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

by Walter Thornbury

"Walkers, whosoe'er ye bee,
If it prove you chance to see,
Upon a solemn scarlet day,
The City senate pass this way,
Their grateful memory for to show,
Which they the reverent ashes owe
Of Bishop Norman here inhumed,
By whom this city has assumed
Large privileges; those obtained
By him when Conqueror William reigned.
This being by Barkham's thankful mind renewed,
Call it the monument of gratitude."

The ruthless Conqueror granted valuable privileges to St. Paul's. He freed the church from the payment of Danegeld, and all services to the Crown. His words (if they are authentic) are—"Some lands I give to God and the church of St. Paul's, in London, and special franchises, because I wish that this church may be free in all things, as I wish my soul to be on the day of judgment." In this same reign the Primate Lanfranc held a great council at St. Paul's—a council which Milman calls "the first full Ecclesiastical Parliament of England." Twelve years after (1087), the year the Conqueror died, fire, that persistent enemy of St. Paul's, almost entirely consumed the cathedral.

Bishop Maurice set to work to erect a more splendid building, with a vast crypt, in which the valuable remains of St. Erkenwald were enshrined. William of Malmesbury ranked it among the great buildings of his time. One of the last acts of the Conqueror was to give the stone of a Palatine tower (on the subsequent site of Blackfriars) for the building. The next bishop, De Balmeis, is said to have devoted the whole of his revenues for twenty years to this pious work. Fierce Rufus—no friend of monks—did little; but the milder monarch, Henry I., granted exemption of toll to all vessels, laden with stone for St. Paul's, that entered the Fleet.

To enlarge the area of the church, King Henry gave part of the Palatine Tower estate, which was turned into a churchyard and encircled with a wall, which ran along Carter Lane to Creed Lane, and was freed of buildings. The bishop, on his part, contributed to the service of the altar the rents of Paul's Wharf, and for a school gave the house of Durandus, at the corner of Bell Court. On the bishop's death, the Crown seized his wealth, and the bishop's boots were carried to the Exchequer full of gold and silver. St. Bernard, however, praises him, and says: "It was not wonderful that Master Gilbert should be a bishop; but that the Bishop of London should live like a poor man, that was magnificent."

In the reign of Stephen a dreadful fire broke out and raged from London Bridge to St. Clement Danes. In this fire St. Paul's was partially destroyed. The Bishop, in his appeals for contributions to the church, pleaded that this was the only London church specially dedicated to St. Paul. The citizens of London were staunch advocates of King Stephen against the Empress Maud, and at their folkmote, held at the Cheapside end of St. Paul's, claimed the privilege of naming a monarch.

In the reign of Henry II. St. Paul's was the scene of a strange incident connected with the quarrel between the King and that ambitious Churchman, the Primate Becket. Gilbert Foliot, the learned and austere Bishop of London, had sided with the King and provoked the bitter hatred of Becket. During the celebration of mass a daring emissary of Becket had the boldness to thrust a roll, bearing the dreaded sentence of excommunication against Foliot, into the hands of the officiating priest, and at the same time to cry aloud—"Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury!" Foliot for a time defied the interdict, but at last bowed to his enemy's authority, and refrained from entering the Church of St. Paul's.

The reign of Richard I. was an eventful one to St. Paul's. In 1191, when Cœur de Lion was in Palestine, Prince John and all the bishops met in the nave of St. Paul's to arraign William de Longchamp, one of the King's regents, of many acts of tyranny. In the reign of their absentee monarch the Londoners grew mutinous, and their leader, William Fitzosbert, or Longbeard, denounced their oppressors from Paul's Cross. These disturbances ended in the siege of Bow Church, where Fitzosbert had fortified himself, and by the burning alive of him and other ringleaders. It was at this period that Dean Radulph de Diceto, a monkish chronicler of learning, built the Deanery, "inhabited," says Milman, "after him, by many men of letters;" before the Reformation, by the admirable Colet; after the Reformation by Alexander Nowell, Donne, Sancroft (who rebuilt the mansion after the Great Fire), Stillingfleet, Tillotson, W. Sherlock, Butler, Secker, Newton, Van Mildert, Copleston, and Milman.

St. Paul's was also the scene of one of those great meetings of prelates, abbots, deans, priors, and barons that finally led to King John's concession of Magna Charta. On this solemn occasion—so important for the progress of England—the Primate Langton displayed the old charter of Henry I. to the chief barons, and made them sacredly pledge themselves to stand up for Magna Charta and the liberties of England.

One of the first acts of King Henry III. was to hold a council in St. Paul's, and there publish the Great Charter. Twelve years after, when a Papal Legate enthroned himself in St. Paul's, he was there openly resisted by Cantelupe, Bishop of Worcester.

Papal power in this reign attained its greatest height in England. On the death of Bishop Roger, an opponent of these inroads, the King gave orders that out of the episcopal revenue 1,500 poor should be feasted on the day of the conversion of St. Paul, and 1,500 lights offered in the church. The country was filled with Italian prelates. An Italian Archbishop of Canterbury, coming to St. Paul's, with a cuirass under his robes, to demand first-fruits from the Bishop, found the doors closed in his face; and two canons of the Papal party, endeavouring to install themselves at St. Paul's, were in 1259 killed by the angry populace.