From time to time, gay pageants were seen on the Thames. The Sovereign would proceed in state from the Palace at Greenwich to the Tower, or from the Tower, Baynard’s Castle, or other residence, to the Palace of Westminster, and the City guilds accompanied their sheriffs or mayors on their way to Westminster to take oath of office. The accounts of the Grocers’ Company for the year 1436 mention payments for the hire of barges to attend the sheriffs’ show; but John Stow, the historian of London, describes the water procession as an innovation made by John Norman, mayor in 1450. He writes: “This John Norman was the first mayor that was rowed by water to Westminster to take his oath, for before that time they rode on horseback. He caused a barge to be made at his own charge, and every company had several barges, well decked and trimmed, to pass along with him; for joy whereof, the watermen made a song in his praise, beginning, ‘Row thy boat, Norman.’”
Of the more important buildings which formed conspicuous ornaments of the river’s banks we shall speak when describing the royal palaces.
CHAPTER IV.
RELIGIOUS LIFE.
Introduction of Christianity—Foundation of the See—The First Prelates: Mellitus, St. Erkenwald, St. Dunstan—Monastic Foundations—St. Paul’s Cathedral: its Officials, Services, Shrines—Old St. Paul’s Described—Paul’s Cross and Spital Sermons—The Jewry—London Parish Churches—Lambeth Palace and Chapel—The Lollards’ Tower.
On the summit of the hill which slopes on the south to the Thames, and more steeply on the west to the rapid stream of the Fleet, has for many centuries stood a church dedicated to the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The ancient statute-book of St. Paul’s Cathedral states that Lucius, king of Greater Britain, in the year 185 was converted by the emissaries of the Pope, who founded three metropolitical sees, the first of which was London. This legendary foundation of the See of London has been associated by some writers with the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, and by others with the Church of St. Peter on Cornhill. But King Lucius has long ago been dismissed into the region of myth.
Whilst, however, it is unknown how London first received Christianity, the date can be pretty closely fixed. “There can be no doubt,” says Dean Milman, “that conquered and half-civilised Britain gradually received, during the second and third centuries, the faith of Christ. St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, probably imbibed the first fervour of those Christian feelings which wrought so powerfully in the Christianity of her age, in her native Britain.” The memory of St. Helena has, from a very early period, been enshrined in London in the dedication of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, formerly the Church of the Nunnery of St. Helen, the site having apparently been originally occupied by a Roman building. The parish church in Bishopsgate was built before 1010, and close adjoining was the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen, founded about 1212.
In the year A.D. 314, more than a century before the departure of the Romans, Restitutus, bishop of London, appears in the list of prelates who were present at the Council of Arles; and we may take it for granted that the Christian Church was duly organized at that time. But the advent of the English was the absolute and complete destruction of it for the time being. The English were entirely heathen.