The Town Part 4

Jane's penance, Richard's chagrin, Wolsey's exaltation, clergymen preaching for and against the pope; a coach coming as a wonder, where coaches now throng at every one's service; and finally, a puritanical lord-mayor, who "blasphemed custard," laying the axe to the tree, and cutting down the pulpit and all its works.

The next appendage to the old church, in point of importance, was the Bishop's or London House, the name of which survives in that of London House Yard. This, with other buildings, perished in the Great Fire; and on the site of it were built the houses now standing between the yard just mentioned and the present Chapter House. The latter was built by Wren. The old one stood on the other side of the cathedral, where the modern deanery is to be found, only more eastward. The bishop's house was often used for the reception of princes. Edward the Third and his queen were entertained there after a great tournament in Smithfield; and there poor little Edward the Fifth was lodged, previously to his appointed coronation. To the east of the bishop's house, stretching towards Cheapside, was a chapel, erected by the father of Thomas Becket, called Pardon-Church-Haugh, which was surrounded by a cloister, presenting a painting of the Dance of Death on the walls, a subject rendered famous by Holbein.[40]

Another chapel called the Charnel, a proper neighbour to this _fresco_, stood at the back of the two buildings just mentioned. It received its name from the quant.i.ty of human bones collected from St.

Paul's Churchyard, and deposited in a vault beneath. The Charnel was taken down by the Protector Somerset about 1549, and the stones were employed in the building of the new palace of Somerset House. On this occasion it is stated that more than a thousand cart-loads of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields where they formed a large mount, on which three windmills were erected. From these Windmill Street in that neighbourhood derives its name. The ground on which the chapel stood was afterwards built over with dwellings and warehouses, having sheds before them for the use of stationers. Immediately to the north of St.

Paul's School, and towards the spot where the churchyard looks into Cheapside, was a campanile, or bell-house; that is to say, a belfry, forming a distinct building from the cathedral, such as it is accustomed to be in Italy. It was by the ringing of this bell that the people were anciently called together to the general a.s.semblage, called the Folkmote. The campanile was very high, and was won at dice from King Henry the Eighth by Sir Miles Partridge, who took it down and sold the materials. On the side of the cathedral directly the reverse of this (the south-west), and forming a part of the great pile of building, was the parish church of St. Gregory, over which was the Lollards' Tower, or prison, infamous, like its namesake at Lambeth, for the ill-treatment of heretics.

"This," says Brayley, on the authority of Fox's Martyrology, "was the scene of at least one 'foul and midnight murder,'

perpetrated in 1514, on a respectable citizen, named Richard Hunne, by Dr. Horsey, chancellor of the diocese, with the a.s.sistance of a bell-ringer, and afterwards defended by the Bishop Fitz-James and the whole body of prelates, who protected the murderers from punishment, lest the clergy should become amenable to civil jurisdiction. Though the villains, through this interference, escaped without corporal suffering, the King ordered them to pay 1,500_l._ to the children of the deceased, in rest.i.tution of what he himself styles the 'cruel murder.'"[41]

The clergy, with almost incredible audacity, afterwards commenced a process against the dead body of Hunne for heresy; and, having obtained its condemnation, they actually burned it in Smithfield. The Lollards' Tower continued to be used as a prison for heretics for some time after the Reformation. Stow tells us that he recollected one Peter Burchet, a gentleman of the Middle Temple, being committed to this prison, on suspicion of holding certain erroneous opinions, in 1573. This, however, is, we believe, the last case of the kind that is recorded.

It remains to say a word of St. Paul's School, founded, as we have already mentioned, by Dean Colet, and destined to become the most ill.u.s.trious of all the buildings on the spot, in giving education to Milton. We have dwelt more upon the localities of St. Paul's Churchyard than it is our intention to do on others. The dignity of the birth-place of the metropolis beguiled us; and the events recorded to have taken place in it are of real interest. Milton was not the only person of celebrity educated at this school. Bentley, his critic, was probably induced by the like circ.u.mstance to turn his unfortunate attention to the poet's epic in after life, and make those gratuitous ma.s.sacres of the text, which give a profound scholar the air of the most presumptuous of c.o.xcombs. Here also Camden received part of his education; and here were brought up, Leland, his brother antiquary, the Gales (Charles, Roger, and Samuel), all celebrated antiquaries; Sir Anthony Denny, the only man who had the courage and honesty to tell Henry the Eighth that he was dying; Halley, the astronomer; Bishop c.u.mberland, the great grandfather of the dramatist; Pepys, who has lately obtained so curious a celebrity, as an annalist of the court of Charles the Second; and last, not least, one in whom a learned education would be as little looked for as in Pepys, if we are to trust the stories of the times, to wit, John Duke of Marlborough.

Barnes was laughed at for dedicating his _Anacreon_ to the duke, as one to whom Greek was unheard of; and it has been related as a slur on the great general (though a.s.suredly it is not so), that having alluded on some occasion to a pa.s.sage in history, and being asked where he found it, he confessed that his authority was the only historian he was acquainted with, namely, William Shakspeare.

Less is known of Milton during the time he pa.s.sed at St. Paul's School, than of any other period of his life. It is ascertained, however, that he cultivated the writing of Greek verses, and was a great favourite with the usher, afterwards master, Alexander Gill, himself a Latin poet of celebrity. At the back of the old church was an enormous rose-window, which we may imagine the young poet to have contemplated with delight, in his fondness for ornaments of that cast; and the whole building was calculated to impress a mind, more disposed, at that time of life, to admire as a poet, than to quarrel as a critic or a sectary. Gill, unluckily for himself, was not so catholic. Some say he was suspended from his masters.h.i.+p for severity; a quality which he must have carried to a great pitch, for that age to find fault with it; but from an answer written by Ben Johnson to a fragment of a satire of Gill's, it is more likely he got into trouble for libels against the court. Aubrey says, that the old doctor, his father, was once obliged to go on his knees to get the young doctor pardoned, and that the offence consisted in his having written a letter, in which he designated King James and his son, as the "old foole and the young one." There are letters written in early life from Milton to Gill, full of regard and esteem; nor is it likely that the regard was diminished by Gill's petulance against the Court. In one of the letters, it is pleasant to hear the poet saying, "Farewell, and on Tuesday next expect me in London, among the booksellers."[42]

The parliamentary soldiers annoyed the inhabitants of the churchyard, by playing at nine-pins at unseasonable hours--a strange misdemeanour for that "church militant." They hastened also the destruction of the cathedral. Some scaffolding, set up for repairs, had been given them for arrears of pay. They dug pits in the body of the church to saw the timber in; and they removed the scaffolding with so little caution, that great part of the vaulting fell in, and lay a heap of ruins. The east end only, and a part of the choir continued to be used for public wors.h.i.+p, a brick wall being raised to separate this portion from the rest of the building, and the congregation entering and getting out through one of the north windows. Another part of the church was converted into barracks and stables for the dragoons. As for Inigo Jones's lofty and beautiful portico, it was turned into "shops," says Maitland, "for milliners and others, with rooms over them for the convenience of lodging; at the erection of which the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being obliged to make way for the ends of beams, which penetrated their centres."[43] The statues on the top were thrown down and broken to pieces.

We have noticed the lucky necessity for a new church, occasioned by the Great Fire. An attempt was at first made to repair the old building--the work, as we have already mentioned, being committed to the charge of Sir John Denham (the poet), his Majesty's surveyor-general. But it was eventually found necessary to commence a new edifice from the foundation. Sir Christopher Wren, who accomplished this task, had been before employed in superintending the repairs, and was appointed head surveyor of the works in 1669, on the demise of Denham. Unfortunately, he had great and ungenerous trouble given him in the erection of the new structure; and, after all, he did not build it as he wished. His taste was not understood, either by court or clergy; he was envied (and towards the close of his life ousted) by inferior workmen; was forced to make use of two orders instead of one, that is to say, to divide the sides and front into two separate elevations, instead of running them up and dignifying them with pillars of the whole height; and during the whole work, which occupied a great many years, and took up a considerable and anxious portion of his time, not unattended with personal hazard, all the pay which he was then, or ever to expect, was a pittance of two hundred a-year. A moiety of this driblet was for some time actually suspended, till the building should be finished; and for the arrears of it he was forced to pet.i.tion the government of Queen Anne, and then only obtained them under circ.u.mstances of the most unhandsome delay. Wren, however, was a philosopher and a patriot; and if he underwent the mortification attendent on philosophers and patriots, for offending the self-love of the shallow, he knew how to act up to the spirit of those venerable names, in the interior of a mind as elevated and well-composed as his own architecture. Some pangs he felt, because he was a man of humanity, and could not disdain his fellow-creatures; but he was more troubled for the losses of the art than his own. He is said actually to have shed tears when compelled to deform his cathedral with the side aisles--some say in compliance with the will of the Duke of York, afterwards James the Second, who antic.i.p.ated the use of them for the restoration of the old Catholic chapels. Money he despised, except for the demands of his family, consenting to receive a hundred a-year for rebuilding such of the city churches (a considerable number) as were destroyed by the fire! And when finally ousted from his office of surveyor-general, he said with the ancient sage, "Well, I must philosophise a little sooner than I intended."

(_Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius philosophari_). The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, in resisting the claims of one of her Blenheim surveyors, said, "that Sir C. Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three times a-week to the top of St. Paul's, at a great hazard, for 200_l._ a-year." But, as a writer of his life has remarked, she was perhaps "little capable of drawing any nice distinction between the feelings of the hired surveyor of Blenheim, and those of our architect, in the contemplation of the rising of the fabric which his vast genius was calling into existence: her notions led her to estimate the matter by the simple process of the rule of three direct; and on this principle she had good reason to complain of the surveyor."[44] The same writer tells us, that Wren's princ.i.p.al enjoyment during the remainder of his life, consisted in his being "carried once a year to see his great work;" "the beginning and completion of which," observes Walpole, "was an event which, one could not wonder, left such an impression of content on the mind of the good old man, that it seemed to recall a memory almost deadened to every other use." The epitaph upon him by his son, which Mr. Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars' bridge, caused to be rescued from the vaults underneath the church, where it was ludicrously inapplicable, and placed in gold letters over the choir, has a real sublimity in it, though defaced by one of those plays upon words, which were the taste of the times in the architect's youth, and which his family perhaps had learnt to admire.

Subtus _conditur_ Hujus ecclesiae et urbis _conditor_ Ch. Wren, Qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, Non sibi sed bono publico.

Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circ.u.mspice.

We cannot preserve the pun in English, unless, perhaps, by some such rendering as, "Here found a grave the founder of this church;" or "Underneath is founded the tomb," &c. The rest is admirable:

"Who lived to the age of upwards of ninety years, Not for himself, but for the public good.

Reader, if thou seekest his monument, Look around."

The reader _does_ look around, and the whole interior of the cathedral, which is finer than the outside, seems like a magnificent vault over his single body. The effect is very grand, especially if the organ is playing. A similar one, as far as the music is concerned, is observable when we contemplate the statues of Nelson and others.

The grand repose of the church, in the first instance, gives them a mortal dignity, which the organ seems to waken up and revive, as if in the midst of the

"Pomp and threatening harmony,"[45]

their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Johnson's ponderous figure looks down upon us with something of sourness in the expression; and in the presence of Howard we feel as if pomp itself were in attendance on humanity. It is a pity that the sculpture of the monuments in general is not worthy of these emotions, and tends to undo them.

A poor statue of Queen Anne, in whose reign the church was finished, stands in the middle of the front area, with the figures of Britain, France, Ireland, and America, round the base. Garth, who was a Whig, and angry with the councils which had dismissed his hero Marlborough, wrote some bitter lines upon it, which must have had double effect, coming from so good-natured a man.

Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame, Known by the Gentiles' great apostle's name, With grace divine great Anna's seen to rise, An awful form that glads a nation's eyes: Beneath her feet four mighty realms appear, And with due reverence pay their homage there.

Britain and Ireland seem to own her grace, And e'en wild India wears a smiling face.

But France alone with downcast eyes is seen, The sad attendant on so good a queen.

Ungrateful country! to forget so soon All that great Anna for thy sake has done, When sworn the kind defender of thy cause, Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws, For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword, For thee she broke her gen'ral--and her word: For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told, And learn'd to speak like oracles of old: For thee, for thee alone, what could she more?

She lost the honour she had gain'd before; Lost all the trophies which her arms had won, (Such Caesar never knew, nor Philip's son;) Resign'd the glories of a ten years' reign, And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain: For thee in annals she's content to s.h.i.+ne, Like other monarchs of the Stuart line.

Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coa.r.s.er wits of the day, in reference to the position of her Majesty, with her back to the church and her face to a brandy shop, which was then kept in that part of the churchyard. The calumny was worthy of the coa.r.s.eness. Anne, who was not a very clever woman, had a difficult task to perform; and though we differ with her politics, we cannot, even at this distance of time, help expressing our disgust at personalities like these, especially against a female.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAUL'S CROSS.]

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Parentalia, p. 290, quoted in the work next mentioned.

[15] Brayley's London and Middles.e.x, vol. i. p. 87.

[16] Parentalia, p. 27.

[17] Survey of London, p. 262. First edition.

[18] Fine Arts of the English School, quoted in Brayley, vol. ii. p.

217.

[19] Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 134.

[20] Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 81.

[21] Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., pp. 71, 73.

[22] Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807.

[23] Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5.

[24] Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant.

[25] Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 281.

[26] London and Middles.e.x, vol. ii., p. 229.

[27] Ancient Mysteries described, &c., 1823, p. 195.

[28] _Purvey'd_ is the word of Mr. Chalmers; who says, however, that he knows not on what principle the right of "purveying such children"

was justified, "except by the maxim that the king had a right to the services of all his subjects." See Johnson and Steeven's Shakspeare, Prolegomena, vol. ii., p. 516.

[29]

"His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green, His high-crown'd hat, and satin doublet, Mov'd the stout heart of England's queen, Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."--GRAY.

[30] Maitland's History of London, vol. ii., p. 1170.

[31] The Bishop's second wife was a Lady Baker, who is said, by Mr.

Brayley, to have been young as well as beautiful, and probably did not add to the prelate's repose.

[32] London and Middles.e.x, vol. ii., p. 231.

[33] The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out-of-door sermons better than their posterity could; yet, as times grew less hardy, they began to have consequences which Bishop Latimer attributed to another cause. "The citizens of Raim," said he, in a sermon preached in Lincolns.h.i.+re, in the year 1552, "had their burying-place without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without, for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a time when there be great sickness, and many die together. I think, verily, that many a man taketh his death in Paul's Churchyard, and this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after; and I think no less, but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease."--Brayley, vol. ii., p.

315. After all, the Bishop may have been right in attributing the sickness to the cemetery. We have seen frightful probabilities of the same kind in our own time; and nothing can be more sensible than what he says of burial-grounds in cities.