48 SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON'S EPITAPH. temporaries thought too magnificent, and which was accused of "shouldering" the altar. There was an absurd epitaph upon it, by which he would seem to have been a dandy to the last. Stay and behold the mirror of a dead man's house, Whose lively person would have made thee stay and wonder. * * * * When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars; Queen Eliz. (O God's dear handmayd) his most miracle. And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard. * Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast He then aspires, says the writer, to "the highest subject's seat," and becomes Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king :) The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are only to be equalled by a passage in an epitaph we have met with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her husband says,― * Maitland's History of London, vol. ii. p. 1170. FLETCHER, BISHOP OF LONDON. "Her graces and her qualities were such That she might have married a bishop or a judge; Of all other women, the phoenix of her sex." 49 Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him, which he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time; which gives one an equal notion of the queen's power, and the servility of those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her head was held up by the executioner, "So perish all Queen Elizabeth's enemies!" He was then Dean of Peterborough. The queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marrying a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to have hastened his end—a catastrophe worthy of a mean courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the tobacco giving him the coup de grace.* Dr. Donne, the head of the metaphysical poets, so well criticised by Johnson, was Dean of St. Paul's, and had a grave here, of which he has left an extraordinary memorial. It is a wooden image of himself, made to his order, and representing him as he was to appear in his shroud. This, for some time before he died, he kept by * The bishop's second wife was a Lady Baker, who is said, by Mr. Brayley, to have been young as well as beautiful, and probably did not add to the prelate's repose. 50 SCENE BETWEEN JOHN OF GAUNT his bed-side in an open coffin, thus endeavouring to reconcile an uneasy imagination to the fate he could not avoid. It is still preserved in the vaults under the church, and is to be seen with the other curiosities of the cathedral. We will not do a great man such a disservice as to dig him up for a spectacle. A man should be judged of at the time when he is most himself, and not when he is about to consign his weak body to its elements. Of the events that have taken place connected with St. Paul's, one of the most curious was a scene that passed in the old cathedral between John of Gaunt and the Anti-Wickliffites. It made him very unpopular at the time. Probably, if he had died just after it, his coffin would have been torn to pieces; but subsequently he had a magnificent tomb in the church, on which hung his crest and cap of state, together with his lance and target. Perhaps the merits of the friend of Wickliff and Chaucer are now as much overvalued. The scene is taken as follows, by Mr. Brayley, out of Fox's Acts and Monuments. "One of the most remarkable occurrences that ever took place within the old cathedral was the attempt made, in 1376, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, under the command of Pope Gregory the Eleventh, to compel Wickliff, the father of the English Reformation, to subscribe to the condemnation of some of his own tenets, which had been recently promulgated in the eight articles that have been termed the Lollards' Creed. The pope had ordered the above prelates to apprehend and examine Wickliff; but they thought it most expedient to summon him to St. Paul's, as he was openly protected by the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and that nobleman accompanied him to the examination, together with the Lord Percy, Marshall of England. The proceedings were soon interrupted by a dispute as to whether Wickliff should sit or stand; and the following curious dialogue arose on the Lord Percy desiring him to be seated :— AND THE ANTI-WICKLIFFITES. 51 "Bishop of London. 'If I could have guessed, Lord Percy, that you would have played the master here, I would have prevented your coming.' "Duke of Lancaster. 'Yes, he shall play the master here, for all you.' for 66 Wickliff, sit down! You have need of a seat, you have many things to say.' Bishop of London. 'It is unreasonable that a clergyman, cited before his ordinary, should sit during his answer. shall stand!' He "Duke of Lancaster. 'My Lord Percy, you are in the right! And for you, my Lord Bishop, you are grown so proud and arrogant, I will take care to humble your pride; and not only yours, my lord, but that of all the prelates in England. Thou dependest upon the credit of thy relations; but so far from being able to help thee, they shall have enough to do to support themselves.' 66 Bishop of London. I place no confidence in my relations, but in God alone, who will give me the boldness to speak the truth.' "Duke of Lancaster (speaking softly to Lord Percy). 'Rather than take this at the bishop's hands, I will drag him by the hair of the head out of the court!'"* Old St. Paul's was much larger than now, and the churchyard was of proportionate dimensions. The wall by which it was bounded ran along by the present streets of Ave Maria Lane, Paternoster Row, Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed Lane; and therefore included a large space and many buildings, which are not now considered to be within the precincts of the cathedral. This spacious area had grass inside, and contained a variety of appendages to the establishment. One of these was the cross, which we have alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, and of which Stow did not know the antiquity. It was called PAUL'S CROSS, and stood on the north side of the * London and Middlesex, vol ii. p. 231, church, a little to the east of the entrance to Canon Alley. It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the space to the east of it, that the citizens were wont anciently to assemble in Folkmote, or general convention not only to elect their magistrates and to deliberate on public affairs, but also, as it would appear, to try offenders and award punishments. We read of meetings of the Folkmote in the thirteenth century; but the custom was discontinued, as the increasing number of the inhabitants, and the mixture of strangers, were found to lead to confusion and tumult. In after times the cross appears to have been used chiefly for proclamations, and other public proceedings, civil, as well as ecclesiastical; such as the swearing of the citizens to allegiance, the emission of papal bulls, the exposing of penitents, &c., "and for the defaming of those," says Pennant, "who had incurred the displeasure of crowned heads." A pulpit was attached to it, it was not known when, in which sermons were preached, called Paul's Cross Sermons, a name by which they continued to be known when they ceased in the open air. Many benefactors contributed to support these sermons. In Stow's time the pulpit was an hexagonal piece of wood, "covered with lead, elevated upon a flight of stone steps, and surmounted by a large cross." During rainy weather the poorer part of the audience retreated to a covered place, called the shrowds, which are supposed to have abutted on the church wall. The rest, including the lord mayor and aldermen, most probably had shelter at all times; and the king and his train (for they attended also) had covered galleries.* Popular preachers were *The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out-ofdoor sermons better than their posterity could; yet, as times grew less hardy, they began to have consequences which Bishop Latimer attributed to another cause. "The citizens of Raim," said he, in a sermon preached in Lincolnshire, in the year 1552, "had their burying-place without the |