"Yt is a greate disorder in the churche, that porters, butchers, and water-bearers, and who not, be suffered (in special tyme of service) to carrye and recarrye whatsoever, no man withstandinge them or gainsaying them." &c.

"The notices of encroachments on St. Paul's, in the same reign, are equally curious. The chantry and other chapels were completely diverted from their ancient purposes; some were used as receptacles for stores and lumber, another was a school, another a glazier's shop; and the windows of all were, in general, broken. Part of the vaults beneath the church was occupied by a carpenter, the remainder was held by the bishop, the dean and chapter, and the minor canons. One vault, thought to have been used for a burial-place, was converted into a wine-cellar, and a way had been cut into it through the wall of the building itself. (This practice of converting church vaults into wine-cellars, it may be remarked, is not yet worn out. Some of the vaults of Winchester Cathedral are now, or were lately, used for that purpose). The shrowds and cloisters under the convocation house, where not long since the sermons in foul weather were wont to be preached,' were made ⚫ a common lay-stall for boardes, trunks, and chests, being lett oute unto trunk-makers, where, by meanes of their daily knocking and noyse, the church is greatly disturbed.' More than twenty houses also had been built against the outer walls of the cathedral; and part of the very foundations was cut away to make offices. One of those houses had literally a closet dug in the wall; from another was a way through a window into a ware-room in the steeple ; a third, partly formed by St. Paul's, was lately used as a play-house; and the owner of the fourth baked his bread and pies in an oven excavated within a buttress." See Mal. Lon. Red. vol. iii. p. 71-73.

The middle of St. Paul's was also the Bond-Street of that period, and remained so till the time of the commonwealth. The loungers were called Paul's Walkers. "The young gallants from the Inns of Court, the western and the northern parts of the metropolis, and those that had spirit enough," says our author, to detach themselves from the countinghouses in the east, used to meet at the central point, St. Paul's; and from this circumstance obtained the appellations of Paul's Walkers, as we now say Bond-street Loungers. However strange it may seem, tradition says, that the great Lord Bacon used in his youth to cry, Eastward ho! and was literally a Paul's Walker." Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807.

Lord Bacon had a taste for display, which was afterwards exhibited in a magnificent manner, worthy of the grandeur of his philosophy; but this, when he was young, might probably enough have been vented in the shape of an exuberance, which did not yet know what to do with itself. Who would think that the late Mr. Fox ever wore red-heeled shoes, and was a "buck about town?"

But to conclude with these curious passages:- "The Walkers in Paul's," continues our author “during this and the following reigns, were composed of a motley assemblage of the gay, the vain, the dissolute, the idle, the knavish, and the lewd; and various notices of this fashionable resort may be found in the old plays and other writings of the time. Ben Jonson, in his Every Man out of his Humour, has given a series of scenes in the interior of St. Paul's, and an assemblage of a great variety of characters; in the course of which the curious piece of information occurs, that it was common to affix bills, in the form of advertisements, upon the columns in the aisles of the church, in a similar manner to what is now done in the Royal Exchange: those bills he ridicules in two affected specimens, the satire of which is admirable. Shakspeare also makes Falstaff say, in speaking of Bardolph, "I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield: if I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were mann'd, hors'd, and wiv'd."

To complete these urbanities, the church was the resort of pickpockets. Bishop Corbet, a poetical wit of the time of Charles the First, sums up its character, as the "walke

"Where all our Brittaine sinners sweare and talk."* Only one reformation had taken place in it since the complaint made by Edward the Third: no woman, at the time of Earle's writing, was to be found there; at least not in the crowd. "The visitants," he says, "are all men, without exceptions."+ A commonwealth writer insinuates otherwise; but the visitation was not public. The practice of "walking and talking" in St. Paul's appears to have revived under James the Second, probably in connexion with Catholic wishes; for there was an act of the first of William and Mary, by which transgressors forfeited twenty pounds for every offence; and what is remarkable, the bishop threatened to enforce this act so late as the year 1725, "the custom," says Mr. Malcolm, "had become so very prevalent."‡

A proverb of " dining with Duke Humphrey," has

Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5.

† Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant.

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

survived to the present day, owing to a supposed tomb of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, which was popular with the poorer frequenters of the place. They had a custom of strewing herbs before it, and sprinkling it with water. The tomb, according to Stow, was not Humphrey's, but that of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the house of Warwick. Men who strolled about for want of a dinner were familiar enough with this tomb; and were therefore said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

While some of the extraordinary operations abovementioned were going on, (the intriguing, picking of pockets, &c.) the sermon was very likely proceeding. It is but fair, however, to conclude that, in the Catholic times, during the elevation of the host, there was a show of respect. We have heard a gentleman say, who visited Spain in his childhood, that he remembered being at the theatre during a fandango, when a loud voice cried out "Dios" (God;) and all the people in the house, including the dancers, fell on their knees. A profound silence ensued. After a pause of a few seconds, the people rose, and the fandango went on as before. The little boy could not think what had happened, but was told that the host had gone by. The Deity (for so it was thought) had been sent for to the house of a sick man; and it was to honour him in passing, that the theatre had gone down on their knees. Catholics reform as well as other people, with the growth of knowledge, especially when restrictions no longer make their prejudices appear a matter of duty. We know not how it is in Spain at this moment, with regard to the devout interval of the fandango; but we know what would be thought of it by thousands of the offspring of those who witnessed it on this occasion; and certainly in no Catholic church now-a-days can be seen the abominations of old St. Paul's.

The passenger who now goes by the cathedral and associates the idea of the inside with that of respectful silence, and the simplicity of Protestant worship, little thinks what a noise has been in that spot, and what gorgeous processions have issued out of it.

Old St. Paul's was famous for the splendour of its shrine, and for its priestly wealth. The list of its copes, vestments, jewels, gold, and silver cups, candlesticks, &c. occupies thirteen folio pages of the Monasticon. The side aisles were filled with chapels to different saints and the Virgin; that is to say, with nooks partitioned off one from another, and enriched with separate altars; and it is calculated that, taking the whole establishment, there could hardly be fewer than two hundred priests. On certain holidays, this sacred multitude, in their richest copes, together with the lord mayor, aldermen, and city companies, and all the other parish priests of London, who carried a rich silver cross for every church, issued forth from the cathedral door in procession, lifting up a hymn, and so went through Cheapside and Cornhill to Leadenhall, and back again. The last of these spectacles was for the peace of Guisnes, in 1546; shortly after which Henry the Eighth swept into his treasury the whole glories of Catholic worship, copes, crosses, jewels, church-plate, &c.-himself being the most bloated enormity that had ever mis-used them.

Among other retainers to the establishment, Henry suppressed a singular little personage, entitled the Boy-Bishop. The Boy-bishop (Episcopus Puerorum) was a chorister, annually elected by his fellows to imitate the state and attire of a bishop, which he assumed on St. Nicholas's day, the sixth of December, and retained till that of the Innocents, December the twenty-eighth. "This was done," says Brayley, "in commemoration of St. Nicholas, who, according to the Romish church, was so piously fashioned, that even when a babe in his cradle, he would fast both on Wednesdays and Fridays, and at those times was 'well pleased' to suck but once a day. However ridiculous it may now seem, the boy-bishop is stated to have possessed episcopal authority during the above term; and the other children were his prebendaries. He was not permitted to celebrate mass, but he had full liberty to preach; and however puerile his discourses might have been, we find they were regarded with so much attention, that the learned Dean Colet, in his statutes for St. Paul's school, expressly ordains that the scholars shall, on every Childermas daye, come to Paule's Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's sermon, and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the chylde bishop; and with them the maisters and surveyors of the scole.' 'Probably," continues Mr. Brayley, "these orations though affectedly childish, were composed by the more aged members of the church. If the boybishop died within the time of his prelacy, he was interred in pontificalibus, with the same ceremonies as the real diocesan; and the tomb of a child bishop in Salisbury cathedral, may be referred to as an instance of such interment."

"From a printed church-book," says Mr. Hone, "containing the service of the boy-bishop set to music, we learn that, on the eve of Innocent's-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 chap

London and Middlesex, vol. ii. p. 229.

lains 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 petit-canons the tapers, according to the rubrick. Afterwards he proceeded to the altar 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 chaunted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the boy-bishop repeated salutions, prayers, and versicles; and in conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering Deo Gratias."

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 scholarship 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 petitioned the king to prohibit certain ignorant and "inexpert people from presenting the History of the Old Testa ment." 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 doubtless originated, partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at which they assisted, 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 as those of St. Paul's. A set of them were incorporated under the title 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.† 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 nile actors:

men.

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, soothe, the Parca 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 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,

Ancient Mysteries Described, &c. 1823, p. 195.

+ 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 Steevens's Shakspeare, Prolegomena, vol. ii. p. 516.

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 imagination 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 Essex. 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 themselves. 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 passenger 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 Sidney (the beau ideal of the age of Elizabeth), and Vandyke, 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 pror, 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,+ 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

ast.

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 passing comely;

And God did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling.

Nature commends her workmanship to Fortune's charge,

Fortune presents him to the court and queen,
Queen Eliz. (O God'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, Coller, 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.t

The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are only to be equalled by a passage in an epitaph

"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.

+ Maitland's History of London, vol. ii. p. 1170.

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 sex."

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.* 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 passed 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 Monu

ments :

"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 commands 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 appre

hend 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 nobleman 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."

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

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 God 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

The Bishop's aecond 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. In the mention of her in Mr. Brayley's table of contents, is a ludicrous mistake of the index-maker. Taking a hasty glance at the text, and overlooking a parenthesis, he has recorded her thus:"Baker, Lady, her immoderate love of tobacco,"

will drag him by the hair of the head out of the court!"*

Old St. Paul's was much larger than new; and the churchyard was of proportionate dimensions. present Streets of Ave Mary Lane, Paternoster Row, The wall by which it was bounded ran along by the Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed Lane; and therefore included a large space and many buildings, which are not now considered to be within the precincts of the cathedral. This spacious area had grass 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 to Canon Alley. It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the space to the east of it, that the citizens were wont anciently to assemble 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 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 is 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. 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 abutted 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.+ 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 jourries some of them might take from the Universities, or elsewhere, should, at his pleasure, be freely entertained for five days' space, with sweet and convenient lodging, fire, candle, and all other necessaries, viz., from Thursday before their day of preaching, to Thursday morning following." "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.

:

Many

"Before this cross," says Pennant, "in 1483, was brought, divested of all splendour, Jane Shore, 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 crookbacked 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 pase demure, so wamanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie,

London and Middlesex, vol. ii. p. 231.

+ The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out-of-doors sermons better than their posterity could; yet, as times grew less hardy, they began to have consequences, "The which Bishop Latimer attributes to another cause. citizens of Raim," said he, in a sermon preached in Lincolnshire 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 myself, when I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an 'll savoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after: aud I think no less, but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease."-Brayley, vol. ii. p. 315.

+ Maitland, vol. ii. p. 949.

THE STREETS OF THE METROPOLIS. THEIR MEMORIES AND GREAT MEN.

CHAPTER THE FIRST. (Continued) Desecration of St. Paul's Cathedral during the Commonwealth. The present Cathedral.-Sir Christopher Wren.-Statute of Queen Anne.

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 worship, 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 erecting of which, the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being obliged to make way for the ends of beams, which penetrated their centers." The statues on the top were thrown down and broken to pieces.

We have already 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. It is not our intention to enlarge on the present state of places and public buildings in London, especially as a volume, we understand, may shortly be laid before the public, which shall take a particular survey of the two great cathedrals of London and Westminster, their architecture and monuments. We shall content ourselves therefore with stating, in reference to times gone by, that Sir Christopher Wren had very great and ungenerous trouble given him, in the erection of the new structure; and after all, 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 petition the government of Queen Anne, and then only obtained them under circumstances of the most unhandsome delay. Wren, however, was a philosopher and a patriot; and if he underwent the mortification attendant 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 anticipated 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, "Well, I must philosophize a little sooner than I intended." (Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius philosophari). The Duchess 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, and at great hazard, for 2001. 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 archi. tect, in the contemplation of the rising of the fabric which his vast genius was calling into existence:

* History of London, II. 1166.

SUPPLEMENT, No. 2.]

admire.

"

Pomp and threatening harmony,"+

their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless eye-balls. 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 goodnatured 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 sheathed 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 learned to speak like oracles of old :
For thee, for thee alone, what could she more?
She lost the honour she had gained before;
Lost all the trophies which her arms had won,
(Such Cæsar never knew, nor Philip's son ;)
Resigned the glories of a ten year's reign,
And such as none but Marlborough's arm could
gain :

For thee in annals she's content to shine,
Like other monarchs of the Stuart line.

Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coarser 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 church-yard. The calumny was worthy of the coarseness. 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.

Life of Sir Christopher Wren, in the Library of Useful Knowledge, No. 24, p. 27.

Wordsworth.

CHAPTER II.

CONTENTS.

The Church of St. Faith. - Booksellers of the Church-yard. Mr. Johnson's.-Mr. Newberry's.— Children's Books.-Clerical Names of Streets near St. Paul's.-Swift at the top of the Cathedral.-Dr. Johnson at St. Paul's.-Paternoster Row.-Panyer's Alley. Stationer's Hall.-Almanacks.-Knight Riders' Street. Armed Assemblies of the Citizens.-Doctor's Commons. The Herald's College.-Coats of Arms.-Ludgate.Story of Sir Stephen Forster.-Prison of Ludgate.Wyatt's Rebellion.-The Belle Sauvage Inn.-Blackfriars. - Shakspeare's Theatre.-Accident at Blackfriars in 1623.-Printing House Square.-The Times. Baynard's Castle.-Story of the Baron Fitzwalter.Richard III. and Buckingham.-Diana's Chamber.— The Royal Wardrobe.—Marriages in the Fleet.-Fleet Ditch.-The Dunciad.

WE remember, in our childhood, a romantic story at school, of a church that stood under St. Paul's. We conceived of it, as of a real good-sized church, actually standing under the other; but how it came there, nobody could imagine. It was some ghostly edification of providence, not lightly to be inquired into; but as its name was St. Faith's, we conjectured that the mystery had something to do with religious belief. The mysteries of art do not remain with us for life, like those of nature. Our phenomenon amounted to this. "The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, was originally a distinct building, standing near the east end of St. Paul's; but when the old cathedral was enlarged, between the years 1256 and 1312, it was taken down, and an extensive part of the vaults was appropriated to the use of the parishioners of St. Faith's, in lieu of the demolished fabric. This was afterwards called (the church of St. Faith in the Crypts,) Ecclesia Sanctæ Fidei in Cryptis; and, according to a representation made to the Dean and Chapter, in the year 1735, measured 180 feet in length, and 80 in breadth. After the fire of London, the parish of St. Faith was joined to that of St. Augustine; and, on the rebuilding of the cathedral, a portion of the churchyard belonging to the former was taken to enlarge the avenue round the east end of St. Paul's, and the remainder was inclosed within the cathedral railing." *

The

The parishioners of St. Faith have still liberty to bury their dead in certain parts of the churchyard and the crypts. Other portions of the latter have been used as a store-house for wine, stationery, &c. stationers and booksellers of London, during the fire, thought they had secured a great quantity of their stock in this place; but on the air being admitted, when they went to take them out, the goods had been so heated by the conflagration of the church overhead, that they took fire at last, and the whole property was destroyed. Clarendon says amounted to the value of two hundred thousand pounds.+

One of the houses on the site of the old episcopal mansion, now occupied by his successor, Mr. Hunter, was Mr. Johnson's, the bookseller, a man who dethe remarkable circumstance of his never having serves mention for his liberality to Cowper, and for seen the poet, though his intercourse with him was long and cordial. Mr. Johnson was in connexion with a circle of men of letters, some of whom were in the habit of dining with him once a week, and who comprised the leading polite writers of the last generation,-Cowper, Darwin, Hayley, Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld, &c. Fuseli must not be omitted, who was at least as good a writer as a painter; and others of celebrity are still living, who have been among the instructors of their time, and will be known to posterity. Here Bonnycastle hung his long face over his plate, as glad to escape from arithmetic into his jokes and his social dinner, as a great boy; and here the first of our living poets (Wordsworth) published his earliest performance.

But the most illustrious of all booksellers in our boyish days, not for his great names, not for his dinners, not for his riches that we know of, nor for any other full-grown celebrity, but for certain little penny books, radiant with gold, and rich with bad pictures, was Mr. Newberry, the famous children's bookseller, "at the corner of St. Paul's church-yard," next Ludgate Street. The house is still occupied by a successor, and children may have books there as formerly, but not the same. The gilding we confess, we regret: gold, somehow, never looked so well as in adorning literature. The pictures also,-may we own that we preferred the uncouth coats, the staring blotted eyes, and round pieces of rope for hats, of our very badly-diawn contemporaries, to all the proprieties of modern embellishment? We own the superiority of the latter, and would have it proceed and prosper, but a boy of our own time was much, though his coat looked very like his grandfather's. The engravings, probably, were of that date. Enormous, however, is the improvement upon the morals of these little books; and there we give them up, and with unmitigated delight. The good little boy, the hero of the infant literature in those days, stood, it must be acknowledged, the chance of being Vol. ii. p. 303.

In his Life, vol. iii. p. 98. Edit. 1827.

[SPARROW, PRINter, crane-court.

a very selfish man. His great virtue consisted in being different from some other little boy, perhaps his brother; and his reward was having a fine coach to ride in, and being a king Pepin. Now-a-days, since the world has had a great moral earthquake that set it thinking, the little boy promises to be much more of a man; thinks of others, as well as works for himself; and looks for his reward to a character for good sense and beneficence. In no respect is the progress of the age more visible, or more importantly so, than in this apparently trifling matter. The most bigoted opponents of a rational education are obliged to adopt a portion of its spirit, in order to retain a hold, which their own teaching must accordingly undo: and if the times were not full of hopes in other respects, we should point to this evidence of their advancement, and be content with it. One of the most pernicious mistakes of the old children's books, was the inculcation of a spirit of revenge and cruelty, in the tragic examples which were intended to deter their little readers from idleness and disobedience. One, if he did not behave himself, was to be shipwrecked and eaten by lions; another to become a criminal, who was not to be taught better, but rendered a mere wicked contrast to the luckier virtue; and above all, none were to be poor but the vicious, and none to ride in their .coaches but little Sir Charles Grandisons, and allperfect Sheriff's. We need not say how contrary this was to the real spirit of Christianity, which at the same time they so much insisted on. The perplexity in after life, when reading of poor philosophers and rich vicious men, was in proportion; or rather, virtue and mere worldly success became confounded. In the present day, the profitableness of good conduct is still inculcated, but in a sounder spirit. Charity makes the proper allowance for all; and none are excluded from the hope of being wiser and happier. Men, in short, are not taught to love and labour for themselves alone, or for their little dark corners of egotism; but to take the world along with them into a brighter sky of improvement; and to discern the want of success in success itself, if not accompanied by a liberal knowledge.

The Seven Champions of Christendom, Valentine and Orson, and other books of the fictitious class, which have survived their more rational brethren (as they thought themselves,) are of a much better order, and, indeed, survive by a natural instinct in society to that effect. With many absurditics they have a general tone of manly and social virtue, which may be safely left to itself. The absurdities wear out, and the good remains. Nobody in these times will think of meeting giants and dragons; of giving blows that confound an army, or tearing the hearts out of two lions on each side of him, as easily as if he were dipping his hands into a lottery. But there are still giants and wild beasts to encounter, of another sort, the conquest of which requires the old enthusiasm and disinterestedness; arms and war are to be checked in their career, and have been so, by that new might of opinion to which everybody may contribute much in his single voice; and wild men, or those who would become so, are tamed by education and brotherly kindness, into ornaments of civil life.

The neighbourhood of St. Paul's retains a variety of appellations, indicative of its former connexion with the church. There is Creed Lane, Ave-Maria Lane, Sermon Lane,* Canon Alley, Pater-Noster Row, Holiday Court, Amen Corner, &c. Members of the cathedral establishment still have abodes in some of these places, particularly in Amen Corner, which is inclosed with gates, and appropriated to the houses of prebendaries and canons. Close to Sermon Lane is Do-little Lane; a vicinity which must have furInished jokes to the Puritans. Addle Street is an ungrateful corruption of Athelstan Street, so called from one of the most respectable of the Saxon kings, who had a palace in it.

We have omitted to notice a curious passage in Swift, in which he abuses himself for going to the top of St. Paul's. "To day," says he, writing to Stella, "I was all about St. Paul's, and up at the top like a fool, with Sir Andrew Fountain, and two more; and spent seven shillings for my dinner, like a puppy." "This," adds the doctor, "is the second time he has served me so: but I will never do it again, though all mankind should persuade me, unconsidering puppies!' The being forced by richer people than one's self to spend money at a tavern, might reasonably be lamented; but from the top of St. Paul's, Swift beheld a spectacle, which surely was not unworthy of his attention; perhaps it affected him too much. The author of Gulliver might have taken from it his notions of little bustling humankind.

Dr. Johnson frequently attended public worship * Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that Sermon Lane is a corruption of Sheremoniers Lane, that is the lane of the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in this lane for melting silver, called the Blackloft-and the Mint was in the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. See Maitland, ii. 880 (Edit. of 1756).

+ Letters to Stella. in the duodecimo edition of his works, 775. Letter vi. p. 43.

"

It is curious to reflect what a change has taken place in this celebrated book street, since nothing was sold there but rosaries. It is but rarely the word Paternoster-Row strikes us as having a reference to the Latin prayer. We think of booksellers' shops, and of all the learning and knowledge they have sent forth. The books of Luther, which Henry the Eighth burnt in the neighbouring churchyard, were turned into millions of volumes, (partly by reason of that burning,) and have put an end to their prede

cessors for ever.

Paternoster-Row, however, has not been exclusively in possession of the booksellers, since it lost its original tenants, the rosary-makers. Indeed it would appear to have been only in comparatively recent time, that the booksellers fixed themselves there. They had for a long while been established in St. Paul's Churchyard, but scarcely in the Row, till after the commencement of the last century. "This street," says Maitland, writing in 1720, "before the fire of London, was taken up by eminent mercers, silknten, and lacemen; and their shops were SO resorted unto by the nobility and gentry, in their coaches, that oftimes the street was so stopped up, that there was no passage for foot passengers. But since the said fire, those eminent tradesmen have settled themselves in several other parts; especially in Ludgate Street, and in Bedford Street, Henrietta Street, and King Street, Covent Garden. And the inhabitants in this street are now a mixture of tradespeople, such as tire-women, or milliners, for the sale of top-knots, and the like dressings for the females." In a subsequent edition of his history, published in 1755; it is added, "There are now many shops of mercers, silkmen, eminent printers, booksellers, and publishers." The most easterly of the narrow and partly covered passages between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row, is that called Panyer's Alley, remarkable for a stone built into the wall of one of the houses on the east side, supporting the figures of a pannier or wicker basket, surmounted by a boy, and exhibiting the following inscription ;

"When you have sought the city round,
Yet still this is the highest ground."

We cannot say if absolute faith is to be put in this asseveration; but it is possible. It has been said, that the top of St. Paul's is on a level with that of Hampstead.

We look back a moment between Paternoster Row and the churchyard, to observe, that the only memorial remaining of the residence of the Bishop of

London, is a tablet in London-House Yard, let into the wall of the public house called the Goose and Gridiron. The Goose and Gridiron is said by tradition to have been what was called in the last century a "music house;" that is to say, a place of entertainment with music. When it ceased to be musical, a landlord, in ridicule of its former pretensions, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with his foot," and called it the Swan and Harp.‡

*Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv. p. 93. + History of London, ii. 925.

t The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and eritical. 8vo., 1797. Vol. iv. p. 206.

Between Amen Corner, and Ludgate Street, at the end of a passage from Ave-Maria Lane, "stood a great house of stone and wood, belonging in old time to John, Duke of Bretagne, and Earl of Richmond, cotemporary with Edward II. and III. After him it was possessed by the Earls of Pembroke, in the time of Richard II. and Henry IV., and was called Pembroke's Inn, near Ludgate. It then fell into the possession of the title of Abergavenny, and was called Burgavenny House, under which circumstances it remained in the time of Elizabeth. "To finish the anti-climax," says Pennant, "it was finally possessed by the company of Stationers, who rebuilt it of wood, and made it their Hall. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and was succeeded by the present plain building."* Of the once powerful possessors of the old mansion nothing now is remembered, or cared for; but in the interior of the modern building are to be seen, looking almost as if they were alive, and as if we knew them personally, the immortal faces of Steele and Richardson, Prior in his cap, and Dr. Hoadley, a liberal bishop. There is also Mrs. Richardson, the wife of the novelist, looking as prim and particular as if she had been just chucked under the chin; and Robert Nelson, Esq., supposed author of the Whole Duty of Man, and prototype of Sir Charles Grandison, as regular and passionless in his face as if he had been made only to wear his wig. The same is not to be said of the face of Steele, with his black eyes and social aspect; and still less of Richardson, who, instead of being the smooth, satisfied-looking personage he is represented in some engravings of him (which makes his heart-rending romance appear unaccountable and cruel), has a face as uneasy as can well be conceived,-flushed and shattered with emotion. We recognise the sensitive, enduring man, such as he really was,—a heap of bad nerves. It is worth any body's while to go to Stationers' Hall, on purpose to see these portraits. They are not of the first order as portraits, but evident likenesses. Hoadley looks at once jovial and decided, like a goodnatured controversialist. Prior is not so pleasant as in his prints; his nose is a little aquiline, instead of turned up; and his features, though delicate, not so liberal. But if he has not the best look of his poetry, he has the worst. He seems as if he had been sitting up all night; his eyelids droop; and his whole face is used with rakery.

It is impossible to see Prior and Steele together, without regretting that they quarrelled: but as they did quarrel, it was fit that Prior should be in the wrong. From a Whig he had become a Tory, and shewed that his change was not quite what it ought to have been, by avoiding the men with whom he had associated, and writing contemptuously of his fellow wits. All the men of letters, whose portraits are in this hall, were, doubtless, intimate with the premises, and partakers of Stationers' dinners. Richardson, was Master of the Company. Morphew, a bookseller in the neighbourhood, was one of the publishers of the Tatler; and concerts as well as festive dinners used to take place in the great room, of both of which entertainments Steele was fond. It was here, if we mistake not, that one of the inferior officers of the company, a humourist on sufferance, came in, one day, on his knees, at an anniversary dinner, when Bishop Hoadley was present, in order to drink to the "Glorious Memory."+ The company, Steele included, were pretty far gone; Hoadley had remained as long as he well could; and the genuflector was drunk. Steele, seeing the bishop a little disconcerted, whispered him, "Do laugh, my lord; pray laugh :-'tis humanity to laugh." The good-natured prelate acquiesced. Next day, Steele sent him a penitential letter, with the following couplet:

Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons, though he none commits."

The most illustrious musical performance that ever took place in the hall, was that of Dryden's Ode. A society for the annual commemoration of St. Cecilia, the patroness of music, was instituted in the year 1680, not without an eye perhaps to the religious opinions of the heir presumptive, who was shortly to ascend the throne as James the Second. An ode was written every year for the occasion, and set to music by some eminent composer; and the performance of it was followed by a grand dinner. In 1687, Dryden contributed his first ode, entitled, "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day," in which there are finer things than in striking. Ten years afterwards it was followed by any part of the other, though as a whole it is not so "Alexander's Feast," the dinner perhaps being a part of the inspiration. Poor Jeremiah Clarke, who shot himself for love, was the composer. This is the ode,

Pennant's London, as above, p. 377.

† Of William III.

The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxi cation of Dryden's Feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been styled the musical Otway of his time He was organist at St. Paul's, and shot himself at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. John Reading, organist of St. Dun stan's, who was intimately acquainted with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon entering the house "found his friend and fellow student in the agonies of