Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo.

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH BANK OF THE THAMES.ToList

THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF

SAINT PAUL

AN ACCOUNT OF THE OLD AND
NEW BUILDINGS WITH A
SHORT HISTORICAL SKETCH

BY

THE REV. ARTHUR DIMOCK, M.A.

Rector of Wetherden, Suffolk

WITH XXXIX ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1900

PREFACE.

The MSS. relating to St. Paul’s are deficient in regard to the earlier
periods, but become gradually more complete as time progresses. They
have been published or quoted, probably, more extensively than those
belonging to any other religious foundation in this country, unless it
be such communities as St. Alban’s, which have attracted the continued
attention of the editors working under the Master of the Rolls. In
consequence, although our knowledge, not only of the Romano-British
period but of many succeeding centuries, is defective or altogether
wanting, yet as time advances after the Norman Conquest the merely
printed material at our disposal becomes gradually almost
embarrassing. When we come to the present Cathedral, we know not only
exactly when it was built, but to a great extent how and why.

In the Parentalia Wren’s grandson, Stephen, partly in his own words,
partly in those of his famous grandfather, lifting the curtain,
discloses the personal history and inner self of the architect at his
work.

Among the leading authorities are the following, giving the place of
honour to the—

Parentalia or Memoirs. Completed by his [Sir Christopher’s] son,
Christopher. Now published by his grandson, Stephen Wren, Esq.
(London, 1858).

The History of St. Paul’s, by Sir William Dugdale (Ellis’ edition,
1818).

Repertorium, by Richard Newcourt (London, 1708).

Radulfi de Diceto, Decani, Lundoniensis Opera Historica (vols. i.
and ii., edited for the Master of the Rolls by the Bishop of Oxford).

[viii]I have to thank the Dean for permission to consult the Chapter copy of
the Registrum Statutorum, edited for private circulation (1873) by
that enthusiastic and accurate St. Paul’s scholar, the late Dr.
Sparrow-Simpson, one of the last of the Minor Canons on the old
foundation, Librarian and Sub-dean. There is a supplement (1897).

Dr. Sparrow-Simpson also wrote or edited the following—

Documents Illustrating the History of St. Paul’s Cathedral (Camden
Society, 1880).

Chapters in the History of Old St. Paul’s (1881).

Visitation of Churches (Camden Society, 1885).

Gleanings from Old St. Paul’s (1889).

St. Paul’s and Old City Life (1894).

His remaining work, the Catalogue of the Library, I have not
consulted.

Annals of St. Paul’s, by Dean Milman (1868).

The learned and talented historian did not live to see this his last
work through the press. In consequence there are printer’s errors as
to dates, &c., which I have not thought it necessary to point out.

Domesday of St. Paul’s, by Archdeacon Hale (Camden Society, 1858).

The Three Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul, by William Longman
(Longmans, 1873).

Amongst other sources of information are the lectures delivered in St.
Paul’s by Bishop Browne when a residentiary, and published by the
S.P.C.K. The value of these to the students of early Church History is
in an inverse ratio to their size. The origin of our secular colleges
yet remains to be written; but I am again indebted to Mr. Arthur
Francis Leach for the Introduction to the Visitations of Southwell
(Camden Society, 1891), for valuable information on this subject.

In regard to the efforts to complete Wren’s designs by mosaic
decorations, I have carefully observed all that has been [ix]done, and
have attentively followed much that has been said and written. In
particular I have been interested by a statement that has gone the
round of the press. Certain young ladies and gentlemen of the Slade
School of Art and elsewhere are reported to have protested that even
good and appropriate decoration would be contrary to the wishes of Sir
Christopher Wren.

My thanks are due to the Dean for his courtesy and trouble in
rendering me all the assistance I asked for; to the Bishop of Oxford
(like the Bishop of Bristol, a former residentiary) for providing me
with a list of authorities at the commencement of my task; to the
librarians of All Souls’ College, Oxford, and their committee, and
particularly to Mr. George Holden, assistant librarian, for permission
to use their invaluable collection of Wren’s designs and drawings; to
the Archdeacon of Middlesex for information concerning the
inscriptions on the stalls; to Canon Milford, successor to Wren’s
father as Rector of Bishop-Knoyle, for communicating to me the
irregularity about the registration of Wren’s baptism, and for the
loan of Mrs. Lucy Phillimore’s Life and Times of Wren, a work out of
print and not to be procured at the London Library; to Mr. Peter
Cazalet for kind assistance in drawing one of the arches and also in
describing the monuments; and if last, certainly not least, to the
ever courteous officials of the Cathedral, who have rendered me every
facility in my study of Wren’s building.

ARTHUR DIMOCK.

Wetherden Rectory,
Haughley, Suffolk,
January 3, 1900.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SOUTH VIEW OF OLD ST. PAUL’S IN 1658.
After the Etching by Hollar, in Dugdale’s “History of St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
ToList

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.

CHAPTER I.ToC

ITS FOUNDATION AND HISTORY TO THE ACCESSION OF DEAN COLET (61-1505).

Romano-British.—Tacitus, in his characteristically concise style,
introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and
the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in
hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in
this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea,
Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two
daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising
against the foreign invaders. Colchester fallen, the ninth legion
annihilated, nothing remained but to abandon the thriving mart of
London itself for a time to the fury of the natives, before the Roman
sway could be restored.

The ground rising both from the northern bank of the Thames, some
three hundred yards distant, and from the eastern bank of the Fleet
beck, forms an eminence. Here, to protect the riverside mart below, on
or about the site of the present churchyard the Romans formed a camp;
and looking down what is now Ludgate Hill, the soldiers could see the
Fleet ebbing and flowing with each receding and advancing tide.
Northwards the country afforded a hunting ground, and a temple to
Diana Venatrix would naturally be erected. During the excavations for
New St. Paul’s, Roman urns were [4]found as well as British graves; and
in 1830, a stone altar with an image of Diana was likewise found while
digging for the foundations of Goldsmith’s Hall in Foster Lane. On
such incomplete evidence rests the accuracy of the story or tradition
that a temple of Diana occupied part of the site of the present
Cathedral.

Suetonius himself restored order in London; and in spite of
insurrections, she progressed during the next three centuries to
become a centre of such importance, Roman highways spreading in
different directions, that the accurate and impartial Ammianus
Marcellinus concedes to her (circa 380) the style and title of
Augusta. And it was during these three centuries of progress that
Christianity obtained a firm footing, but when and how we know not.
The picturesque story, which deceived even Bede, how that Lucius,
“king of the Britons,” sent letters to Eleutherus, a holy man, Bishop
of Rome, entreating Eleutherus to convert him and his, must now be put
down as a pious forgery.[2] Tertullian (circa 208) says that the
kingdom and name of Christ were then acknowledged even in those parts
inaccessible to the Romans; and we are probably on the safe side in
asserting that missions had been successfully introduced into London
by the end of the second century. Neither are we in much doubt or
difficulty as to whence they came. Gaul, visited by missionaries from
Ephesus, in turn sent others on; and the Church in London, as
throughout these Isles, in Romano-British times can be safely
described as a daughter of Gaul, and a granddaughter of the Ephesus of
St. Timothy. Beyond we know little, if anything at all, more than that
a Bishop of London, known by the Latinised name of
Restitutus, was one of three British prelates at the Council
of Aries (314). And while there is no reason to suppose otherwise than
that the bishops, of whom Restitutus could not have been anything like
the first, had their principal church erected in the neighbourhood, at
least, of St. Paul’s churchyard and dedicated to that saint, neither
site nor name can ever be authenticated. When the Roman troops
retired, so thoroughly did the invading savages destroy all records,
that our [5]knowledge of the British Church in London may be compared,
not inaptly, to our knowledge of Thornhill’s paintings in the concave
sphere of the dome. We know that they exist; but even on a bright May
day they are invisible from below.

Saxon, Angle, and Dane.—In the early years of the fifth century the
Romans are stated to have finally abandoned this country. If certain
lists are to be credited, Bishops of London of the original British
series continued until the flight of Theorus in 586. These lists have
now been rejected,[3] although as the taking of London by the East
Saxons was not prior to the date above, there is reason in the
suggestion that church and bishop were still in existence. In the
pages of Bede, writing about a century later, we come across something
more definite, which readers interested in St. Paul’s may care to
have.

“In the year of our Lord 604, Augustine, Archbishop of Britain,
consecrated two bishops, viz., Mellitus and Justus; Mellitus to preach
to the province of the East Saxons, who are divided from Kent by the
river Thames, and border on the eastern sea. Their metropolis is the
city of London, situated on the bank of the aforesaid river, and is
the mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land. At that time
Sabert, nephew to Ethelbert [Augustine’s King of Kent] by his sister
Ricula, reigned over the nation, though under subjection to Ethelbert,
who had command over all the nations of the English as far as the
river Humber. But when this province [East Saxons] also received the
word of truth by the preaching of Mellitus, King Ethelbert built the
church of St. Paul in the city of London, where he and his successors
should have their episcopal seat.”[4]

Bede, in one sense most interesting, becomes in a second sense most
irritating. We would give much to know how long an interval had
elapsed since the last bishop, whether this rude East Saxon building
was erected on the ruins of another or on a different site, whether
the name St. Paul’s was a continuation or no. Bede is silent,
ignoring the distressed and defeated Britons as an inferior race.

[6]Ethelbert may have given the endowment of Tillingham in Essex. “And if
any one should be tempted to take away this gift, let him be anathema
and excommunicated from all Christian society.” Whether the deed with
these lines originated with him or with some unknown and later donor,
it is certain that the language has been respected; for when the
valuable estates were alienated, this particular donation was reserved
for the fabric fund; and in consequence the Dean and Chapter are by
far the oldest county family in Essex.[5]

Sabert and Ethelbert were gathered to their fathers; and both were
succeeded by pagan sons. London and the East Saxon province or
kingdom—let us say Middlesex and Essex, with perhaps Herts—seem to
have been ruled by the three sons of Sabert in commission, who,
disregarding whatever thin veneer of Christianity they had found it
convenient to adopt during their father’s lifetime, boldly
apostatised, and the East Saxons readily followed. Entering St.
Paul’s, as the bishop was celebrating, the three scoffed and mocked,
“We will not enter into that laver, because we do not know we stand in
need of it; but eat of that bread we will.” Giving the bishop the
alternative of compliance or expulsion, he withdrew after an
episcopate of twelve years and retired across the Channel. Returning
in answer to the entreaties of Laurentius, “the Londoners would not
receive Bishop Mellitus, choosing rather to be under their idolatrous
high priests.” Eventually he succeeded Laurentius at Canterbury. And
for a second time London relapsed into paganism.

Thus the good fruits of the mission of Augustine were completely lost.
An interval occurs, and then Sigebert the Good, on a visit to King
Oswy of Northumbria, was converted by the reasoning of his host, and
baptised by Bishop Finan of Lindisfarne. Finan had no connection with
Rome, but belonged to that remarkable body who traced their origin to
Ireland and Iona. Sigebert took south with him two brothers, English
by race, recommended by Finan, of whom one was Cedd; a third
brother was the more famous Chad. The work of re-planting was at once
set about with the help of Sigebert’s example and protection. Up and
down the province [7]they went, and gained so many converts that Finan
felt justified in consecrating Cedd bishop of the East Saxons. The new
bishop now employed much of his time in training converts, natives of
the province, for the priesthood, both at Ythancester, near
Tillingham, and at Tilbury.[6] He acted as interpreter at the Whitby
Conference, where he was won over to the continental method of
reckoning Easter, and died shortly after of the plague (664). A later
visitation of the pestilence is assigned as a cause of half of the
diocese relapsing, while the other half, governed by Sebbe, remained
faithful. King Wulfhere of Mercia—the then overlord—sent his own
bishop Jaruman with a number of clergy, who effected a complete
restoration. Mellitus, Cedd, Sabert, Sigebert, and Sebbe (said to have
been buried at St. Paul’s) now appear in the transept windows as
founders of English Christianity.

Thus we find, after various vicissitudes and relapses, the Christian
religion planted in the East Saxon province before the end of the
seventh century. The succeeding centuries must be rapidly passed over.
A staff of clergy was formed who came to be called canons; other
endowments by degrees added; the services at St. Paul’s maintained as
a model for the diocese; parish churches and monasteries built. We
must even pass over Bishop Erkenwald, the hero of so many stories, and
whose shrine was the most popular in Old St. Paul’s. In 962, just
after Dunstan had left the bishopric for Canterbury, St. Paul’s was
burnt, and the same year rebuilt. Both before and after this London
suffered from the ravages of the Danes.

The Primate Elfege, the victim of a drunken rabble, was buried at St.
Paul’s (1014), as was Ethelred the Unready (1017), and nearly fifty
years later Edward the outlaw, the representative of the house of
Cerdic and of Alfred.

William the Norman, bishop (1051-1075) in spite of the Confessor and
his nominee the Sparrowhawk, occupied the see long enough to greet his
countrymen on taking possession; and just before his death would be
present at the great council held in his cathedral presided over by
Lanfranc. Norman though he was, he was in touch with the citizens
around his church, and earned their enduring gratitude and friendship
by obtaining a fresh grant of their privileges, as he did for the
cathedral. “I will,” said the Conqueror, “the said church to [8]be free
in all respects, as I trust my own soul to be at the Judgment Day.”

The Normans.—Maurice, of course a Norman, had been only recently
elected bishop in the room of Huge de Orivalle, when the tenth century
church of Bishop Elfstan was destroyed in a fire that consumed the
greater part of the City (1086 or 1087).

He set to work to build another on a larger scale and after the
approved Anglo-Norman method. Fresh ground was procured, and houses
pulled down for the enlargement of church and churchyard. “Barges,”
says Mr. J.R. Green, “came up the river with stone from Caen for the
great arches that moved the popular wonder, while street and lane were
being levelled to make space for the famous churchyard of St. Paul’s.”
Maurice died before the work was anything like finished, but Richard
de Belmeis, a most munificent prelate, devoted his episcopal revenues
for the purpose.

An earthquake in the second year of Rufus, followed two years later by
a destructive November storm, impeded the progress, but in spite of
all drawbacks and hindrances, builders and workmen toiled on, Henry I.
exempting the stone from toll. “Such is the stateliness of its
beauty,” said William of Malmesbury, “that it is worthy of being
numbered amongst the most famous of buildings; such the extent of the
crypt, of such capacity the upper structure, that it seems sufficient
to contain a multitude of people.” It was the variation of an inch or
two in the regularity of the arching of Maurice’s new nave that
afterwards sorely vexed Wren.

We have now come to a time when Domesday gives us some interesting
information. A commencement had been made of endowing separate stalls.
Certain of the estates were parcelled out in this way, partly because
they may have been safer from alienation, partly that the canons might
be responsible, if necessary, for the services of religion in the
manors and townships in which their endowments, technically known
afterwards as corpses, were situated. In Domesday, St. Pancras,
Rugmere (in St. Pancras), and Twyford, in Willesden, appear, and may
fairly be set down as the three original prebends, although the term
“prebend” does not yet appear, neither do the distinctive names of the
stalls. To these three some would add Consumpta-per-Mare in the Essex
Walton, so called [9]because the glebe was consumed by the
encroachments of the sea. We will dismiss this obscure subject by
anticipating a little, and stating that, what with parts of the old
endowments and what with additions, by the end of the twelfth century
the thirty prebends were complete. The names and inscriptions will be
found in the account of the interior of the present Choir.

The two Caddingtons were a gift in Bedfordshire in the diocese of
Lincoln; the remaining twenty-eight were in Middlesex and Essex. The
corporate property of the Chapter by the same date must have reached
24,000 acres.[7]

The Conquest brought other changes in its train. Originally the bishop
was head of the Chapter, and the canons his assistants. But, beginning
not later than with Maurice, who held high office under the Crown, the
bishops became more and more immersed in politics, and found no time
to preside, while the Chapter would naturally raise no objection to
greater independence. What our French neighbours now call a doyen, a
senior from among the canons, took the bishop’s vacant place, and
became dean.

John de Appleby, so late as 1364, dean by virtue of papal proviso, was
only allowed to summon the Chapter, and could not preside until he had
obtained a prebend by exchange. A hundred and fifty years later Colet
was a prebendary. I find no traces of archdeacons—London, Essex,
Middlesex, or Colchester—prior to the Conquest, but these eyes of the
bishop soon appear afterwards; and the Chanter becomes Precentor; the
Sacrist, or keeper of the plate, vestments, and other valuables,
becomes Treasurer; and the Master of the Schools, Chancellor. For the
sake of convenience looking forward a little, these changes, begun in
Norman times, were completed not long after.

The Plantagenets.—As in the tenth century and as in the eleventh,
that evil demon Fire for a third time, “three days before the
Christmas of 1136,” partially destroyed, or at least [10]seriously
injured, St. Paul’s, during a conflagration which reached from London
Bridge to beyond the Fleet. In rebuilding, the then method was to
throw a coating of the more refined Romanesque of the day over the
older work;[8] and this is how I explain an obscure passage in
Pepys—”It is pretty here to see how the late church was but a case
wrought over the old church; for you may see the very old pillars
standing whole within the wall of this.”[9] The old pillars of the
nave were restored, and furnished with graceful engaged columns, and
vaulting shafts rising from the ground. As the choir was afterwards
superseded by another, we cannot tell what was done to it.

We have now come to a time when it is impossible even to catalogue the
numerous stirring events which the cathedral witnessed. William
Fitzosbert the Longbeard, for thundering forth at Paul’s
Cross—where the citizens’ folk-mote was wont to be held—against
tyranny and corruption in high quarters, suffered the extreme penalty.
But people in a higher position were soon to do the same. When John
and Innocent formed their strange alliance against the national
liberties, it was at St. Paul’s that Stephen Langton produced the
Charter of Henry I. Here John publicly handed over his kingdom to the
Pope, and received it back as a vassal. Here came the counterblast,
when Louis, son of King Philip II. of France, received the kingdom
from the assembled magnates. After the death of John and Innocent the
papal claims were upheld; and at a council in 1232, at which the papal
legate presided, he took for his text, “In the midst of the throne and
round about the throne were four beasts.”[10] The four beasts were not
the four Evangelists, but four opposition prelates, including the two
primates and the Bishop of London, Roger the Black. It was the great
bell of St. Paul’s which in the days of Simon de Montfort summoned the
citizens to rise against their king.

Old St. Paul’s completed.—Whilst the nave was constantly witnessing
scenes like this, and whilst clergy and people were protesting against
encroachments on their liberties [11]from abroad or at home, a new and
more magnificent choir, and a new or restored north aisle to either
transept were in course of construction, the ways and means being
found with the help of indulgences issued by various bishops, Scotch
and Irish included, over a lengthy period.[11] In 1240 the king and
the Cardinal Legate Otho attended the consecration of so much of the
new work as was then completed; and Bishop Roger was supported by the
Primate, Edmund Rich, and other prelates.

East of the cathedral was St. Faith’s, one of those parish churches in
which cathedral cities are notoriously prolific—churches with
parishes of the size of an average meadow, or less.[12] Whether it be
owing to greater wealth, or to greater subdivision of property, or to
enthusiasm kindled at a religious centre, nowhere do donors and
benefactors appear to have been more numerous than in these ancient
cities, like London, Norwich, and Exeter. St. Faith’s was pulled down,
and the rights of the parishioners made good by allotting to them the
new crypt underneath the site of their old church. About this time
also the vaulting was renewed throughout, and various adornments added
from time to time. In 1312 the choir was paved with marble at a cost
of fivepence per foot; and three years later the old and ruinous
steeple was superseded by a new one of wood covered with lead, rising,
according to the lowest estimate—that of Wren—to a height of 460
feet, without the cross. The cross had a “pomel well guilt” set on the
top, and contained relics of different saints, put there by Bishop
Gilbert de Selgrave with all due solemnity, accompanied by an
indulgence, for protection. Thus was finished Old St. Paul’s, the most
magnificent church in England, meet to be the cathedral of the
capital, which London had now become.

MONUMENT OF JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER.
After Hollar.ToList

Wycliffe and Gaunt.—The Primate Sudbury and Bishop Courtenay tried
John Wycliffe at the cathedral on a charge of heresy (February 13,
1377). This was in the days of rival popes at Rome and Avignon, and
one or other or both had been described by the accused as “Antichrist,
the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers
and [12]purse-kervers.”[13] By an alliance almost as strange as that
between John and Innocent, Wycliffe found himself supported by John of
Gaunt, with whom was the Earl Marshal, Percy, [13]Earl of Northumberland.
Wycliffe and the Duke of Lancaster had this much in common, they both
wished to confine the clergy to their strictly clerical duties, the
latter through jealousy, the former for higher reasons. An immense
concourse filled the cathedral. Courtenay was popular with the
citizens, Gaunt was not; and Percy was strongly suspected of a wish to
abolish the mayoralty, and as Earl Marshal to appoint a captain of his
own instead. During an angry altercation Gaunt whispered loudly to a
neighbour, “Rather than I will take those words at his [Courtenay’s]
hands, I would pluck the bishop by the hair out of the church.” In the
tumult that followed this insult Gaunt and Percy with difficulty
escaped; the former fled across the river to Kennington, and his
palace at the Savoy was sacked. Yet, in spite of all this, Gaunt was
the only royal prince after the Conquest buried at St. Paul’s. His
tomb under the arch on the north side of the high altar, enriched by a
noble canopy to which his spear, shield, and insignia were attached,
contained effigies of himself and of his second wife, Constance of
Castile. He had also a chantry.

Bishop Robert de Braybroke.—On Courtenay’s translation to
Canterbury, Braybroke became bishop (1382-1404). A thoroughly
practical reformer, he held out the threat of the greater
excommunication because “in our Cathedral not only men but women also,
not on common days alone but especially on Festivals, expose their
wares as it were in a public market, and buy and sell without
reverence for the holy place…. Others play at ball or other unseemly
games, both within and without the church, breaking the beautiful and
costly painted windows, to the amazement of the spectators.” He also
attempted to regulate residence. Owing to the increased value of the
corporate or common property divided amongst the residentiaries or
stagiarii, residence was no longer reckoned a burden, but sought
after. To keep the number down to two the canons in residence would
admit no fresh colleague unless he spent during his first year from
six hundred to a thousand merks in feasting and other useless
expenditure. Braybroke put a check to this abuse, and by the
arbitration of the king the practice of Salisbury was taken as a
model.[14] It was after [14]his death (October 15, 1414) that the Use of
St. Paul in the religious services was superseded by the Use of Sarum.

The Petty or Minor Canons now received their charter of corporation
immediately after the death of Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II.
Apparently when Becket’s representative ventured on his dangerous
errand, deed of excommunication in hand, the canons’ vicars or vicars
choral sang the services. In Braybroke’s time we find a body
intermediate between the canons and their vicars. They were twelve in
number, were required to have good voices, and to understand the art
of singing, and by their charter were to pray for their royal
benefactor, as well as for the repose of the souls of his wife and
ancestors. The first ranked as Sub-dean, taking for many purposes the
dean’s place in his absence, and the two next were the Cardinals. The
Sacrist, the Almoners, and the Divinity Lecturers endowed by Bishop
Richard de Gravesend and Thomas White were appointed from among them.
They enjoyed their own common hall, and elected their own warder and
steward; and two years after incorporation, drawing up their own
Statutes, provided that they were to be read in Hall every quarter,
and that no one was to shuffle his feet during the reading.[15]

The vicars choral either now or later had dwindled down to six, and
seem to have been only in minor orders. The Petty Canons had their own
endowments; but if the canons had to pay their own vicars, we need not
be surprised at this diminution.

The Wars of the Roses.—With this period St. Paul’s is closely
associated. At St. Paul’s the Yorkist leaders pledged their allegiance
to the unhappy Henry VI. on the Sacrament—only to break it. After
Barnet the dead bodies of the king-maker and his brothers were
exposed, and after Tewkesbury the murdered corpse of Henry received
similar treatment. Most striking of all is the grim figure of Richard
of Gloucester. He it was who caused Jane Shore to be put to open
penance on the ground that she had bewitched him, she “going before
the Cross on a Sunday with a taper in her hand,” says Stow, [15]“out of
all aray saue her kirtle only.” Hastings, the successor of Edward in
her affections, was implicated with her, and his offence read from
Paul’s Cross. At Paul’s Cross, newly restored by the bishop, the
younger Kempe, and while the boy king was a prisoner in the palace
hard by, that worthless sycophant, Dr. Ralph Shaw, the preacher (May
19, 1483), took for his text, “The multiplying brood of the ungodly
shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay
any fast foundations” (Wisdom, iv. 3). His sermon went to prove to the
citizens that Richard was the only, or at least the senior, legitimate
member of the royal family. Richard was present to hear his own mother
dishonoured; and the preacher, pointing dramatically to him, argued
that, unlike his three elder brothers, he resembled the late Duke of
York. But the people showed no sympathy, would not cry “Long live King
Richard,” and dispersed, fearing the worst for the poor lad immured in
the bishop’s palace.

The Clergy and Services.—We may now conveniently glance at these
important subjects. The Bishop, who appointed all the dignitaries
except the dean, was Visitor. At the great festivals he was usually
present, and the bells were rung in his honour. How the Dean
always, or nearly so, held another stall has been already stated; how
he came to be presented by the Crown instead of elected by his
brethren is uncertain; but the Chapter somehow practically lost their
right of electing both bishop and dean, for either pope or king in
effect appointed their diocesan. The dean was visitor of the homes of
the clergy and of the chapter estates. To the four
Archdeaconries of London, Essex, Middlesex, and Colchester
was afterwards added the small one of St. Alban’s on the dissolution
of that important abbey, but without a stall in the choir.[16] The
office of Precentor is explained by the name. The
Treasurer was responsible for the very valuable
treasures—jewels, vestments, relics, and the like—as distinct from
the moneys. Lower in rank, but in reality of greater importance, came
the Chancellor. He had jurisdiction over the old school of
St. Paul’s, and any others in the City with the exception of those of
St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and was secretary and
keeper of the seals, receiving a pound of pepper for each deed sealed.
The thirty Prebendaries (or [16]rather twenty-nine when the dean
was one) could only hold one stall each at St. Paul’s, but any number
of benefices elsewhere like the higher dignitaries; and it is by no
means certain that in the thirteenth century John Mansell did not hold
three stalls at St. Paul’s simultaneously among his innumerable
benefices which together, according to Matthew Paris, amounted to
4,000 merks per annum.[17] Of the prebendaries a varying minority in
residence, stagiaries (stagiarii, perhaps a corruption of the more
classical stationarii),[18] not only divided amongst themselves the
balance of the common fund, but were not above partaking of a share of
the capitular bakehouse and brewhouse. The dean, the three higher
dignitaries, and the prebendaries constituted the Chapter, in certain
matters the non-residentiaries having no jurisdiction, and, as
recorded in their Visitations, exercised a very great authority over
their various manors. Below the Chapter came the twelve Petty
Canons, officers peculiar to St. Paul’s and Hereford;[19] and
there were over fifty Chantry Priests when suppressed.
Besides their appointed daily masses they would divide amongst them
the annual masses called obits, which amounted to about a hundred,
and were expected to assist the Petty Canons. They spent their
extensive leisure after the proverbial manner of idle and ignorant
men. The Vicars Choral had dwindled down to six by Colet’s
time, were no longer in priests’ orders, and eventually became laymen
pure and simple. Space would fail us to enumerate the remaining
official and semi-official officers. Among the latter were the twelve
scribes, who sat in the nave for the service of the illiterate public,
and were sworn to do nothing detrimental to the interests of the
Chapter.

The Apostle’s mass was sung the first thing in the morning, in earlier
days by a Vicar Choral, and subsequently by a Petty Canon; and next
came the two masses named after the Virgin and the Chapter, the
Cardinals taking the latter. The other [17]daily services were the usual
Nocturns or Matins and the rest, ending with a combined evensong of
Vespers and Compline. We do not know how the old Use of St. Paul’s
differed from that of Sarum. Besides the Conversion and Commemoration
of St. Paul, the Deposition (April 30th) and the Translation (November
14th) of St. Erkenwald were red-letter days when, before the peal was
sounded, the bells were rung two and two. On the eve of St. Nicholas
(December 5th), patron saint of [18]children, the choristers elected
their boy bishop and his clerks. On St. John the Evangelist’s Day
(December 27th) at evensong the newly elected boy bishop in pontifical
vestments, with his boy clerks in copes, walked in procession, and
after censing the altar of the Blessed Trinity returned and occupied
dignitaries’ stalls, and any evicted dignitary had to take the boy’s
place as thurifer or acolyte, the boy bishop giving the benediction.
The next day (Holy Innocents) this youth preached and took the earlier
part of the mass. These choir lads were trained to act mysteries and,
later on, stage plays.[20]

THE SHRINE AND ALTAR OF ST. ERKENWALD BEHIND THE HIGH ALTAR.
After Hollar.ToList

Each new Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Council, went in procession to
St. Thomas Acon, and from thence to the cathedral. He paid his
devotions at the tomb of Bishop William the Norman, in the nave, in
gratitude for privileges obtained from the Conqueror, and then at the
tomb of his predecessor, the Portreeve Gilbert Becket, father of
Thomas, in a little chapel in the churchyard. On Whitsunday and the
following Tuesday were great processions in which the Corporation
joined, as they did on seven other festivals. At Whitsuntide,
according to a sixteenth century account, a huge suspended censer was
swung along the nave, and the descent of the Holy Spirit illustrated
by the letting loose of a white pigeon. Those who are curious about
the shrines, and particularly of St. Erkenwald’s, the scene of so many
reputed miracles of healing, and of the relics, which included a vase
believed to contain some hair, milk, and a garment of the Virgin, are
referred to Dugdale and other like works. Passing over Te Deums for
victories like Agincourt and Obsequies for the dead—this latter a
source of income to the officers—we will close this chapter with the
wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, a lad of fifteen, to Catherine of
Aragon, in November, 1501. The next spring Arthur died, and the king
effected the betrothal of the widow of eighteen to his younger son
Henry, aged eleven. Seven years later Henry VII. died, and lay in
state at the cathedral.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER II.ToC

FROM THE ACCESSION OF DEAN COLET TO THE FIRE (1505-1666).

With the Florentine studies of John Colet, remarks J.R. Green, a purer
Christianity awoke throughout Teutonic Europe. Born in 1466, a son of
a distinguished citizen who was twice Lord Mayor, after seven years at
Oxford he travelled with sufficient means to France and Italy, and
whether at home or abroad studied in particular Greek. “The knowledge
of Greek seems to have had one almost exclusive end for him,”[21]
continues Green; “Greek was the key by which he could unlock the
Gospels and the New Testament.” Discarding the traditional
mediævalisms, his faith rested simply on a vivid realisation of the
Person of Christ; and whilst his active and lucid intellect exhibit
him in many lights, everything else was subordinate to his faith.
Returning to England, he lectured gratuitously at Oxford on St. Paul’s
Epistles, and formed a friendship with Erasmus. So Erasmus became the
earnest pupil of an earnest master. Taking priests’ orders, he was
appointed Dean of St. Paul’s and Prebendary of Mora (1505), and
established a reputation as a preacher. In those days, and until
Wolsey as legate gave the preference to Westminster, the two Houses
held their sessions in the Chapter House and Nave of Old St. Paul’s,
as the opening ceremony still reminds us. Preaching at the opening in
1512, he startled Convocation by declaring, “All that is in the Church
is either the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of
life.” In vain his bishop, Richard Fitz-James, endeavoured to
establish a charge of heresy: the Primate Warham and young Henry
VIII. [20]both admired and supported the Dean; and the Dean continued to
show his preference for the New Testament in the original Greek rather
than for the prevalent nonsense of the mediæval schoolmen.

DEAN COLET.
After the portrait in Holland’s “Heroologia,” 1620.[22]
ToList

Where the consent of his Chapter was necessary, Colet’s efforts at
reform were obstructed. The profanation of the sacred building he
could not stop: buying, selling, and promenading in the nave continued
the order of the day. The Chapter would have nothing to do with his
new statutes, but elsewhere he was more successful. The Chancellor’s
School was not in accordance with his views; and in spite of Bishop,
Chancellor, and Chapter, out of his own means he built St. Paul’s
School, towards the east end of the churchyard, and endowed it;
and leaving his colleagues out in the cold, left the management to the
Mercers’ Company. His theology was manifest in the image over the
gate. It was neither Erkenwald nor Uncumber: it was not the Virgin or
even St. Paul himself, but the Child Jesus with the simple and
pregnant inscription, “Hear ye Him.” The severity of his discipline,
although a Pauline parent or pupil would now resent it, was adapted to
those rough and hardy times, when people rose early and worked hard,
and when corporal punishment was general and often, and irrespective
of sex or age. William Lyly, an Oxford student who had studied in the
East, was his first high master. As the original St. Paul’s School
became eventually absorbed in Colet’s, this latter—now removed from
its old [21]home to stately buildings on the Hammersmith Road, and
possessing (1899), as a high master, a worthy successor of
Lyly[23]—is in one sense a new foundation of Colet’s, yet in [22]another
is also a continuation of that venerable foundation under the charge
of the Chancellor. Looked at in this latter aspect, it may assert an
antiquity almost as great as St. Peter’s, York, which claims—and not
without reason—to be the senior boys’ school in the country. Colet so
looked forward to the different requirements of different ages that
his statutes did not tie his school down to any cut and dried course
of study; but let us hope place will always be found for the Greek
Testament. What are we to think of the preacher who, while denouncing
war, so pricked the conscience of Henry VIII. that the king sent to
consult him? What of the Bible student who thought that the story of
Creation was an allegory, and intended to teach the ignorant
Israelites that the one God had created everybody and everything? What
of the reformer who went beyond Erasmus in denouncing the profane
excesses perpetrated in the name of religion at the shrine of Becket
at Canterbury? Colet died of the “sweating sickness” at the early age
of fifty-three, in 1519; and it is idle to speculate on his action had
he lived until the breach with Rome. His monument in the south aisle
of the choir perished in the Fire; and in the new Renaissance
cathedral a second might well be erected to the memory of this great
leader of the Renaissance in theology and learning, the greatest among
many great occupants of the Dean’s stall.

TOMB OF JOHN COLET, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S.
After Hollar.ToList

Reformation Principles Opposed.—The still smouldering doctrines of
Wycliffe were now fanned into a flame; and Wolsey endeavoured to
extinguish them without having resort to the stake Tyndal’s New
Testament, translated into English in 1526 at Worms, must have been
speedily smuggled across the Channel. On the Shrove Tuesday of 1527
Wolsey attended St. Paul’s, accompanied by some six-and-thirty
prelates, mitred abbots, and other high dignitaries. Barnes of
Cambridge, formerly a friar, and five others, “Stillyard men,” were
brought from the Fleet prison in penitential array, Barnes carrying a
heavy taper, the rest faggots. Testaments and other forbidden books
were in baskets by a fire in the nave. On their knees the penitents
recanted; while Barnes declared that he deserved to be burnt. Fisher
again preached; and the six pardoned offenders were taken inside the
rails and made to walk round the fire, after which the books were
burnt—by no means a solitary literary conflagration.

[23]Reformation Principles Advanced.—In order to raise money, Henry
declared that as the clergy had acquiesced in the authority of Wolsey
as legate, and as such acquiescence was contrary to the Statute of
Provisors, all these benefices were forfeit to the Crown, and a heavy
subsidy must be paid as ransom. The clergy of the diocese of London,
considering that the arch-offender against this Statute was Henry
himself, and next to him the prelates and great mitred abbots,
attended a meeting at the Chapter House, and were assisted by a number
of their parishioners. John Stokesley, Bishop designate,[24] who
presided, and who had to see the assessment made, could neither keep
order nor gain his point: “We never meddled, let the bishops and
abbots pay.” Fifteen priests and four parishioners were imprisoned,
and, of course, Henry gained his point.

Throughout 1534 the deanery was vacant. The Bishop was directed to see
that the appointed preachers at Paul’s Cross taught that the Pope had
no spiritual authority of divine right. Here as elsewhere it is
remarkable with what ease and unanimity the papal jurisdiction based
on the Petrine claims was done away with. No dignitary—and Bonner
that year became Prebendary of Chiswick—no priest of humbler rank
connected with the cathedral, either resigned or got into trouble on
this important doctrinal question; although the execution of those two
earnest men, John Fisher and Thomas More, who opposed the divorce and
the abrogation of the papal claims, was followed by a pronouncement of
excommunication, deposition, and an interdict on the part of Paul III.
Yet at St. Paul’s, nineteen Anabaptists—a sect whom no one
pitied—were sentenced to be burnt, and of these a man and a woman
suffered at Smithfield, and the remainder in the provinces. The next
year (1536) Hugh Latimer, as earnest and good a bishop as Fisher and
his exact opposite, preaching before Convocation, denounced abuses in
the spirit of an age which did not hesitate to call a spade a spade.
“Lift up your heads, brethren, and look about with your eyes; spy what
things are to be reformed in the Church of England.”

But more dramatic and more effective than the sonorous ring of honest
Hugh’s eloquence, was the sermon at the [24]Cross (February 14, 1538) of
Bishop John Hisley, Fisher’s successor at Rochester, and formerly
Prior of the Dominicans in London. His subject was an ingenious piece
of mechanism, called the Rood of Grace, from Boxley in his diocese, a
source of revenue from devotees. Now, this product of the mechanic’s
art does not seem to have had any resemblance to a Rood—i.e., a
large cross or crucifix—but rather was shaped like a big doll; and
Hisley demonstrated to his intelligent congregation of citizens how no
inherent power, but a man standing inside, with the aid of wires,
caused the rood to bow, and move its eyes and mouth.[25]

The exposure was followed next St. Bartholomew’s eve by the removal of
the Great Rood at the north door, and those of our Lady of Grace and
of St. Uncumber. This last saint is supposed to be a foreign princess
of early times, styled also in England St. Wilgeforte. A peck of oats
was a favourite offering at her shrine in St. Paul’s by those who
wished for favours; and according to Sir Thomas More she owed her
popular name because wives unhappy in their union so offered in the
hope that she would uncumber (i.e., disencumber) them of their
husbands. The disgrace of Thomas Cromwell put a temporary stop to
actions of this nature; and we find Gardiner at the Cross denouncing
both Rome and Luther. We further find Barnes, our quondam penitent,
amongst those who replied from the same famous pulpit, and likening
himself and Gardiner to two fighting cocks, only that the garden
cock lacked good spurs. The result was that Barnes ended his chequered
career at the stake, as did others.

Edward VI.—So long as Henry lived it was dangerous to uphold either
the Petrine claims or the doctrine of justification by faith alone,
and it was equally dangerous to oppose the doctrine of
transubstantiation; but the Council of the child king would not have
this latter doctrine, and was distinctly Protestant. The endowments of
the chantries had been transferred to the Court of Augmentations in
the autumn of 1545 (37 Henry VIII. c. 4) for the benefit of the king;
but when at the beginning of 1547 Edward succeeded his father, St.
Paul’s [25]still enjoyed her own. Somerset and his Protestant council not
only wanted the property, but objected to masses for the dead, and a
renewing Act was quickly passed, Edward’s name taking his father’s
place. So went chantries and obits into the royal coffers, the list
in Dugdale, as returned to the Court, filling ten folio pages; while
but little commiseration was felt for the hard lot of these illiterate
chaplains deprived of their livelihood. And this was not all. Besides
any remaining roods and crucifixes, altars were demolished, tombs
wrecked, plate, jewels, vestments and frontals sold. Elaborate gold
and silver embroidered work found its way to Spanish cathedrals, and
up to a short time ago was reported to be still there.[26] Pardon
Haugh Chapel was desecrated, and the bones carted away to Finsbury;
the Chapter House cloisters went to build Somerset House. The dean,
William May, was an advanced Protestant; but so was not his bishop,
Bonner. Bonner preached at the Cross upholding transubstantiation, and
was deprived and imprisoned. It is to the credit of his successor,
Ridley, that he supported Bonner’s mother and sister at Fulham; “Our
mother Bonner”—he was unmarried—taking the head of his table. Yet
Ridley was one of the judges at St. Paul’s who sent the Anabaptist
woman Joan Bucher to the stake for heresy. During the first year or
two of this reign, complains Dean Milman, “Sunday after Sunday the
Cathedral was thronged, not with decent and respectable citizens, but
with a noisy rabble, many of them boys, to hear unseemly harangues on
that solemn rite” [the Sacrament]. Ridley, after his translation
(1550) restored comparative order, and remained bishop long enough to
witness the introduction of the Second Prayer Book.

Mary Tudor.—When poor Edward came to his untimely end, Ridley sided
with the faction of Jane, and preached at the Cross, declaring both
Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate. For this he has been much censured;
but so far as the two princesses went—of course this would not make
Jane next of kin—he was but upholding the decisions of Ecclesiastical
Courts. In spite of any weakness in her title—and we have seen how
her mother had been married to Arthur at St. Paul’s—Mary was
proclaimed, the bells rung, the Lords went in procession to hear Te
Deum chanted; Bonner went back, and Dean May was [26]replaced by John
Feckenham. Yet Mary’s party by no means had everything their own way.
Gilbert Bourne, Prebendary of Wedland, who had retained his benefice
throughout the late reign and was now Chaplain to the Queen, preaching
at the Cross, was rudely interrupted with cries and throwing up of
caps; and had it not been for two of his brother canons, John Rogers
of St. Pancras and John Bradford of Cantlers, and others, who
conducted him in safety to the adjacent schoolroom, matters might have
gone ill with Mary’s champion. Gardiner recanted his former heterodoxy
concerning the papal supremacy in a sermon; and Pole appeared as
Legate. Ridley, Rogers, and Bradford were amongst those who suffered
at the stake, while May escaped.

Of course the old services were reintroduced; and we turn from grave
to gay in a record of one of these revived functions. A doe was
offered on the Conversion and a buck on the Commemoration of St. Paul,
both in connection with some quaint old-world land tenure. Our records
tell us that Bonner wore his mitre, and the Chapter their copes, with
garlands of roses on their heads. The buck—it was the
Commemoration—was brought to the high altar, and at some time and
place not exactly defined but within the choir, was slain; and the
head, severed and raised on a pole, was borne before the processional
cross to the west door. Here a horn was blown, and other horns in
different parts of the City answered.[27]

Elizabeth.—After the death of Mary, as the diocese of London had
been the chief sufferer from the persecutions, and as the excitement
in the City ran very high, the sermons at the Cross were for a time
wisely discontinued. The Primate Pole, the last Romanist at Canterbury
and the last Legate openly accredited to an English sovereign, and
many of his suffragans likewise, died about the same time; and it was
left for Bonner to preside over a thin Upper House.

What was to be done with the bishop? To allow him to continue in his
high office was tantamount to a grave scandal to religion, and his
person was not safe from the fury of the populace. He was replaced by
Edmund Grindal, and spent the remaining ten years of his life chiefly
in the security of the Marshalsea, without any undue vigour or
harshness. Mary’s [27]first dean, Feckenham, had been made abbot of the
resuscitated regular foundation of Westminster, and his successor was
quietly ejected in favour of the restored May, whilst a few of the
other dignitaries lost their stalls. The Epistle and Gospel were first
read in English, and eventually the Prayer Book was resumed; but the
changes were made gradually; and, considering the provocation, no
vindictive spirit was displayed.

In June, 1561, the beautiful spire was destroyed by fire caused by
lightning or by a plumber’s neglect, and the Chapter House seriously
injured. We have no trustworthy plates prior to this fire, and the
various estimates about the height of the spire and other matters are
anything but infallible. Service was held at St. Gregory’s, and the
roof and other parts restored at a cost of £6,700, but the
architecture was never the same afterwards. Of course the disappointed
Romanists attributed the disaster to the Divine anger, and Bishop
Pilkington, of Durham, preaching next Sunday at the Cross, to the
still continued desecration.

It is difficult for us to understand why this desecration was allowed
to go on. A pillory was indeed set up outside near the bishop’s
palace, and a man convicted of fighting nailed there by his ears,
which were afterwards cut off; but this must have been an offence
exceptionally outrageous. “What swearing is there,” says Dekker, “what
shouldering, what jostling, what jeering, what biting of thumbs to
beget quarrels.” At Bishop Bancroft’s Visitation a verger complained
that colliers with coal-sacks, butchers’ men with meat, and others
made the interior a short cut. Bishop Corbet, of Norwich, wrote:

The choir boys even during service time were on the alert for “spur
money,” a fine due for the wearing of spurs. “Paul’s Walk” (the
central aisle of the nave), said Bishop Earle, of Salisbury, “is the
land’s epitome…. It is the general mart of all famous lies.”
Shakespeare was thinking of his own time, as well as of the time of
Henry IV. (2 Henry IV., act 1, scene 2) when he makes Falstaff engage
Bardolph, out of place and standing at the servant-men’s pillow to be
[28]hired. John Evelyn called the cathedral a den of thieves. Before, we
have mentioned that this abuse existed in mediæval times; the above
authorities show that it still went on right up to the Fire. Doctrine
might be purified, and rites reformed; Paul’s Walk was neither
purified nor reformed.

John Felton nailed the Bull of Pius V. excommunicating and deposing
Elizabeth (Regnans in Excelsis) to the bishop’s gate at night (May
15, 1570), and was hung on a gallows hard by. We pass on from this,
and from Elizabeth’s “tuning of the pulpit” and various other matters,
to the Armada. By September some of the captured flags were displayed
on high outside, and waved over the preacher at the Cross. The last
Sunday in November was appointed for the State Thanksgiving, Aylmer
being bishop and Nowell dean. The Queen was driven in a chariot drawn
by four white horses. Bishop John Piers, of Salisbury, the Almoner,
was the preacher. His sermon has not come down, but the Form of Prayer
has—”Turning the destruction they intended against us upon their own
head.” At the conclusion, the Queen remained in the City to dine with
the bishop.

After the death of the great Queen, the leading conspirators in the
Gunpowder Plot[28] were executed outside the West Front. John King,
Dean of Christ Church, styled by James “the king of preachers,” was
consecrated bishop in 1611; and the next year Bartholomew Leggatt was
condemned as a heretic in the Consistory Court, and burnt at
Smithfield; and a month later Edward Wightman suffered a like fate at
Lichfield. But the Marian persecutions had made all good citizens sick
of such sights, and henceforth, says Fuller, the king yielding to
public opinion, “politically preferred that heretics, though
condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in
prison.”

Inigo Jones.—A certain Master John Farley agitated in favour of the
decaying and neglected fabric, and King James attended service in
state to hear his favourite preacher, the bishop, plead for
restoration from an appropriate text chosen by the king himself (March
26, 1620). After the service came a banquet at the bishop’s palace,
and after the banquet a meeting; and a Royal Commission was appointed
before [29]the end of the year on which the Lord Mayor was the first
person named. Amongst other commissioners was Inigo Jones, Surveyor of
the Royal Works. He had studied in Italy and was an enthusiastic
student of the Italian Renaissance. Unfortunately the public was
anything but enthusiastic, and only a small sum was contributed, which
went in the purchase of stone. Matters came to a complete standstill;
and shortly prior to his assassination the elder Villiers is reported
to have stolen part of the stone for a watergate for his new town
house.

INIGO JONES’ PORTICO.
After Hollar.ToList

The Commission died with the king, and Laud, becoming bishop,
persuaded Charles to issue a new one. This time a handsome sum was
collected, and work was commenced. As regards the exterior, the nave
and west sides of the two transepts were cased throughout, and some
repairs made to the east end.[29] The chief alteration in the interior
was the [30]adornment and restoration of the choir screen, at the expense
of Sir Paul Pindar, and with the laudable object of putting an end to
desecration. Inigo Jones added a noble classical portico to the West
End as a successor to Paul’s Walk. We forgive the lack of harmony with
the Norman nave, when we recall the truly religious motive.

But evil days for the cathedral were approaching. In the House of
Commons (February 11, 1629), Oliver Cromwell, Member for Huntingdon
town, made his maiden speech in a Grand Committee on Religion. He
complained that Dr. Alablaster had preached flat Popery at Paul’s
Cross, and that the Doctor’s bishop, Neile of Winchester, would not
have it otherwise.[30] Alablaster was High Church, and the Third
Parliament of Charles was not.

The Civil War.—The outbreak of the Civil War put an end to the
Commission, and the moneys were confiscated.[31] The Long Parliament
acquired the supremacy in the City, and from 1643 Inigo Jones ceased
to act as surveyor, dying before the Restoration. The whole staff was
expelled, and their revenues sequestrated; and Dr. Cornelius Burgess
was appointed preacher, some of the more eastern bays of the choir
being walled in by a brick partition as his chapel or conventicle. The
chief fault to be found with Burgess is that he was out of place in a
cathedral, otherwise there is much to be said in his favour. Even in
those times, when religious fanaticism went mad, he behaved with
discretion, and courageously headed the petition of London ministers
against the execution of the king. Hugh Peters figures in the crypt,
and other parts were assigned as meeting-houses. It is better to pass
over as quickly as may be the behaviour of the soldiery and populace.
“Paul’s Cathedral,” says Carlyle, “is now a Horseguard; horses stamp
in the Canons’ stalls there [but the choir was mainly reserved for
Burgess and his sermons], and Paul’s Cross itself, as smacking of
Popery … was swept altogether away, and its leaden roof melted into
bullets, or [31]mixed with tin for culinary pewter.”[32] Its very name,
the Cross, was against it; and thus fell, never to be restored, the
most famous pulpit in England, which through successive generations
had been part and parcel of English history. Carlyle also tell us that
Trooper Lockyer, of Whalley’s Horse, “of excellent parts and much
beloved,” was shot in the churchyard for mutiny, “amid the tears of
men and women.”[33]

Monuments which had escaped earlier vandals were now defaced and
destroyed; the scaffolding was seized; part of the roof on the south
side fell in, and the lead was used for water-pipes. The new portico
was hacked about and turned into stalls for wares, and, in a word,
Inigo Jones’ work more than undone. Other doings of the soldiery are
unfit for publication.[34]

The Restoration.—Juxon was translated to Canterbury, and the
munificent and much-abused Gilbert Sheldon received London, only in
turn to succeed Juxon again three years later. At the beginning of the
Civil War the deanery had become vacant, and Richard Steward
designated for the vacancy. It was an empty appointment, and was
afterwards changed for another of a like kind, and Matthew Nicolas
became nominally dean. This preferment took actual effect from the
summer of 1660, when Nicolas was installed dean and prebendary of
Caddington Major, such of the other dignitaries as survived resuming
their stalls, and vacancies were filled up. Another bay was added to
the Burgess conventicle, and the cathedral services were resumed. But
the sad condition of the fabric called for action, and in 1663 another
Commission was appointed, and Christopher Wren appointed
surveyor. Taking example from his uncle’s cathedral at Ely, he
suggested an enlargement of the area at the junction of the four
members of the cross, and subscriptions were raised.

The Plague.—There is a gap in the subscription list after March,
1665: the pestilence was already at work. As the summer advanced its
ravages were intensified; and the City, fortunate in escaping earlier
attacks, suffered so severely that the pest-houses proved
insufficient; and Harrison Ainsworth is responsible for a story which
may probably be depended on in its main outlines. The Lord Mayor and
City authorities, in [32]conjunction with the College of Physicians,
obtained the consent of Dean Sancroft (the second from Nicolas) and
his chapter for the conversion of the cathedral into a lazar-house;
and a meeting was held in the Chapter House, at which the Primate
Sheldon was present. Sheldon employed himself, co-operating with the
Lord Mayor, in making provision for the victims. “Chapels and
shrines,” says Ainsworth, “formerly adorned with rich sculptures and
costly ornaments, but stripped of them at times when they were looked
upon as idolatrous and profane, were now occupied by nurses,
chirurgeons and their attendants; while every niche and corner was
filled with surgical instruments, phials, drugs, poultices, foul rags
and linen.”[35] After its chequered career, Old St. Paul’s was
destined to be used last of all as a hospital.

The Fire.—The house and Navy office of Samuel Pepys were in
Seething Lane, Crutched Friars, near where Fenchurch Street Station
now is. About three in the morning of Sunday, September 2, 1666,
Samuel and his wife were called by their servant Jane, who told them
of a fire visible in the south-west towards London Bridge. After
looking out, not thinking it a great matter, the couple returned to
bed; but getting up at seven Pepys heard a far worse account, and
instead of attending morning service went to the Tower, and called on
his neighbour Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant. Robinson told him
that the house of Faryner, baker to the king, in Pudding Lane had just
caught fire, that Fish Street was in flames, and the church of St.
Magnus destroyed. These were near the north end of London Bridge, as
the Monument and St. Magnus both remind us.

The origin of the Fire Pepys learnt later (February 24, 1667).
Faryner’s people had occasion to light a candle at midnight; they went
as usual into their bakehouse to light it, but as the fire had gone
out, had to seek elsewhere. This striking a light in an unusual place
by Faryner, his son and daughter, is asserted to have been, somehow
and all unknown to them, the origin of the Fire. “Which is,” says
Pepys, “a strange thing, that so horrid an effect should have so mean
and uncertain a beginning.” About two in the morning, when the family
were [33]upstairs and asleep again, the choking sensation of smoke woke
them up, just in time to escape and tell the tale.

ST. PAUL’S IN FLAMES.
Originally engraved by Hollar for the title of Dean (afterwards Archbishop)
Sancroft’s sermon on the Great Fire.ToList

There was a drought, and the flames spread on their mission of
devastation, assisted by a breeze. St. Paul’s and most of the hundred
City churches were not likely to be used for worship that morning. “To
see the churches all filling with goods by people who themselves
should have been quietly there at the time.” But service was held as
usual at the Abbey; and just about sermon time, a newly elected king’s
scholar, Taswell, noticing a stir and commotion—he was standing by
the pulpit steps—ascertained the cause. The news had spread that the
City was in flames. Like most boys the prospect of something exciting
coincided with his desire to escape a long sermon, so he hastened
outside in time to see four boats on the river, the occupants of which
had escaped in blankets. Let us hope that as he was not fully
admitted, he escaped Busby’s birch. All through the Sunday St. Paul’s
was safe—the distance from Pudding Lane was a little over half a
mile—and even the east end of Lombard Street was intact. The
parishioners of St. Gregory and St. Faith, lulled into a false sense
of security, remained confident that even though the conflagration
spread [34]westward, and the surrounding houses caught fire, the flames
would not leap across the vacant space of churchyard; and the
booksellers accordingly began to store their goods in St. Faith’s as
though the crypt were a fireproof safe.[36] So it might possibly have
been, and in spite of sparks, had the distracted Lord Mayor been firm
enough to prevent the storing of books in the churchyard, and had the
cathedral roof been in good repair. The flames gradually encircled the
churchyard; the goods there took fire, and the flames caught the end
of a board placed on the roof to keep out the wet. The Nemesis of
neglect!

Our young friend Taswell first saw the flame at eight o’clock on the
Tuesday evening at Westminster. It broke out at the top of St. Paul’s
Church, almost scorched up by the violent heat of the air and
lightning too, and before nine blazed so conspicuous “as to enable me
to read very clearly a 16mo. edition of Terence, which I carried in my
pocket.”

Pepys corroborates as to the day “Paul’s is burned and all Cheapside,”
writing of Tuesday, September 4th; and under the same date, Evelyn
adds: “The stones of St. Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead
running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing
with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them,
and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help
could be applied, the eastern wind still more impetuously driving the
flames forward.” By Wednesday night the central section of the City
was so burnt out that Pepys walked through Cheapside and Newgate
market. “It is a strange thing,” he remarks, “to see how long the time
did look since Sunday.” “Sad sight,” he adds next day, “to see how the
river looks: no houses nor church near it.” Friday, the 7th, early: “A
miserable sight of Paul’s Church with all the roofs fallen in, and the
body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth’s; Paul’s School also, Ludgate
and Fleet Street.”

We will conclude this with some more extracts from the evidence of
Pepys. On the next Sunday, when it is interesting to observe the
drought came to an end, he attended service twice, probably at St.
Olave’s, Hart Street, Mark Lane, in the neighbourhood of Crutched
Friars. In the morning “Our parson made a melancholy but good sermon;
and [35]many and most in the church cried, specially the women. The
church mighty full; but few of fashion, and most strangers. To church
again, and there preached Dean Harding [Nicolas Hardy, of Rochester];
but methinks a bad, poor sermon, though proper for the time; nor
eloquent in saying at this time that the City is reduced from a large
folio to a decimo-tertio.” The phrase “most strangers” is not
surprising, as besides St. Paul’s, some eighty-five parish churches
were in ashes, including two without the walls but inside the
Liberties. Our last extract is under date 12th November following, and
illustrates how such remains as had hitherto escaped desecration were
treated in the general disorder. Bishop Braybroke’s efforts at reform
have been already acknowledged: his tomb was behind the high altar
towards the east. “In the Convocation House Yard [apparently the space
within the Chapter House Cloisters] did there see the body of Robert
Braybroke, Bishop of London, that died in 1404. He fell down in the
tomb out of the great church into St. Fayth’s this late fire, and is
here seen his skeleton with the flesh on; but all tough and dry like a
spongy dry leather or touchwood, all upon his bones. His head turned
aside. A great man in his time, and Lord Chancellor. And now exposed
to be handled and derided by some, though admired for its duration by
others. Many flocking to see it.”

Old St. Paul’s, then, suffered the fate of its predecessors in the
first week of September, 1666. By the Friday the conflagration had so
far exhausted itself that Pepys was able to walk from Paul’s Wharf to
the churchyard. The City within the Walls was well-nigh burnt out, and
of the eighty-three parish churches consumed only forty-eight were
rebuilt; and these with the thirteen untouched left accommodation more
than sufficient for the surrounding population. Our regret for the
cathedral would have been greater, had this magnificent monument of
mediæval genius—probably of its kind as fine as any in the
world—been capable of a conservative restoration: it is to be feared
that neglect, the destroyer, and the restorer had amongst them
rendered this task well-nigh impossible.

So far as existing authorities guide us, it remains to describe the
architecture.[37]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER III.ToC

OLD ST. PAUL’S—EXTERIOR.

The church was cruciform, with aisles to every arm; and we will give
the external dimensions before the fire of 1561, which include the
lofty spire and exclude the portico. The figures must in all cases be
considered approximate.

The extreme length east and west is difficult to ascertain:
authorities do not agree; neither do their different estimates with
their scales. Mr. William Longman, upon the authority of Mr. E.B.
Ferrey, estimates it at 596 feet, and his accompanying scale even
more. If the accuracy of the comparative ground-plan in “St. Paul’s
and Old City Life” can be depended upon, we must put it at a little
over 580 feet; but Mr. F.C. Penrose’s invaluable excavations do not
appear to have fixed the precise termination of the west front. Mr.
Longman also gives a comparative ground-plan of the two cathedrals
from a drawing of Wren’s (see below, p. 64); and this, though on a
small scale, is perhaps our safest guide, and we shall probably not be
far wrong if we say 580 feet or a little over, and divide our length
as follows: nave, 252 feet; across transept, 104 feet; choir, 224
feet. To this must be added the portico of 40 feet, making a total
length of at least 620 feet. The old west end was some 70 feet nearer
Ludgate Hill, and with the portico 110 feet nearer. Length of
transepts, 293 feet, the two arms being equal; breadth of both nave
and transepts, 104 feet, Dugdale’s scale making them exactly 100 feet:
breadth of choir a trifle less. Height of nave from ground to apex of
roof, about 130 feet, and of choir, 143 feet. Height of central tower
by Wren’s estimate, the lowest, 260 feet, and of spire about 200
feet; [37]altogether according to Wren, 460 feet, and according to others
still higher. Height of western towers with the spires I take the
liberty of adding, unknown. I have calculated the area at about 81,000
to 82,000 square feet; and in this have excluded St. Gregory’s (say 93
X 23 feet plus the apse) and the Chapter House, with the surrounding
cloister; a square of 90 feet and more than half covered in. These two
members were structurally part and parcel of the building.

Thus we see that Old St. Paul’s was by far the largest cathedral
church in England. Its area exceeded York and Durham: its length
Winchester: the height of its graceful lead-covered spire exceeded
Salisbury; and this, taking Wren’s safe and low estimate, and not
counting ball, cross and eagle weathercock of some thirty feet more.
If we allow St. Gregory and the covered part of the Chapter House
area, as we should, it equalled in area or slightly exceeded alike its
successor and Cologne and Florence, and was surpassed only by the new
St. Peter’s, Milan, and Seville. “See the bigness,” said Bishop Corbet
of Norwich, “and your eye never yet beheld such a goodly object.”

The difficulties which present themselves in any attempt to describe
the architecture still continue to beset us; such earlier drawings as
we have are contradictory and rude to a degree.[38] The Nave
was Norman, rebuilt to a great extent after the fire of 1137. The
aisles had the usual round-headed windows, with the unusual (for
England) circular windows above. There were flat buttresses; but I
must reject the flying-buttresses of some restorers. The clerestory
windows are a puzzle. Everybody maintains they were Pointed, and, if
so, they would have been inserted at the same time as the new roof;
but there seems to be no trustworthy authority for this. In Finden’s
engravings after Hollar they are taken at a peculiar angle which is
apt to mislead. Hollar and his engravers give two windows on the south
side in the interior, i.e., of the nave and clerestory. Both seem
alike; and Inigo Jones’ patched-up north and south fronts represent
them both as round, so that the balance of evidence appears to be in
favour of round.[39]

Another difficulty is the question of the existence or [38]nonexistence
of the western towers. Mr. William Longman and Mr. E.B. Ferrey give
none in their south-west view, because “no drawings or plates are
known to exist which would settle the question.” But it is our
misfortune that we have to reconstruct Old St. Paul’s practically
without the help of drawings, until we come to Inigo Jones’ finished
work. In Dugdale’s ground-plan they cover almost exactly the same area
as one of the severies of the neighbouring aisles, and are flush with
the west front; in both respects resembling those of Wells and other
cathedrals. Besides, they are constantly mentioned, and at various
dates, as Mr. Longman duly acknowledges. The southern tower was the
original Lollards’ Tower from which the Lambeth tower has
borrowed its name, and was utilised for a prison by the Bishops of
London for ecclesiastical offences. It was both bell and clock tower,
and abutted on to both the cathedral proper and St. Gregory’s. So late
as 1573, Peter Burchet of the Middle Temple, shortly afterwards
executed for murdering his gaoler in the tower, was imprisoned here
for heresy, and would then have been sentenced to death but for
recanting.

The north-west tower was likewise used at times as a prison, and was
connected with the bishop’s palace. In the days of Bonner, an upper
floor almost as high as the parapet of the nave contained a room eight
feet by thirteen; and the two towers were connected by a passage in
the thickness of the west wall. Hollar’s views show us that Inigo
Jones overlaid these towers with a new coating, and finished them off
with turrets. The original towers were probably crowned with spires of
wood and lead, and both projected some thirty feet from the aisles.
The high roof of the nave[40] of the middle of the thirteenth century
had an angle of about forty-five, and replaced an older one during the
rebuilding of the choir. The Central Tower had double
flying-buttresses with pinnacles springing from the clerestory; and,
assuming that the west towers had also spires, the grouping must have
been nearly perfect.

Yet another puzzle is the architecture of the Transepts. The
north and south windows at the ends are sometimes [39]represented as of a
late date, but not by Hollar. They were probably Norman in their three
stages. In his report[41] Wren says, “The North and South Wings have
Aisles only on the West side, the others being originally shut up for
the ‘Consistory.'” What he meant was that the two east aisles were
shut off from the rest of the transepts. Their architecture (of the
same dimensions as their western counterparts) was Geometrical as
regards windows, buttresses, and pinnacles. The rest of the transepts
resembled the nave; and this part of the south front was very much
broken. The cloister and chapter house occupied almost the whole of
the west side of the south transept, and four bays of the nave; St.
Gregory’s Church occupied four more bays at the west of the nave,
leaving only three aisle windows of the nave on the south side.

Taking the Choir next, we will at once dismiss as
untrustworthy the view taken in 1610 in Speed, as reproduced in “St.
Paul’s Cathedral and Old City Life.” Here the windows are represented
as Norman; but this is not the first time I have found Speed at fault.
We have records of the consecration of the western part in 1240, and
of the pulling down of St. Faith’s and of the completion of the
eastern part by the end of the century, or, counting certain
additions, a little later. The western and earlier part extended to
the fourth window, which is broader than the rest; and the mouldings
were somewhat different in this part; but still the matter is not
without difficulty. The engravings represent the whole of the tracery
of the twelve windows on either side as Geometrical. We should have
expected the four western windows to be lancets; and there is no
explanation for the uniformity. The East End contained a great window
some thirty-seven feet in height, of seven lights and trefoiled at the
head; and above this the circular rose window, the four angles of the
square stage filled in with an arrangement of smaller circles. There
were eastern aisle windows on either side of the main window, and four
crypt lights below.

When we add that the buttresses were crowned with pinnacles to
strengthen them in their resistance to the flying-buttresses of the
clerestory and to the aisle walls beneath, and that these pinnacles
contained niches for statues and were [40]terminated with crockets and
finials, so far as we can judge the exterior of the choir was in every
respect a fitting completion of the exterior of Old St. Paul’s.

We have already said sufficient of Inigo Jones, how he flagged [i.e.
cased] the outside of the nave and transept, says Wren, “with new
stone of larger size than before.”[42] Owing to this, the plates are
silent as to the window mouldings and other details. Let us pass on to
the

INTERIOR.

The Nave was of eleven bays (not twelve), with triforium and
clerestory, and aisles in addition. The outer coating only of the
pillars was of good stone. Wren says, “They are only cased without,
and that with small stones, not one greater than a Man’s Burden, but
within is nothing but a Core of small Rubbishstone, and much Mortar,
which easily crushes and yields to the Weight.” Even the outer casing,
he adds, “is much torn with age, and the Neglect of the Roof.”[43]
Double engaged shafts reached to the clerestory, and supported the
springers. The actual arcading sprang from these shorter engaged
shafts, which had cushioned capitals; and the arcading of the
triforium was similar. The mouldings of the arches of arcading and
triforium look like the lozenge. The vaulting, too heavy for its
supports, was quadripartite, with cross springers intervening, and the
longitudinal rib unbroken. The Transepts were each of four bays, and
in their details similar to the nave. Their north aisles were shut off
by blank walls which displayed here and there the architecture of the
rest; and each aisle of four bays was further divided into two equal
parts of two bays each, making four compartments altogether. In one or
other of these four the Consistory Court, according to Wren, was held.
To the arcading of nave and transepts, Wren says that in later years
four new and stronger piers were added in the common centre under the
tower for the purpose of strengthening it. As these are not shown in
Dugdale’s plates, we can only conjecture their date to have been after
the fire of 1445. By the plan they were far more massive than the
others, and we can well understand Wren’s complaint that they broke in
upon the perspective.

[41]

THE NAVE OF OLD ST. PAUL’S.
After Hollar.ToList

The dates of the nave and transepts have already been suggested. After
the fire of 1087, Bishop Maurice and his successor built everything
afresh on a larger scale. The fire of 1136 did great damage, and
restoration on a considerable scale was effected. Mr. E.A. Freeman, by
a happy coincidence, touches on restorations at Wells of this time,
and contrasts our two dates.[44] After the fire of 1136 the
restoration would be in a style “somewhat less massive, somewhat more
highly [42]enriched.” I have already pointed out Freeman’s statement that
the custom towards the middle of the eleventh century was to throw a
coating of the more refined Romanesque of the day over earlier Norman
work, and this agrees with the statements both of Wren and Pepys.

We may, then, assume that while the former ground-plan and general
outline remained the same, after 1136 the pillars were encased and
more elaborate mouldings added. By another statement of the same
authority[45] it would seem that “the vaulting shafts run up from the
ground” belong to the second restoration, when the vaulting itself was
completed, and the date of this is indicated in Bishop Basset’s letter
of 1255.

Hence the nave and transepts were restored after the transitional
Norman style, and vaulting shafts added in the fully developed Early
English style, while the window tracery and other details of the
isolated north aisles of the transepts were Geometrical. The four
piers supporting the central tower were of a later date; but surely
there must have been others, though less massive, before, otherwise it
is difficult to understand how the tower and spire were supported.

Dugdale gives only two monuments in the nave. Thomas Kemp, who died
bishop, reposed under the penultimate arch in the north side, in a
chapel enclosed by a screen and railings. The second was that of Sir
John Beauchamp, who died in 1358, and whose monument was under the
eastern arch on the south side. Somehow the populace entertained the
idea that this latter was the burial place of Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester, uncle to Henry VI., who was murdered in 1447 and buried at
St. Alban’s. The adjacent part of the south aisle was called Duke
Humphrey’s Walk: and the tomb seems to have been a sanctuary. At
dinner-time, needy people who lacked both the means to purchase a meal
and friends to provide them with one, and who chanced to loiter about
this sanctuary, were said to dine with Duke Humphrey, and the phrase
was equivalent to having no dinner at all.

[43]

THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.
After Hollar.ToList

[44]

The Choir.—As our ancestors looked eastward from under the central
tower, both aisles of the choir were completely hidden from view by
the height of the blank wall. The choir screen in the centre was of
less altitude, had four niches for statues on either side, and a fine
Pointed doorway in the centre [45]of three orders of arches. The plates
are of a date too late to show any rood. Entering through this door
was the choir of twelve bays. Stephen Wren implies that the whole of
this magnificent member was completed by 1240;[46] but much of the
architecture belonged to a somewhat later date, and the prints are
corroborated by numerous documents.[47] The extension eastward on the
site of Old St. Faith’s must have almost amounted to a rebuilding.
Where did this extension begin, and where did the choir of 1240 end?
Wren noticed that the intercolumnar spacing was less irregular to the
east. Mr. Longman points out that the clustered pillars towards the
west differed from the others, as did their capitals and the triforium
arcading, while the fifth arch-space was greater than all the rest.
Here we have the original east end.

Westward, the square fronts of the pillars were left bare; eastward
they were covered with clustered shafts, and the springers which
supported the vaulting were continued to the ground. Westward,
moreover, the triforium arcading differed from that to the east, and
was occasionally even left blank.

There remains, however, this peculiarity, that according to the prints
the main aisle windows were uniform throughout, and with Geometrical
tracery. The vaulting differed from the nave in this, that the
diagonals, where they met the longitudinal rib, had bosses, and three
single cross ribs alternated instead of one. The longitudinal rib was
again unbroken throughout.

That part of the Choir devoted to public worship was limited to the
first seven bays, of which the three to the east were on a higher
level. The stalls of the dignitaries extended four bays, and shut out
the aisles. On the north side the organ occupied the third bay, and on
the south the bishop’s cathedral throne, as now, was at the end. The
Chapel of St. Mary, or Lady Chapel, was east of the presbytery at the
extreme end, with St. George’s to the north and St. Dunstan’s south;
and the whole of the space outside the presbytery—north, south,
east—was taken up by some of those monuments which contributed so
much to the beauty and interest of the interior, and they even
encroached inside. Dugdale gives some seventy to eighty. [46]Between the
altar and the Lady Chapel was St. Erkenwald’s noted and richly
decorated shrine, and the tombs of Bishop Braybroke and Dean Nowell.
Hard by in the north aisle slept John of Gaunt under his magnificent
canopy; and supporter of Wycliffe though he was, his tomb was rifled
and defiled during the Commonwealth. Near at hand was the monument of
Sebba, King of the East Saxons—a convert of Erkenwald, from whom he
received the cowl. In the disgraceful chaos after the Fire, the body
of Sebba, says Dugdale “was found curiously enbalmed in sweet odours
and clothed in rich robes.” Here also could be read the unflattering
epitaph over the monument of Ethelred the Unready; and hard by the
tomb of John of Gaunt, in December, 1641, the corpse of another
Fleming by birth was interred. Sir Anthony Van Dyck had spent the last
nine years of his life in England at the invitation of Charles, and
this great pupil of Rubens was probably the last buried in the choir
before the Civil War. The Lady Chapel contained a wooden tablet to Sir
Philip Sidney, with the inscription:

Another wooden tablet in the north aisle was to the memory of his
father-in-law, the statesman Walsingham; and numerous other statesmen,
nobles, divines, and lawyers were buried, or at least remembered. We
can but regret that these are now things of the past, and gone, with
the exception of the effigy of Dean Donne—as remarkable as the man
himself—and a few mutilated remains. Even Colet’s is gone.

Before descending to the Crypt we may remark that the Interior must
have fully emphasised the sense of majestic beauty produced by the
Exterior. The long perspective eastward from the West Door, flanked on
either side by the arcading and terminating with a glimpse of the rose
window [47]over the choir screen, as depicted in Dugdale, leaves nothing
to be desired.

The Crypt or Shrouds.—The crypt was underneath the eight eastern
bays of the choir, and was about 170 feet in length.[48] The entrance
was from the churchyard on the north side, and the gloom was lit up by
basement windows both at the sides and east end. An additional row of
piers down the centre supported the choir pavement above; and the
whole undercroft may best be described as of eight arches in length
and four in breadth, the arches springing from engaged columns and the
vaulting quadripartite.

The mouldings of the clustered columns were plain rounds and hollows,
and everything throughout appears to have been uniform and of the same
date. The four western bays, rather more than half, formed the parish
church of St. Faith; the eastern part the Jesus Chapel, which, after
the suppression of the Guild, was added to St. Faith’s. These two
parts were separated by a wooden screen, and over the door was an
image of Jesus, and underneath the inscription:

These remarks about the Jesus Chapel, be it noted, date only from the
reign of Henry VI., by whom the Guild was incorporated, and the
members of which held high festival on the days of the Transfiguration
and of the Name of Jesus.

At the south-west corner of St. Faith’s, but outside, was the Chapel
of St. John the Baptist, and near this were the three Chapels of St.
Anne, St. Sebastian, and St. Radegund. Dugdale gives a list of sixteen
of the more noted tombs. They include that of William Lyly, the first
master of Colet’s famous foundation. Had his bones not been disturbed
by Wren’s workmen, they could still have been found underneath the
arcading due south-west from Dean Milman’s tomb.[49] To Lyly’s memory
his son George, Prebendary of Cantlers, also placed a tablet in the
nave above.

[48]Having mentioned our last chapel and altar, it may here be added that
the records enumerate not less than twenty chapels and three dozen
altars altogether. Besides the Guild of Jesus there were four
others—All Souls’, the Annunciation, St. Catherine’s, and the
Minstrels—and these do not seem to include the oldest of all, that
founded by Ralph de Diceto in 1197, which met four times a year to
celebrate the mass of the Holy Ghost. We now go on to the surrounding
buildings.

THE PRECINCTS.

St. Gregory’s, in reality part of the cathedral with the Lollards’
Tower common to both, is mentioned as a parish church in early
documents. Pulled down and rebuilt, in the plates of Hollar it appears
as an uninteresting building, hiding from view the four west bays of
the south aisle of the nave. After the Fire the parish was united for
ecclesiastical purposes to St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, and
both have since been by a further union annexed to St. Martin, Ludgate
Hill. The Petty Canons were parsons or rectors—that is to say, the
income of the benefice was devoted to their support, and so continued
until their suppression as a corporation. The Bishop’s Palace was to
the north-west, and joined the tower. We know nothing of its
architecture, and it is last mentioned in Inigo Jones’ Report of 1631.

Pardon Church Haugh, or Pardonchirche Haw, on the north side and
east of the palace, was not a church at all, and was situated probably
in St. Gregory’s parish. How the “Haw,” or small enclosure, received
its name is doubtful: there may have been some unrecorded connection
with pardons or indulgences. Here Thomas à Becket’s father, who was
Portreeve, built his chapel, rebuilt by Dean Thomas Moore, whose
executors added three chantries. The Haugh was environed by a
cloister, and the tombs in this part traditionally exceeded, both in
number and workmanship, those in the cathedral, but this is all we
know about them. In the cloister was the picture of the Dance of
Death. Death, represented by a skeleton, leading away all sorts and
conditions of mankind, beginning with Pope and Emperor. The
accompanying verse of Dean John Lydgate, monk of Bury (or his
translation from the French), was as gruesome as the[49] picture.
Somewhere here the Petty Canons had their common hall. Near the
cloister, and on the east side, was Walter Sheryngton’s Library; and
adjacent to the north-west corner of the neighbouring transept, his
chapel with its two chantries. East of the Haugh and about opposite
the north point of the transept, was the Charnel, a chapel with a
warden and three chantries. Underneath was a crypt or vault for the
decent reception of any bones that might be disinterred, and hence the
name.

ST. PAUL’S CROSS.
From an Engraving in Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata,” after the picture
in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
ToList

[50]We have now arrived at the north side of the transept, and inside the
angle formed by chancel and transept stood Paul’s Cross, in St.
Faith’s parish. It was an octagon of some thirty-seven feet, and stood
about twelve feet from the old cathedral. Mr. Penrose excavated for
the site, and found it just at the north-east angle of the present
choir. The last structure—of wood on a stone foundation, and with an
open roof—was the gift of Thomas Kemp; but a pulpit cover existed in
1241. Above the roof rose the cross from which the name was derived;
and from 1595 the whole was surrounded by a low brick wall, at the
gate of which a verger was stationed. Against the choir wall was a
gallery of two tiers: in the upper was the projecting royal box or
closet, below the Lord Mayor’s; and the parishioners of St. Faith had
a right to seats. In very bad weather an adjournment was made to the
crypt; but our sturdy forefathers endured alike stress of weather,
length of discourse, and undiluted frankness of speech, after a manner
that altogether puts us, their degenerate descendants, to shame.

From a rude picture, painted in 1620 at the instance of Henry Farley,
we can see the preacher for the day with a sand-glass at his right
hand. King James, in his state box, has his Queen on his right, and
his unhappy son on his left, with the Lord Mayor below. These are to
the left of the preacher, who faces the transept. The congregation,
partly composed of parishioners of St. Faith, is seated on forms; and
the men wear their steeple-crowned hats. A dog-whipper is vigorously
belabouring a poor animal with a cat-o’-nine-tails; but the cries of
the victim do not in the least disturb either preacher or audience;
and two led horses are behind the preacher. A well-dressed youth, a
late arrival, bows and accosts a grave-looking citizen with “I pray,
sir, what is the text?” and the citizen answers, “The 2nd of Chron.
xxiv.” A second citizen [51]is dropping a coin into a large money-box by
the transept door. The subject of the sermon, judging from the text,
was the much-needed restoration; and perchance the preacher was none
other than the diocesan, James’ “king of preachers.”[50]

In 1633 the preaching was removed into the choir “for the repaire of
the Church,” though we cannot quite see in what way this could help
the repairing. Those who shortly afterwards obtained control of the
City could tolerate neither the name nor the actual cross, and were
afraid of disturbances as well. The structure came down, and although
it was said at the time only to make way for another “fairer and
bigger,” was never restored again. The endowments out of which the
preachers were paid went to the Sunday morning preachers, and these
latter are the legitimate successors of the old-time divines.

THE CHAPTER HOUSE AND CLOISTER.
After Hollar.ToList

The Clochier, or Bell Tower, with its lead-covered spire crowned
with a statue of St. Paul, stood at the east end [52]of the churchyard.
There must have been a tower here from a very early period if this was
the bell that summoned the folk-mote. The Guild of Jesus owned the
four bells of later times; and when that body was dissolved they
reverted to the Crown, and were lost at dice to a Sir Miles Partridge,
subsequently executed for sharing in the fortunes of the Protector
Somerset. The cloister of the Chapter House, or Convocation House,
shut off almost entirely the west wall of the south transept and four
bays of the south wall of the nave. This was of the unusual
arrangement of two stories, and formed a square of some ninety feet on
the plan, with seven windows in either story. This was called the
“Lesser Cloisters,” apparently to distinguish it from the cloister of
Pardon Church Haugh. In the centre of the square, and approached
through a vestibule from the east, was the Chapter House, an octagon
with a diameter of nearly forty feet, supported by massive buttresses.
In Dugdale’s engraving the lofty roof has gone; and the tracery of
Chapter House and Cloisters alike are Perpendicular. It will be seen
there were two places for the two Houses of Convocation, one near the
west door of the nave, and this.

There was St. Peter’s College, where the Petty Canons lived, Holmes
College, and the Lancaster College. Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of
Lancaster, executed for high treason against his cousin, Edward II.,
who was canonised by the people, though not by the Pope, had a tablet
somewhere in the church at which miracles were believed to be wrought,
and two offices to himself. But whether the Lancaster College referred
to him or to John of Gaunt, or where it was situated, is uncertain.

Of all these various buildings which surrounded the cathedral and
added to its interest, the curious, by going to the south side of the
nave, may discern some traces of the old Lesser Cloisters and Chapter
House. Everything else has gone so completely that it would be
difficult to fix even the exact site.

[53]

PLAN OF OLD ST. PAUL’S IN 1666.ToList

DIMENSIONS.

OLD ST. PAUL’S.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IV.ToC

FROM THE FIRE TO THE COMPLETION OF NEW ST. PAUL’S (1666-1710).

Christopher Wren was the most distinguished member of a distinguished
family. His father’s elder brother, Matthew, was fellow and senior
treasurer of Pembroke College, Cambridge, when James I. visited that
university in 1611, and won the favour of his sovereign by the ability
with which he acquitted himself in the “Philosophy Act.” After serving
as chaplain to Charles in the journey to Spain, he received, amongst
other preferments, the Mastership of Pembroke and the Deaneries of
Windsor and Wolverhampton, and then was made, in quick succession,
Bishop of Hereford, Norwich, and Ely. We shall see that the Cathedral
of Ely exercised an influence over his nephew in designing the Dome of
St. Paul’s. Matthew survived the Commonwealth after a lengthy
imprisonment without trial, and returned to Ely after the Restoration.
His younger brother Christopher was chaplain to Lancelot Andrewes,
Bishop of Winchester, who preferred him to the Rectory of East Knoyle,
Wilts.[51] Charles I. made him chaplain in ordinary; and when Matthew
was preferred to Norwich, his brother succeeded him in his two
deaneries. The Dean, like his brother, was a learned scholar, and to
him posterity is indebted for the preservation of many valuable
records at [56]Windsor during the troubled times. He married Mary,
heiress of Robert Cox, of Founthill, in Wiltshire, and died in poverty
and deprived of his benefices before the Restoration. The only
surviving son of the marriage, Christopher, was born at East Knoyle,
October 20, 1632. Like others who have eventually lived to an extreme
old age, he was delicate during childhood, and, instead of being sent
early to school, received his primary instruction privately. Like his
father before him, he displayed great aptitude for mathematics, both
pure and applied, and was fortunate enough to have a capable teacher
in Dr. William Holder, the husband of a sister, in whose house his
father took refuge and died after his ejection from Windsor. At the
age of thirteen he was sent for a short period to Westminster, and
about the same time invented a new astronomical instrument. The next
year he was admitted as a gentleman commoner at Wadham College,
Oxford. Both the Warden, Dr. John Wilkins, and the Savilian Professor
of Astronomy, Dr. Seth Ward, observed his early promise, and gave him
every encouragement in the pursuit of his favourite studies, and he
continued to design ingenious instruments and models, Dr. Charles
Scarborough, a surgeon of note, making use of his talents in preparing
pasteboard models for his anatomical lectures.[52] His intellectual
precocity can only be compared to that of John Stuart Mill, and with
this difference, that whereas Mill was forced by his father like a
plant under glass, Wren’s studies were spontaneous and voluntary.

Graduating in 1650, he was elected three years later, after taking his
Master’s degree, to a Fellowship of All Souls, the next year began his
friendship with John Evelyn, and he was subsequently chosen Professor
of Astronomy at Gresham College[53] and Savilian Professor at Oxford.
Isaac Newton in the “Principia” cites him as an authority on
mathematics, and, had he never turned his attention to architecture,
he would still have taken high rank in other ways. By 1663, as appears
by a letter of Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, he was
looked upon as the fittest man to restore the dilapidated St.
Paul’s, and was about the same time asked to go to Tangiers to direct
the extensive fortifications and harbour projected there. He refused
the offer of Tangiers on the plea of health, “and humbly prayed his
Majesty to allow of his Excuse, and to command his duty in England.”
Although this post was to be accompanied by a reversionary grant of
the Surveyor Generalship of the Royal Works, one may well ask the
question, who, had he accepted it, would have rebuilt St. Paul’s?[54]

[57]

ELEVATION AND SECTION OF WREN’S REJECTED DESIGN FOR ST. PAUL’S.
From his drawings in All Souls’ College, Oxford, as reproduced in facsimile in Blomfield’s
“Renaissance Architecture in England.”ToList

[58]

[59]We now begin to find him devoting what Sprat most truly called “that
great genius of yours” to architecture. He examined carefully the
leading churches of England and of some parts of the Continent.[55] He
went to Paris the year of the Plague, and it is characteristic of the
taste of his time that no mediæval cathedral passed on the way is
mentioned. At Paris, under the auspices of Mazarin, many architects
and artists were assembled. “I hope I shall give you a very good
Account of all the best Artists in France,” he wrote to a friend. “My
business now is to pry into Trades and Arts. I put myself into all
shapes to humour them; ’tis a comedy to me, and tho’ sometimes
expenceful, I am loth yet to leave it.” He mentions not only leading
men like Colbert, but more than twenty architects, painters, and
designers he met, and above all Bernini, the architect of the Louvre.
“Bernini’s designs of the Louvre I would have given my skin for; but
the old reserved Italian gave me but a five Minutes View; it was five
little designs on Paper, for which he had received as many thousand
Pistoles: I had only time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory.” In after
years, when his enthusiasm [60]had been tempered by a more mature
judgment, this eulogium would have been materially qualified. We may
add here that he was in course of time knighted, and became President
of the Royal Society.

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN.
From the engraving in Elmes’ Memoirs of Sir C. Wren, after the portrait by Kneller
at the Royal Society’s rooms.ToList

Such was the man to whom not merely the king and his advisers, but
public opinion, turned to repair the ravages of the Fire, and in
particular to rebuild St. Paul’s. It was the Surveyor General, Sir
John Denham, who recommended Wren as his successor, and the death of
Denham in March, 1668, gave this recommendation full effect. One of
Wren’s many [61]disappointments was that the opportunity was missed of
laying out afresh the whole City from Temple Bar to Tower Hill, and
from Moorfields to the river. His inventive genius projected broad
streets, generally rectangular, with piazzas, each the meeting-point
of eight thoroughfares, and quays and terraces along the river bank.
He calculated that by obliterating the numerous churchyards and laying
out healthier cemeteries in the suburbs, no owner would lose a square
foot of ground, and that, although they would not find their property
exactly on the same site, every building would be replaced, with the
immense compensation of an excellent situation in the finest and
healthiest city in the whole world. By this plan St. Paul’s would have
directly faced a long and broad street running west and passing
through the present Law Courts, with St. Dunstan’s Church in the
centre beyond the Fleet, and the narrow Strand joining from the west
at Temple Bar. At Ludgate, three hundred yards west of the cathedral,
this avenue of a width of some thirty yards began to open out until,
opposite the west front, it had increased to a breadth of a hundred
yards, leaving ample room for a piazza. Here an acute bifurcation was
formed, the northern street leading to the Exchange; the southern, a
broader and a nobler Cannon Street, with St. Paul’s between. This
scheme, as laid before the King and Parliament, Wren declared to be
thoroughly practicable. Certainly it would have prevented congestion
of traffic unto this day, and given St. Paul’s (although somewhat
hemmed in on the east) a position unique amongst churches.[56] “The
only and as it happened unsurmountable Difficulty remaining was the
obstinate Averseness of great Part of the Citizens to alter their old
Properties, and to secede from building their Houses again on the old
Ground and Foundations”; and as rebuilding began almost as soon as the
smoke of the Fire had ceased, and long before anything definite could
be decided upon, a great opportunity was lost. The estimated
three-quarters of a million of souls and the vehicles innumerable now
crossing the boundaries every weekday are compelled, too often, to
traverse choked and narrow streets, and not without danger to life and
limb; while St. Paul’s itself, cribbed, cabined, confined, becomes in
[62]each successive generation more hemmed in as the surrounding emporiums
and magazines grow taller and taller.

At first the idea was entertained of restoring the ruins, but this was
finally abandoned by royal warrant to the Commissioners in 1668, and
clearing and excavations began. The workmen with pickaxes stood on the
top of the walls some eighty feet high, and others below cleared away
the dislodged stones—a dangerous task in which lives were lost. Of
the Central Tower some two hundred feet remained, and a more
expeditious plan was adopted. A deal box, containing eighteen pounds
of gunpowder, was exploded level with the foundations at the centre of
the north-west pillar, and the adjacent arches were lifted some nine
inches, while these ruins “suddenly jumping down, made a great Heap of
Ruin in the Place without scattering.” Wren estimated the whole weight
lifted at three thousand tons, and the labour saved equal to that of a
battalion of a thousand men. When the alarmed inhabitants of the
neighbourhood heard and felt the concussion, they naturally took it
for an earthquake. In the surveyor’s absence a subordinate used too
much powder in attempting a second mine, and neither burying it low
enough nor building up the mouth, a stone was projected through an
open window into a room where some women were sitting at work.
Although no one was hit, the neighbours took alarm, and successfully
agitated against all further blasting. Delay was caused, and finally a
battering-ram some forty feet in length, worked by thirty men,
completed the demolition. The stones and rubbish were cleared away,
and used in different buildings and in repairing the streets.
Afterwards some houses on the north side which encroached on the
building, and may have been those that assisted the passage of the
Fire, were levelled, and their site included in the churchyard.

When at length the ruins of Old St. Paul’s had come down and the huge
mass of wreckage been cleared away, working from the west the
excavations for the new foundations were begun. The old cathedral had
rested on a layer of loam, or “pot earth” or “brick earth,” near the
surface; and wells being sunk at various points to ascertain the depth
of this, it was found that the loam, owing to the ground sloping
towards the south, gradually diminished from a depth of six feet to
[63]four. Sinking further, they found sand so loose as to run through the
fingers; next, freshwater shells and more sand, and continuing through
hard beach or gravel, they reached at last the London clay.[57] At one
point of the north-east corner, where the loam had been dug out, Wren
was compelled to rest the foundations on the clay; and it seems almost
a pity that this was not universally adopted, at whatever additional
cost of time and labour, in preference to the loam. The building had
not long been completed ere the great weight of the dome caused some
of the piers to sink from an inch to more than two inches, and Edward
Strong the younger had to repair cracks and fissures.[58] Dean Milman
tells us that in his time the City authorities once contemplated a
sewer on the south side; but the surveyor, Mr. R. Cockerell,
remembering that the sand and shells underneath the loam would be in
danger of oozing out, went in great haste to him, and on their joint
representation the project was abandoned.

The old cathedral was not due east and west, neither did it directly
face Ludgate Hill. Owing to the lie of the land cleared away, both of
these peculiarities were increased by the surveyor, and the axis of
the New St. Paul’s was swung some seven degrees further north than the
Old. He thereby made the best of his somewhat cramped site, and
avoided the foundations of the old walls. The excavations were not
completed nor the site fully cleared and made ready until 1674.

[64]

RELATIVE POSITION AND AREA OF THE GROUND-PLANS OF OLD AND NEW ST. PAUL’S.
Reproduced from Longman’s “Three Cathedrals of St. Paul’s.”
ToList

It has been the lament of many that the Pointed arch had by the time
of the Fire died out, and that the Renaissance style, borrowed from
Italy, had taken the place in England of Gothic architecture. “About
two hundred years ago,” we are told in the “Parentalia,” “when
ingenious Men began to reform the Roman Language to the Purity which
they assigned and fixed to the Time of Augustus and of that Century,
the Architects also, ashamed of the modern Barbarity of Building,
began to examine carefully the Ruins of Old Rome and Italy; to
search into the Orders and Proportions, and to establish them by
inviolable Rules: so to their Labour and Industry we owe in a great
Degree the Restoration of Architecture.” Here we have the Renaissance
style defined. Wren would naturally have fallen in with the fashion of
his own time; and the faults he found in his elaborate surveys at Old
St. Paul’s, Salisbury, and elsewhere confirmed him in his adherence.
He found “a Discernment of no contemptible Art, Ingenuity and
geometrical Skill in the Design and Execution of some few”; but this
was more than counterbalanced by grave [65]faults: “An affectation of
Height and Grandeur, tho’ without Regularity and good Proportion, in
most of them.” They are loaded with too much carving and tracery, and
in other ways offend his taste, but chiefly in the neglect of a due
regard to stability. “There is scarce any Gothick Cathedral, that I
have seen, at home or abroad, wherein I have not observed the Pillars
to yield and bend inwards from the Weight of the Vault of the Aile….
For this Reason this Form of Churches has been rejected by modern
Architects abroad who use the better and Roman Art of
Architecture…. Almost all the Cathedrals of the Gothick Form are
weak and defective in the Poise of the Vault of the Aile.”[59] On the
other hand, he reckoned the dome “a form of church-building unknown in
England, but of wonderful Grace,” and, moreover, the dome wasted a
minimum of space, whilst a mediæval cathedral could accommodate only a
small auditory in proportion to its large area, so that every one
could both see and hear. Any place of worship was in his eyes badly or
imperfectly constructed in which the preacher’s voice could not travel
so as to be distinctly heard. There is much to be said on both sides
in regard to the comparative merits of Gothic and Renaissance; and
instead of echoing complaints, it is surely better to be thankful we
have one cathedral, situated in the greatest centre of population, in
the latter style.[60]

MODEL OF WREN’S FIRST DESIGN
Reproduced from Longman’s “Three Cathedrals,” &c.
[The western cupola is an addition to the design shown on p. 57]ToList

In 1668 a small committee of eight, in addition to the Dean and
Chapter, was appointed, and about the same time Wren set [66]seriously to
work and soon after produced his first design (see p. 57). In addition
to the reasons already mentioned, he had at first to take into
consideration the all-important question of finance, for when he began
there were only voluntary contributions to fall back upon; but in 1670
a share of the import duties on coal was granted, and soon constituted
the greater part of the rebuilding fund. In 1673 an enlarged
commission of over a hundred members was nominated by royal warrant,
with the Lord Mayor at its head, who took precedence over the Primate
and the Bishop; and Wren laid his first design before them, of which a
model was made. This was a kind of Greek cross; the external order was
the Corinthian, with Attic above. It bore a general resemblance to a
rotunda, and was crowned with a dome taken from the Pantheon at Rome.
This dome was of about the same diameter as the present, but less
lofty, and was likewise supported by eight pillars. West of the
rotunda part was the foot of the cross, and a secondary dome [67]was
afterwards added. When Wren began to design this we have seen that
amongst other considerations was that of finance[61]; but even had the
coal dues been then granted, it is certain that he would have adhered
to it, for it was always a great favourite. In designing it he took
two facts into consideration: (1) that the outdoor sermons, formerly
preached at the Cross, were for the future to be preached inside, and
that a large auditorium would be required for this purpose (2) that
religious processions inside were now discouraged, and that a nave and
aisles were in consequence a useless waste of space and means.[62]
Forgetting these two important [68]items, a vast amount of adverse
criticism has been bestowed upon Wren’s favourite. Its main drawback
was the absence of a proper Sacrarium; and yet so obvious were its
advantages, that when a cathedral was lately proposed for Liverpool,
no less an authority on architecture than the late Canon Venables
advocated its adoption.

INTERIOR OF THE MODEL.
A sketch by the Rev J.L. Petit.ToList

The clergy and others wanted something with more resemblance to the
old cathedrals; and first of all the surveyor tried to humour them by
adding another secondary dome to the west. He next set to work making
a great number of sketches, merely, as his grandson says, for
“Discource sake”; and one of these was so much approved of that a
model was again made. But the demand for a building with choir, nave,
and aisles complete continued, and required to be satisfied; and at
length one design met with the approval of the king; and on the 14th
of May, 1675, Charles issued his warrant to the commissioners
accordingly, stating that he approved of this particular design
because it was “very artificial, proper, and useful,” and could be
built by parts, and that his commissioners were to begin at once with
“the East-end or Quire.”

Wren had already become disgusted with the impediments and delays
caused by incompetent judges, and had determined to discontinue making
his drawings and plans public.[63]

We shall never know all that took place during the building so as to
be able to account for the deviations from this design. The king gave
the surveyor permission to make alterations “rather ornamental than
essential,” and left the whole to his management, so that the royal
commission was chiefly employed as treasurers. But even this scarcely
explains the great alterations made. The drum and dome of the design,
of comparatively modest dimensions, are crowned with a minaret-like
spire. The west front has but one order of columns, and the towers are
insignificant to a degree. These are amongst the features which were
altered, and they were “essential” as distinct from “ornamental.” We
know that Wren developed as his experience was enlarged; and we know
also that certain alterations were made contrary to his wish. [69]Beyond
this we are lost in conjecture at the poverty of his design. Perhaps,
despising the taste of the commissioners, he never seriously intended
to adhere to it, anticipating he would be his own master.

THE “WARRANT” DESIGN.
From a drawing in All Souls’ College, Oxford. Reproduced from Blomfield’s
“Renaissance Architecture.”ToList

[70]Quickly following on the royal warrant, the first stone was laid June
21, 1675, at the south east corner of the choir.[64] By 1685 the walls
of the choir were finished, with the north and south porticoes, and
the dome piers raised to a like height. When fixing the centre of his
dome, Wren directed a labourer to place a stone as a mark. The man
took a broken fragment of an old gravestone on which was inscribed the
word Resurgam; and by many this was naturally taken as a favourable
augury. In 1686 the old west end, hitherto left undisturbed in its
ruins, was cleared away, and two years later the choir was ready for
its roof; but shortly after, a fire at the west of the north choir
aisle, in a room allotted to the organ-builder, caused a slight delay.
Not until 1697 was the choir ready for divine service.

After long years of war, during which the country had suffered from
the heavy burden of taxation, and her commerce had been impaired, the
treaty of Ryswick was at length signed, sealed, and ratified; and
Louis XIV. acknowledged William and Mary as the lawful sovereigns of
these isles. The king returned from the Continent in November, 1697,
and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. Stock almost rose, and
gold almost fell, to par; and every prospect of a returning prosperity
put the public, whatever their politics, in a good humour. A council
at which William presided, resolved that the second day of December
should be kept as a day of Thanksgiving; and the Chapter decided that
the day of Thanksgiving should be the day for the consecration of the
choir. William wished to attend himself; but it was represented that
if he went in procession from Whitehall, the whole population would
turn out, and the parish churches be empty; and he had to rest content
with a service in his palace. At St. Paul’s the civic representatives
attended in full state, and Bishop Compton, Dean Sherlock, and the
cathedral staff, occupied the new stalls of Grinling Gibbons. The
temporary organ accompanied the chanting, and a special prayer
incorporated into the Communion office ran: “We offer our devout
praises and thanksgivings to Thee for this Thy mercy, humbly
beseeching Thee to perfect and establish Thy good work. [71]Thou, O Lord,
dwellest not in houses made with hands; heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain Thee; but though Thy throne is in heaven, earth
is Thy footstool; vouchsafe, therefore, we beseech Thee, Thy gracious
presence in this Thy house to hear our prayers, and accept our
sacrifices [72]of praise and thanksgiving.” Bishop Compton, who preached,
took for his text, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into
the House of the Lord.” His sermon has not come down to us, but no
doubt he reminded the clergy and congregation that the day of
Thanksgiving had been selected because it was the dedication of their
metropolitan temple to the public worship of the religion of the
Prince of Peace; that after a lapse of thirty years, and in spite of
the hardship and distress engendered by plague, fire, and war, London
was raising another building on the spot consecrated by centuries of
prayer and praise; and that as the result of the treaty of peace,
their national religion was assured, while the metropolis might
continue to extend her commerce without fear of disaster and
bankruptcy.[65]

A LATER DESIGN.
From Sir C. Wren’s drawings at All Souls’ College.
[This is approximately the design finally adopted.]ToList

Early in 1699, although the nave was not completed, the north-west
chapel was opened for daily morning service, at six in the summer, and
seven in the winter. Queen Anne attended in state for the victories of
Marlborough on land, and of Ormond and Rook at sea (Nov. 12, 1702).
Two years later came Blenheim; and she went again in her state coach
drawn by eight bays. From the west door to the choir, under the
unfinished vaulting and dome, the way was lined by a detachment of
Foot Guards; and as the long procession advanced, the hautboys played
and the drums beat until the Queen and her husband had reached their
throne in the centre of the choir towards the west, when, after a
pause, service began. Dean Sherlock preached from the text, “Doubtless
there is a God that judgeth the earth”; and the service, which began
at one, lasted some three hours. On four other occasions Anne repeated
these visits—thrice for victories, and once for the union of England
and Scotland.[66]

Although the commissioners decided that the dome was to be covered
with copper, lead was used instead, and the work steadily progressed
until two years after the last royal visit, when the fabric was
completed. Wren was now seventy-eight [73]years of age, and his son
Christopher represented him when, in company with the master-mason,
Edward Strong, and other free and accepted masons, the last stone was
laid on the summit of the lantern, a great crowd looking on from
below. Stephen was able to reflect with satisfaction that the
cathedral had been begun and finished by his grandfather, and
practically during the time of one bishop, for Henchman had died a few
months after the laying of the first stone; and he contrasted this
with St. Peter’s at Rome, where, with an unlimited supply of marble
and other costly building materials ready at hand, one hundred and
fifty-three years had been required under nineteen popes from Julius
II. to Innocent X., and under twelve architects from Bramante to
Berninus. Stephen forgot, however, that St. Peter’s is more than twice
the size of St. Paul’s, and that only the bare fabric of the latter
was ready, and that it still wanted its mosaics and other adornments.

Under Wren as Surveyor-General we have already mentioned the
master-mason Edward Strong and his son Edward. John Oliver was
Assistant-Surveyor and Purveyor, with a salary of £100; Lawrence
Spencer was Clerk of the Works and Pay-master at a like salary; Thomas
Russell was Clerk of the Cheque at a salary of £50, and called over
the roll of workmen at six in the morning, one in the afternoon, and
six in the evening.[67] It has to be added that Wren and the royal
commissioners did not agree; and that about the time of the
consecration of the choir, an Act was passed with a clause suspending
“a moiety of the Surveyor’s Salary until the said Church should be
finished, thereby the better to encourage him to finish the same with
the utmost Diligence and Expedition.” His salary of £200 was thus
reduced temporarily to £100, and the arrears, in accordance with the
terms of this Act, were not made good until the completion. And worse
than this was the charge brought against him that he deliberately
delayed the building so that his pittance of two hundred a year might
be continued. The commissioners knew nothing of building, and, like
many people of to-day, may have thought that the old cathedrals were
finished in a few years. Fortunately, Wren was an enthusiast in his
great work, and the happy possessor of an equable temperament that
nothing could seriously disturb. [74]Otherwise this disgraceful treatment
of so old a man might well have been fatal.

It is better to turn away from this as quickly as may be, and
contemplate with a laudable pride the great achievement of our
ancestors. The Plague, and still more the Fire, must have seriously
impoverished the City; and in 1703 the great storm did immense damage.
Of the five-and-thirty years the cathedral was in building, one half
were years of war; and the public confidence and security were further
disturbed by a revolution, by civil war in Ireland, and by plots and
intrigues without number, following in the wake of a disputed
succession. Yet the City raised, and almost without complaint, a sum
enormous in those days, and which would, even in our own time, be
reckoned as serious.

I have calculated the expense as follows. My figures lay no claim to
infallibility—I doubt whether a chartered accountant could make a
quite accurate balance-sheet—but they may be taken as fairly
approximate:—

My balance does not tally with Mr. Longman’s. He tells us that the
coal duty, which was on sea-borne coal, was 1s. 6d. per chaldron,
whereof four-fifths went to St. Paul’s. The age of Indulgences was
over, and, unlike the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the cost of
building St. Paul’s was chiefly defrayed by a public impost; and this
cost may be estimated in round numbers at about three-quarters of a
million for the actual building, with an additional hundred thousand
for incidental expenses.

FOOTNOTES:

NEW ST. PAUL’S.

[76]

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, FROM THE WEST.ToList

CHAPTER V.ToC

NEW ST. PAUL’S.

EXTERIOR.

“It would be difficult to find two works of Art designed more
essentially on the same principle than Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and
Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Bible narrative transposed into the
forms of a Greek epic, required the genius of a Milton to make it
tolerable; but the splendour of even his powers does not make us less
regret that he had not poured forth the poetry with which his heart
was swelling in some form that would have freed him from the trammels
which the pedantry of his age imposed upon him. What the Iliad and the
Æneid were to Milton, the Pantheon and the Temple of Peace were to
Wren. It was necessary he should try to conceal his Christian Church
in the guise of a Roman Temple. Still the idea of the Christian
cathedral is always present, and reappears in every form, but so, too,
does that of the Heathen temple—two conflicting elements in
contact—neither subduing the other, but making their discord so
apparent as to destroy to a very considerable extent the beauty either
would possess if separate.”[68]

[78]I give this quotation at length, not because I by any means agree with
one half of the fault-finding, but because it helps to explain the
architecture. St. Paul’s is often called “Classical,” or “Roman,” or
“Italian”; it is not one of these three: it is English Renaissance. It
was, too, a distinctly happy thought of Fergusson to suggest that the
Cathedral takes a like place in English architecture to that which the
immortal “Paradise Lost” does in English literature. The ground-plan
suggests the Gothic; the pilasters and entablature the Greek and
Roman; the round arch is found in both Roman and Romanesque, and that
commanding feature, the Dome, is the common property of many styles
and many ages. The general plan resembles the long or Latin Cross,
with transepts of greater breadth than length; and the uniformity is
broken by an apse at the east, and the two chapels at the west end.

The best views are, perhaps, the two oblique ones approaching from
Ludgate Hill and from Cannon Street. The upward view from the
churchyard on the south side by the angle of nave and transept gives
the proportions of the lower stages of the dome effectively; and those
who care to make the weary ascent of one of the Crystal Palace towers,
will be rewarded by the aspect of the dome emerging above the pall of
surrounding smoke, and appearing to preside like a watchful and
protecting deity over the destinies of the city at its feet.

The dimensions are as follows, in feet:—Length, 513, which may thus
be divided: nave and portico, 223; breadth of transept, 122; length of
choir, 168. Length of transepts, 248 feet. Breadth of nave, 123; of
transept and choir a trifle less; of west front with chapels, 179.
Height, to summit of balustrade, 108; to apex of roof, 120; to stone
gallery, 182; to base of sphere, 220; to upper gallery at the summit
of the dome, 281; to the summit of the cross, 363 feet.

The material is from the quarries of Portland, chosen because of its
durability in regard to both weather and smoke, the facilities for
transport, and the size of the blocks. Had Roche Abbey stone from
South Yorkshire been more easily obtainable, these quarries might have
been used as well. The size of the blocks contributes an important
feature to the architecture, where so much depends upon the breadth of
four feet; and even the procuring of this, as time went on, and the
stonecutters had to work at a greater distance from the sea, became [79]a
matter of delay and difficulty, and the masons might have to wait
months for their blocks.

The combination of the stability with such lightness and gracefulness
as were procurable, can in a measure be estimated by the comparative
area taken up by the walls, pillars, and other points of support. This
area amounts to seventeen per cent., and compares favourably with St.
Peter’s at Rome, which is more than half as much again, as well as
with St. Sophia and the Duomo at Florence. On the other hand many of
our Gothic cathedrals require only ten per cent.[69] Wren would have
said that they lack stability, and that he had calculated accurately
on the minimum of massiveness requisite for security; and besides
this, they have no heavy dome to be poised. Throughout there are two
stages or stories. The lower has the Corinthian Order, which was
always Wren’s favourite, as he held that it was at once more graceful
and bore a greater weight of entablature than the earlier Doric and
Ionic. Wren’s first design of a Greek Cross followed St. Peter’s in
consisting of one main order plus an attic.[70] While Bramante at St.
Peter’s found stones of nine feet in diameter in the quarries of
Tivoli, Wren, after making inquiries all over, could not procure
sufficient stone for his columns and pilasters of a greater diameter
than four feet, and he would not depart, at least to any degree, from
what he held to be the correct Corinthian height of nine diameters.
Had a sufficient quantity of larger blocks been obtainable, we should
have had the Corinthian order plus the attic, instead of the two
regular orders of Corinthian and Composite.[71] And this, it seems,
was [80]his reason for departing in this respect from the First Design;
as also partially from the Approved Design. The pilasters are grouped
in pairs throughout, not only for stability, but also for sufficient
space for the circular-headed windows ornamented with festoons. Above
the entablature rises the second stage or story, or order. Here the
coupled pilasters have that slight difference in base and more
particularly in capital which constitutes the Composite order. The
capitals have the larger scrolls or volutes of the Ionic above the
acanthus leaves of the Corinthian proper. In reality the difference
is, here, but slight; and the best authorities maintain that there is
less difference between the Corinthian and the Composite than between
different examples of the Corinthian itself. The reason for the
dressed niches, with pediments instead of windows, like those in the
lower stage, will come later on. A main architrave and cornice run
round the entire building like an unbroken string course, and above
this, excepting at the different fronts, a balustrade, to which a
history is attached.

A new commission had been nominated after the death of Queen Anne[72]
(which by the way included Sir Isaac Newton), and this commission
insisted upon a balustrade unless the surveyor “do in writing under
his hand set forth that it is contrary to the principles of
architecture, and give his opinion in a fortnight’s time.” Wren
answered, “Persons of little skill did expect, I believe, something
they had been used to in Gothic structures, and ladies think nothing
well without an edging.” He urged that he had already terminated the
building, and that his design of pairs of pedestals in continuation of
the pilasters would better resist the wind. As in other matters, he
had to give way; and the difference in the effect cannot be [81]judged
from mere illustrations.[73] The four angles, where the transepts
join, are filled up with the huge supporting bastion-like piers of the
dome; and internally are left, so to speak, hollow; that at the
south-west being utilised as a staircase, and the others on the ground
floor as vestries.

No roof is visible from below. The actual roof of oak and lead was so
flattened as to be invisible in accordance with the ideas of the
architect. “No Roofs almost but Spherick raised to be visible.”
“The Ancients affected Flatness.” “No Roofs can have Dignity enough
to appear above a Cornice, but the Circular.“[74]

We now come to that peculiarity upon which so much adverse criticism
has been bestowed. The usual observer will wonder why there are niches
instead of windows in the upper stage, as light is so much needed. On
entering the interior he will notice that the height of the aisles
does not correspond with the exterior; and on ascending to the Stone
Gallery will ascertain that this upper stage of the exterior is not
part of the actual wall of the church, which stands back some thirty
feet. It is, in fact, a screen or curtain wall; the lower stage alone
is the wall of the aisles, and the disfiguring square openings with
which the pedestals below the niches are pierced, give light to the
passages and galleries between the aisles and the roof. Externally one
is supposed to see the wall of the cathedral; in reality one sees the
lower story forming the wall, and an upper story in continuation made
to look as though the church were immediately behind, but in reality
quite disengaged from it. The following is an able specimen of the
adverse criticisms that have been directed against this curtain: “It
is a mere empty show with nothing behind it, and when once this is
known it is impossible to forget it, or to have the same feeling
towards the building which a spectator might have, despite its defects
of detail, who believed its external mass to represent its interior
arrangements.”[75] Yet an attentive [82]study of the “Parentalia” enables
us to plead a great deal in mitigation. The spectator will notice that
there are no substantial buttresses; and the reason is the simple one
that Wren held them to be disfigurements. “The Romans always
concealed their Butments.“[76] “Oblique Positions are Discord to the
Eye unless answered in Pairs, as in the Sides of an equicrural
Triangle…. Gothick Buttresses are all ill-favoured, and were avoided
by the Ancients.“[77] Such were the opinions of Wren; but how was he
to procure stability? The answer is, by the curtain wall. By its dead
weight pressing on the walls of the aisles it renders them stable and
immobile, free from all danger of thrust, while it conceals the
buttresses which render secure the clerestory stage of the building
proper. To paraphrase his own words: “I do not add buttresses, but I
build up the wall so high as by the addition of this extra weight, I
establish it as firmly as if I had added buttresses.“[78] Thus this
wall performs a double function: it is a substitute for buttresses in
respect to the aisle walls, and a screen for the actual buttresses of
the clerestory stage.

Such is the purpose of the upper story. An ingenious critic who did
not seem to know this vindicates it on the plea that “uninterrupted
altitude of the bulk in the same plane, is absolutely necessary to the
substructure of the mighty dome.”[79] No doubt the size of the dome
requires a proportionate rise in the lower elevations; but the fact
remains that the exterior and interior do not correspond. A greater
authority than this critic has thus defined good architecture: “The
essence of good architecture of any kind is that its constructive
system should be put boldly forward, that its decorative system should
be such as in no way conceals or masks the construction, but makes the
constructive features themselves ornamental.”[80] And at his uncle’s
cathedral of Ely, Wren might have borrowed and worked out an idea
which would have silenced all accusation of fraud and deceit. There,
in the central part of the choir on the south side, the roof was
removed and placed lower down centuries ago, the better to light up
certain shrines below. [83]This roof was never restored to its original
position; and the upper stage of the wall is pierced with empty
windows through which flying-buttresses can now be seen. The effect,
though altogether unusual, is far from displeasing; and the spectator
who remembers that Wren was perfectly familiar with this building, is
led to wonder why he did not by piercing the niches, imitate Ely at
St. Paul’s.

The Windows, round-headed and without tracery, contrast unfavourably
with the Lancet and Decorated. Wren recognised the value of tracery,
as is evident from his remarks on Salisbury Cathedral, although he
objected to the Perpendicular mullions and transoms.[81] Yet it is
difficult to see how he could have devised anything more elaborate or
graceful to harmonise. The carving above and below, in the
conventional festoons of the day, is almost universally voted as
respectable and nothing more. Mr. Ruskin is very severe on these
festoons, on the ground that they are tied heavily into a long bunch
thickest in the middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead
wall, and contends that the architecture has no business with rich
ornament in any place. Yet he admits that the sculpture is as careful
and rich as may be; and let any one study, for instance, the window
immediately east of the south portico, and particularly below, where
the details can be better observed. In spite of a heavy top-coat of
smoke, the combination of cherubs, birds, grapes, and foliage is as
graceful and artistic as possible; and the work beneath the east end
and north transept windows will also well repay careful study. These
details are apt to be neglected, possibly because they seem dwarfed by
the immense proportions of the building.[82]

[84]The North and South Chapels, as we hear on probably trustworthy
authority, were added at the instance of James, Duke of York, who
looked forward to the day when the Roman Catholic services would be
substituted for the Anglican. Although Stephen is silent as to his
grandfather’s intentions, there is evidence given by Mr. Longman and
Miss Lucy Phillimore to show that Wren tried his best to finish the
building without them. Whether seen from the north-east or south-west
they interfere with the perspective, and the independence of the
lowest stage of the West Towers is completely lost; and curiously
enough in this last respect the South-West or Consistory Chapel does
very much what St. Gregory’s did to the Lollards’ Tower in Old St.
Paul’s.

We now turn to the different parts and members.

North and South Fronts.—These are similar, each part corresponding
to each, excepting a slight difference in the steps of the porticoes
caused by the ground on the south side sloping towards the Thames; and
this uniformity or symmetry is invariably carried out in the different
parts wherever feasible. Take the three main windows of the choir
aisles on either side, and compare them with the three of the nave
aisles on either side between the transepts and the chapels. The
windows themselves and their pilasters exactly agree, as do their
distances.

Where the uniformity of the fronts is broken by the projecting
transepts and chapels, it is broken after one manner, so that when you
have seen the north side you have seen the south, excepting for the
above-mentioned difference caused by the slope.

The North and South Fronts are approached by flights of steps of black
marble. The steps on the north side are twelve in number, and are
reached from the whole semi-circle; on the south side they are
twenty-five in number, and are reached from the ends, the front having
a low wall. Here, the flanking urns on either side afford another
instance of the disregard of Wren’s wishes. The difference in the
number of the steps is caused by the slope towards the Thames, and is
interesting as affording an instance of a difference between the two
fronts. The Corinthian pillars, of the full diameter of four feet,
cleverly support the semi-circular entablature above, which is part of
the general entablature continued all round. These porticoes have
[85]semi-dome shaped roofs, and are flanked on either side by the windows
of the transept aisles. The central windows above the porticoes are
slightly larger than the others, and have niches on either side. Above
these are triangular pediments, and above these again, and in
alignment along the balustrade, are statues of ten of the
Apostles—five to each front. The sculpture on the northern pediment
depicts the royal arms, with angels bearing palm branches for
supporters, and on the southern is a Phœnix with the motto
“Resurgam.”

NORTH-EAST VIEW OF ST. PAUL’S.ToList

By universal consent these façades are admirable in the justness of
their proportions, and the harmonious way in which they blend both
with the west front and the entire [86]building. Caius Gabriel Cibber
received six pounds for modelling and a hundred pounds for carving the
Phœnix.

The East End.—The Apse was intended for the reception of the altar.
It has three windows in either stage. Underneath the lower central
window is a crown, with cypher of William and Mary, surrounded by the
garter. This device was intended to show in whose reign the choir was
built. It was probably correct when put up; but poor Mary died before
the completion. The apse is of the breadth of the centre, and on
either side are the windows of the aisles, while the central one in
the basement belongs to the Crypt Chapel. There is nothing very
striking or remarkable in this part, the details being similar to the
rest of the church. Very different is the case with our next feature
of interest.

The West Front.—The best view is that from the direct front; but by
looking from the north or south-west the conjunction of the chapels
comes in sight, and the spectator can judge for himself whether or no,
so far as the exterior is concerned, they are any improvement. A few
additional dimensions are necessary. The summits of the towers are 222
feet high; the statue of St. Paul above the apex of the pediment is
135 feet. I have already given prominence to the cause of the defeat
of Wren’s original conception of one main order and an attic, namely,
that he could not get blocks of stone of a sufficient size. The
Approved Design, so far as the colonnade is concerned, seems to have
been borrowed from the portico of Inigo Jones. The dimensions of the
blocks had been discovered, yet there was only one order of columns,
with a second story of three windows, and supported by Inigo Jones’
harp-shaped buttresses; the only buttresses that Wren even wished to
have visible. Now, the old portico was not cleared away until 1686;
and the west front was built after Wren’s taste and judgment had been
given time to ripen. In consequence we have a complete revolution, so
far as the Approved Design is concerned, and something infinitely more
noble and dignified; and we may congratulate ourselves that his blocks
of stone were no larger, so that he produced two orders of columns. At
St. Peter’s, where marble of 9 feet (8-1/4 only according to more
recent accounts) was used, the pillars have a shaft of 74 feet, not
including capital or base, and the highest statue is 175 feet from the
base, as compared with the [87]135 feet of St. Paul’s.[83] Yet Wren, by
resorting to two orders of columns, has so increased his apparent
height, that those who have compared the two, assert that the west
front of St. Paul’s appears to be as high as St. Peter’s.

In the lower order the columns are twelve in number, fluted and in
pairs. Claude Perrault had recently adopted this method of coupling in
the eastern façade of the Louvre, as is duly acknowledged in the
“Parentalia.” According to Stephen Wren, it “is not according to the
usual Mode of the Ancients in their ordinary Temples, which for the
generality were small; but was followed in their Coloss or greater
Works; for instance, in the Portico of the Temple of Peace, the most
magnificent in old Rome, the Columns were very properly and
necessarily doubled to make wider openings.” Italian buildings are
likewise cited. The columns project slightly in advance of the Front;
and as the central part with the great doorway is recessed some twenty
feet, a depth of shadow is produced in the Pronaos.

As the great doorway for “Solemnities” requires a wider opening in
front than the two side ones in daily use, the two central pairs are
placed Eustyle—i.e., with a supposed space between of two and a
half diameters—while the rest are placed Pycnostyle—one and a half
diameters.[84] In the second story, owing to the towers above, the
outside couples are displaced by pilasters; and the eight remaining
columns support the architrave and cornice, and the great triangular
pediment above of seventy-four feet in breadth and eighteen in height.
On this is represented in bas-relief the Conversion of St. Paul. Saul
of Tarsus still seated on his horse, which is crouching on the ground,
looks up at the rays of light; and the alarmed escort are trying to
control their frightened steeds. In the distance is Damascus. The
sculpture is the work of Francis Bird, and he was paid for it the
handsome sum of £650. The statue on the apex is that of the patronal
saint; the two near him are those of St. Peter and St. James, while
the four more remote are those of the Evangelists, with their emblems
taken from Rev. iv. 7.

[88]The Towers, with their Italian details, complete the Façade. They
consist of five stages besides the domes, of which the two lower
correspond with the rest of the front. The third is pierced with
circular openings, which in the southern are filled up with the faces
of the clock. The fourth is transitional between the square and the
octagon; from each angle of the square below spring two pairs of
Corinthian columns, half-concealing, half-revealing the supports of
the small domes. The fifth is an octagon, with two orders of open
arches in each face, and an exterior arcading, urn-shaped pedestals
being freely adopted as in the stage below. The domes, the pine of
which was modelled by Francis Bird, is designed with curves of
contrary flexure for the purpose of adding to the height. Mr. Longman
likens these towers to Alpine aiguilles, and points out how
picturesquely they form outposts to the great mass of the dome.

Both towers are used as campaniles. The north contains the “five
minutes” bell, and the new peal, numbering twelve. The southern
contains the three bells on which the clock is struck; and the largest
of these, weighing 5 tons 4 cwt., is the passing bell on great
occasions. On June 3, 1882, the citizens heard for the first time
their new Great Paul. This monster, weighing nearly seventeen tons,
came from the foundry of Messrs. Taylor, at Loughborough, and its
progress by road was duly chronicled like that of some great
personage. It was placed in the south tower, and is reckoned amongst
the largest bells in the world. Part of the magnificent railings, cast
without the use of coal, at Lamberhurst on the Kent and Sussex border,
have been removed, and, after suffering shipwreck, now enclose a
monument at Toronto. We can but regret that some second home was not
found in London for such a specimen of an extinct industry: but the
throwing open of the area, so that justice might be done to the view
of the cathedral, is in strict accordance with Wren’s views. So is the
present arrangement of the steps. In the landing the red marble is
from Laconia, in Southern Greece, the dark grey from Porto Venere,
near La Spezia, in Italy, and the granite from Shap, in Westmoreland.

Posterity may be thankful that Wren was allowed a free hand in
departing from the Accepted Design, and in carrying out his more fully
developed conceptions. The well worked [89]out designs of the different
parts and details, and the combination of these into one harmonious
whole with the dome for a background, leave nothing to be desired.[85]

Before leaving, the visitor may stand by Queen Anne’s statue and
reflect that near that very spot was erected the scaffold on which
suffered Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wynter, John Grant, and Thomas
Bates, for their share in the Gunpowder Plot. Digby was said to have
been the handsomest man of his day. He died “penitent and sorrowful
for his vile treason,” as did all save Grant.

The Dome.—To the end, Wren’s wish seems to have been to have made
the external height no greater than was required by the formation of
the internal cupola. “The old Church having had before a very lofty
Spire of Timber and Lead, the World expected that the new Work should
not in this Respect fall short of the old (tho’ that was but a Spit
and this a Mountain). He was therefore obliged to comply with the
Humour of the Age, (though not with ancient Example, as neither did
Bramante) and to raise another Structure over the first Cupola.”
Stephen might have said two other structures. Not only did Wren wish
the interior height to be somewhat less, so as to make it more perfect
for the purpose of an auditorium, but he thought any greater exterior
height unnecessary, and would have finished off the exterior elevation
in some other way.

As matters eventuated, he raised the internal sphere so that the
disproportion with the external might be reduced. The whole dome has
three shells. (a) The majestic exterior visible to the eye, an
outward roof of wood covered with lead and ribbed for the sake of
ornament. (b) The intermediate brick cone which supports the lantern
and its accessories of 700 tons weight. This springs from the level of
the stone gallery, and rises in straight lines which converge at the
circular opening beneath the lantern. This, although seen neither from
the outside or from within, constitutes the most solid and substantial
part. Between this and the outside visible shell is an ingenious
network of beams supporting the latter, and at the base of this
network a strengthening of which the account had better be given in
Stephen’s own words: “Altho’ [90]the Dome wants not Butment, yet for
greater Caution, it is hooped with Iron in this Manner; a Chanel is
cut in the Bandage of Portland-Stone, in which is laid a double Chain
of Iron strongly linked together at every ten Feet, and the whole
[91]Chanel filled up with Lead.“[86] (c) The interior dome, also of
brick. The height of this third and smallest shell reaches only to the
level of the curved lines of the fluted patterns of the exterior
shell, a difference of from fifty to sixty feet.

SECTION OF THE DOME.ToList

Since the outside cupola does not bear the heavy weight of the lantern
it has been denounced as a sham, but this is an exaggeration. It is
evident, as we look at it, that it is incapable of bearing any such
weight. Much more practical is the objection of Gwilt that the
elaborate framework of beams supporting this outside cover is certain
to decay in course of time. A third objection is that of
deception—the exterior and interior are presumed to be one and the
same. This is not correct. Neither roof nor steeple is assumed to have
such correspondence, and Wren might surely be allowed a like liberty
with his dome. As Mr. Wightwick very properly says, it will be time
enough to find fault when the roofs of churches are the same outside
as within.

The Romans are credited with first applying the Dome to larger
buildings. It travelled eastward to Constantinople, and was in use in
Italy during mediæval times. The word “Dome” is derived from the
Duomo of Florence, where Brunelleschi covered in the octagon with
his famous cupola in the earlier part of the fifteenth century.[87]
But Wren’s particular study was the Pantheon, which we have no
evidence whatever that he saw; and, indeed, he erected his dome
without having ever seen, so far as we know, anything like it.

Photo. S.B. Bolas & Co.

THE LANTERN, FROM THE CLOCK TOWER.ToList

A few words will suffice for the main features. The first stage of the
superstructure is the Stylobate, of 25 feet in height and some 140 to
145 feet in diameter. The next, the Peristyle or Colonnade which
lights up the interior. It has thirty-two Composite columns of a
height of 38 feet, including the pedestals. Every fourth
intercolumnation is filled up with an ornamental niche (if the term be
allowable for a recess of the size) to hide the supports behind. This
alternation, while it agreeably affects the play of light and shade,
yet allows a partial glimpse of the supports. Why could not Wren have
[92]done as much with his curtain wall? Above the peristyle comes the
Stone Gallery with its balustrade—a great attraction for
visitors—just about half-way up to the summit of the cross. Here the
diameter decreases by the breadth of the gallery to 108 feet, and the
Tholobate[88] rises. It has pilasters, with lights between, in the
upper parts. Above is the outer dome proper—the spherical part—with
a further contraction to 102 feet. Wren had the advantage of St.
Peter’s to profit by, and abstained from inserting the “luthern”
lights of the larger edifice. The absence of these and the ribbing of
the lead coating was, in his opinion, “less Gothic.” The lights,
again, could not easily have been reached for repairs; and if left
unrepaired would have been the means of causing injury to the
supporting timbers underneath. The effect, no doubt, is better, and
the lighting above and below sufficient for the stairs leading to the
lantern.

[93]The Lantern.—The Golden Gallery is almost exactly a hundred feet
above the Stone Gallery. The Lantern is an elegant and graceful piece
of design and workmanship, and consists of three square stages, each
of them with lights and with recesses (or chamfered, so to speak) at
the angles. The second has Corinthian columns, which must be fifteen
feet in height, and a plain entablature, and some more urn-shaped
pedestals. The third is completed with a miniature dome, and has upper
and lower lights in each face. Standing immediately underneath, or by
Nelson’s tomb in the Crypt, these lights produce a striking and almost
unique effect. The present gilt ball and cross, which crown the
edifice, replaced the originals of Francis Bird, being put up by
Cockerell—the then Clerk to the Works—in 1821. The extreme height is
from 363 to 365 feet, and in 1848 the Ordnance Survey placed a “crow’s
nest” against the cross for the purpose of observations from the
highest attainable point.

Miss Lucy Phillimore has published a paper of Wren’s in which the
Surveyor remarks that for the architect it is necessary “in a
conspicuous Work to preserve His Undertaking from general censure, and
so for him to accommodate his Designs to the Geist of the Age he lives
in, though it appear to him less rational.” As regards the height of
the dome, we are the gainers because he was compelled to do this. It
is not, indeed, the whole of St. Paul’s or its only important feature;
for St. Paul’s is not a Byzantine church in which the dome is
practically not a part, but the whole. It is the most magnificent
member of a magnificent building, and with its graceful equipoise and
conscious evidence of stability stands alone and in a class by itself
amongst the cathedral superstructures of the land.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VI.ToC

INTERIOR.

The measurements show a marked diminution from the exterior—viz., 460
feet in length, a little under a hundred feet in breadth without
reckoning the recesses underneath the windows, and 240 feet across the
transepts.

In the Surveyor’s favourite the Dome was almost everything; the four
short arms being so constructed as to afford picturesque and varied
vistas. Probably the acoustic properties would have been superior, and
for the ordinary purposes of congregational worship there would have
been less unused space. Hence it need take no one by surprise that
some, although they recognise the superiority of the present exterior,
give the preference to the originally designed interior. The short
arms were expanded into choir, transepts, and nave; the elaborate
vestibule has gone, but the west chapels have appeared. Finally, the
curved lines at the angles of the arms, designed to aid the interior
vistas, have given way to the orthodox right angles. It is impossible
to say how far Wren would have altered his opinions had he ever seen
the present building filled from door to door, as it now occasionally
is.[89]

Disappointed at the rejection of his pet scheme, Wren turned his
attention to the Basilica of Constantine, with its three aisles of
three arches apiece. “This Temple of Peace being an Example of a
Three Aisle Fabric is certainly the best and most authentic pattern of
a cathedral Church, which must have three Aisles according to Custom,
and be vaulted.“[90] Piers were used in [95]this building, the columns
being merely ornamental; but the interior of St. Paul’s is in many
respects essentially different from its Roman model. In the Temple of
Peace three arches cover the enormous length of over 250 feet, and
seriously diminish the apparent size; in St. Paul’s their span is less
than half of this. Indeed, in this respect Wren adopted a via media
between the Roman and the Anglo-Norman and Pointed. Old St. Paul’s,
for instance, contained twice as many arches in the same length as its
successor, and Rochester still more. This use of larger arches renders
the perspective less effective, as any one can see by comparing the
views of Old and New St. Paul’s. A second alteration from the Temple
of Peace to be mentioned is the massiveness of the piers. Wren’s
regard for stability caused him to make his vast square supports of a
solidity exceeding those of Mainz and Speier. From the Romans the
Surveyor adopted the round arch, with its borrowed Grecian
architecture partly cut away; and this, next to the dome, is the most
striking feature of the interior.

Before proceeding to the different members, the symmetry and
correspondence of parts and details require to be mentioned. They
strike the eye everywhere. Those who claim that in this respect Exeter
is the most perfect cathedral, not only in England but throughout the
world, must limit their comparison to the older buildings. Here, when
we have described the details of the architecture of the nave, we have
little or nothing that requires to be said of the architecture of the
choir and transepts. The dome, of course, has features peculiar to
itself.

THE NAVE.

As we pass under the western portico we notice the bas-reliefs of
Francis Bird above the doors, and on either side of the main door.
They are respectable and nothing more. Over the central door St. Paul
is preaching at Berea. The original pavement of Purbeck, Welsh, and
Torbay marble remains throughout the building, excepting where the new
reredos has necessitated certain alterations. The length to the dome
area is a little over 200 feet, the width as above, and the height of
the central vaulting 89 feet.

The main west doorway has the round arch resting upon coupled
pilasters, the keystone is adorned with the head and [96]arms of a winged
figure. On either side are likewise coupled pilasters of the largest
size. The doors of the small rooms or closets on either side reveal
the enormous size of the end piers projecting from the west wall.
Above the entablature of the main arch is a gallery, and the window
has lately been filled in with designs in Munich glass in memory of
Mr. Thomas Brown, of the firm of Longmans and Co. The subjects are
appropriately taken from the life of St. Paul—the Conversion, and the
subsequent visit of Ananias at Damascus. The kneeling figures below
are those of Mr. Brown and his wife.

THE CHOIR AND NAVE, FROM THE EAST END.ToList

The general ground-plan is of five compartments. Four are formed by
the arcading, and the fifth by the great transverse archway connecting
the nave and dome. The western bay or severy has a greater extension
east and west than the three to the east, and corresponds to the
adjacent chapels. It is square in the plan, and the others oblong; an
important difference, as we shall see when we come to the Vaulting.

[97]There are throughout in reality three stages in the elevation—The
Main Arcade, Triforium Belt, or “Attic,” and Clerestory. The pedantic
objection to the use of this simple and familiar terminology and
system of classification seems to have arisen from the idea that St.
Paul’s must be treated as though it were a purely Classical building.
Upon their fronts the piers have great Corinthian pilasters. These are
continued above the capitals, and the great transverse arches of the
vaulting spring from the continuations on a level with the top of the
triforium. These great pilasters form the divisions east and west into
severies.

THE ORDER OF THE INTERIOR.
Drawn by Peter Cazalet.ToList

The Main Arcade.—The sides of the piers (east and west) have
smaller pilasters, coupled and with narrow panels between, and above
these is a plain entablature from which the broad arches rise. This
method of making the arches spring from an entablature instead of
letting them rest naturally upon the capitals, was an idea borrowed
from the Romans, who in turn borrowed it from the Greeks. With the
Greeks the entablature was useful, as they had no round arch; and the
Romans, just as they borrowed Greek forms and Greek metres for their
native Italian literature, in a like spirit borrowed their
entablature. It is not necessary, and Freeman calls it a mere
stilt.[91] The earliest instance we know of its disuse is in the
colonnade of the great hall of Diocletian’s palace at Spalatro. The
greater space of the west severy is diminished by the introduction of
detached columns, so that the arches may all be of a like span. These
columns, coupled and placed in front of the lesser pilasters, are of
white veined marble, and exceedingly graceful. As the arches more
immediately rest upon them than upon the pilasters, the Roman use of
the entablature as a stilt can be here more clearly seen. I may add
that in the church of St. Apollinare Nuovo, at Ravenna, the pillars
have [98]only blocks above their capitals, instead of the old entablature
reaching from column to column; and this church, built about 500
A.D., accordingly represents the Transition stage between the
Roman proper and the Romanesque.

Turning next from underneath the arches, and taking our stand in the
central aisle, we are in a position to notice the details of the main
entablature above the arches. The keystones are ornamented with heads
and other pieces of sculpture. As Wren employed so few arches they
rise to a great height, and of the different members of the
entablature which rests upon the Corinthian capitals of the greater
pilasters, part had to be cut away. The crowns of the arches take a
great piece out of the architrave, and their keystones reach well
within the plain and narrow frieze. Only the cornice of the first
stage remains intact, and this runs round the four limbs of the church
like a string course in any Romanesque or Gothic building.

The Triforium Belt.—This used to be called the “Attic,” in
imitation of the Classical nomenclature; but surely this term is
incorrect, since there is a clerestory above, and the vaulting springs
from it as well. On the other hand, “Triforium” pure and simple
implies arcading, and the above term is adopted from Fergusson as less
open to exception.[92] In continuation of the greater pilasters are
abutment piers, from the summits of which spring the great arches
spanning the nave, the window arches of the clerestory, and the
pendentives which connect these with the vaulting. The blank fronts
between the piers are relieved by panels, but otherwise destitute of
adornment. Openings connect the nave with the galleries behind.

The Clerestory.—This stage again calls for little or no comment.
The windows, hidden from the exterior by the curtain wall, are
slightly rounded. Above and on either side are sections of spheres,
ornamented with festoons. These are the ends of elliptic cylinders in
connection with the vaulting.

The Vaulting.—The great arches overhead divide the vault as the
greater pilasters and their continuations do the walls. Between these
arches are the small saucer-shaped domes, 26 feet in diameter. The
reason for these and their accessories, the pendentives, may best be
understood from [99]Wren’s own words. He says that his method of vaulting
is the most geometrical, and “is composed of Hemispheres, and their
Sections only; and whereas a Sphere may be cut all Manner of Ways, and
that still into Circles … I have for just Reasons followed this way
in the Vaulting of the Church of St. Paul’s…. It is the lightest
Manner, and requires less Butment than the Cross-vaulting, as well
that it is of an agreeable View…. Vaulting by Parts of Hemispheres I
have therefore followed in the Vaultings of St. Paul’s, and with good
reason preferred it above any other way used by Architects.“[93] The
saucer-shaped domes are sections of spheres, as are both the
pendentives and the sides of the clerestory windows. He set to work
something in this way. After satisfying himself that he had hit on a
better plan than the plain cylindrical or the cross-vaulting of the
Romans, or the other forms of intersecting vaults, he seems to have
taken a hemisphere as a plan to work upon, and fixed his imaginary
centre about the level of the top of the triforium. In the great
square western severy of the nave this was easier, but the other
severies are oblong. Here he stretched his sections out, so as to
include the clerestory windows and their much-needed light. The usual
way of expressing this is to say that the vault is intersected across
by an elliptic cylinder. The wreaths, garlands, and festoons, and the
various conventional patterns with which the edges and surfaces of the
various parts of the vaulting is adorned cannot be estimated from the
pavement. We may add here that the pendentives were purposely
constructed of “sound Brick invested with Stucco of Cockle-shell
lime,” and not of Portland stone, for further ornament if
required.[94] So are the circular sections.

The nave is connected with the dome by the space between the great
piers or walls of more than 30 feet in length. These piers are also
broader at their ends than those which support the arcading, the
latter covering a square of about 10 feet. The greater massiveness is
owing to their assistance being required in supporting the dome. They
have large pilasters [100]at the angles, and their coffered wagon
vaulting, adorned with geometrical patterns, is very striking.

The Nave Aisles.—We will first point out an unnoticed feature in
the great piers at either end. Their inner faces as seen from the
aisles have recesses or niches for the reception of monuments, and
other recesses are generally found in the wall opposite. At the west
of the aisles there are eight of these altogether, just behind the
coupled columns. They are repeated in all the great piers leading to
the dome, but although of sufficient height to permit of the
introduction of life-sized effigies, still remain unoccupied. The
coupled columns are repeated at the entrances to the chapels. At both
ends the perspective is narrowed; at the west by the chapels, at the
east by the breadth of the great piers. The windows stand in recesses
which are segments of circles. Their sides are made to represent piers
with concave surfaces. These latter carry an entablature from which
spring the round window arches. Festoons run below the actual windows,
the concave side piers have panels, and the round arches above
diamond-shaped patterns. There are only three windows on either
side—the chapels taking the place of a fourth—and the depth of their
recesses points out the thickness of the walls. Between each recess
are Composite pilasters in couples, with others opposite against the
piers. These correspond with the lesser pilasters of the arcading, and
from them spring transverse arches, as in the great central aisle. The
vaulting, owing to the severies being nearly square, is regular; in
other respects similar to that already described. The height is much
less than that of the greater aisle, reaching only to the first stage
of the latter.

The West Chapels.—They may best be described as squares of 26 feet,
with apses or tribunes at either end which increase the length to 55
feet. They suffer sadly from want of light, the one window in each
being altogether insufficient; but Wren had to do what he could. He
panelled them with oak, and made them of the same height as the
aisles, with vaulting of his favourite kind, drawn out to meet the
windows.

The North Chapel is called the Morning Chapel, from its original use
for morning prayer on weekdays. The mosaic above the altar is in
imitation of a fresco by Raphael. That [101]at the west end, by Salviati,
is in memory of William Hale Hale, a voluminous writer and editor of
the “Domesday of St. Paul’s,” who was a Residentiary, Archdeacon of
London and Master of the Charterhouse. He died in 1870. The
stained-glass window is in memory of the metaphysician, Henry
Longueville Mansell, Dean of the Cathedral, who died suddenly, after a
rule of three years, in 1871. It is by Hardman, and represents the
Risen Christ and St. Thomas.

THE GEOMETRICAL STAIRCASE.ToList

[102]The South Chapel is called the Consistory Chapel, because the
Consistory Court has been held here excepting during the time that it
sheltered the Wellington monument. The reliefs in white marble at the
ends—the east by Calder Marshall, and the west by Woodington—have to
do with this monument. Certainly the most appropriate of the six
subjects is that on the west wall which illustrates the Baptist
admonishing the soldiers. “Do violence to no man … and be content
with your wages.” Wellington earned his name of the Iron Duke for the
firmness and sternness with which he punished pillaging and
outrage.[95] The stained-glass window by Mr. Kempe has been lately put
in to the memory of James Augustus Hessey, Archdeacon of Middlesex
(1875-93), whose Bampton Lectures, “Sunday,” still remain for
theologians the standard treatise upon the Day of Rest. The Font of
veined Carrara marble, another work of Bird, rather resembles the
round basins resting on stands of the ancient Greek baths than any of
our usual models. As St. Paul’s is one of those cathedrals with no
parish annexed, only those connected with it have any claim for
baptisms.

The Geometrical Staircase.—This is in the South Tower, and leads
from the Crypt to the Library. It is circular, of a diameter of
twenty-five feet, and so constructed that eighteen steps, each nearly
six feet broad at the outside, lead from the outside entrance to the
interior. The ironwork is worthy of the choir.

The three remaining limbs differ only on the plan; in the other
features of their architecture they are essentially similar to the
nave. While the Pointed architecture suggests upward lines, and the
Greek entablature horizontal lines, the round arch suggests a neutral
position between the two. The great span of the arches and the general
largeness of the different parts diminish the apparent size. The
uniformity in the details produces that symmetry which is a
peculiarity of the Renaissance.

THE DOME.

The Dome rises from its foundation in the Crypt of a square of 190
feet, and of this the solid parts are more than equal to the vacant
spaces, and are of a thickness of 20 feet.[96]

Coming to the level of the church, these solid parts are represented
by twelve supports. The chief of them are the bastion-like piers at
the angles of the transepts. They are hollow at the pavement level;
and the south-west is used as a staircase, the north-west as the
Lord’s Mayor’s vestry, the north-east the Minor Canons’, and the
south-east the Dean’s. It gives some idea of their massiveness to
reflect that these rooms inside them are nearly twenty feet across.
The eight other supports are the huge wall-like piers, thirty-five
feet by ten, at the entrances from the four limbs.

The Arcading.—When Wren planned his dome interior he had the
difficulty caused by the four limbs and their side aisles to overcome.
It was easy enough for the architect of such a church as St. Geneviève
(or the Pantheon) at Paris to construct one, as he had neither this
complicated arcading nor so heavy a superincumbent mass to consider.

Wren’s path, then, was beset with difficulties, and he must have
turned to his uncle’s cathedral at Ely for enlightenment. In the
earlier years of the fourteenth century the central tower at Ely
collapsed: and the Sacrist, Alan de Walsingham, who acted as
architect, seeing that the breadth of his nave, choir, and transepts
happened to agree, took for his base this common breadth, and cutting
off the angles, obtained a spacious octagon. The four sides
terminating the main aisles are longer than the four alternate sides
at the angles of the side aisles; but at Ely this presents no
difficulty, owing to the use of the pointed arch. As you stand in the
centre of the octagon under the lantern you see eight spacious arches
of two different widths, all springing from the same level and rising
to the same height of eighty-five feet, the terminal arch of the
Norman nave pointed like its opposite neighbour of the choir. Amongst
Gothic churches the interior of Ely reigns unique and supreme,
certainly in England, if not in Europe.[97] Wren was familiar with
[104]this cathedral, and even designed some restorations for it; and he
adopted the eight arches in preference to any possible scheme of four
great arches of sixty feet: but the use of the round arch, as distinct
from the pointed, deprived him of Sacrist Alan’s liberty, who without
incongruity made his intermediate arches of the shorter sides,
springing from the same level, rise to the same height as the others.
Wren was compelled to make use of some expedient to reconcile his two
different spaces between piers of forty feet and twenty-six feet, and
accordingly arched these four smaller intermediate spaces as follows.
A smaller arch, rising from the architrave of the great pier, spans
each shorter side of the octagon, and has a ceiling or quarter dome in
the background, coming down to the terminal arches of the side aisles.
A blank wall space above is relieved by a section of an ornamental
arch of larger span, resting on the centre of the cornice; and above
this a third arch, rising from the level of the triforium cornice,
rests more upon the outer side of the great supporting pier, and
thereby obtains the required equal span of forty feet, and equal
height of eighty-nine feet from the ground. This also has a quarter
dome; and the platform beneath on a level with the clerestory is
railed.

The reduction of the octagon to the circle is facilitated by giving
the spandrels between the arches the necessary concave surface; and
this stage is finished off with a cantilever cornice, the work (at
least in part) of one Jonathan Maine. The eight great keystones of the
arches by Caius Gabriel Cibber are seven feet by five, and eighteen
inches in relief.

The Whispering Gallery is almost exactly a hundred feet from the
pavement, and curiously enough about the same distance across. We are
still, be it understood, below the level of the apex of the exterior
roof, and the Cross is quite two hundred and sixty feet above us. The
gallery projects so that the lectern steps and the pulpit are
underneath. The attendant whispering across the whole area can be
distinctly heard, an acoustic property seemingly caused by the
nearness of the concave hemisphere above.

INTERIOR OF THE DOME.
From an engraving by G. Coney in Sir H. Ellis’ edition of Dugdale’s St. Paul’s.
ToList

The Drum.—The actual bend inwards now begins, but for this part
only in straight lines.[98] First comes the plain band or
[105]Podium, panelled and of a height of twenty feet. On this
stand thirty-two composite pilasters, in reality, as well as in
appearance, out of the horizontal. Three out of each four [106]intervening
spaces are pierced with square-headed windows; and from them such
light as the dome possesses, streams down through the windows of the
exterior colonnade. The alternate fourth recesses, apparently nothing
more than ornamental niches, conceal the supports which bear the
weight above. In the recent scheme of decoration they have been filled
with statues of Early Fathers—the four eastern, SS. Chrysostom,
Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Athanasius; and the four western, SS.
Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, and Gregory. If the light allows,
the Podium, at present bare, is a suitable place for mosaics.

The Cupola.—So, for want of a better name, we will call the topmost
section or inner roof of brick, two bricks thick. Here the straight
lines bearing inwards give way to the sphere; and here, too, the three
separate coverings, which constitute the dome, begin. The circular
opening below the lantern coincides with the lower edge of the fluting
of the exterior shell, and is about two hundred and fifteen feet from
the pavement.[99]

These upper regions, hidden in an almost perpetual gloom, were
decorated in monochrome by Sir James Thornhill; but his work has
failed to resist the chemical action of the surcharged atmosphere. Yet
a word or two about it may interest. Concentric circles surround the
opening; and the remaining surface is ingeniously divided into eight
compartments by designs of piers and round arches; the piers
coinciding with the eight recesses below. In these compartments are
scenes from the life of the patronal saint: (1) The Conversion, (2)
Elymas, (3) Cripple at Lystra, (4) Jailer at Philippi, (5) Mars Hill,
(6) Burning Books at Ephesus, (7) Before Agrippa, (8) Shipwreck. We
have all of us heard from the days of our boyhood or girlhood the
story of the painter, on a platform at a great height, who stepped
back to get a better view of his work. As he did so, an assistant,
standing by, brush in hand, observed with alarm that the slightest
further backward step would entail his falling headlong and being
dashed to pieces. He deliberately daubed the painting; and the artist,
stepping [107]instinctively forward to prevent this, saved his life. The
painter is said to be Thornhill: the scene, the giddy height under the
dome.

The interior height of two diameters will always be a disputed
question. Stephen Wren[100] seemed to think that his grandfather hit
the happy medium of a diameter and a half; but this only reaches to
the windows and Early Fathers. He probably gives us the Surveyor’s
intention. Afterwards, when Wren was compelled to raise the height
of the exterior, he increased the interior. St. Sophia and the
Invalides are both less than two diameters, and give the idea of
greater area. While it is difficult to see what æsthetic advantage is
gained by a roof and upper regions immersed in perpetual gloom, the
acoustic properties and the light might both have been improved by a
more modest elevation. Yet the advocates of a smaller ratio injure
their case by writing about “a great disproportioned hole in the
‘roof.'”

The Pulpit was one of the additions suggested in Dean Milman’s time,
when the dome area was used for service. It is a memorial to Captain
Robert Fitzgerald, designed by Mr. Penrose; and the marbles come from
various places. It stands on columns, of which the gray are from
Plymouth, the “dark purplish” from Anglesea, and the red from Cork. In
the panels and elsewhere the green is from Tenos, and the yellow
chiefly from Siena, with a little of the ancient Giallo Antico from
Rome.[101] Alike in the design, and in the combination of these
different marbles, the pulpit is a fitting and judicious adornment.
The Lectern takes the familiar form of an eagle, and is of bronze.
This fine piece of work was finished in 1720 by Jacob Sutton, at a
cost of £241 15s.

The Mosaics.—Stephen Wren tells us that his grandfather intended
his great building to be adorned with mosaic work, and that one of his
numerous disappointments was his inability, thanks to the ignorant
opposition of the Commission, to carry out this intention. The
categorical statement of the grandson is corroborated by (a) the
text of various Acts of Parliaments, (b) other Renaissance Churches
and notably St. Peter’s, (c) the use of material softer than
Portland stone for [108]various surfaces.[102] Bishop Newton, who was Dean
a hundred and twenty years ago, roundly accused the authorities of
filching the decoration funds for William’s wars. Queen Anne’s wars
would have sounded more probable. It was not until our own day that in
this respect, as in others, the Surveyor’s ideas have been carried
out.

The eight spandrels of soft and suitable stone have designs of the
four Greater Prophets, and the four Evangelists, executed by Dr.
Salviati of Venice. For the designs of St. Matthew and St. John the
authorities were fortunate enough to secure the services of that
wonderful Academician, Mr. G.F. Watts. He thoroughly understood and
overcame the difficulty of the great distance of the spectator on the
pavement below. These designs are in every way worthy of the painter
of the Rider on the White Horse, and its fellows. The other
Evangelists were designed by Mr. Brittan, and the Prophets by Mr. A.
Stevens. The smoke should never be allowed to mar the colouring, and
so injure the good effect, of this part of the scheme of decoration.

Subsequently the authorities and their committee turned to Mr. (now
Sir William) Richmond, R.A., whose veneration for St. Paul’s dates
from childhood. His interest in mosaic work caused him to study
carefully the principles of design which obtained in Italy, Greece,
and Asia Minor, during the best times of the Byzantine Empire.[103]
Sir William has adopted the old plan of glass tesseræ or cubes, and of
four shapes—the cube, double cube, equilateral triangle, and a longer
form with sharp points. They are of eight to ten tones of colour, and
are put into position on the spot, being joined together by a mastic
cement which resembles that used by Andrea Tafi in restoring the
mosaics in the Baptistery at Florence. This cement in time becomes
quite hard. The cubes with their complex facets are not joined close
together, but separated by one-sixteenth to one-fourth of an inch, the
better to reflect the light, so as to give a rich and soft texture.
They are made at Messrs. [109]Powell’s workshops. Sir William has done a
great deal more than design. He has, so far as this country is
concerned, caused us to acquire a new art, while he has restored an
old one. The workmen, who are all natives, have been trained by him.
Accustomed only to the smooth, pictorial mosaics of thin plates of
glass put together in the workshop, he had to teach the Messrs. Powell
and their staff both how to make the glass cubes, and how to put each
one separately into its place in the cement on the wall or roof. As
our cathedrals are sermons in stone, so these adornments are intended
to be illustrated sermons in glass. Beginning with the Creation, and
including those, Pagans as well as Israelites, who prepared the way
and led up to the Fulness of the Time, we are here taught the leading
features of that progressive truth which has been revealed.

The difficulty in dealing with the lofty blank spaces of the dome will
be not to go too high up, and not to come too far down. At the time of
revising these lines (August, 1899) the decoration of this part of the
cathedral has advanced no further than the quarter domes of those
alternate arches which tested so severely the genius of the Surveyor.
In the four, taken as a whole, the general subject illustrated will be
St. Paul’s Gospel of the Resurrection from the early verses of 1
Corinthians, XV.

North-East, the Crucifixion. Christ stands on the Tree of Life,
branches on either side and the cross behind. The water of life issues
from below the tree, making a silver flood; these silver tones, the
result of many experiments, when flashing, expand and give more light
than gold. The holy women are on either side, and Adam and Eve
kneeling in the two corners. The world is represented as a
harvest-field. The inscription below runs, “The Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.” South-East, the Resurrection. The Risen
Christ is standing at the entrance of the open sepulchre, and is
supported on either side by an angel in blue and white. He wears a
long mantle of white, shaded to red, probably to prevent the white
rays spreading too much. On either side in the corners are placed the
sleeping soldiers: and above is a canopy of clouds, lifting on the
horizon. A scroll-work, which looks like pomegranates, takes the place
of the silver flood of the companion across the choir arch.
[110]Inscription, “Behold! I am alive for evermore.” South-West the
Entombment. A winged angel, sitting, holds the reclining Body. On the
right, standing figures of women, and on the left two angels.
Continuing round are two other figures on either side; and these, as I
am instructed, are symbolical of our four nationalities. Trees and
foliage are above the figures. This section is still incomplete, and
the text wanting; but the scroll-work looks like leaves and acorns.
Years hence, when the dome as a whole is finished, we shall be in a
position to judge. So far everything is rich and promises well.[104]

Photo. S.B. Bolas & Co.

THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, SHOWING THE BACK OF THE STALLS AND THE IRON GATES.ToList

THE TRANSEPTS.

These short limbs consist of only one arch beyond the great dome
piers. There is no arch at the ends like that by the west door.
Instead, the wall space shows four single pilasters with their
entablature supporting the gallery. The gilded copy of the well-known
inscription on Wren’s tomb is over the north doorway. The great
windows, the gift of the late Duke of Westminster, and designed by Sir
William Richmond, illustrate early Church history. The North
represents twelve primary bishops who introduced, or restored after
lapse, [112]Christianity, after the coming of the English, and include
Augustine, Mellitus, Cedd, Birinus, Theodore of Tarsus (the originator
of the parochial system), and Erkenwald. The South represents twelve
kings who co-operated and supported the prelates, including Ethelbert,
Cynegils, Coinwalch, Sabert, Sigebert, and Sebbe. In the south
transept aisles the Thanksgiving service in 1872 for the recovery of
the Prince of Wales is commemorated by a window, the subject being the
Raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain, and a tablet performs the
like service.

BISHOP’S THRONE AND STALLS ON THE SOUTH SIDE.ToList

THE CHOIR.

The plan consists of the great piers and chancel arch, three arches,
other great piers which support the triumphal or reredos arch and are
pierced for doorways, and finally the apse. The side aisles do not
extend beyond the reredos arch. The main aisle, formerly isolated from
the dome by the organ and organ-screen, is now separated only by a low
railing, and the space underneath the chancel arch has been included.
By uniting choir and dome for the purposes of congregational worship
the intention of the architect has been carried into effect. The
ironwork of the gates, both at the west end of the aisles and in the
doorways of the reredos arch, is part of Tijou’s work, restored and
replaced as occasion arose.

The Stalls.—They all now face uniformly on opposite sides. They are
the work of Grinling Gibbons, and originally cost over £1,300. The
best plan is to see them both from the choir and the aisles, as their
general conception and details are alike creditable to the
wood-workers of their day. The canopies have galleries above; and
those in the centre on either side, as also over the throne at the end
of the south side, have turrets. But it is not only their artistic
merits. More than anything else they carry us back to the days of Old
St. Paul’s, since they reproduce the seats of the dignitaries for ages
past. Numbering thirty-one on either side, the Latin inscriptions over
fifteen on either side call for notice. These are the headings of the
Psalter divided into thirty parts.

In the days of Bishop Maurice and Dean Ulstan, according to Newcourt,
a division was first made, so that each prebendary should say the
Psalter through in a month, while the whole [113]Psalter should be said
each day. Under Ralph de Baldock, in succession Archdeacon of
Middlesex, Dean, and finally Bishop (1276-1313), the present and more
equal division was made.[105] The Archdeaconries of Essex and
Colchester are now in the Diocese of St. Alban’s, and the Archdeaconry
of St. Alban’s, consisting of a few parishes in Herts and Bucks,
created after the dissolution of the abbey, though for a time in the
diocese, never had a stall. The stalls and seats have been added to
from the designs of Mr. Penrose. For the sake of convenience I have
numbered the thirty-one stalls on either side: the other numbers, in
brackets, to the right, represent the traditional positions in Old St.
Paul’s. Each dignitary’s stall has the name inscribed. Neither from
the position of the stalls, nor from the order of the allotment of the
Psalter is it possible to discover any priority. Perhaps both were
arranged according to the then seniority of the canons.

Dr. Sparrow-Simpson assigned the psalms to Consumpta and Oxgate as I
have put them in brackets.[106]

The Organ.—In Old St. Paul’s the organ was considered to have but
two peers, Canterbury and York; and the present instrument is worthy
of its predecessor. Grinling Gibbons executed the older part of the
case, with its foliage, figures, and imitations of the architecture.
Bernard Schmidt, a German, was the builder; and in 1802 “a most
[115]industrious Swede and his partner” took it to pieces, cleaned it, and
improved the tone of many of the notes. When the choir was opened out,
at the suggestion of Dr. Sparrow-Simpson the instrument was enlarged
by Mr. Willis, divided between the two sides, and placed above the
stalls at the west end, the old carved work being chiefly on the north
side. Whether Jeremiah Clark (1695-1707) lived long enough to preside
is uncertain; but if not, Richard Brind (1707-1718) was the first to
play the present instrument. Neither Sir John Stainer nor Sir George
Martin need any mention. The organist is seated on the north side, and
communicates by electricity.

The Reredos.—Advantage has been taken of the space between the
great eastern piers to bring forward the altar and crown it with a
lofty reredos. Would Wren have approved of the breaking of the vista
by shutting out the windows of the apse? As he himself designed an
unexecuted Baldachino “of rich marble columns writhed” somewhat after
the style of his favourite St. Peter’s,[107] and as this was not so
high, and was to stand against the east wall, the answer to this
question is doubtful. The impression left is that for the present
altar-piece he would have designed his east front somewhat
differently. Be this as it may, upon this magnificent specimen of
modern art it is waste of time to lavish praise, and the names of the
designers, Messrs. Bodley and Garner, will always be associated with
it. The symbolism is expressed in the frieze above the Crucifixion,
“Sic Deus dilexit mundum” (“God so loved the world”). The lower part
is pierced with doors on either side: and “Via Electionis” (“A chosen
vessel”) over the north door refers to St. Paul, and “Pasce oves meos”
(“Feed my sheep”) over the other to St. Peter; and here the crossed
swords are the arms of the diocese. The section above has the
Entombment in the centre, and the Nativity and Resurrection on either
side. A Crucifixion occupies the central position. The framework is of
Roman design, with pilasters and a round arch; and remembering Wren’s
conception, it is interesting that the columns of Brescia marble,
supporting the entablature above, are twisted. This is flanked with a
colonnade; the figure on the north being the Angel Gabriel, and to the
south the Virgin. Above the pediment is a canopy [116]with the Virgin and
Child, and St. Peter and St. Paul to the north and south; and above
all, and nearly seventy feet from the ground, the Risen Christ
completes this most reverent design.

The altar cross is adorned with precious stones and lapis lazuli; and
the massive copper candlesticks are imitations of those, four in
number, sold during the Protectorate, and now, with the arms of
England, in Ghent Cathedral.

The Apse.—Although the side aisles require no particular mention,
unless it be of certain relics from Jerusalem in the south aisle, the
iron gates leading to the reredos are well worthy of attention. When
the choir was opened out, the ironwork was brought here; but there was
not sufficient. Recourse was had in vain to modern coal-smelted metal:
it split, and proved useless for the finer work. Searching the
records, it was discovered that Tijou used only charcoal-smelted iron;
and a supply was procured from Norway. Comment is needless. The
vaulting comes down to the upper tier of windows. The windows in the
lower tier, by Mr. C.E. Kempe, in harmony with the mosaics, have for
their general subject the Last Judgment.

Isolated by the great Reredos behind from the rest of the church, the
apse now forms a separate chapel, and is called the Jesus Chapel. Why
borrow the name from the east end of the crypt below? The Liddon
Chapel would be a suitable name. Here, against the south wall is his
monument; and the altar-piece, in its marble framework, forms part of
his memorial. It is a copy of a painting by Giovanni Battista da
Conegliano, otherwise Cima. The original, now in the National Gallery,
was painted for the Fraternity of the Battuti at Portogruaro. The
subject is the incredulity of St. Thomas.

THE CHOIR, ALTAR AND REREDOS.ToList

The Mosaics.—Excepting, perhaps, certain minor alterations which
time and experience may suggest, the decoration and adornment of the
Choir may now be reckoned as finished. The scheme was begun from the
east, and continued westward; but there is no good reason for altering
our plan, and we will continue to work from the west eastward. Of the
five divisions of the main aisle, the chancel arch may be dismissed;
the subject being a continuation of the western bay. There remain,
then, the three bays, the reredos arch, and the apse; and we will take
these in their order. The [117]spandrels of the arcading treat of the Fall
and Redemption; the triforium belt has the same subject as the
“inverted saucers” of the vaulting; the clerestory windows on the
north, Creation awaiting, or anticipating, or in any sense preparing
the way for the Kingdom of Christ,—on the south, those who prepared
places of worship; the pendentives, Angels, and inscriptions from the
Psalms and Isaiah; the vaulting, the Story of Creation, continued in
the triforium belt. Thus it will be seen that the arrangement of the
interior, with its three stages, is fully recognised. Underneath the
clerestory windows [118]the inscriptions are from the Advent antiphons to
the Magnificat; and these selections have most carefully omitted
anything savouring of the invocation of saints. Below the angels with
their outstretched arms in the pendentives the western sides of the
great transverse arches have inscriptions from the Benedicite, and
on their eastern from Romans i. 20. All of these texts or inscriptions
are in Latin. The glass in the clerestory windows has been put in to
give the best effect to the mosaics. A tabular statement will best
present a general idea of Sir William Richmond’s system taken as a
whole.

The great transverse arches are inscribed on their western sides from
the Benedicite: “Omnes volucres cœli.” “Omnia quæ moventur in
aquis.” “Omnes bestiæ et pecora.” “Benedicite, omnia opera Domini,
Domino.” Looking from the east, the other faces have the Latin of
Romans i. 20: “Invisibilia ejus a creatura mundi.” “Per ea quæ facta,
sunt intellecta.” “Conspiciuntur.” “Sempiterna ejus virtus et
divinitas.”

The Reredos Arch.—In the triforium stage over the entrances has
Melchizedek on the north and Noah on the south. The High Priest, in a
long robe, blesses Abraham, in armour and with sword at side. Eight
figures of servants are behind; and so minute is the treatment that
the loaves of bread in the basket are depicted. The original design of
this is at South Kensington. Noah, with a rainbow offering as he came
out of the Ark, faces; and both are suggested by the neighbouring
altar. Above, the subject is the Sea giving up its Dead, and the words
“Alleluia,” “Sanctus.”

The work in the Apse is difficult to describe. Above all, in the
crown of the vault, is a sun with golden rays. The chief figure is
Christ seated in judgment. The expression is of mingled firmness and
pity; and the crown has thorns bursting into flower. The upper robe,
fastened round the breast by a jewelled buckle, has red lining; and
the long robe beneath is white. To the right are two angels with the
Book of Life; and behind, two more holding crowns and inviting to
come. On the left, two more hold the scroll of the rejected, and the
angel of wrath, supported by weeping figures, [121]holds out both hands to
repudiate. The pilasters by the windows have representations of Hope,
Fortitude, Charity, Truth, Chastity, and Justice.

But we have already exceeded our limit in describing this effort to
carry out Wren’s conception on a large and well-organised scale.
Nothing approaching to it has ever been attempted in this country
before; it is “a new art acquired, a new craft learnt.” Had not the
artist been constantly on the spot to see that his own thoughts were
reproduced, the work must have suffered. Sir William Richmond may
safely leave posterity to thank him. We notice with satisfaction that
before his labours on the choir were quite finished, the Royal Academy
co-opted him a full Academician, and the Crown bestowed a Knight
Commandership of the Bath.[108]

THE MONUMENTS.

For the sake of simplicity these are taken together. Not till some
eighty years after the completion of the building was any monument
placed in it: another instance of how the intentions of the architect
were ignored. In 1795, John Bacon, R.A. (1740-1799), finished the
Howard and Johnson statues, and that of Sir William Jones four years
later. The Reynolds statue, by John Flaxman, R.A. (1755-1826), was
added about the same time; and these four memorials occupy what Milman
calls the four posts of honour in front of the great supports. Then
came the wars not only with France, but in all parts of the world; and
while some of these heroes by land and sea to whom monuments were
erected are immortal, others are now so forgotten that even the date
of their birth is difficult to obtain. Yet their general claim is that
they were killed in the service of their country; and no one need
grudge them this honour. I cannot but think that a certain amount of
indiscriminate amateur criticism has been expended on the earlier
works. Johnson is represented partially draped in a toga; and there is
a sequence [122]of nude or semi-nude Victories and Fames with or without
wings. The taste of to-day has changed, and but few people approve of
the typical design of the reign of George III. Yet it is necessary to
state that besides four by Flaxman, six bear the imprints of the
genius of Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A. (1782-1831), not to mention five
by E.H. Bailey, R.A. (1788-1847), and six by Rossi. Not only were
Flaxman and Chantrey artists and not mere masons, but examples of both
Bacon and Bailey are among the very few sculptures in the National
Gallery. The asterisk affixed to the number indicates that the remains
slumber in the Crypt.

North Aisle of Nave.

1. Officers and men of the Cavalry and 57th and 77th Foot (now 1st and
2nd battalions of the Middlesex Regiment) who died or were killed in
the Crimea, with old colours of Middlesex Regiment carried in the
Crimea. (Marochetti.)

*2. Wellington (1769-1852). Sarcophagus of white marble with
ornaments in bronze. The recumbent effigy in bronze rests upon this.
The canopy supported by Corinthian columns of white marble, which are
carved with foliated diaper pattern. The bronze groups represent
Valour, with Cowardice at her feet, and Truth plucking out the tongue
of Falsehood. The canopy arch supports a great pediment intended for
an equestrian statue, and the faces have the Duke’s arms and the
Garter. The chief battles are inscribed at the base. (Alfred Stevens.)

3. Gordon (Major-Gen. Chas. Geo., C.B., 1833-1885). Admirers of this
Christian hero constantly bring fresh flowers, which the attendants
remove when withered. Gordon’s head was exhibited by the Mahdi, and
his trunk thrown into the Nile at Khartoum. A recumbent figure on a
sarcophagus, the features beautifully chiselled. One of two by that
great sculptor, Sir Joshua Edgar Boehm, R.A. (1834-1890).

4. Mural tablet to the officers and men of the Royal Fusiliers (7th
Foot) who perished in Afghan Campaign, 1879-1880.

5. Stewart (Major-Gen. Sir Herbert, K.C.B., 1844-1885). Killed in
the abortive attempt to relieve Gordon. A mural tablet behind Gordon’s
monument. (Boehm.)

6. Torrens (Major-Gen. Sir A. Wellesley). Died in the Crimea.
(Marochetti.)

[123]

THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT.ToList

[124]7. Mural tablets in brass on either side of the Melbourne monument to
the crew of H.M.S. Captain. Constructed in the early days of
ironclads, this vessel foundered in 1870 through a mistaken
calculation about the metacentre, with the designer, Captain Cooper
Coles, and a son of the First Lord on board.

8. Melbourne (William Lamb, Viscount, 1779-1848), with his brother
Frederick, a diplomatist (d. 1853). Prime Minister at the accession of
Queen Victoria. Black marble representation of “the gate of death,”
with angels of white marble. The complete darkness with nothing beyond
is more appropriate to the Premier’s religious views as stated in the
Greville Memoirs, than to the inscription from the Collect for
Easter Eve. (Marochetti.)

South Aisle of Nave.

9. Officers of Coldstream Guards killed at Inkerman, with old colours
of regiment above. Vesey Dawson, Granville Elliott, Lionel Mackinnon,
Murray Cowell, Henry M. Bouverie, Frederick Ramsden, Edward Disbrowe,
C. Hubert Greville, with inscription, “Brothers in arms, in glory and
in death, they were buried in one grave.” (Marochetti.)

10. Burgiss (Captain Richard Rundle, R.N., 1755-1797). Killed at
Camperdown in command of the Ardent. Almost undraped, and out of
proportion about the shoulders and bust, as is also the figure of
Victory giving him the sword. Group in lower part of sarcophagus
difficult to interpret. (J. Banks, R.A.)

11. Middleton (T.F., d. 1822). First Bishop of Calcutta. (Lough.)

12. Lyons (Captain, R.N., d. 1855). (Noble.)

13. Westcott (Captain Geo. Blagdon, R.N., 1743-1798). Killed in
command of the Majestic at the Nile. Expression of the face too
young. The bas-relief has the Sphynx, the Nile, and the Orient blown
up. (Banks.)

14. Loch (Captain, R.N., d. 1853). (Marochetti.)

North Transept.

15. Faulknor (Captain Robert, R.N., 1763-1795). He was called the
“Undaunted” by Jervis; killed off Dominica in [125]command of the
Blanche, and while lashing his bowsprit to the Pique, a French
frigate of superior size. Falling into the arms of Neptune, with
Victory about to crown him. (C. Rossi, R.A.)

16. Mackenzie (Major-Gen. J.R.), Langwerth (Brig.-Gen. E.). Both
killed at Talavera, July 28, 1809. Above Faulknor’s. Two sons of
England bear trophies. The figure of Victory not remarkable for good
proportions. (C. Manning.)

*17. Reynolds (Sir Joshua, P.R.A., 1723-1792). Draped in the robes
of a Doctor of Laws; in right hand the Discourses to the Royal
Academy; beneath the left hand is a medallion of his master, Michael
Angelo. A pity that Bacon and others did not follow a like natural
style of design. The special preachers are advised to preach at him,
so that their voices may travel across the dome. (Flaxman.)

*18. Cockerell (Chas. Robert, d. 1863). An accomplished successor of
Wren as surveyor. (F.P. Cockerell.)

19. Hoghton (Major-Gen. Dan., d. 1811). Killed at Albuera. A tabular
monument; the embroidery on the uniform, the line of bayonets, and the
colours excellent. (Chantrey.)

20. Elphinstone (Hon. Mountstuart, d. 1859). Lieut. Gov. of Bombay,
and thrice refused the Governor-Generalship. (Noble.)

21. Myers (Lieut.-Col. Sir Wm., 1784-1811). Killed at Albuera. A
bust supported by Hercules for Valour and Minerva for Wisdom.
Inscription, extract from a letter from Wellington. (J. Kendrick.)

22. Malcolm (Admiral Sir Pulteney, d. 1838.) (Bailey.)

23. St. Vincent (Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, Earl of,
1735-1832). Defeated the Spanish Fleet off Cape St. Vincent, Feb. 14,
1797. A colossal statue, with Victory and the Muse of History.
(Bailey.)

24. Rodney (Admiral Geo. Brydges, Baron, K.B., 1718-1790). Defeated
French Fleet off Martinique under De Grasse, April 12, 1782.
Accidentally disregarding the code of Fighting Instructions, he
adopted the manœuvre of “breaking the line” instead of the old
“line a-head,” and later admirals followed. Marble, in uniform and the
Bath. Fame, a winged female figure with only the lower limbs [126]draped,
instructs the Muse of History. Parliament voted £6,000 for this
monument, which is very good. (Rossi.)

*25. Picton (Sir Thomas, d. 1815). After a chequered career, in
which he figured at the Old Bailey, killed at Waterloo, “gloriously
leading his division,” said Wellington, “to a charge of bayonets.” (S.
Gahagan.)

26. Napier (Gen. Sir William F.P., 1785-1860). Soldier and man of
letters. Son of Lady Sarah Lennox, whom George III. wished to marry,
and brother to Charles James (No. 29). Commanded 43rd in Peninsula,
and wrote the History of the War, still a standard authority, and
other works. (Bailey.)

27. Hay (Major-Gen. Andrew, d. 1814). Killed at Bayonne. Falling
into the arms of Valour; soldier mourning and a file of troops in the
background, all in correct uniform. (H. Hopper.)

28. Gore and Skerrett. Two Major-Generals killed at
Bergen-op-Zoom, March 10, 1814. Chantrey is betrayed into a
pseudo-classical style, most elegant of its kind and beautifully
executed, by the designer Tallemache. Fame, without wings and undraped
to the waist, consoles Britannia, at whose feet reposes the British
Lion. (Designed by Tallemache, executed by Chantrey.)

29. Napier (Gen. Sir Chas. James, 1782-1853). Brother to William
(No. 26) and conqueror of Scinde. (G. Adams.)

30. Ponsonby (Major-Gen. Hon. Sir William, d. 1815). Killed in
command of the Union Brigade of Cavalry (Royals, Scots Greys,
Inniskillings) at Waterloo. There is good reason for Theed
representing him undraped, as his body was stripped by some of those
camp followers mentioned by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. The horse
falling, as represented, was the cause of his death. “I have to add
the expression of my grief,” wrote Wellington, “for the fate of an
officer who had already rendered very brilliant and important
services, and was an ornament to his profession.” (Designed by William
Theed, R.A., and, after his death, executed by Bailey.)

31. Riou and Mosse (Captain Edward Riou, 1762-1801, and Captain
James Robert Mosse, 1746-1801). The “gallant good Riou,” of Campbell’s
song, fell in command of the Amazon, and Mosse of the Monarch, at
Copenhagen. Victory and Fame hold medallions. (Rossi.)

[127]32. Napier (Admiral Sir Chas., 1786-1860). Second in command at
bombardment of Acre, and commanded English part of the allied fleet in
the Baltic, 1854. A tablet. (G. Adams.)

33. Le Marchant (Major-Gen. John Gaspard, d. 1812). Killed at
Salamanca. To the left is Spain placing the trophies in the tomb; to
the right Britannia instructing a cadet. (Designed by C.H. Smith and
executed by Rossi.)

34. Hallam (Henry, 1777-1859). Historian, and father of the “Arthur”
of “In Memoriam.” (Theed.)

35. Johnson (Samuel, 1709-1784). More fault has been found with this
design than with any other. Instead of partially draping the colossal
statue of the great man of letters in a toga, Bacon might have adopted
the more correct taste of Flaxman with Reynolds (No. 17) and
represented him in his Oxford D.C.L. robes. This criticism does not
apply to the execution. (Bacon.)

36. Bowes (Major-Gen., d. 1812). Indiscriminate fault-finders may
well study this piece of work with fifteen figures. Bowes, storming a
wall at Salamanca, falls back into the arms of his men. (Chantrey.)

37. Duncan (Admiral Adam Viscount Duncan, 1731-1804). Defeated the
Dutch Fleet off Camperdown October 11, 1797. A simple statue, with a
seaman and wife and child on the pedestal. (R. Westmacott.)

38. Dundas (Major-Gen. Thomas, 1750-1794). The inscription sets
forth that Parliament voted this monument with especial reference to
services in the West Indies. Britannia, attended by Sensibility and
the Genius of Britain, crowns the bust with a laurel wreath. (John
Bacon, jun.)

39. Crauford and Mackinnon. Above No. 38. Two Major Generals who
fell at Ciudad Rodrigo, 1812. The partially draped figure with musket
and target is that of a Highland soldier, mourning; the other is the
stereotyped Victory placing a wreath. (J. Bacon, jun.)

South Transept.

*40. Nelson (Vice-Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson, K.B., and Duke of
Bronte in the Neapolitan peerage, &c., [128]1758-1805). Completed about
1818, and placed just east of where the dean’s stall now is (then
outside the choir rails); placed in present position 1870. The actual
statue in uniform and with left hand resting on anchor and cable is 7
feet 8 inches in height, and the whole monument about 18 feet. Flaxman
thus described his design:—”Britannia is directing the young seamen’s
attention to their great example, Lord Nelson. On the die of the
pedestal which supports the hero’s statue are figures in
basso-relievo, representing the Frozen Ocean, the German Ocean, the
Nile, and the Mediterranean. On the cornice and in the frieze of
laurel wreaths are the words, Copenhagen, Nile, Trafalgar. The British
Lion sits on the plinth, guarding the pedestal.” The life-like
expression of the face was probably taken from the portrait by
Leonardo Guzzardi, in the possession of the family. The cloak conceals
the empty sleeve, and the right eye is wanting. (Flaxman.)

NELSON’S MONUMENT.ToList

41. Hardinge (Captain Geo. N., R.N., 1779-1808). Above Nelson.
Killed in command of the San Fiorenzo when it captured the much
larger Piémontaise after a three days running fight, March 3, 1808,
off Ceylon. The somewhat indifferently modelled male figure represents
an East Indian Chief with the British colours. (C. Manning.)

42. Brock (Major-Gen. Sir Isaac, d. 1812). Killed at Queenstown,
Upper Canada. (Westmacott.)

43. Babington (William, d. 1833). One of the few medical men.
(Behnes.)

[129]44. Hoste (Captain Sir William, R.N., d. 1831). Statue with simple
epitaph. (Campbell.)

45. Jones (Sir William). A great Orientalist. One of the original
Four, and of similar design to the Johnson across the dome. The open
book on the smaller pedestal has a picture of Noah’s Ark. On the
larger pedestal, Study and Genius unveil Oriental knowledge. (Bacon.)

46. Lyons (Vice-Admiral Edmund Lord Lyons, 1790-1858). Commanded the
Fleet before Sevastapool; also Minister at Athens. (Noble.)

47. Abercromby (Sir Ralph, 1736-1801). Defeated the French under
Menou at Alexandria, mortally wounded, and died on board ship. He is
falling from his horse, and a Highland soldier supports him. Large
sphinxes on plinth. (Westmacott.)

48. Moore (Sir John, 1761-1809). Killed at Corunna, and Soult
erected a humble monument over his grave. A Spanish soldier (why not
in uniform?) and Victory are laying him in his grave. A child—the
Genius of Spain—holds a trophy, the arms of Spain behind. Gracefully
modelled and well executed. (J. Bacon, jun.)

48A. Tablet commemorating Queen’s visit, 1872, for Prince of Wales’
recovery.

49. Cooper (Sir Astley Paston, 1768-1841). A skilful operator before
the days of chloroform. (Bailey.)

50. Gillespie (Major-General Robert Rollo, d. 1814). Mortally
wounded in attempting to storm the fort of Nalapanee, in Nepaul.

51. Pakenham and Gibbs. The former commanded and the latter was a
General under him of the force defeated by Jackson at N. Orleans,
1815. Treaty of peace had been already signed at Ghent. In full
uniform. (Westmacott.)

*52. Turner, Joseph M.W., R.A. (1775-1851). The greatest of English
landscape painters, if not of every school. (Macdowell.)

*53. Collingwood (Vice-Admiral Cuthbert, Lord, 1750-1810). In
command at Trafalgar after Nelson’s death. Died in command of the
Mediterranean Fleet, and the corpse is represented arriving home:
supporters Fame and the Thames; alto-relievo on the ship’s side
illustrates the progress of navigation. A fine group. (Westmacott.)

[130]54. Howe (Admiral of the Fleet, Richard, Earl Howe, K.G.,
1726-1799). Defeated the French off Ushant, June 1, 1794. Colossal
figure in the correct uniform with garter, collar, and ribbon (over
right shoulder, should have been left). Boat cloak over left shoulder,
and telescope in right hand. The female figure with the pen is
History. (Flaxman.)

55. Jones (Major-Gen. Sir John, Bart., K.C.B., R.E., 1797-1843).
(Behnes.)

56. Ross (Major-Gen. Robert, d. 1814). Over entrance to crypt.
Defeated a superior force at Washington, and under orders from home
destroyed the public buildings; defeated and killed at Baltimore.
Undraped male figure is Valour. (J. Kendrick.)

57. Howard (John, 1726-1790). Although a Quaker, the first admitted.
Died at Kherson from the plague he was investigating. In toga, and the
face expressing benevolence. “Plan for improvement of prisons” and
“hospitals” on papers in left hand; “regulations” on another at his
feet. Trampling on chains and fetters, and the bas-relief on the
pedestal represents him relieving prisoners. Inscription by his
neighbour—Samuel Whitehead, of Bedford. Liddon’s last sermon from the
adjacent pulpit, April 27, 1890, on the occasion of the Centenary,
referred to him. (Bacon.)

58. Cadogan (Colonel Henry, d. 1813). Historical design. Mortally
wounded at Vittoria, he orders his men to place him where he can see
his regiment engaged in a successful bayonet charge. (Chantrey.)

59. Lawrence (Major-Gen. Sir Henry Montgomery, K.C.B., 1806-1857).
One of two famous brothers. Predicted the Mutiny fourteen years before
it broke out, and died in the defence of Lucknow. (Lough.)

60. Heathfield (Gen. Geo. Eliott, Baron, d. 1790). Defender of
Gibraltar, 1779-1783, against the united fleets and armies of France
and Spain.

61. Cornwallis (Gen. Chas., Marquis, K.G., 1739-1805). American
visitors, associating him only with the surrender of Yorktown, may
wonder at this monument. It is fully merited, not so much for the
defeat of Tippoo Sahib and conquest of Mysore, as for continuing the
policy of Clive and sternly preventing the natives of India from being
ground down by the greed and cruelty of English residents. Twice
Viceroy of [131]India, and died there in harness. Napoleon met him during
the negotiations at Amiens, and styled him “un bien brave homme.” A
pyramidal group. In Garter mantle with insignia (ribbon again over
wrong shoulder). The male figure represents the river Bagareth (sic)
and holds an emblem of the Ganges. The female figure standing by is
our Eastern Empire. Perhaps the best of this sculptor. (Rossi.)

Choir South Aisle.

Photo S.B. Bolas & Co.

MONUMENTS OF DR. JOHN DONNE AND BISHOP BLOMFIELD.ToList

Four are recumbent figures of bishops and dignitaries, and call for no
comment beyond the success in giving a life-like expression to the
features.

*62. Milman (Henry Hart, 1791-1868). Dean for nineteen years.
Pastor, poet, historian, and divine. (Williamson.)

*63. Donne (John, 1572-1631). A versatile and somewhat eccentric
dean, 1621-1631. The only monument at all intact that escaped the
Fire. Upright in shroud, and on classical urn. In old church in like
position, but on opposite side. Sat for his portrait in his shroud.

64. Blomfield (Chas. Jas., 1786-1857). Bishop, 1828-1856. (Geo.
Richmond.)

65. Jackson (John, 1810-1885). Bishop, 1868-1885. (Thos. Woolner.)

66. Heber (Reginald, 1783-1826). Second Bishop of [132]Calcutta; died at
Trichinopoly. Thackeray’s “Good divine, charming poet, beloved parish
priest.” Milman’s “Early friend, by the foot of whose statue I pass so
often, not without emotion, to our services…. None was ever marked
so strongly for a missionary bishop in the fabled and romantic East.”
A kneeling figure, and the best in this aisle. Formerly under the east
window, but now facing the sanctuary. (Chantrey.)

*67. Liddon (Henry Parry, 1829-1890). South side of the Apse. We
fitly close this catalogue with this famous preacher, with the
possible exception of Henry Melvill the greatest connected with the
cathedral in modern time. Residentiary for twenty years, and
Chancellor. (Bodley and Garner.)

Amongst the great sculptors, John Gibson is not represented by any
work. Amongst the great men, Wren, his epitaph notwithstanding, might
well have a monument with a list of his buildings on the pedestal.
Marlborough should have one opposite to Wellington; and Colet, surely,
might be again remembered, and with him Dean Church.

THE CRYPT.

The entrance to the staircase is in the ambulatory on the north side
of the south transept. This basement story, for the whole length and
breadth of the building, of which more than one half is taken up by
piers and pillars, dimly lighted in aisles and transepts from above,
though it strikes the spectator most impressively, has an aspect weird
and sombre to a degree. We feel we are in the company of the dead. The
pavement of the dome area is supported by eight larger and four
smaller piers, forming externally a square and internally an octagon;
and within the octagon eight columns describe a circle of sufficient
diameter for Nelson’s tomb. The central aisles throughout are likewise
supported by double rows of square pillars. At the west end of the
choir the piers underneath the chancel arch are exceptionally massive,
and east of them the introduction of two extra rows of pillars
together with an irregularity in the vaulting indicates, not only
where choir screen and organ were placed, but also that Wren never
wanted them there to isolate the chancel.

[133]

NELSON’S TOMB.ToList

The parish of St. Faith in 1878 consented to the removal of the high
railings which marked off their part, and tiles now record the south
and west boundaries. This reminds us that the crypt has been a burial
place for ages past. Many completely unknown lie around us, and sleep
in the company of more than one great maker of history; but we are
concerned only with the few, and with certain monuments of others
buried elsewhere. At the west is placed Wellington’s funeral car, made
of captured guns, and with his chief victories inscribed in gold, and
the candelabra used for the lying in state. Near, and further east,
are buried Cruikshank, Lord Mayor Nottage (who died during his
mayoralty in 1886), Bartle Frere and his wife (Lady Frere died 1899,
and is the last interred at the time of writing this), and Lord Napier
of Magdala. In the very centre the corpse of Nelson, enclosed
in wood from a mast of the Orient, reposes within the circle of
columns in a plain tomb, and underneath a magnificent black and [134]white
sarcophagus of the sixteenth century. Let us pause to reflect that
this fine work of art, on which Benedetto da Rovanza and his masons
spent much labour, was intended by Wolsey for his own monument, but
was confiscated with the rest of his goods. To this day no one knows
the exact spot where the Abbot of Leicester and his monks buried the
great Tudor statesman; and nearly three centuries later the marble
covered the coffin of the great admiral. On the top a viscount’s
coronet takes the place of the disgraced and broken-hearted cardinal’s
hat. Nelson’s nephew, Lord Merton of Trafalgar, lies in a vault
underneath, and at the sides are Collingwood and the Earl of Northesk,
two companions in arms. A grating here, underneath the centre of the
dome, allows the light from the lantern to be dimly seen. Further east
and near the south side were placed in April, 1883, the remains of the
ill-fated Professor Palmer and his two companions, Captain Gill and
Lieutenant Charrington, who were killed by Arabs while on a Government
mission in the Desert of Sinai. Underneath the chancel arch is the
sepulchre of Wellington, of Cornish porphyry, plain and unadorned. As
with the monument, so here, no attempt is made to enumerate those
titles, commands, orders and posts and offices of honour, proclaimed
by Garter King at Arms, after Dean Milman had committed his body to
the ground. The simple inscription, “Arthur, Duke of Wellington,” upon
the severely simple tomb, depicts, not incorrectly, the life and
character of the Iron Duke. A neighbouring tomb is that of Picton.
Some little distance to the east, and in the end recess of the south
choir aisle is the grave of Wren. The plain black marble
slab, which tells who lies below, is only raised some sixteen inches;
and on the wall of the recess is the original of the famous
inscription, “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” Other
members of the family are close at hand in what we may call Wren’s
corner. His daughter Jane, his daughter-in-law Maria with her parents
Philip and Constantia Masard, and tablets commemorate Dame Jane his
wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Coghill, and her great granddaughter
who, living to the age of ninety-three, well-nigh connects his time
with ours. One of the deans—Newton, Bishop of Bristol, whose monument
was not allowed above, slumbers near the great architect; as in
Painters’ Corner do [135]Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Leighton (whose fine
gravestone contrasts so oddly with Wren’s), and Millais, all
Presidents of the Royal Academy, with James Barry, Opie, Dance,
Fuseli, Turner, Landseer, and Boehm. Near here are Mylne and
Cockerell, successors of Wren: Milman lies directly under the altar,
and Liddon underneath his monument.

Photo. S.B. Bolas & Co.

CHURCH OF ST. FAITH IN THE CRYPT.ToList

The monuments include two removed from the choir to make room for the
organ. John Cooke, killed in command of the Bellerophon
(Westmacott), and George Duff, killed in command of the Mars
(Bacon), both at Trafalgar. Tablets, busts, or brasses, are in honour
of Lord Mayo, the Canadian statesman Macdonald, the Australian
statesman Dally, the Press correspondents who fell in the Soudan, the
soldiers who fell in the Transvaal, Goss, the organist and composer,
and Bishop Piers Claughton, a residentiary. At the east end, where
service is held on a weekday morning at eight, are a [136]few fragments of
the old monuments—Nicholas Bacon (in armour and legs missing),
Christopher Hatton, John Wolley, and others. Some slight carvings of
the old buildings are also left.

THE GALLERIES AND LIBRARY.

Photo. S.B. Bolas & Co.

THE LIBRARY.ToList

Above the aisles are long and spacious galleries, and after mounting
the staircase to the south-west of the dome, we pass through one of
these—that over the south aisle—to the Library over the South-West
Chapel. A gallery is supported by brackets carved by Jonathan Maine,
and the flooring is of 2,300 pieces of oak, inlaid and without pegs or
nails. There is a portrait of Bishop Compton, who may be considered
the founder; and later donations and bequests include those of Bishop
Sumner of Winchester, Archdeacon Hale, and notably Dr.
Sparrow-Simpson. Altogether many thousands of MSS. [137]and books. A
beautiful “Avicenna Canon Medicinæ,” a psalter supposed to have been
used in the old Latin services, and another bought by Dr. Simpson at a
second-hand book-stall, are of the fourteenth century. A subscription
book for the rebuilding contains the following: “I will give one
thousand pounds a yeare whitehall 20 March 1677/8 Charles R.” These
subscriptions never found their way into the fund; and forgetful how
readily the Merry Monarch’s money might have been intercepted en
route, it has been assumed that he never parted with it. In the same
book James also promises “two hundred pounds a yeare to begin from
Midsommer day last past.” The printed books include Tyndale’s
Pentateuch and his New Testament; and the Sumner and Hale bequests
include large numbers of curious tracts and pamphlets. Richard
Jennings’ model of the centre of the west front is preserved. In the
eighteenth century St. Paul’s was a favourite place for weddings, and
the registers, with many interesting names, are being edited for the
Harleian Society. The Trophy Room above the North-West Chapel contains
Wren’s model, which was restored when Sydney Smith was a Canon.

We are quite content to follow Fergusson, and let the architectural
value of New St. Paul’s stand or fall with the literary value of
“Paradise Lost.” Just as Addison says of the latter: “In poetry as in
architecture, not only the whole, but the principal members and every
part of them should be great”; “there is an unquestionable
magnificence in every part”; “a work which does an honour to the
English nation”: just as Macaulay corroborates by eulogising it as
“that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics
has placed in the highest class of human compositions”—even so we may
end here, and describe this unique and marvellous conception of a man
who was not a trained architect, who was never known to have travelled
further than Paris and who was incessantly hampered and hindered, as a
conception, not indeed architecturally faultless, but for all that and
leaving out the much greater St. Peter’s, as the finest church of the
Renaissance style and epoch, more stable and better adapted for public
worship than any earlier cathedral in England. To the Renaissance, the
genius of Milton contributed an epic in blank verse, the genius of
Wren a second in stone.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIIToC

CONCLUSION (1710-1897)

Wren’s great friend and supporter on the Commission, John Evelyn, was
long since dead; and in 1718, thanks to an intrigue, the Surveyor was
dismissed in favour of an incompetent successor, chiefly famous for
figuring in the Dunciad. Fortunately, says his grandson, “He was
happily endued with such an Evenness of Temper, a steady Tranquillity
of Mind, and Christian Fortitude, that no injurious Incidents or
Inquietudes of human life, could ever ruffle or discompose.” He
continued for a time superintending at the Abbey, but soon took a
house from the Crown at Hampton, where he could look upon another of
his innumerable designs, and from time to time came up to see his
cathedral, and, as the story goes, was wont to sit under the dome.
Thanks to the regularity and temperance of his habits, for he profited
by his medical studies, and his happy disposition, he lived five years
longer, occupying his leisure with a variety of mathematical and
scientific studies, and above all “in the Consolation of the Holy
Scriptures: cheerful in Solitude, and as well pleased to die in the
Shade as in the Light.” A visit to London brought on a cold he failed
to shake off. He was accustomed to take a nap after dinner; and on
February 25, 1723, his servant, thinking he had slept long enough,
entered the room. The good old man had passed quietly to his
well-earned rest. His wife had long pre-deceased him. Steele declared
that Wren was absolutely incapable of trumpeting his own fame, “which
has as fatal an effect upon men’s reputations as poverty; for as it
was said—’the poor man saved the city, and the poor man’s labour was
forgot’; so here we find the modest man built the city, and [139]the
modest man’s skill was unknown.”[109] But Wren did not build only for
the Commission who dismissed him, but for posterity; and posterity
more impartial will yet pronounce that he belongs to the great men of
two centuries ago, and accord him a place beside Marlborough and
Addison and Newton.

About this time Parliament vested the fabric in three trustees—the
Primate, the Bishop, and the Lord Mayor. With them rests the
appointment of the surveyor, the examination and audit of his
accounts, and in general the charge and maintenance of the
cathedral.[110] This trust is unique, and has its origin in the large
sums provided from taxation, whereas the other cathedrals were raised
by voluntary offerings. The eighteenth century does not call for more
than a passing notice. Wren’s intentions continued to be delayed or
frustrated in at least four important respects. The high railings shut
out any complete view of the exterior: the dome area, isolated from
the choir by the organ, was not used for the very purpose it was
designed: the interior lacked mosaics: no monuments to the great dead
filled the recesses ready for them. Reynolds headed a body of artists
anxious to execute a scheme of adornment not in accordance with the
architect’s views, and was defeated by Bishop Terrick on grounds other
than æsthetic. George III. gave thanks in 1789 for his recovery, and
again eight years later for naval victories. On this latter occasion
Nelson attended as one of the representatives of the Fleet; and as his
one remaining eye rested on the Howard monument, did he think that the
time was near at hand when he would be brought there, and when another
monument would be erected to himself? For at last the cathedral was
being put to its intended use; and the first memorial was accorded to
a self-sacrificing philanthropist, who was not even a member of the
Anglican communion. Another eight years, and amidst all that was high
and distinguished, under the very centre of the dome, Dean
Pretyman-Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, committed to the ground the
maimed body of the greatest of our sea captains. “As a youth,” says
Dean Milman, “I was present, and remember the solemn effect of the
sinking of the coffin. I heard, or fancied that I heard, the low wail
of the sailors who bore and encircled the remains of their
[140]admiral.”[111] During the short peace before the return from Elba
Wellington carried the sword of state before the Regent at the
Thanksgiving service (July 9, 1814), and Dean Milman was called upon
to officiate at the funeral of Wellington (November 18, 1852), which
the Prince Consort attended, when the length of the procession may be
estimated from Henry Greville’s statement that it took one and
three-quarter hours to pass Devonshire House.

The earlier Parliaments returned by the first Reform Bill brought
about sweeping and ill-considered changes, both diocesan and
capitular. Essex and the small archdeaconry of St. Alban’s were
separated from the diocese, and instead of being formed into a new
one, were annexed to Rochester.[112] The capitular changes were
chiefly the work of one sweeping Act which applied to the Chapters as
a body (3 and 4 Vict. c. 113). The obligation of residence was removed
from the prebends; four new resident canonries were created, and the
revenues of the prebends alienated. By this scheme the greater part of
the authority was entrusted to the dean and the residentiaries, and
the thirty prebends became almost honorary, excepting that the old
fees had still to be paid on installation. Thirty benefices—sinecures
most of them in the modern sense and of large and increasing
value—had become an anomaly and out of date; but were residents,
officially non-resident for three-fourths of the year, the happiest
method of reform? What Sydney Smith, one of the last of the old
resident prebendaries, thought of these changes may be read in his
life. A more competent authority on matters capitular than Sydney
Smith, and like him in other respects an admirer of the first
Victorian ministry, roundly declared, “The three months system is a
mockery and worse”;[113] and as a matter of fact the residentiaries
prefer to discharge their duties by a more regular attendance. The
patronage of three of these coveted stalls was reserved to the Crown;
the fourth was left to the Bishop; but although the Archdeaconry of
London was annexed to this fourth, one-third of the revenue was
deducted for the remaining [141]Archdeaconry of Middlesex. Since then the
income of this fourth stall has been raised to the level of the
others, and the prebendal stall of Cantlers re-endowed, the occupant
being the diocesan inspector in religious knowledge. The one
satisfactory feature in these changes is that the alienated revenues,
estimated at £150,000, have been put to a good and practical use. By
yet another change the mediæval college of the petty canons has been
dissolved, and the minor canons reduced from twelve to six.

The best vindication of the new order of things is to look at results.
It was left to Dean Milman and his Chapter, originally at the
suggestion of Bishop Tait, to endeavour to carry out Wren’s designs
and Wren’s ideas. The high exterior railings are gone: the organ
removed to its proper position and the organ screen taken away, so
that dome and choir are connected for congregational purposes: the
system of decoration by mosaics well advanced. The absolute necessity
of using the dome was emphasised, not only by the Sunday evening
services, but by the appointment of Henry Parry Liddon to a
resident’s stall. Competent judges have asserted that Henry Melvill,
though not the greater thinker, was the greater preacher of the two;
but Melvill was almost past his best on his appointment in 1856, and
he is rather associated with the choir than the dome. Be this as it
may, Wren would have been gratified indeed to have seen the favourite
offspring of his genius filled from arch to arch, and to have listened
to the clear and melodious high-pitched voice of the great preacher,
always articulate, and with an articulation after Wren’s own heart
that did not drop the last words of the sentences. Wren would have
been further gratified to have seen his dome used, in addition to
weekday services, three times each Sunday, as he would have been to
have worked under those successive Deans—Milman, Mansel, Church,
Gregory—who, in conjunction with their Chapters, have loyally
endeavoured to put the cathedral to the use he wished from the day he
first began to design his short Greek cross; and finally, he would
have been gratified at Gounod’s statement that the services are
rendered to the finest music in the world, and to have seen the free
facilities offered to the public for studying his architecture, and
would have contrasted the orderly behaviour of the visitors from every
quarter of the globe with the old-time swashbucklers and rowdies of
[142]Paul’s Walk; and any objection to the lengthening westward would have
been removed, had he lived to have seen his great cathedral filled
from door to door with a congregation of from ten to twelve thousand
at the special musical services.

This all too short summary must close by recording that the Queen
attended the Thanksgiving service in February, 1872 for the recovery
of the Prince of Wales; and on Queen Victoria’s Day, Tuesday, June 22,
1897, again proceeded in state from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s,
where a Thanksgiving service was held at the West Front on occasion of
the Diamond Jubilee, her Majesty returning by way of London and
Westminster Bridges.

FOOTNOTES:

APPENDIX A.ToC

BISHOPS AND DEANS.

* Archbishop of Canterbury.      § Archbishop of York.

BISHOPS BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

BISHOPS AND DEANS AFTER THE CONQUEST.

As regards the earlier periods, some of the dates are only
approximate, and certain names are inserted and others omitted with
hesitation.

APPENDIX B.ToC

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF ST. PAUL’S.

AREA IN SQUARE FEET OF SOME OF THE LARGEST CHURCHES.

The Basilica of Constantine was 68,000 square feet.

St. Paul’s is not so long as Winchester, Ely, York, and Canterbury.

Old St. Paul’s was a trifle less in area than its successor, but
counting St. Gregory’s and the Chapter House, my estimate from
Dugdale’s plan is that it exceeded it. In length it exceeded every
church the dimensions of which I have been able to ascertain, with the
solitary exception of the 680 feet of St. Peter’s.

DIMENSIONS.

EXTERIOR.

INTERIOR.

Length, 460 feet, of which the Nave is a little over 200.
Breadth (excluding recesses underneath the windows), about 100 feet.
Length of Transepts, 240 feet.
Height of Central Vaulting, 89 feet.
Height of Whispering Gallery about 100 feet, and same diameter.
Opening at apex of Dome, about 215 feet.
Area, 59,700 square feet.

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

GROUND PLAN of ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL showing the position of the Monuments.ToList