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

by Walter Thornbury

In the reign of this weak king several folkmotes of the London citizens were held at Paul's Cross, in the churchyard. On one occasion the king himself, and his brother, the King of Almayne, were present. All citizens, even to the age of twelve, were sworn to allegiance, for a great outbreak for liberty was then imminent. The inventory of the goods of Bishop Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London for twenty-five years of this reign, is still preserved in the archives of St. Paul's. It is a roll twenty-eight feet long. The value of the whole property was nearly £3,000, and this sum (says Milman) must be multiplied by about fifteen to bring it to its present value.

When the citizens of London justly ranged themselves on the side of Simon de Montfort, who stood up for their liberties, the great bell of St. Paul's was the tocsin that summoned the burghers to arms, especially on that memorable occasion when Queen Eleanor tried to escape by water from the Tower to Windsor, where her husband was, and the people who detested her tried to sink her barge as it passed London Bridge.

In the equally troublous reign of Edward II. St. Paul's was again splashed with blood. The citizens, detesting the king's foreign favourites, rose against the Bishop of Exeter, Edward's regent in London. A letter from the queen, appealing to them, was affixed to the cross in Cheapside. The bishop demanded the City keys of the Lord Mayor, and the people sprang to arms, with cries of "Death to the queen's enemies!" They cut off the head of a servant of the De Spensers, burst open the gates of the Bishop of Exeter's palace (Essex Street, Strand), and plundered, sacked, and destroyed everything. The bishop, at the time riding in the Islington fields, hearing the danger, dashed home, and made straight for sanctuary in St. Paul's. At the north door, however, the mob thickening, tore him from his horse, and, hurrying him into Cheapside, proclaimed him a traitor, and beheaded him there, with two of his servants. They then dragged his body back to his palace, and flung the corpse into the river.

In the inglorious close of the glorious reign of Edward III., Courtenay, Bishop of London, an inflexible prelate, did his best to induce some of the London rabble to plunder the Florentines, at that time the great bankers and money-lenders of the metropolis, by reading at Paul's Cross the interdict Gregory XI. had launched against them; but on this occasion the Lord Mayor, leading the principal Florentine merchants into the presence of the aged king, obtained the royal protection for them.

Wycliffe and his adherents (amongst whom figured John of Gaunt—"old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster"—Chaucer's patron) soon brewed more trouble in St. Paul's for the proud bishop. The great reformer being summoned to an ecclesiastical council at St. Paul's, was accompanied by his friends, John of Gaunt and the Earl Marshal, Lord Percy. When in the lady chapel Percy demanded a soft seat for Wycliffe. The bishop said it was law and reason that a cited man should stand before the ordinary. Angry words ensued, and the Duke of Lancaster taunted Courtenay with his pride. The bishop answered, "I trust not in man, but in God alone, who will give me boldness to speak the truth." A rumour was spread that John of Gaunt had threatened to drag the bishop out of the church by the hair, and that he had vowed to abolish the title of Lord Mayor. A tumult began. All through the City the billmen and bowmen gathered. The Savoy, John of Gaunt's palace, would have been burned but for the intercession of the bishop. A priest mistaken for Percy was murdered. The duke fled to Kensington, and joined the Princess of Wales.

Richard II., that dissolute, rash, and unfortunate monarch, once only (alive) came to St. Paul's in great pomp, his robes hung with bells, and afterwards feasted at the house of his favourite, Sir Nicholas Brember, who was eventually put to death. The Lollards were now making way, and Archbishop Courtenay had a great barefooted procession to St. Paul's to hear a famous Carmelite preacher inveigh against the Wycliffe doctrines. A Lollard, indeed, had the courage to nail to the doors of St. Paul's twelve articles of the new creed denouncing the mischievous celibacy of the clergy, transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, pilgrimages, and other mistaken and idolatrous usages. When Henry Bolingbroke (not yet crowned Henry IV.) came to St. Paul's to offer prayer for the dethronement of his ill-fated cousin, Richard, he paused at the north side of the altar to shed tears over the grave of his father, John of Gaunt, interred early that very year in the Cathedral. Not long after the shrunken body of the dead king, on its way to the Abbey, was exposed in St. Paul's, to prove to the populace that Richard was not still alive. Hardynge, in his chronicles (quoted by Milman), says that the usurping king and his nobles spread—some seven, some nine—cloths of gold on the bier of the murdered king.

Bishop Braybroke, in the reign of Edward IV., was strenuous in denouncing ecclesiastical abuses. Edward III. himself had denounced the resort of mechanics to the refectory, the personal vices of the priests, and the pilfering of sacred vessels. He restored the communion-table, and insisted on daily alms-giving. But Braybroke also condemned worse abuses. He issued a prohibition at Paul's Cross against barbers shaving on Sundays; he forbade the buying and selling in the Cathedral, the flinging stones and shooting arrows at the pigeons and jackdaws nestling in the walls of the church, and the playing at ball, both within and without the church, a practice which led to the breaking of many beautiful and costly painted windows.

But here we stop awhile in our history of St. Paul's, on the eve of the sanguinary wars of the Roses, to describe mediæval St. Paul's, its structure, and internal government. Foremost among the relics were two arms of St. Mellitus (miraculously enough, of quite different sizes). Behind the high altar—what Dean Milman justly calls "the pride, glory, and fountain of wealth" to St. Paul's—was the body of St. Erkenwald, covered with a shrine which three London goldsmiths had spent a whole year in chiselling; and this shrine was covered with a grate of tinned iron. The very dust of the chapel floor, mingled with water, was said to work instantaneous cures. On the anniversary of St. Erkenwald the whole clergy of the diocese attended in procession in their copes. When King John of France was made captive at Poictiers, and paid his orisons at St. Paul's, he presented four golden basins to the high altar, and twenty-two nobles at the shrine of St. Erkenwald. Milman calculates that in 1344 the oblation-box alone at St. Paul's produced an annual sum to the dean and chapter of £9,000. Among other relics that were milch cows to the monks were a knife of our Lord, some hair of Mary Magdalen, blood of St. Paul, milk of the Virgin, the hand of St. John, pieces of the mischievous skull of Thomas à Becket, and the head and jaw of King Ethelbert. These were all preserved in jewelled cases. One hundred and eleven anniversary masses were celebrated. The chantry chapels in the Cathedral were very numerous, and they were served by an army of idle and often dissolute mass priests. There was one chantry in Pardon Churchyard, on the north side of St. Paul's, east of the bishop's chapel, where St. Thomas Becket's ancestors were buried. The grandest was one near the nave, built by Bishop Kemp, to pray for himself and his royal master, Edward IV. Another was founded by Henry IV. for the souls of his father, John of Gaunt, and his mother, Blanche of Castile. A third was built by Lord Mayor Pulteney, who was buried in St. Lawrence Pulteney, so called from him. The revenues of these chantries were vast.

But to return to our historical sequence. During the ruthless Wars of the Roses St. Paul's became the scene of many curious ceremonials, on which Shakespeare himself has touched, in his early historical plays. It was on a platform at the cathedral door that Roger Bolingbroke, the spurious necromancer who was supposed to have aided the ambitious designs of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, was exhibited. The Duchess's penance for the same offence, according to Milman's opinion, commenced or closed near the cathedral, in that shameful journey when she was led through the streets wrapped in a sheet, and carrying a lighted taper in her hand. The duke, her husband, was eventually buried at St. Paul's, where his tomb became the haunt of needy men about town, whence the well-known proverb of "dining with Duke Humphrey."

Henry VI.'s first peaceful visit to St. Paul's is quaintly sketched by that dull old poet, Lydgate, who describes "the bishops in pontificalibus, the Dean of Paules and canons, every one who conveyed the king"