son, John, does not seem to have become a priest; and Robert de Auco was succeeded at his death by Walter, the son of the bishop. Before 1138 we meet with the names of Wlured and his two sons, all canons. Gervase of Canterbury, a canon, had a son, John. Richard, a canon, was son of Archdeacon Richard. The manor of Caddington Major, now called Aston Bury in Bedfordshire, was held by Roger the Archdeacon, son of Robert the Archdeacon. A little earlier we find that Ralph Flambard, appointed Bishop of Durham in 1099, who figures in the history of the Tower of London in the reign of Henry II., and who died in 1128, was prebendary of Tatenhall. His son, Elias, was prebendary of Sneating, near Kirkeby in Essex, where he was succeeded by William, son of Archdeacon Otho, at whose death Ralph, brother of Canon Elias, a younger son of the Bishop of Durham, succeeded to the stall. Of another of the married archdeacons, Nicholas Croceman, we read that he held Oxgate, and that his son, another Nicholas, succeeded him in both archdeaconry and canonry. One of the two Bishops Balmes had two sons, Henry, prebendary of Mora, and Walter, of Newington, in the reign of Henry II. The first bishop appointed by Richard I. was his treasurer, the son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely; he was one of the most eminent of those who held the See of London in the twelfth century, and figures as Bishop Richard Fitz Neal. In short, before the beginning of the thirteenth century we may assume that most of the secular clergy were married men, and the enforcement of celibacy, no doubt, was one of the causes of the unpopularity of the Church in London before the Reformation; while it led indirectly to the alienation of the prebendal estates.