London, Volume 4
Knight, Charles
1843
XCII. Old St. Paul's. No. II.
XCII. Old St. Paul's. No. II.
To the glimpse of the metropolitan church, on Day in the century, given in the preceding paper, we must now add a notice of or extraordinary-customs that prevailed in it, in connexion with other periods of the year. Of these, foremost in importance was St. Nicholas's Day, the , when a boy was elected from among the children of the choir by themselves; the mitre of silver and gilt, with precious stones, placed upon his head, rings of similar materials on his hands, the alb, cope, and tunic upon his body, and behold the youthful bishop armed with the amplest authority from that time forwards till Innocents' Day, the . His companions, at the same time, put on the garb of priests, and, between them, during the whole period mentioned, performed all the ceremonies of the Cathedral, excepting only the Mass. Nay, it is even said that the boy-bishop's power was so complete, that he had the right of disposing of any prebends that happened to fall vacant during his rule, and if he died within the same period, was buried with episcopal honours and a monument erected to him in the Cathedral. Among the other duties of their position which the boy-bishops were ambitious enough to attempt, was the preaching in regular course to the auditory. Even so late as , Dean Colet, the founder of School, directs Their sphere was by no means confined to the church. According to Bishop Hall,[n.258.1] they were The boy chosen appears to have been of the handsomest and most elegantly-shaped of the choral band. The custom extended also to Monasteries. The Nunneries had for their mock-dignitary a little girl. Archbishop Peckham, in , in an injunction to the Nunnery of Godstow, in Oxfordshire, directed that the public prayers should not any more be said in the church of that monastery by little girls on Innocents' Day. The custom was put down by a proclamation of Henry VIII., but again revived in Mary's reign, when the boy-bishop sang before the Queen, in her privy-chamber at St. James's, and, in the course of his song, panegyrized his royal mistress on her devotions, comparing her to Judith, Esther, the Queen of Sheba, and the Virgin Mary. The boy-bishops finally disappeared from in the reign of Elizabeth. | |
The theatrical representations of Old form another highly interesting feature. Pennant says, The idea of a cathedral turned into a theatre-the Bible into a play-seems somewhat strange in our days; and the manner of much of the performances is no less startling than the place or the matter. The stage in the and centuries generally consisted of platforms, rising above and behind another, on the highest of which appeared a representation of God surrounded by his angels; the presented bands of saints and blessed martyrs; the was filled by those who performed the mere mortal characters intended to be exhibited. By the side of this platform opened the mouth of Hell, from which ascended fire and smoke, and the terrible cries of the damned. But our ancestors lilked even their devils to be merry devils, so every now and then came bounding forth troops of the most jocund spirits that could desire, bandying to and fro the jest, the repartee, and the practical joke. WVe are afraid that even the unfortunate sinners who fell into their hands were not half so much alarmed as they ought to have been at the sight of their future tormentors. What a strange medley of feelings must have possessed the bosoms not merely of the auditors at such spectacles, but of the clergy under whose auspices these representations were invariably got up in such places as ! If the roars of laughter thus produced, and resounding through the pile long after the exit of the demons, are little calculated to find an echo with us, we can, perhaps, still less sympathise with the silence and reverent admiration that greeted the exhibition of the favourite of Old St. Paul's--the descent of a white pigeon through a hole in the roof, to represent the person of the Trinity, followed by a censer, which was swung to and fro the entire space of the choir, filling the air with its fragrant vapours. | |
259 | |
The presentation of the banner of St. Paul to Robert Fitzwalter, the Castellan of the City in the event of threatened attack by enemies, has been elsewhere referred to; we need, therefore, only transcribe the characteristic passage drawn up by of the family, and presented in to the Lord Mayor, which introduces as the central object of the ceremony. &c. Then would be heard pealing forth its ominous voice the great bell of St. Paul's--a signal the potency of which in the middle ages we can only judge of by the feelings such sounds excite to this hour in the great towns of Spain, or by imagining ourselves in the position of some unhappy Jew of the metropolis, who never heard its terrible sounds without a shudder, remembering how often it had been heard above the shrieks of his dying countrymen. During a century or of our history, no assemblage of armed men such as that bell was wont to'call together could be looked on without fear by a Jew. Royalist or anti-royalist, all had an equal love of his gold, equal hatred of him, and an equally unscrupulous method of exhibiting both passions. When De Montfort, for instance, in called the Londoners together at the sound of bell to march against Henry III., they seem to have been unable to go forth till they had alike replenished their purses and satisfied their consciences by the plunder and massacre of some men, women, and children of the detested faith. Such was patriotism and Christianity in the century! | |
260 | |
Let us now briefly glance at the exterior of Old in the century. The goodly dial on the tower, made with its angel pointing to the hour [n.260.1] need not detain us, nor the bishop's palace before mentioned,[n.260.2] in the north-west corner of the inclosure, from the chapel of which we hear the voices of the priests chanting the masses for the souls of deceased bishops. We are approaching a more interesting place, Pardon-Church-Haugh, the name given to that venerable-looking chapel and surrounding cloister, founded in the reign of Stephen by Gilbert Becket, portreeve of London, father to the famous archbishop, and the subject of of the most delightful stories or legends in English history. Gilbert, it appears, whilst following the fortunes of his lord in the Crusades, was taken prisoner by a Saracen emir, and thrown into a dungeon. The emir's daughter beheld the captive, pitied him, loved him, and at last freed him. Escaped from his dungeon by her means, Gilbert soon reached his own country. Wretched at his absence, love at last suggested what only love could suggest under such circumstances--the determination to seek him through the world, knowing only the name-Gilbert, the place-London. Hastening to the nearest port, she found at least of those talismanic words understood, and she embarked in a vessel for England. In at last, she wandered from street to street, with no friend to aid, knowing but word of the language,
and, oh! the world of wisdom often contained within such simple faith!-they met at last. With tears of joy was the stout yeoman seen hurrying away his beauteous infidel to be baptized in his own faith, preparatory to their immediate | |
| marriage. The extraordinary nature of the circumstance, taken in connexion with the foundation of the chapel before us, where he lies, and no doubt his bride also, make it more than probable, supposing the story to be true, that the baptism took place in . After Becket's time the chapel and cloister | |
261 | appear to have become favourite places with the wealthy and the pious--the for the repose of their bodies, the other for securing the repose of their souls. The cloister is rich with monuments, but we must pass on to the picture we see there on the eastern wall, with the verses beneath, and the strange title, An inscription informs us that the whole was done at the charge of Jenkyn Carpenter, citizen of London, in imitation of the in the cloisters adjoining St. Innocents' churchyard, Paris; whilst the verses are headed, An awful dance, indeed! A double line of figures, commencing'in the left of the foreground, and continued away on the right till the apparently endless procession is lost in the distance; the line led by a pope with his triple crown on his head, behind him an emperor, next a king, then cardinal, duke, archbishop, patriarch, baron, princess, bishop, squire, and so on regularly downwards through every condition of life; whilst the other line presents dread but sublime uniformity-emperor and labourer, duke and citizen, monk and minstrel, are each led on by the same ghastly partner, a skeleton Death. Wonderful as is the conception of the picture, the execution is equal. The variety of expression given to the skeleton forms, in spite of the continual repetition --above all, the unearthly submissiveness with which the terrible procession of the highest and lowliest of the earth move on together, as though in a deep and awful dream which deprived all alike of the power of resisting-seem to us among the greatest triumphs of the art. In the verses, which extend to great length, we have the conversation which may be supposed to preface the dance; Death's invitation to each, and the answer, beginning with the pope and ending with the hermit. We transcribe a passage or :
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Machabree, the author of the original verses, was a German physician, who is supposed to have written them from the sight of the picture, which was found in | |
262 | many of the continental edifices about the latter part of the century. The picture itself was probably suggested by the wide-sweeping ravages of the plague, as we know that it was subsequently painted on the walls of churches to commemorate such occasions: as at Basle, after the plague which carried off so many persons during the years' sitting of the General Council which met in ; and, we may add, as in the cloister of , for the very name shows that this cloister and chapel had been in some way used for similar purposes with the Pardon Churchyard, Clerkenwell, where Sir Walter Manny bought ground for the interment of the victims of the pestilence. Lydgate is a somewhat free translator of Machabree's verses, we observe for, among the other passages, we see that
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The moral of the whole is summed up toward the conclusion by
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Among the other noticeable features of the exterior of on the north side are the library over the cloister and the chapel near the door leading into the north transept of the cathedral: the furnished with books at a great cost, and the built by Walter Shiryngton, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster--a man of whom it is recorded he had in ready money at his death no less than the sum of , kept in an iron chest in the vestry of the church, whereof were in groats, and the rest in gold. The charnel-house and chapel, a place of resort to pilgrims, is--here also; and, above all, thefamous Cross, near the eastern extremity.[n.262.3] The Bell Tower on the east, with | |
263 | its great bells used in old times to summon the people to the folkmote, with its tall spire and image of St. Paul on the summit, and the sumptuous chapterhouse, and cloisters surrounding it, on the western side of the southern transept, are the only other objects demanding notice. |
With the exception of an accident now and then, such as the injury done by lightning to the spire in , which took a long time to repair, there is nothing of moment in the history of the edifice from the period of its completion down to that when the Reformation began to perplex hierarchies with fears of change even more than nmonarchs. From that time is a troubled history for the next years. We can only deal with the more salient points; and, , here is a quiet--little bit of correspondence going on between the authorities of the cathedral and Queen Anne Boleyn's Vice-Chamberlain. As yet, proceedings of the nature indicated had to be done very decorously; and our readers will own that the writer (Dr. John Smythe, canon-residentiary) was the very man so to do them :-- And is this all?--By no means. The crafty canon-residentiary knows well enough that those who receive such kind of service are not unprepared to repay it in kind: so he goes on to point out that his long time, as he understands, hath made secret labours to supplant him of some house he holds, and to obtain certain authority; and so a good word with the Queen's Grace is desired both for the house and the authority, backed by this persuasive piece of eloquence to Sir Edward Baynton, the Vice-Chancellor's own ears:-- he says,
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Turn we now to a somewhat more gratifying evidence of the progress of the Reformation--the sudden apparition, in or about most of the principal English churches, for the time, of such a spectacle as this: Englishmen reading the Bible in their own language. The announcement of the King's purpose was made known by his direction, in , for a translation to be made. Coverdale had, the year before, completed his translation, which was now placed in the King's hands; and, as the translator himself told his audience day at Cross, various opinions having been expressed as to its value, Cromwell accordingly directed a copy of Coverdale's Bible to be chained to a pillar or desk in the choir of every parish church. As soon as the new translation was completed in , similar directions were issued with regard to that; and again in , showing that the earlier orders had been but indifferently obeyed. Bonner was now Bishop of London; and, in obedience to the proclamation, he caused Bibles to be set up in different parts of the Church, with a brief admonition attached, that they should be read humbly, meekly, reverently, and obediently; that no persons should read them with loud voices, or during divine service; and, more particularly, that the laity were not to dispute of the mysteries contained therein. But the awakening mind of man was preparing to accomplish mightier things than breaking through a bishop's injunction. Many a group might be seen about these chained Bibles, now listening in deep silence to the voice of who read, now arguing hotly upon some disputed passage or point of faith it involved. Bonner was the last man to submit to this in peace. He threatened publicly to remove the Bibles if these abuses continued; whilst in private, he, with the other chief heads of the clergy, who viewed with alarm the growing schism, strained every nerve to undo what had been done, but with little or no effect. | |
The next evidence of the change going on, that we meet with in the history of , is the dissolution of the chantries in the year of the reign of Edward VI.--an act which at once struck off priests from the foundation, that being the number still employed in the daily performance of the celebrations at the different chantries, then reduced to . This blow was followed, years later, by another--the stripping the church of the long list of valuables which we have before referred to, leaving only, as if by way of mockery, | |
265 | or chalices, basins, and a silver pot, a few cushions, towels, dresses, &c. Ruder hands were now laid upon the venerable structure. says Dugdale, [n.265.1] In the place of the images or statues thus removed, various texts of Scripture were affixed against the wall, condemnatory, or thought to be so, of the former practice. A curious passage in Strype's shows us the state of feeling among the clergy of the cathedral. In Bonner had received an indirect reprimand from the King's Council on account of the performance of masses, said to be still kept up in some of the chapels of . It was directed that the Communion, under colour of which the masses had been said, should be said at the high altar only. Some months after that, when Ridley was bishop, the Communion was still celebrated with such superstition as though it were a mass. In consequence, the Council sent, on the , or to observe the usage at , who reported that the Communion was We may judge how joyously these parties must have received the news of Mary's accession to the throne. The continuator of Fabian tells us, whilst, on And although Mary, for political reasons, issued almost immediately a declaration that she would constrain nobody in religious matters, her intentions were well known to the Catholic party; and too soon, unhappily, to every else. It was a blessed thing for England that of its
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The most important point in the history of during the reign of Elizabeth is the destruction of the tall steeple, in . In the accounts published at the time, the damage was attributed to lightning during a tempest, but a later writer, Dr. Heylin (), says, that a plumber had since confessed that it happened through his negligence in leaving a pan of coals and other fuel in the steeple when he went to dinner; and which, taking hold of the dry wood in the spire, had become so dangerous before he returned, that he kept his secret. The damage done was immense. Not only the entire steeple was destroyed, but the roof of the church and aisles. Many pious | |
266 | persons no doubt were totally at a loss to understand the calamity; for in the cross there had been long deposited the relics of certain saints, placed there originally by Gilbert de Segrave, Bishop of London about , for the express purpose of defending the steeple from all danger of tempests; but they were satisfied at last when they discovered that the evil was owing to the Reformation. A preacher at Paul's Cross thought it necessary to answer this hypothesis in acareful and learned manner. All parties, however, exerted themselves to remedy the mischance. By the roof was repaired; but it now began to be perceived that a general repair of the edifice was needed, and there was still the steeple to build. James I., on occasion, came in splendid procession to give eclat to a new attempt to raise subscriptions. A commission also was issued, but nothing further done till Charles's reign, when, in , Laud, then Bishop of London, laid the stone, and Inigo Jones, the architect, the . It would have been well for this great architect's fame if his connexion with could be altogether forgotten. After looking upon the elegant tracery and beautifully-pointed architecture of the old cathedral, and then on the monstrous additions made by him, such as Corinthian porticos, round-headed windows, balustrades ornamented with round stone balls along the top, needs to remember the Banqueting House, , to prevent something like a feeling of contempt for this fine artist. Strange that men like Inigo Jones and Wren, both able to do so much honour to their country by developing their own tastes and principles, should have been willing to meddle with works founded upon the tastes and principles of others, with whom evidently they had nothing in common. If the notion had ever crossed their minds that some restorer of the Gothic would day be busily employed repairing or the Banqueting House on his own peculiar views, we suspect their equanimity would have been somewhat disturbed. |
Many honourable instances of private zeal in the restoration of the cathedral have been recorded. Charles himself set the example by erecting, at his own expense, the portico on the west, whilst Sir Paul Pindar restored the beautiful screen at the entrance into the choir (the single work that seems to have been done in the right spirit), and gave no less than to the repair of the south transept. And thus, by , the whole was finished except the steeple, at an expense of about , when the Civil War broke out; and men, in their struggle to prevent or to accomplish a reform of all the evils which political or religious institutions are heir to, became too much engrossed to attend any longer to the state of . In order that we may finally dismiss this part of our subject, we may observe that on the abolition of bishops, deans, and chapters, in , the revenues and buildings attached to were seized, and much injury done to the interior of the cathedral by the quartering of horse-soldiers in the nave, and the erection of a wall between the nave and choir, in order to partition the latter off for divine service. Charles II. began the work of repair and restoration in , but before any great advance was made came the Great Fire. | |
At the very beginning of the Civil War an eminent antiquary conceived and executed a scheme of no ordinary importance or toil, which he has thus described in the preface to his work on :;-- A more interesting passage, or a more gallant deed than-this, we shall nowhere find in the annals of antiquarianism. And whatever the amount of the danger apprehended and the mischief done to our cathedrals during the Civil War, event of infinitely greater moment, that he could not anticipate, the Great Fire, has left us almost entirely dependent upon what Dugdale did at this period for our knowlcdge of Old . In the vaults beneath the present cathedral are the remains of some half-dozen monuments dug up out of the ruins of the former edifice, and this is nearly all we should have known of the sumptuous structures already described, but for his labours. The amount of destruction wrought in our great religious edifices during the Civil War, we believe, has been much exaggerated, and the error has probably arisen from overlooking the handiwork of the reformers themselves during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. Henry, at cast of the dice, knocked down the Bell Tower before mentioned, with its goodly spire and bells, or at least his fellow-gamester Sir Miles Partridge, who was the winner of the throw, did for him. Then as to Edward's and Elizabeth's reigns, we have already transcribed a passage from Dugdale showing that the forming nearly the whole of the beautiful sculpture, and many of the beautiful and costly portraitures of brass, chiefly of bishops, of whom no less than had been buried in the cathedral, were then destroyed. But in Edward's reign private rapacity did greater injury even than any yet specified. The Protector Somerset, then busy erecting in , swept away the chapel and cloisters of Pardon Church Haugh, with the Dance of Death, and all the beautiful monuments; also Shiryngton's Chapel, and the Charnel-House and Chapel, in order that he might have the materials. Let us now see what were the principal memorials among those which remained when Dugdale set to work, and which have not been already described in the preceding paper. Among the tablets were to Linacre, the great physician and founder of the , who was buried here; another to Sir Philip Sidney, with an inscription, beginning- who was interred in , in , amidst so deep and universal a | |
268 | grief as has seldom greeted the remains of poet or warrior; indeed for months afterwards it was considered an infringement of decency for a gentleman to appear at court or in public except in mourning. Among the monuments were plenty of those cumbrous, tasteless pieces of magnificence which'choke up the aisles and chapels of to this day. Such, for instance, were the monuments of the noticeable triad of men-Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth's favourite Chancellor, with a long inscription in verse attached, detailing his descent and history at large,--Sir Francis Walsingham, her eminent Secretary, who, Pennant says, --and lastly, Sir Nicholas Bacon, her Keeper of the Seals, the father of the great Chancellor, and himself a distinguished and excellent man. says his son,
graces of the intellect. When Elizabeth came to visit him at Gorhambury, the size and magnificence of the place seem to have drawn from the Queen, who evidently had a jealousy of the power of her nobles, the satirical remark, that
was the happy answer, The Earl of Pembroke's monument was also a work of great size and magnificence in this style. Lastly, there was here a large memorial of the founder of the school, Dean Colet, with a skeleton reclining at full length on a mat under a canopy, and a bust of the Dean in a niche at the top. The poet Donne's effigy, still preserved, we reserve for mention in our account of the existing structure. In St. Faith's, also, were many monuments and inscriptions. Perhaps the most memorable of them is that which stated- The imagination starts back in awe as it asks, what would have been the consequences had this gentleman been unwilling to be made such an example of? |
Apart from the history of the Cathedral itself, using the word in its strictest sense, there are a variety of events which belong to that history as having taken place within its walls. The Church and the State have each for many centuries used it occasionally for peculiar purposes--the , for instance, for great ecclesiastical assemblies, proclamations, and trials of heretics--the other for pageants on occasions of public prayer or thanksgiving. Lastly, the people themselves managed, as we shall see, to turn Old to a variety of uses, none of them very consistent with the objects of the building. To begin with of its miscellaneous religious or ecclesiastical memories. Here, in , John's acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope was publicly read, in consequence of which acknowledgment the Church suddenly changed sides in the contest between the king and his barons, and wanted the latter to do the same. The event | |
269 | next to be mentioned was of vast importance, no less than the degradation of the English martyr, William Sawtre, from the priestly order, by stripping him, in regular succession, of all the distinctive articles of his dress, preparatory to sentencing him to the stake at Smithfield, where he was burnt in l. This terrible act took place under the primacy of Arundel, and was performed with the view of putting down Lollardism at once and for ever. If, as in some systems of theology, the shades of the authors of this fatal proceeding could but have been allowed to revisit the earth, and watch for the next years the progress of the principle they had established in St. Paul's--have summed up the amount of misery and agony inflicted, and the amount of success obtained, they would have received a punishment adequate even to such a crime. The name of the Lollards' Tower, applied to of the turrets of the western front, and below which was the parish church of St. Gregory (at the S. W. corner of the pile), shows that Sawtre's case is not the only , perhaps by hundreds, of the early Church Reformers, whose persecutions were carried on within the walls of the Cathedral. The Lollards' Tower here, as at , was the bishop's usual place of confinement for the heterodox, but enjoys a pre-eminence of guilt to which the other cannot pretend. Its walls were reported to be stained with the blood from many a midnight murder, and case that has come down to us prepares us to believe any tale of horror in connexion with it. In , Richard Hunne, a merchant tailor of London, had a dispute with the parson of a country parish in Middlesex, who demanded a bearing-sheet as a mortuary privilege accruing through the death of an infant child of Hunne's in his parish. Hunne objected, it is supposed, through his inclination to the new doctrines, and was sued in the Spiritual Court, when, by the advice of his counsel, he adopted a daring course, that of taking out a writ of premunire against the parson for bringing the King's subjects before a foreign jurisdiction--a Spiritual Court sitting under the authority of the Pope's Legate. The clergy were in a state of frenzy at such bold questioning of their power, and, as the speediest method of reaching him, charged him with heresy. He was arrested and thrown into the Lollards' Tower. Hunne was frightened, and whilst acknowledging the partial truth of the charges brought against him, recanted in due form. But he would not give up his writ against the parson. Instead, therefore, of being discharged, as he was entitled to demand he should be, he was sent back to his prison; days after he was found dead, hanging suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Of course he had hung himself, according to the officers of the prison, but, unfortunately for them, a coroner's inquest came to a different conclusion. Burnet says, It seems scarcely credible that, with the suspicion of such an atrocity hanging over them, the bishop and his clergy should have begun a new process of heresy against the dead body; yet they did so, and actually caused it to be burnt at Smithfield. Even this boldness, however, could not conceal the motive--it was too transparent; theit show of conscious innocence availed nothing. Finally, after strong endeavours to stop the course of justice, Chancellor Horsey succeeded in escaping direct punishment, but not the odium which was universally raised against him. Parliament interfered in favour of Hunne's children, and compelled the restitution of his property, which had been seized on the conviction of his dead body for heresy. But even this act of atrocity was not worse than many performed with all due form and ceremonies in the same cathedral:--here is related by Stow as to the fate of some poor people of Holland, who had taken into their heads they had a mission to reform the state of religious belief, and came to this country to make the experiment. In , there were examined in men and women born in Holland, whose opinions were that in Christ is not natures; that Christ took neither flesh nor blood of the Virgin Mary; that children born of infidels shall be saved; that baptism of children is of no effect; that the sacrament of Christ's body is but bread only; that he who after his baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, and cannot be saved. of them were condemned: man and woman burnt in Smithfield, the other sent to different parts of the country to receive the same punishment. Such was the treatment of reformers under the rule of a reformer; when they did not happen to wait his good time, and make their opinions square exactly with his. |
The state pageants or exhibitions here might well furnish interesting matter for many pages: we must dismiss them in a few lines. The taking possession of the English throne under peculiar circumstances seems to have been accompanied in old times by a splendid procession to . Thus when Louis of France came into London in , amidst the greetings of the barons and citizens, who were ready to welcome any so long as they got rid of the tyrant John, he was conducted with great pomp and ceremony to , where all those present swore fealty to him. Henry VI. and Edward IV. each came here after particular successes. At other times events of this nature were marked by a different kind of exhibition, showing who had lost, instead of those who had gained kingdoms. Richard II.'s body was exhibited at , and, says Stow, Henry VI. before mentioned, and the great King-maker, were also publicly shown here after their death. Henry's corpse is said to have bled on the occasion. very sumptuous state pageant that took place in was the marriage of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., to Catherine of Arragon, afterwards the unhappy wife of Arthur's brother Henry. They were lodged for the time in the bishop's palace. Among the prayers and thanksgivings before alluded to, the most remarkable are those offered in for the preservation of Mary and , the Queen having made an awkward mistake; and those in for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. | |
The words at once revive recollections of the uses to which | |
271 | the public were accustomed to turn the nave and aisles of the Cathedral. says the author of a tract on the burning of the steeple in , It is curious how early the traffic in benefices at has been noticed. Chaucer's Parson is described as who &c. Whilst Bishop Hall corroborates the author before quoted, not only as to the fact, but the part of the Cathedral where such business was transacted: The middle aisle was the famous Paul's Walk, which between and in the morning, and and in the afternoon, was the resort of persons of all ranks of society, and a pretty medley it seems they formed. [n.271.1] We mentioned in our former paper the monument of Sir John Beauchamp; it was this it appears that, being mistaken for the monument of good Duke Humphrey, buried at St. Albans, led to the popular phrase among the poor idlers, who here whiled away their time, of dining with Duke Humphrey, when they knew of no better host. |
The exterior was an equally popular place for various public proceedings. The lottery of which we have any record was drawn before the western doors in . It included lots, at each lot; the prizes consisting of plate. It began on the , and continued, Stow says, till the . What a picture of national passion for gambling is | |
272 | given in those few words! The profits of the lottery were applied to the repair of the havens of England. Another lottery was drawn in , when the prizes consisted of rich and beautiful armour; .and, for the convenience of all parties, a wooden house was erected against the great door of the Cathedral. We may add that of the objects of the erection of the great portico at the west end was to relieve the interior from the nuisances pointed out. |
Footnotes: [n.258.1] Triumphs of Rome. [n.260.1] This is curious, if it means, as it appears to do, that the dial was illuminated at night. [n.260.2] By an oversight in the previous article the Palace is placed on the right of the top of Ludgate Hill. [n.262.3] The subject of No. III. of this publication. [n.265.1] Sir H. Ellis's edition, 1818, p. 31; to which we may once for all express our acknowledgments for the chief materials of the present papers. [n.271.1] Dekker's Dead Tearme or Westminster's Speech to London, 1607. |
