Mediæval London

Vestments, plate, and, unfortunately, books also have all disappeared. The loss of the latter is irreparable. Like Sarum, York, and Hereford, St. Paul’s had a “Use” of its own, and of this Use, unfortunately, no example is extant. In 1415, Bishop Clifford, with the consent of the Dean and Chapter, decreed that the Divine Office in St. Paul’s should henceforth be conformable to that of the Church of Salisbury.

The feast days were numerous. Those of the first class included two feasts of St. Erkenwald and the two feasts of St. Paul. On these days the bells were rung two and two before the peal was sounded; on ordinary days they were sounded singly. It will be seen that there was thus an unceasing round of services, extending almost through day and night.

The ordinary daily services were supplemented still further by occasional services. There were the pilgrims to the shrines of Erkenwald and Mellitus; and a short form of prayer, with a hymn, which appears to have been used on these occasions, was printed by the late Dr. Sparrow Simpson, Sub-Dean. An extraordinary instance of this devotion occurred in 1322, when Thomas, earl of Lancaster, grandson of Henry III., and cousin of Edward II., who was then king, was taken captive after his defeat at the battle of Boroughbridge. Six days afterwards he was tried, condemned, and beheaded in his own Castle of Pomfret by a court of peers, with Edward himself at their head. He was sentenced as a rebel taken in arms against the King, and his whole life-record was that of an unscrupulous, treacherous, and selfish man. Yet, owing perhaps to his kindness to the poor and bountiful patronage of the clergy, his fame grew after his death. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his tomb and at a tablet in St. Paul’s, erected to commemorate him.

The people prayed for his canonisation, and thronged to the Cathedral to pay their devotion to this saint of their own making. Leaden brooches, representing a knight holding a battle-axe, have been found in London, and were probably tokens given to pilgrims who had visited the tablet. The practice of distributing signs to pilgrims visiting the shrines of saints was a very common one from early times down to the Reformation period. These pilgrim signs, or signacula, were often worn by pilgrims in their hats as a sign of distinction, and a certain flavour of holiness attached to the wearer, who had braved what in those days were the real perils of a long and painful journey on foot to accomplish his pious purpose.

A similar practice, as is well known, prevails in the Mohammedan world, where a pilgrim to Mecca, the prophet’s birthplace, receives the honourable title of Hadji. The form of the signs varied greatly, and was generally a representation of the saint or his emblem. Many were issued at the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, the Canterbury Bell being a frequent device; St. James of Compostella was represented by an escallop shell, and so on. The objects, which were small, and seldom much larger than a brooch, have been found in large quantities along the banks of the Thames, where the mud appears to have had a preserving influence upon the bronze of which they are made. We can well imagine the joyous return of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, each wearing a pilgrim’s sign, when their long journey was completed.

Another curious service at the Cathedral was the mock investiture of the Boy Bishop on Holy Innocents’ Day or Childermas, as it was formerly called. On the Eve of St. Nicholas, the special patron of children (December 6th is his festival), the children of the choir elected one of their number to be the Boy Bishop. At St. Paul’s he was arrayed in pontifical vestments with a rich pastoral staff and a white embroidered mitre. On St. John’s Day, after evensong, the Boy Bishop, with his clerks, officiated at a service; occupying the upper canons’ stalls, whilst these dignitaries themselves served in the boys’ places as acolytes, thurifers, and lower clerks.

The next day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the Boy Bishop preached a sermon. Two of these sermons have been preserved, and printed by the Camden Society. The foolish and profane rites were sanctioned by so eminent a man as Dean Colet, and formed the subject of regulations drawn up so early as 1263 for the performance of this function at St. Paul’s.

A brief description of old St. Paul’s, the finest in many respects of our English cathedrals, must now be attempted. Crossing the unsavoury Fleet and ascending Ludgate Hill, the Londoner passed first through Ludgate a little west of St. Martin’s Church, and reached the great western gate of the Close spanning the street near the ends of Creed Lane and Ave Maria Lane. The cathedral stood within a spacious walled enclosure. The wall was built in 1109, and greatly strengthened in 1285, and extended from the north-east corner of Ave Maria Lane, running eastward along Paternoster Row to the north end of Old Change in Cheapside, thence southward to Carter Lane, and on the north of Carter Lane to Creed Lane, back to the great western gate.

Besides this principal entrance, the enclosure had five other gates or posterns. Entering at the western gate, the little church of St. Gregory is seen nestling close to the cathedral on its southern side. The church seems insignificant, and helps to show us the vastness of the cathedral, just as St. Margaret’s Church brings out by contrast the magnificent proportions of Westminster Abbey.

The western front was flanked by two towers, the northern of which was closely attached to the Bishop’s palace; the southern, commonly called the Lollards’ Tower, was used by the Bishop as a prison for heretics. The most prominent feature was the spire, which rose from the centre of the roof to a prodigious height, 493 feet in all. The Bishop’s palace was at the north-west end of the nave. Passing beyond it and its grounds, you arrived at Pardon Church Haugh. This was a goodly cloister, wherein were buried many persons of note, whose monuments surpassed those of the Cathedral itself in number and curious workmanship. The chief feature of the building was the striking series of paintings on the cloister walls, representing the Dance of Death, and beneath them a metrical description of the allegorical design, translated from the French by John Lydgate, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds, and the author of the curious poem, “London Lickpenny.” Within the cloister was a chapel founded by Gilbert à Becket, the father of the famous St. Thomas. Cloister, chapel, monuments, and paintings were all swept away by the ruthless hand of the Protector Somerset to find materials for his palace in the Strand.

North of the cathedral was the college of the minor canons, and east of it Canon Alley. Between the two was Walter Sherrington’s Chapel, and further east, beyond Canon Alley, was the Charnel Chapel. This old building was also pulled down by Somerset, and the bones removed from the crypt beneath taken, in a thousand cart-loads, to Finsbury Fields. The soil required to cover them raised the ground sufficiently for three windmills to stand on. The windmills are seen in Aggas’ map of London, and Windmill Street, Finsbury, now marks the site, as the name “Bunhill Fields” perpetuates the ghastly Bone Hill.

At the north-east angle of the choir was the famous Paul’s Cross. In passing the east end of the church might be seen the magnificent Rose window, one of the very finest in all England. In the clochier or bell-tower was the bell which summoned the citizens of London to the Folkmote held close beside it. Turning westward along the south side of the close, the traveller passed the Chapter House, with its high-pitched roof, the house of the Chancellor, and Paul’s Chain, with its many fair tenements, and close adjoining Paul’s brewhouse and Paul’s bakehouse. To the west lay the Deanery, an ancient house, given to the church by the famous Dean and historian, Ralph de Diceto. At the west end, also, were the houses of the canons, vicars, and many other officials.

The interior of the cathedral was no less beautiful. The immense length of the building from east to west, through choir and nave, was very striking. Some remains of the foundation of the old building may still be seen on the south side of the present cathedral.

In the pre-Reformation services no place was found for preaching; when provision was made for the delivery of sermons, it was by the appointment of a special preacher – in later times known as lecturer – this being no part of the duty of the regular clergy. As early as 1281, Richard de Swinefield, archdeacon of London, and afterwards Bishop of Hereford, was appointed preacher of the cathedral. A few years later, Bishop Richard de Gravesend appointed a divinity lecturer, and Ralph de Baldock endowed the office in the second year of Edward II.

The two great centres of preaching were Paul’s Cross and the Spital; the former was used also – and, perhaps, frequently – as a platform for exerting political influence. Here Dr. Shaw, the brother of Sir John Shaw or Shaa, Lord Mayor, harangued the multitude in support of Richard the Third’s claims to succeed to the Crown, whilst the Duke of Buckingham, Richard’s trusted adherent, appealed on the Protector’s behalf to the chief citizens assembled at Guildhall.

The Jews had a troubled time in London, as in other parts of the country, being exposed to constant extortion by the Sovereign and his ministers. Their principal quarter was in the neighbourhood of the present churches of St. Olave and St. Lawrence Jewry. The thoroughfare of the Old Jewry appears from Mr. Joseph Jacob’s investigations to have been deserted by them prior even to their expulsion from the realm by Edward I. in the year 1291.

Besides the magnificent churches forming part of the monastic establishments, examples of which fortunately remain to us in the churches of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, the parish churches of the old city were numerous and important. From the inventories of their possessions prepared at the Dissolution, and preserved among the records of the Augmentation Office, it would seem that in the number of their chantries and the richness and extent of their vestments and service books, some of the larger parish churches could almost vie with the Cathedral itself. Although shorn of their magnificence by the legislation of the Reformation period, and the cruel devastation of the Great Fire, the few buildings which escaped the latter catastrophe bear evidence of their former grandeur. The most interesting of them are St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, with its fine monuments; All Hallows, Barking; St. Olave, Hart Street; and St. Giles, Cripplegate. The large number of the city churches is accounted for by the obligation of each parishioner not only to regularly attend the services at his own parish church, but to ensure the attendance also of his wife and household, apprentices and journeymen. A corresponding obligation rested upon the parish officers to provide a pew or other accommodation for each parishioner in his own parish church. In the smaller parishes situated in the heart of the city this was easy enough, but in border parishes like those of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, and St. Giles, Cripplegate, it must always have been a difficulty to provide for the large populations which such parishes contained.

There is one very important building of which we have scarcely as yet made mention, for it lies outside London City, the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. We call it now “Lambeth Palace,” but the title is of recent date – not older, indeed, than the earlier part of the nineteenth century. Up to that date its occupants dated their letters from “Lambeth House” or “Lambeth Manor.” In old times the title Palace was only given to a bishop’s residence within his own cathedral city. The Bishop of London’s Palace was in St. Paul’s Churchyard; his residence at Fulham was his “house.”

Lambeth (== Loamhythe, i. e., “muddy bank”) had been in Saxon days a royal manor. Edward the Confessor’s sister gave it to the See of Rochester; it came back for a short time to the Crown after the Conquest, but was restored to the Prior and Convent of Rochester by Rufus, and was transferred to Canterbury under the following circumstances.

There had been continual rivalry between the Cathedral Church of Canterbury and the Monastery of St. Augustine. The latter had asserted high rights, and had more than once claimed that of electing the Primate. More than one Archbishop, chafing at all this, determined to have a Chapter of secular canons of his own, and so be independent of the Monks. But the latter so steadfastly resisted this that it was not until 1197 that Archbishop Hubert Walter carried his point by exchanging the Manor of Darenth which he held for that of Lambeth. Darenth was nearer Rochester, and therefore more convenient for that See. Situated, as Lambeth was, immediately opposite the Royal Palace of Westminster, the Archbishop became at once the stay of the Court, and also a check upon any attempt at tyranny – a position which was strongly recognised on more than one occasion. This was really the establishment in fact, of what had been little more than theory before, the Primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Of the early buildings little is known. The oldest part now existing is the crypt, but this is not older than the early part of the thirteenth century. The present beautiful chapel was built over it by the roystering young Archbishop Boniface, uncle of King Henry the Third’s wife, Eleanor. He had roused the wrath of the Londoners by forcing his way into St. Paul’s Cathedral and claiming all sorts of uncanonical authority over the clergy there, winding up by beating the Prior of St. Bartholomew’s unmercifully with his fists. In the result he built the Chapel of Lambeth as an amend, and it is certainly one of the most beautiful examples of Early English architecture in England. Lambeth House has undergone a vast number of changes. The great entrance gateway was built by Cardinal Morton (1486), the two northern towers by Cranmer, and the long corridor by Cardinal Pole. Later than the period with which we are concerned, Juxon built the present library, and Archbishop Howley almost rebuilt the garden front.

The so-called Lollards’ tower is a misnomer. The building bearing that name in Lollard days was at St. Paul’s, though it is probable enough that some of them were confined at Lambeth. But the deeply interesting inscriptions which may be read on the Lambeth walls were mostly, if not all, cut by prisoners confined here during the Puritan wars. There is one strangely pathetic memorial, immediately opposite the door in the picture. It consists of a number of holes pricked in the wainscot beside a window looking north. Minute examination reveals that some poor creature occupied his lonely hours by pricking out a rough plan of the Great Bear and the surrounding constellations as he saw them from the window.