In All Hallows, Bread Street, now pulled down, was baptised the greatest poet of our country, John Milton. For this cause alone the church should never have been suffered to fall into decay. It was wickedly and wantonly destroyed for the sake of the money its site would fetch in the year 1877. When you visit Bow Church, Cheapside, look for the tablet to the memory of Milton, now fixed in that church. It belonged to All Hallows, Bread Street.
Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn:
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty—in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go;
To make a third she joined the other two.
Christ Church, Newgate, stands on part of the site once occupied by the splendid church of the Grey Friars. Four Queens lie buried here, and an immense number of princes and great soldiers and nobles.
Very few people, of the thousands who daily walk up and down Fleet Street, know anything about the statue in the wall of St. Dunstan's Church. This is the statue of Queen Elizabeth which formerly stood on the west side of Lud Gate. This gate was taken down in the year 1760, and some time after the statue was placed here. One of the sights of London before the old church was pulled down was a clock with the figure of a savage on each side who struck the hours and the quarters on a bell with clubs. London has seldom been without some such show. As long ago as the fifteenth century there was a clock with figures in Fleet Street. Tyndal the Reformer, and Baxter the famous Nonconformist were preachers in this church.
St. Mary le Bow, was so called because it was the first church in the City built on arches—bows—of stone. The church is most intimately connected with the life and history of the City. Bow Bell rang for the closing of the shops. If the ringer was late the prentice boys reminded him pretty plainly.
'Clarke of the Bow Bell with thy yellow lockes:
In thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.'
To which the clerk replied:
'Children of Chepe, hold you all stille:
For you shall have Bow Bell ring at your will.'
St. Mary's Woolnoth was for many years the church of the Rev. John Newton, once the poet Cowper's friend. He began his life in the merchant service and was for many years engaged in the slave trade.
For these reasons—their antiquity, their history, their associations—the destruction of the City churches ought to be resisted with the utmost determination. You who read this page may very possibly become parishioners of such a church. Learn that, without the consent of the parishioners, no church can be destroyed. A meeting of parishioners must be called: they must vote and decide. Do not forget this privilege. The time may come when your vote and your's alone, may retain for your posterity a church rich in history and venerable with the traditions of the past.