Old and New London, Volume I / A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places

by Walter Thornbury

OLD ST. PAUL'S.—THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST

Camden, the Elizabethan historian, revived an old tradition that a Roman temple to Diana once stood where St. Paul's was afterwards built; and he asserts that in the reign of Edward III. an incredible quantity of ox-skulls, stag-horns, and boars' tusks, together with some sacrificial vessels, were exhumed on this site. Selden, a better Orientalist than Celtic scholar (Charles I.), derived the name of London from two Welsh words, "Llan-den"—church of Diana. Dugdale, to confirm these traditions, drags a legend out of an obscure monkish chronicle, to the effect that during the Diocletian persecution, in which St. Alban, a centurion, was martyred, the Romans demolished a church standing on the site of St. Paul's, and raised a temple to Diana on its ruins, while in Thorny Island, Westminster, St. Peter, in the like manner, gave way to Apollo. These myths are, however, more than doubtful.

Sir Christopher Wren's excavations for the foundation of modern St. Paul's entirely refuted these confused stories, to which the learned and the credulous had paid too much deference. He dug down to the river-level, and found neither ox-bone nor stag-horn. What he did find, however, was curious. It was this:—1. Below the mediæval graves Saxon stone coffins and Saxon tombs, lined with slabs of chalk. 2. Lower still, British graves, and in the earth around the ivory and boxwood skewers that had fastened the Saxons' woollen shrouds. 3. At the same level with the Saxon graves, and also deeper, Roman funeral urns. These were discovered as deep as eighteen feet. Roman lamps, tear vessels, and fragments of sacrificial vessels of Samian ware were met with chiefly towards the Cheapside corner of the churchyard.

There had evidently been a Roman cemetery outside this Prætorian camp, and beyond the ancient walls of London, the wise nation, by the laws of the Twelve Tables, forbidding the interment of the dead within the walls of a city. There may have been a British or a Saxon temple here; for the Church tried hard to conquer and consecrate places where idolatry had once triumphed. But the Temple of Diana was moonshine from the beginning, and moonshine it will ever remain. The antiquaries were, however, angry with Wren for the logical refutation of their belief. Dr. Woodward (the "Martinus Scriblerus" of Pope and his set) was especially vehement at the slaying of his hobby, and produced a small brass votive image of Diana, that had been found between the Deanery and Blackfriars. Wren, who could be contemptuous, disdained a reply, and so the matter remained till 1830, when the discovery of a rude stone altar, with an image of Diana, under the foundation of the new Goldsmith's Hall, Foster Lane, Cheapside, revived the old dispute, yet did not help a whit to prove the existence of the supposed temple to the goddess of moonshine.

The earliest authenticated church of St. Paul's was built and endowed by Ethelbert, King of East Kent, with the sanction of Sebert, King of the East Angles; and the first bishop who preached within its walls was Mellitus, the companion of St. Augustine, the first Christian missionary who visited the heathen Saxons. The visit of St. Paul to England in the time of Boadicea's war, and that of Joseph of Arimathea, are mere monkish legends. The Londoners again became pagan, and for thirty-eight years there was no bishop at St. Paul's, till a brother of St. Chad of Lichfield came and set his foot on the images of Thor and Wodin. With the fourth successor of Mellitus, Saint Erkenwald, wealth and splendour returned to St. Paul's. This zealous man worked miracles both before and after his death. He used to be driven about in a cart, and one legend says that he often preached to the woodmen in the wild forests that lay to the north of London. On a certain day one of the cart-wheels came off in a slough. The worthy confessor was in a dilemma. The congregation under the oaks might have waited for ever, but the one wheel left was equal to the occasion, for it suddenly grew invested with special powers of balancing, and went on as steadily as a velocipede with the smiling saint. This was pretty well, but still nothing to what happened after the good man's death.

St. Erkenwald departed at last in the odour of sanctity at his sister's convent at Barking. Eager to get hold of so valuable a body, the Chertsey monks instantly made a dash for it, pursued by the equally eager clergy of St. Paul's, who were fully alive to the value of their dead bishop, whose shrine would become a money-box for pilgrim's offerings. The London priests, by a forced march, got first to Barking and bore off the body; but the monks of Chertsey and the nuns of Barking followed, wringing their hands and loudly protesting against the theft. The river Lea, sympathising with their prayers, rose in a flood. There was no boat, no bridge, and a fight for the body seemed imminent. A pious man present, however, exhorted the monks to peace, and begged them to leave the matter to heavenly decision. The clergy of St. Paul's then broke forth into a litany. The Lea at once subsided, the cavalcade crossed at Stratford, the sun cast down its benediction, and the clergy passed on to St. Paul's with their holy spoil. From that time the shrine of Erkenwald became a source of wealth and power to the cathedral.

The Saxon kings, according to Dean Milman, were munificent to St. Paul's. The clergy claimed Tillingham, in Essex, as a grant from King Ethelbert, and that place still contributes to the maintenance of the cathedral. The charters of Athelstane are questionable, but the places mentioned in them certainly belonged to St. Paul's till the Ecclesiastical Commissioners broke in upon that wealth; and the charter of Canute, still preserved, and no doubt authentic, ratifies the donations of his Saxon predecessors.

William the Conqueror's Norman Bishop of London was a good, peace-loving man, who interceded with the stern monarch, and recovered the forfeited privileges of the refractory London citizens. For centuries—indeed, even up to the end of Queen Mary's reign—the mayor, aldermen, and crafts used to make an annual procession to St. Paul's, to visit the tomb of good Bishop William in the nave. In 1622 the Lord Mayor, Edward Barkham, caused these quaint lines to be carved on the bishop's tomb:—