In the first year of Philip and Mary, the Common Council of London passed an act which shows the degradation into which St. Paul's had sunk even before the fire. It forbade the carrying of beer-casks, or baskets of bread, fish, flesh, or fruit, or leading mules or horses through the Cathedral, under pain of fines and imprisonment. Elizabeth also issued a proclamation to a similar effect, forbidding a fray, drawing of swords in the church, or shooting with hand-gun or dagg within the church or churchyard, under pain of two months' imprisonment. Neither were agreements to be made for the payment of money within the church. Soon after the fire, a man that had provoked a fray in the church was set in the pillory in the churchyard, and had his ears nailed to a post, and then cut off. These proclamations, however, led to no reform. Cheats, gulls, assassins, and thieves thronged the middle aisle of St. Paul's; advertisements of all kinds covered the walls, the worst class of servants came there to be hired; worthless rascals and disreputable flaunting women met there by appointment. Parasites, hunting for a dinner, hung about a monument of the Beauchamps, foolishly believed to be the tomb of the good Duke Humphrey. Shakespeare makes Falstaff hire red-nosed Bardolph in St. Paul's, and Ben Jonson lays the third act of his Every Man in his Humour in the middle aisle. Bishop Earle, in his "Microcosmography," describes the noise of the crowd of idlers in Paul's "as that of bees, a strange hum mixed of walking tongues and feet, a kind of still roar or loud whisper." He describes the crowd of young curates, copper captains, thieves, and dinnerless adventurers and gossip-mongers. Bishop Corbet, that jolly prelate, speaks of
"The walk,
Where all our British sinners swear and talk,
Old hardy ruffians, bankrupts, soothsayers,
And youths whose cousenage is old as theirs."
On the eve of the election of Sandys as Bishop of London, May, 1570, all London was roused by a papal bull against Elizabeth being found nailed on the gates of the bishop's palace. It declared her crown forfeited and her people absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The fanatic maniac, Felton, was soon discovered, and hung on a gallows at the bishop's gates.
One or two anecdotes of interest specially connect Elizabeth with St. Paul's. On one occasion Dean Nowell placed in the queen's closet (pew) a splendid prayer-book, full of German scriptural engravings, richly illuminated. The zealous queen was furious; the book seemed to her of Catholic tendencies.
"Who placed this book on my cushion? You know I have an aversion to idolatry. The cuts resemble angels and saints—nay, even grosser absurdities."
The frightened dean pleaded innocence of all evil intentions. The queen prayed God to grant him more wisdom for the future, and asked him where they came from. When told Germany, she replied, "It is well it was a stranger. Had it been one of my subjects, we should have questioned the matter."
Once again Dean Nowell vexed the queen—this time from being too Puritan. On Ash Wednesday, 1572, the dean preaching before her, he denounced certain popish superstitions in a book recently dedicated to her majesty. He specially denounced the use of the sign of the cross. Suddenly a harsh voice was heard in the royal closet. It was Elizabeth's. She chidingly bade Mr. Dean return from his ungodly digression and revert to his text. The next day the frightened dean wrote a most abject apology to the high-spirited queen.
The victory over the Armada was, of course, not forgotten at St. Paul's. When the thanksgiving sermon was preached at Paul's Cross, eleven Spanish ensigns waved over the cathedral battlements, and one idolatrous streamer with an image of the Virgin fluttered over the preacher. That was in September; the Queen herself came in November, drawn by four white horses, and with the privy council and all the nobility. Elizabeth heard a sermon, and dined at the bishop's palace.
The "children of Paul's," whom Shakespeare, in Hamlet, mentions with the jealousy of a rival manager, were, as Dean Milman has proved, the chorister-boys of St. Paul's. They acted, it is supposed, in their singing-school. The play began at four p.m., after prayers, and the price of admission was 4d. They are known at a later period to have acted some of Lily's Euphuistic plays, and one of Middleton's.
In this reign lotteries for Government purposes were held at the west door of St. Paul's, where a wooden shed was erected for drawing the prizes, which were first plate and then suits of armour. In the first lottery (1569) there were 40,000 lots at 10s. a lot, and the profits were applied to repairing the harbours of England.