30

ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CATHEDRAL.

by Mr. Malcolm from the manuscript presentments on visitations preserved at St. Paul's, are the following:

"In the upper quier wher the comon [communion] table dothe stande, there is much unreverente people, walking with their hatts on their heddes, comonly all the service tyme, no man reproving them for yt."

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

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

The middle of St. Paul's was also the Bond Street of that period, and remained so till the time of the Commonwealth. The loungers were called Paul's Walkers.

"The young gallants from the inns of court, the western and the northern parts of the metropolis, and those that had spirit enough," says our author, "to detach themselves from the counting-houses in the east, used to meet at the central point, St. Paul's; and from this circumstance obtained the appellations of Paul's Walkers, as we now say, Bond-street Loungers. However strange it may seem, tradition says that the great Lord Bacon used in his youth to cry, Eastward ho! and was literally a Paul's Walker."†

Lord Bacon had a taste for display, which was afterwards exhibited in a magnificent manner, worthy of the grandeur of his philosophy; but this, when he was young, might *Londinium Redivivum. vol. iii., pp. 71, 73.

† Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807.

DINING WITH DUKE HUMPHREY.

31

probably enough have been vented in the shape of an exuberance, which did not yet know what to do with itself. Who would think that the late Mr. Fox ever wore red-heeled shoes, and was a "buck about town?"

But to conclude with these curious passages :

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

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

"Where all our Brittaine sinners sweare and talk."*

Only one reformation had taken place in it since the complaint made by Edward the Third: no woman, at the time of Earle's writing, was to be found there; at least not in the crowd. "The visitants," he says, 66 are all men without exception."† A commonwealth writer insinuates otherwise; but the visitation was not public. The practice of "walking and talking" in St. Paul's appears to have revived under James the Second, probably in connection with Catholic wishes; for therewas an Act of William and Mary, by which transgressors forfeited twenty pounds for every offence; and, what is remarkable, the Bishop threatened to enforce this Act so late as the year 1725; "the custom," says Mr. Malcolm, "had become so very prevalent."‡

A proverb of "dining with Duke Humphrey," has survived to the present day, owing to a supposed tomb of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, which was popular with the poorer frequenters of the place. They had a custom of strewing herbs before it, and sprinkling it with water. *Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5. Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant.

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

The tomb, according to Stow, was not Humphrey's, but that of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the house of Warwick. Men who strolled about for want of a dinner, were familiar enough with this tomb; and were therefore said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

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

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

Old St. Paul's was famous for the splendour of its shrine, and for its priestly wealth. The list of its copes, vestments, jewels, gold and silver cups, candlesticks, &c., occupies thirteen folio pages of the Monasticon. The side aisles were filled with chapels to different saints and the Virgin; that is to say, with nooks partitioned off one from another, and enriched with separate altars; and it is calculated, that, taking the whole establishment, there could hardly be fewer than two hundred priests. On certain holidays, this sacred

multitude, in their richest copes, together with the lord mayor, aldermen, and city companies, and all the other parish priests of London, who carried a rich silver cross for every church, issued forth from the cathedral door in procession, singing a hymn, and so went through Cheapside and Cornhill to Leadenhall, and back again. The last of these spectacles was for the peace of Guisnes, in 1546; shortly after which Henry the Eighth swept into his treasury the whole glories of Catholic worship-copes, crosses, jewels, church-plate, &c.-himself being the most bloated enormity that had ever misused them.

Among other retainers to the establishment, Henry suppressed a singular little personage, entitled the Boy-Bishop. The Boy-Bishop (Episcopus Puerorum) was a chorister annually elected by his fellows to imitate the state and attire of a bishop, which he assumed on St. Nicholas's day, the sixth of December, and retained till that of the Innocents, December the twenty-eighth.

6

"This was done," says Brayley, "in commemoration of St. Nicholas, who, according to the Romish Church, was so piously fashioned, that even when a babe in his cradle he would fast both on Wednesdays and Fridays, and at those times was well pleased' to suck but once a-day. However ridiculous it may now seem, the Boy-Bishop is stated to have possessed episcopal authority during the above term; and the other children were his prebendaries. He was not permitted to celebrate mass, but he had full liberty to preach; and however puerile his discourse; might have been, we find they were regarded with so much attention, that the learned Dean Colet, in his statutes for St. Paul's school, expressly ordained that the scholars shall, on 'every Childermas daye, come to Paule's Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's sermon, and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the Chylde Bishop; and with them the maisters and surveyors of the scole.' Probably," continues Mr. Brayley, "these orations, though affectedly childish, were composed by the more aged members of the church. If the Boy-Bishop died within the time of his prelacy, he was interred in pontificalibus, with the same ceremonies as the real diocesan; and the tomb of a child-bishop in Salisbury Cathedral may be referred to as an instance of such interment." *

"From a printed church-book," says Mr. Hone, "containing the service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of Innocents'-day, the Boy-Bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing versicles, as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy-Bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book,

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

D

34

ST. PAUL'S SINGING-SCHOOL.

and the petit-canons the tapers, according to the rubrick. Afterwards he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy-Bishop repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles; and in conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering Deo Gratias.”*

The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. Nicholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy among the doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by Dean Colet was in honour of "the child Jesus." There was a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, perhaps, a revival, as far as scholarship was concerned. The boys in the older school were not only taught singing but acting, and for a long period were the most popular performers of stage-plays. In the time of Richard the Second, these Boy-Actors petitioned the King to prohibit certain ignorant and "inexpert people from presenting the History of the Old Testament." They began with sacred plays, but afterwards acted profane; so that St. Paul's singing-school was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common wherever there were choir-boys; and it doubtless originated, partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at which they assisted, and partly in the delight which the more scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of Terence, still kept up at Westminster school, is supposed by Warton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of Westminster Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth, (who took great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as actors, though not so much so at those of St. Paul's. A set of them were incorporated under the title of Children of the Revels, among whom are to be found names that have since become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare-Field, Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It appears that children with good voices were sometimes kidnapped for a supply.† Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred *Ancient Mysteries described, &c., 1823, p. 195. Purvey'd is the word of Mr. Chalmers; who says, however, that he knows not on what principle the right of " 'purveying such children "