We came to Newgate. “Behold!” he said, “the cat, emblem of Whittington, who rebuilt this gate and prison. Here is Christ’s Hospital, which once was the House of the Grey Friars. It is London’s chiefest glory: here shall you find boys ruled with wisdom and taught godliness, who would otherwise have joined the throngs of the masterless, and roamed about the streets and roads.” And so on to Ludgate, where we left the Wall. “See,” said Stow, “there are houses with many palaces of nobles all the way from Bridewell to the King’s House at Westminster. And now, good sir, we leave the Wall, and we will visit the City within the Wall.”
He led me by Ludgate into the precinct of St. Paul’s, surrounded by a stone wall; the Cathedral looked battered and worn by the tooth of time; the spire, once the glory of the City, was gone never to be replaced; the stonework was black in parts from the smoke of the sea coal; the tracery was mouldering; about the towers of the west flew the swifts crying. “There are kites on the roof,” said Stow, “which keep the City clean and devour the offal.”
[Illustration: LATIMER PREACHING BEFORE EDWARD VI. AT WESTMINSTER
At Paul’s Cross there was a preaching by some reverend divine: a crowd of women sat on benches listening; a few men were there, but it was in working hours. The preacher argued some difficult point of doctrine, comparing texts and turning over the leaves of his small brown Geneva Bible. I observed that his hearers listened with a critical air. “For fifty years,” said Stow, looking on with contempt, “they have been arguing and disputing on matters of doctrine and nothing settled yet; in the old time we were told what to believe, and we were stayed and comforted by our belief. These people prove one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. They are pulled this way and that by the power of texts which they think they understand. Let us go into the Cathedral.”
[Illustration: SOUTH FRONT OF BAYNARD’S CASTLE, ABOUT 1640]
Outside, in the churchyard, everything was destroyed that formerly made the place venerable and beautiful: Pardon churchyard; the “Clochard;” the cloister with the Dance of Death; Sherrington’s Library; the college of the minor canons. Only Paul’s Cross remained. And the Cathedral, rising up alone and gaunt, bereft of her daughters, seemed mournful and lonely. “Perhaps,” said Stow, “a new church is wanted for the new Faith. St. Paul’s was not built for Protestants. They know not how to treat the church. Look at yonder fellows!” He pointed to two porters who bore boxes on their heads, and entering at the North doors tramped noisily through the Cathedral, going out at the South. “They have made a right of way, a short way, through the church. Saw one ever the like? Through the church itself!”