We must first deal with the bishop and the secular clergy, and then consider the conditions relative to the establishment of the regulars, ending with a note on education in London during the Middle Ages.
The Cathedral Church of St. Paul's is of great antiquity, and was established in the first period of Saxon Christianity. There have been three buildings on the same site, and the first was erected in the earliest years of the seventh century by Mellitus the missionary bishop and Ethelbert, King of Kent. Although this church existed for nearly five centuries no record whatever remains of it. Sir Gilbert Scott wrote: 'I am not aware that we have any information as to the Cathedral built by the companions of Augustine (Mellitus and Justus) at London and Rochester. Curiously enough there continues to this day at Rochester, and continued to the seventeenth century in our own St. Paul's equally as at Canterbury, a crypt beneath the elevated sanctuary, no doubt the lineal successor and representative of those erected by these missionary bishops, in imitation of the great basilica at Rome, whence they had been sent to evangelise this distant region.'[354]
Erkenwald, whose shrine stood at the back of the high altar in the oldest church, was the fourth bishop (A.D. 675-693), and it was at his house in London that Archbishop Theodore, the organiser of the Church of England, was reconciled to Bishop Wilfrid after their long estrangement.[355] Aelfun, or Alhunus, was Bishop of London in 1012, and performed the burial service over Aelfah (or Alphage), Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered by the Danes and buried in St. Paul's.
William, the chaplain of Edward the Confessor, was consecrated in 1051. He was driven from England with the other foreign prelates in the following year, but returned to his See and died in 1075. It was he who was addressed as 'William Bishop' in William the Conqueror's charter to the citizens of London.
The first Church of St. Paul's was destroyed by fire at the end of the eleventh century, but the exact time is not certain as Matthew of Westminster and Roger of Wendover give conflicting dates for the rebuilding. There seems to be no doubt that the second cathedral was commenced by Bishop Maurice, and as he was not consecrated until 1085 the date given by Dugdale, 1083, must be wrong. Probably the received date of 1087 (the last year of William the Conqueror's reign) is more correct. Fire again did great damage in the year 1136, but the work of rebuilding proceeded slowly, and in 1221 the steeple was finished; the choir was rebuilt and the whole building was nearly completed by 1283.