Old St. Paul's Cathedral

shop Foliot and Dean Diceto-FitzOsbert-King John's Evil Reign, his Vassalage-Henry III.'s Weak and Mischievous Reign-The Cardinal Legate in St. Paul's-Bishop Roger "the Bl

ith a special exception to be considered hereafter, were completed

returned to the faith which it had abandoned; but Essex for a while remained heathen, and when Mellitus wished to return they refused him, and he succeeded Laurence at Canterbury. Other bishops ministered to the Christians as well as they could; but the authority of the See and the services of the cathedral were restored by Erkenwald, one of the noblest[page 24] of English prelates, son of Offa, King of East Anglia. He founded the two great monasteries of Chertsey and Barking, ruled the first himself, and set his sister Ethelburga over the other. In 675 he was taken from his abbey and consecrated fourth Bishop of London by Archbishop Theodore, and held the See until 693. He was a man, by universal consent, of saintly life and vast energy. He left his mark by strengthening the city wall and building the gate, which is called after him Bishopsgate. Close by is the church which bears the name of his sister, St. Ethelburga. He converted King Sebba

orth he came to St. Edmund's Bury, and found some men who were charged with robbing the shrine of St. Edmund, and were detected by the Saint's miraculous interference. The bishop ordered them to be hanged; but the uncanonical act weighed so heavily on his conscience that he performed a lifelong penance, and as an expiation reared a splendid

For when the Norman Conquest came the Londoners, for a while, were in fierce antagonism, and it might have gone hard with them. But Bishop William was known to the Conqueror, and had, in fact, been his chaplain, and it was by his intercession that he not only made friends with them

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church," the Old[page 26] St. Paul's w

d," Dean Milman calls it. Up to that time, secular and Church matters had been settled in the same assembly, but this meeting, held with the King's sanction, and simultaneously with the Witan, or Parliament, established distinct courts for the trial of ecclesiastical causes. It decreed that no bishop or arch

e of the dispute between Henry I. and Anselm about the investit

the altar, thrust a sentence of excommunication into his hands, and exclaimed aloud, "Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury." When Becket returned to England, December 1st, 1170, after a hollow reconciliation with the King, he was asked to remove his sentence of excommunication on Foliot and the Bishops of Salisbury and York, who had, as he held, usurped his authority. He refused, unless they made acknowledgment of the

op Stubbs) are of great historical value. In the Becket quarrel Diceto was loyal to Foliot, but he also remained friendly with Becket. In 1180, he became Dean of St. Paul's. Here he displayed great and most valuable energy; made a survey of the capitular property (printed by the Camden Society under the editorship of Archdeacon Hale), collected many books, which he presented to the Chapter, built a Deanery House

Longbeard," poured forth impassioned harangues from Paul's Cross against the oppression of the poor, and the cathedral was invaded by rioters. Fifty-two thousand persons bound themselves to follow him, but Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, met the citizens in the cathedral, and by his mild and persuasive eloquence persuaded them to preserve the peace. FitzOsbert, finding himself deserted, clove the head o

esult was an oath, taken with acclamation, that they would, if necessary, die for their liberties. And this led up to Magna Charta. But it was a scene as ignominious as the first surrender before Pandulf, when Pope Innocent accepted the homag

trine and discipline, and assessed the tribute which clergy and laity were to pay to the liege lord enthroned at the Vatican. But the indignation of the nation had been waxing hotter and hotter ever since King John's shameful surrender. Nevertheless, in the first days of the boy King's reign, the Papal pretensions did good service. The barons, in wrath at Jo

r de Cantelupe, the saintly Bishop of Worcester, but for a long time they were powerless. Besides direct taxation, wealth raised from the appropriation of rich canonries was drained away from church and state into the Papal treasury. The Legate remained for four years in power. The Archbishop, in despair, retired abroad, and died as a simple monk at Pontigny. The Bishop of London, Roger Niger, was so called from his dark complexion, and people whimsically noted his being confronted with the Cardinal Otto Albus. Bishop Roger, before his episcopate, was Archdeacon of Rochester, a very wise and energetic administrator. He was now on the side of Rich, bent on defending his clergy from being over-ridden by the foreigners. He exerted himself as bishop not only to repair the mischief done by the storm, but to enlarge and beautify the still unfinished structure. Fourteen years later King Henry was offering devotion at the shrine of Rich, for he had been canonised, and that on the strength of his having resisted the King's criminal folly in betraying the rights of his people; for by this time the nation was aroused. The Londoners rose and burned the houses of the foreigners. Bishop Roger, though he, of course, declared against the scenes of violence, let it be seen that he was determined, by constitutional methods, to defend his clergy from being plun

ed by the great bell of St. Paul's, and declared themselves on the side of the great patriot. They are s

which forbade any emperor, king, or prince to tax the clergy without express leave of the Pope. Any layman who exacted, or any cleric who paid, was at once excommunicate. Boniface, who had been pope two years, put[page 31] forward far more arrogant pretensions than Gregory or Innocent had done, but times were changed. The Kings of England and France were at once in opposition. The latter (Philip IV.) was more cautious than his English neighbour, and in the uncompromi

apylton, who was ruling for him in London, was dragged out of St. Paul's, where he had

h to the papacy. During that "seventy years' captivity," as it was called, Italy and Rome were revolutionised, and when at length the popes returned to their ancient city (1376) the great "papal schism" began, which did so much to bring on the Reformation. It arose out of the Roman people's determ

gain said. This done they returned by Cheapside to the Church of St. Thomas Acons, where each man offered a penny. On All Saints' Day (three days later) they went to St. Paul's again for Vespers, and again at Christmas, on the Epiphany, and on Candlemas Day (Purification). On Whitsun Monday they met at St. Peter's, Cornhill, and on this occasion the City clergy all joined the procession, and again they assembled in the cathedral nave, while the Veni Creator Spiritus was sung antiphonally, and a chorister, robed as an angel, waved incense from the rood screen above.4 Next day the same ceremony was repeated, but this time it was "the common folk" who joined in the procession, which returned by Newgate, and finished at the Church of St. Michael l

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ils of State. Edward III., after a reign of great splendour, had sunk into dotage. John of Gaunt had been striving for mastery against the Black Prince, but the latter was dying, July, 1376, and Gaunt was now supreme. He hated good William of Wykeham, who had possessed enormous influence with the old king, and he was bent generally on curbing the power of the higher clergy. At this juncture Wyclif was summoned to appear at St. Paul's to answer for certain opinions which he had uttered. It is not clear what these opinions were, further than that they were mainly against clerical powers and assumptions; questions of doctrine had not yet shaped themselves. He appeared before the tribunal, but not alone. Gaunt stood by his side. And here, for a while, the position of parties becomes somewhat complicated. Gaunt was at this moment very unpopular. The Black Prince was the favourite hero of the multitude, an unworthy one indeed, as Dean Kitchin has abundantly shown, but he had won great victor

now on his side. He had preached at the very beginning of the new reign that a great amount of treasure, in the hands of the Pope's agent, ought not to pass out of England. Archbishop Sudbury summoned him not to St. Paul's, but to Lambeth. But the favour with which he was now regarded was so manifest that he was allowed to depart from the assembly

nglish history: the spread of Lollardism, i.e., the Wycliffite doctrines, and th

enry IV., who had a few days before buried his father, John of Gaunt, there, who died at Ely House, Holborn, February 3rd, 1399, and whose tomb was o

a white sheet and carrying a lighted taper, starting each day from St. Paul's and visiting certain churches. Her husband, says the chronicler Grafton, "took all patiently and said little." Still retaining some power in the Council, he lived until 1447, when he died and was buried at St. Albans. He was an unprincipled man, but a generous patron of letters and a persecutor of Lollards; and hence, in after years, he got the name of "the good Duke Humphrey," which was hardly a greater delusion than that which afterward

ecember 23rd, 1460. On the following 3rd of March his son was proclaimed King Edward IV. in London, and on the 29th (Palm Sunday) he defeated Henry's Queen Margaret at Towton, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English[page 36] ground. A complicated struggle followed, during which there was much changing of sides. Once King Henry, who had been imprisoned in the Tower, was brought out by the Earl of Warwick, who had changed sides, and conducted to St. Paul's in state. But the Londoners showed that they had no sympathy; they were on the Yorkist side in the interest of strong government. Hall

e months later, at the age of 15. The chroniclers are profuse in their descriptions of the decorations of the cathedral

o not so much concern the material fabric of the cathedral as in the past, but they were of th

ge