DR. BOURNE PREACHING AT PAUL'S CROSS
When the Restoration came, sunshine again fell upon the ruins. Wren, that great genius, was called in. His report was not very favourable. The pillars were giving way; the whole work had been from the beginning ill designed and ill built; the tower was leaning. He proposed to have a rotunda, with cupola and lantern, to give the church light, "and incomparable more grace" than the lean shaft of a steeple could possibly afford. He closed his report by a eulogy on the portico of Inigo Jones, as "an absolute piece in itself." Some of the stone collected for St. Paul's went, it is said, to build Lord Clarendon's house (site of Albemarle Street). On August 27, 1661, good Mr. Evelyn, one of the commissioners, describes going with Wren, the Bishop and Dean of St. Paul's, &c., and resolving finally on a new foundation. On Sunday, September 2, the Great Fire drew a red cancelling line over Wren's half-drawn plans. The old cathedral passed away, like Elijah, in flames. The fire broke out about ten o'clock on Saturday night at a bakehouse in Pudding Lane, near East Smithfield. Sunday afternoon Pepys found all the goods carried that morning to Cannon Street now removing to Lombard Street. At St. Paul's Wharf he takes water, follows the king's party, and lands at Bankside. "In corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the city, a most horrid, bloody, malicious flame, not like the flame of an ordinary fire." On the 7th, he saw St. Paul's Church with all the roof off, and the body of the quire fallen into St. Faith's.
On Monday, the 3rd, Mr. Evelyn describes the whole north of the City on fire, the sky light for ten miles round, and the scaffolds round St. Paul's catching. On the 4th he saw the stones of St. Paul's flying like grenades, the melting lead running in streams down the streets, the very pavements too hot for the feet, and the approaches too blocked for any help to be applied. A Westminster boy named Taswell (quoted by Dean Milman from "Camden's Miscellany," vol. ii., p. 12) has also sketched the scene. On Monday, the 3rd, from Westminster he saw, about eight o'clock, the fire burst forth, and before nine he could read by the blaze a 16mo "Terence" which he had with him. The boy at once set out for St. Paul's, resting by the way upon Fleet Bridge, being almost faint with the intense heat of the air. The bells were melting, and vast avalanches of stones were pouring from the walls. Near the east end he found the body of an old woman, who had cowered there, burned to a coal. Taswell also relates that the ashes of the books kept in St. Faith's were blown as far as Eton.
On the 7th (Friday) Evelyn again visited St. Paul's. The portico he found rent in pieces, the vast stones split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription on the architrave, not one letter of which was injured. Six acres of lead on the roof were all melted. The roof of St. Faith's had fallen in, and all the magazines and books from Paternoster Row were consumed, burning for a week together. Singularly enough, the lead over the altar at the east end was untouched, and among the monuments the body of one bishop (Braybroke—Richard II.) remained entire. The old tombs nearly all perished; amongst them those of two Saxon kings, John of Gaunt, his wife Constance of Castile, poor St. Erkenwald, and scores of bishops, good and bad; Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and father of the great philosopher; the last of the true knights, the gallant Sir Philip Sidney; and Walsingham, that astute counsellor of Elizabeth. Then there was Sir Christopher Hatton, the dancing chancellor, whose proud monument crowded back Walsingham and Sidney's. According to the old scoffing distich,
"Philip and Francis they have no tomb,
For great Christopher takes all the room."
Men of letters in old St. Paul's (says Dean Milman) there were few. The chief were Lily, the grammarian, second master of St. Paul's; and Linacre, the physician, the friend of Colet and Erasmus. Of artists there was at least one great man—Vandyck, who was buried near John of Gaunt. Among citizens, the chief was Sir William Hewet, whose daughter married Osborne, an apprentice, who saved her from drowning, and who was the ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds.
After the fire, Bishop Sancroft preached in a patched-up part of the west end of the ruins. All hopes of restoration were soon abandoned, as Wren had, with his instinctive genius, at once predicted. Sancroft at once wrote to the great architect, "What you last whispered in my ear is now come to pass. A pillar has fallen, and the rest threatens to follow." The letter concludes thus: "You are so absolutely necessary to us, that we can do nothing, resolve on nothing, without you." There was plenty of zeal in London still; but, nevertheless, after all, nothing was done to the rebuilding till the year 1673.
CHAPTER XXI
ST. PAUL'S (continued)