It was, no doubt, fortunate that Inigo Jones confined his work at St.[page 68] Paul's to some very poor additions to the transepts, and to a portico, very magnificent in its way, at the west end. He would have destroyed, doubtless, much of the noble nave in time; but his work was abruptly brought to an end by the outbreak of the Civil War. The work had languished for some years, under the continuance of causes which I have already adduced. But Laud, as Bishop of London, had displayed most praiseworthy zeal, and King Charles had supported him generously. When the troubles began, the funds ceased. In 1640 there had been contributions amounting to £10,000. In 1641 they fell to less than £2000; in 1643 to £15. In 1642 Paul's Cross had been pulled down, and in the following March Parliament seized on the revenues of the cathedral.
With the Rebellion the history of the cathedral may be said to be a blank. It would have been troublesome and expensive to pull it down, so it was left to decay; the revenues were seized for military uses, and the sacred vessels sold. There is a doubtful tradition that Cromwell tried to sell the building to the Jews for a stately synagogue. Inigo Jones's portico was let out for shops, the nave was turned into cavalry barracks. An order, quoted by Sir Henry Ellis, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, came out in 1651 prohibiting the soldiers from playing at ninepins from nine p.m. till six a.m., as the noise disturbs the residents in the neighbourhood, and they are also forbidden to disturb the peaceable passers by. At the Church of St. Gregory by St. Paul, towards the latter part of Cromwell's life, it is said that the liturgy of the Church was regularly used, through the influence of his daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, and not only so, but that he used sometimes to attend it under the same auspices.
Once more before the catastrophe let us pause and see what monuments had been erected in the Cathedral since the Stuarts mounted the throne. Dean VALENTINE CAREY was also Bishop of Exeter, d. 1626, a High Churchman, He "imprudently commended the soul of a dead person to the mercies of God, which he was forced to retract." There was a brass to him with mitre and his arms, but no figure.
Then we come to a monument which has a very great and unique interest, that of Dr. John Donne, who was Dean from 1621 to 1631. It is hardly needful to say that his life is the first in the beautiful set of[page 69] biographies by his friend, Izaak Walton. But it seems only right to quote Walton's account of this monument. The Dean knew that he was dying, and his friends expressed their desire to know his wishes. He sent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it, and to bring with it a board, of the just height of his body. "These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth:—Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and, having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus." In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued, and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor, Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that church; and, by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these words were affixed to it as an epitaph:—
JOHANNES DONNE Sac. Theol. Profess.
Post varia studia, quibus ab annis
Tenerrimis fideliter, nec infeliciter
incubuit;
Instinctu et impulsu Spiritus Sancti, monitu
et hortatu
Regis Jacobi, ordines sacros amplexus
Anno sui Jesu, MDCXIV. et suæ ætatis XLII
Decanatu hujus ecclesiæ indutus,
XXVII. Novembris, MDCXXI.
Exutus morte ultimo die Martii MDCXXXI.
Hic, licet in occiduo cinere, aspicit eum
Cujus nomen est oriens.
The unique interest attaching to this monument is in the fact that [ [page 70] it was saved from the ruins of the old cathedral and now adorns the wall of the south choir aisle.
There are three more Bishops of this later period.
JOHN STOKESLEY (1530-1539) distinguished himself by his zeal in burning Bibles, and using all his influence on the side of Henry VIII. on the divorce, by his burning of heretics, and by his desire to burn Latimer. Froude tells the whole story with vivid pen. Stokesley was buried in St. George's Chapel in the N.E. corner of the cathedral. He was the last of the pre-Reformation bishops buried in St. Paul's.
THOMAS RAVIS (1607-1610) was buried in the N. Aisle, with simply a plain grave-stone telling that he was born at Malden in Surrey, educated at Westminster and Oxford, Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Gloucester. But a most vigorous epitaph of him was written by his friend and successor at Christ Church, Bishop Corbet, namely, a poem in which extolling his virtues and his piety, he declares that it is better to keep silence over his grave, considering the profanation which is daily going on in the cathedral, the "hardy ruffians, bankrupts, vicious youths," who daily go up and down Paul's Walk, swearing, cheating, and slandering. And he sums up thus:—
"And wisely do thy grievèd friends forbear
Bubbles and alabaster boys to rear
On thy religious dust, for men did know
Thy life, which such illusions cannot show."