The Town Part 3

"From a printed church-book," says Mr. Hone, "containing the service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of Innocents'-day, the Boy-Bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles, as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy-Bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, and the pet.i.t-canons the tapers, according to the rubrick.

Afterwards he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy-Bishop repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles; and in conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering _Deo Gratias_."[27]

The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. Nicholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy among the doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by Dean Colet was in honour of "the child Jesus." There was a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, perhaps, a revival, as far as scholars.h.i.+p was concerned. The boys in the older school were not only taught singing but acting, and for a long period were the most popular performers of stage-plays. In the time of Richard the Second, these Boy-Actors pet.i.tioned the King to prohibit certain ignorant and "inexpert people from presenting the History of the Old Testament."

They began with sacred plays, but afterwards acted profane; so that St. Paul's singing-school was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common wherever there were choir-boys; and it doubtless originated, partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at which they a.s.sisted, and partly in the delight which the more scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of Terence, still kept up at Westminster school, is supposed by Warton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of Westminster Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth, (who took great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as actors, though not so much so at those of St. Paul's. A set of them were incorporated under the t.i.tle of Children of the Revels, among whom are to be found names that have since become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare--Field, Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It appears that children with good voices were sometimes _kidnapped_ for a supply.[28] Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus pressed into the service; and a relic of the custom is supposed to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. The exercise of the right of might over children, and by people who wanted singers--an effeminate press-gang--would seem an intolerable nuisance; but the children were probably glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to sing and play before a court.

Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile actors:

Weep with me, all you that read This little story; And know, for whom a tear you shed, Death's self is sorry.

'Twas a child that so did thrive In grace and feature, As heaven and nature seemed to strive Which owned the creature.

Years he numbered, scarce thirteen, When fates turned cruel; Yet three filled zodiacs had he been The stage's jewel;

And did act (what now we moan) Old men so duly, As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one, He played so truly.

Till, by error of his fate, They all consented; But viewing him since (alas! too late) They have repented;

And have sought (to give new birth) In baths to steep him!

But being so much too good for earth, Heaven vows to keep him.

This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men. It is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston, when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in his female dress after the play. This custom of males appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days; who, besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a boy on the stage _to pretend to be himself_.

One of the strangest of the old ceremonies, in which the clergy of the cathedral used to figure, was that which was performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Commemoration and on that of the Conversion of St. Paul. On the former of these festivals, a fat doe, and on the latter, a fat buck, was presented to the Church by the family of Baud, in consideration of some land which they held of the Dean and Chapter at West Lee in Ess.e.x. The original agreement made with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was, that he himself should attend in person with the animals; but some years afterwards it was arranged that the presentation should be made by a servant, accompanied by a deputation of part of the family. The priests, however, continued to perform their part in the show. When the deer was brought to the foot of the steps leading to the choir, the reverend brethren appeared in a body to receive it, dressed in their full pontifical robes, and having their heads decorated with garlands of flowers. From thence they accompanied it as the servant led it forward to the high altar, where having been solemnly offered and slain, it was divided among the residentiaries. The horns were then fastened to the top of a spear, and carried in procession by the whole company around the inside of the church, a noisy concert of horns regulating their march. This ridiculous exhibition, which looks like a parody on the pagan ceremonies of their predecessors the priests of Diana, was continued by the cathedral clergy down to the time of Elizabeth.

The modern pa.s.senger through St. Paul's Churchyard has not only the last home of Nelson and others to venerate, as he goes by. In the ground of the old church were buried, and here, therefore, remains whatever dust may survive them, the gallant Sir Philip Sydney (the _beau ideal_ of the age of Elizabeth), and Vand.y.k.e, who immortalised the youth and beauty of the court of Charles the First. One of Elizabeth's great statesmen also lay there--Walsingham--who died so poor, that he was buried by stealth, to prevent his body from being arrested. Another, Sir Christopher Hatton, who is supposed to have danced himself into the office of her Majesty's Chancellor,[29] had a tomb which his contemporaries thought too magnificent, and which was accused of "shouldering" the altar. There was an absurd epitaph upon it, by which he would seem to have been a _dandy_ to the last.

Stay and behold the mirror of a dead man's house, Whose lively person would have made thee stay and wonder.

When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars; And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing; Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and pa.s.sing comely; And G.o.d did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling.

Nature commends her workmans.h.i.+p to Fortune's charge, Fortune presents him to the court and queen, Queen Eliz. (O G.o.d's dear handmayd) his most miracle.

_Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen_; This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd, Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time; First trained him in the stately band of pensioners;

And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard.

Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells, And so, _Vice-Chamberlain_, where foreign princes eyes Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels.

He then aspires, says the writer, to "the highest subject's seat," and becomes

Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:) _Robe_, _Collar_, _Garter_, dead figures of great honour, Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence, The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar.

This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other.[30]

The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are only to be equalled by a pa.s.sage in an epitaph we have met with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her husband says:--

"Her graces and her qualities were such That she might have married a bishop or a judge; But so extreme was her condescension and humility, That she married _me_, a poor doctor of divinity; _By which heroic deed_, she stands confest, Of all other women, the phoenix of her s.e.x."

Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him which he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time; which gives one an equal notion of the Queen's power, and the servility of those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her head was held up by the executioner, "So perish all Queen Elizabeth's enemies!" He was then Dean of Peterborough. The Queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marrying a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to have hastened his end--a catastrophe worthy of a mean courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the tobacco giving him the _coup de grace_.[31]

Dr. Donne, the head of the metaphysical poets, so well criticised by Johnson, was Dean of St. Paul's, and had a grave here, of which he has left an extraordinary memorial. It is a wooden image of himself, made to his order, and representing him as he was to appear in his shroud.

This, for some time before he died, he kept by his bed-side in an open coffin, thus endeavouring to reconcile an uneasy imagination to the fate he could not avoid. It is still preserved in the vaults under the church, and is to be seen with the other curiosities of the cathedral.

We will not do a great man such a disservice as to dig him up for a spectacle. A man should be judged of at the time when he is most himself, and not when he is about to consign his weak body to its elements.

Of the events that have taken place connected with St. Paul's, one of the most curious was a scene that pa.s.sed in the old cathedral between John of Gaunt and the Anti-Wickliffites. It made him very unpopular at the time. Probably, if he had died just after it, his coffin would have been torn to pieces; but subsequently he had a magnificent tomb in the church, on which hung his crest and cap of state, together with his lance and target. Perhaps the merits of the friend of Wickliff and Chaucer are now as much overvalued. The scene is taken as follows, by Mr. Brayley, out of Fox's Acts and Monuments.

"One of the most remarkable occurrences that ever took place within the old cathedral was the attempt made, in 1376, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, under the command of Pope Gregory the Eleventh, to compel Wickliff, the father of the English Reformation, to subscribe to the condemnation of some of his own tenets, which had been recently promulgated in the eight articles that have been termed the Lollards' Creed. The Pope had ordered the above prelates to apprehend and examine Wickliff; but they thought it most expedient to summon him to St. Paul's, as he was openly protected by the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and that n.o.bleman accompanied him to the examination, together with the Lord Percy, Marshall of England. The proceedings were soon interrupted by a dispute as to whether Wickliff should sit or stand; and the following curious dialogue arose on the Lord Percy desiring him to be seated:--

"_Bishop of London._--'If I could have guessed, Lord Percy, that you would have played the master here, I would have prevented your coming.'

"_Duke of Lancaster._--'Yes, he shall play the master here for all you.'

"_Lord Percy._--'Wickliff, sit down! You have need of a seat, for you have many things to say.'

"_Bishop of London._--'It is unreasonable that a clergyman, cited before his ordinary, should sit during his answer. He shall stand!'

"_Duke of Lancaster._--'My Lord Percy, you are in the right!

And for you, my Lord Bishop, you are grown so proud and arrogant, I will take care to humble your pride; and not only yours, my lord, but that of all the prelates in England. Thou dependest upon the credit of thy relations; but so far from being able to help thee, they shall have enough to do to support themselves.'

"_Bishop of London._--'I place no confidence in my relations, but in G.o.d alone, who will give me the boldness to speak the truth.'

"_Duke of Lancaster_ (_speaking softly to Lord Percy_).--'Rather than take this at the Bishop's hands, I will drag him by the hair of the head out of the court!'"[32]

Old St. Paul's was much larger than now, and the churchyard was of proportionate dimensions. The wall by which it was bounded ran along by the present streets of Ave Maria Lane, Paternoster Row, Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed Lane; and therefore included a large s.p.a.ce and many buildings which are not now considered to be within the precincts of the cathedral. This s.p.a.cious area had gra.s.s inside, and contained a variety of appendages to the establishment. One of these was the cross which we have alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, and of which Stow did not know the antiquity. It was called PAUL'S CROSS, and stood on the north side of the church, a little to the east of the entrance of Cannon Alley. It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the s.p.a.ce to the east of it that the citizens were wont anciently to a.s.semble in Folkmote, or general convention--not only to elect their magistrates and to deliberate on public affairs, but also, as it would appear, to try offenders and award punishments. We read of meetings of the Folkmote in the thirteenth century; but the custom was discontinued, as the increasing number of the inhabitants, and the mixture of strangers, were found to lead to confusion and tumult. In after times the cross appears to have been used chiefly for proclamations, and other public proceedings, civil as well as ecclesiastical; such as the swearing of the citizens to allegiance, the emission of papal bulls, the exposing of penitents, &c., "and for the defaming of those," says Pennant, "who had incurred the displeasure of crowned heads." A pulpit was attached to it, it was not known when, in which sermons were preached, called Paul's Cross Sermons, a name by which they continued to be known when they ceased in the open air. Many benefactors contributed to support these sermons. In Stow's time the pulpit was an hexagonal piece of wood, "covered with lead, elevated upon a flight of stone steps, and surmounted by a large cross." During rainy weather the poorer part of the audience retreated to a covered place, called the shrowds, which are supposed to have ab.u.t.ted on the church wall. The rest, including the lord mayor and aldermen, most probably had shelter at all times; and the King and his train (for they attended also) had covered galleries.[33] Popular preachers were invited to hold forth in this pulpit, but the Bishop was the inviter. In the reign of James the First, the lord mayor and aldermen ordered, that every one who should preach there, "considering the journies some of them might take from the universities, or elsewhere, should at his pleasure be freely entertained for five days' s.p.a.ce, with sweet and convenient lodging, fire, candle, and all other necessaries, viz., from Thursday before their day of preaching, to Thursday morning following."[34] "This good custom," says Maitland, "continued for some time. And the Bishop of London, or his chaplain, when he sent to any one to preach, did actually signify the place where he might repair at his coming up, and be entertained freely." In earlier times a kind of inn seems to have been kept for the entertainment of the preachers at Paul's Cross, which went by the name of the _Shunamites' House_.

"Before the cross," says Pennant, "was brought, divested of all splendour, Jane Sh.o.r.e, the charitable, the merry concubine of Edward the Fourth, and, after his death, of his favourite, the unfortunate Lord Hastings. After the loss of her protectors, she fell a victim to the malice of crooked-backed _Richard_. He was disappointed (by her excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating with her lover to destroy him.

He then attacked her on the weak side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the severity of the church: she was carried to the Bishop's palace, clothed in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted to the cathedral and the cross, before which she made a confession of her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations of a youthful monarch, the handsomest man of his time. On his death she was reduced to necessity, scorned by the world, and cast off by her husband, with whom she was paired in her childish years, and forced to fling herself into the arms of Hastings."

"In her penance she went," says Holinshed, "in countenance and pace demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie, save her kertle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the wondering of the people cast a comlie rud in her cheeks (of which she before had most misse), that hir great shame wan hir much praise among those that were more amorous of hir bodie, than curious of hir soule. And manie good folks that hated her living (and glad were to see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance, than rejoiced therein, when they considered that the Protector procured it more of a corrupt intent than any virtuous affection."

"Rowe," continues Pennant, "has flung this part of her sad story into the following poetical dress; but it is far from possessing the moving simplicity of the old historian."[35]

Submissive, sad, and lonely was her look; A burning taper in her hand she bore; And on her shoulders, carelessly confused, With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung; Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread; Feeble she seemed, and sorely smit with pain; While, barefoot as she trod the flinty pavement, Her footsteps all along were marked with blood.

Yet silent still she pa.s.sed, and unrepining; Her streaming eyes bent ever on the earth, Except when, in some bitter pang of sorrow, To heaven she seemed, in fervent zeal, to raise, And beg that mercy man denied her here.

"The poet has adopted the fable of her being denied all sustenance, and of her peris.h.i.+ng with hunger, but that was not a fact. She lived to a great age, but in great distress and miserable poverty; deserted even by those to whom she had, during prosperity, done the most essential services. She dragged a wretched life even to the time of Sir Thomas More, who introduces her story in his Life of Richard the Third. The beauty of her person is spoken of in high terms; 'Proper she was, and faire; nothing in her body that you would have changed, but if you would have wished her somewhat higher. Thus sai they that knew hir in hir youth. Albeit, some that now see hir, for she yet liveth, deem hir never to have been well visaged. Now is she old, leane, withered, and dried up: nothing left but shrivelled skin and hard bone; and yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, might gesse and devise, which parts how filled, would make it a faire face.'"[36]

To these pictures, which are all drawn with spirit, may be added a portrait in the notes to Drayton's _Heroical Epistles_, referring to the one by Sir Thomas More.

"Her stature," says the comment, "was mean; her hair of a dark yellow, her face round and full, her eye grey, delicate harmony being betwixt each part's proportion, and each proportion's colour; her body fat, white, and smooth; her countenance cheerful, and like to her condition. That picture which I have seen of her, was such as she rose out of her bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich mantle, cast under her arm, over her shoulder, and sitting in a chair on which her naked arm did lie. What her father's name was, or where she was born, is not certainly known; but Sh.o.r.e, a young man of right goodly person, wealth, and behaviour, abandoned her bed, after the King had made her his concubine."[37]

Richard, in the extreme consciousness of his being in the wrong, made a sad bungling business of his first attempts on the throne. The penance of Jane Sh.o.r.e was followed by Dr. Shawe's sermon at the same cross, in which the servile preacher attempted to b.a.s.t.a.r.dise the children of Edward, and to recommend the "legitimate" Richard, as the express image of his father. Richard made his appearance, only to witness the sullen silence of the spectators; and the doctor, arguing more weakness than wickedness, took to his house, and soon after died.[38]

In the reign of the Tudors, Paul's Cross was the scene of a very remarkable series of contradictions. The government, under Henry the Eighth, preached for and against the same doctrines in religion. Mary furiously attempted to revive them; and they were finally denounced by Elizabeth. Wolsey began, in 1521, with fulminating, by command of the Pope, against "one Martin Eleutherius" (Luther). The denouncement was made by Fisher (afterwards beheaded for denying the King's supremacy); but Wolsey sate by, in his usual state, censed and canopied, with the pope's amba.s.sador on one side of him, and the emperor's on the other.

During the sermon a collection of Luther's books was burnt in the churchyard; "which ended, my Lord Cardinal went home to dinner with all the other prelates."[39] About ten years afterwards the preachers at Paul's Cross received an order from the King to "teach and declare to the people, that neither the pope, nor any of his predecessors, were anything more than the simple Bishops of Rome." On the accession of Mary, the discourses were ordered to veer directly round, which produced two attempts to a.s.sa.s.sinate the preachers in sermon-time; and the moment Elizabeth came to the throne, the divines began recommending the very opposite tenets, and the pope was finally rejected. At this Cross Elizabeth afterwards attended to hear a thanksgiving sermon for the defeat of the Invincible Armada; on which occasion a coach was first seen in England--the one she came in. The last sermon attended there by the sovereign was during the reign of her successor; but discourses continued to be delivered up to the time of the Civil Wars, when, after being turned to account by the Puritans for about a year, the pulpit was demolished by order of Parliament.

The "willing instrument" of the overthrow was Pennington, the lord-mayor. The inhabitants who look out of their windows now-a-days on the northern side of St. Paul's may thus have a succession of pictures before their mind's eye, as curious and inconsistent as those of a dream--princes, queens, lord-mayors, and aldermen,

A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings,