"But I always thought that Julius Caesar was buried in Rome!"
It is surely very unfair for individuals to perpetrate post-mortem puzzles of the kind! For this "Julius Caesar," (who, by-the-way, gained his false honours by dropping his surname) was merely a Judge and a Master of the Rolls of Elizabeth's day, and, evidently, as shown by his tomb, designed by himself, what is called "a crank" also. When I had got over the "Julius Caesar" deception, I sympathised duly with the large family of "John Robinson, alderman," whose children form a long kneeling procession behind him; and still more did I mourn for those unhappy nuns who, poor things, were immured in the darkness behind "the Nuns' Grate," or "hagioscope"; their scant peepholes so unkindly devised that they could only see the altar, and not the congregation! These "Black Nuns" of St. Helen's must, nevertheless, one thinks, have been often but naughty, giggling school-girls, despite their show of conventual discipline. Perhaps, as Chaucer would have us believe, such discipline was but lax in England in the middle ages. Be that as it may, we find, at one time, no less authorities than the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's admonishing them thus:
"Also we enjoyne you, that all daunsyng and reveling be utterly forborne among you, except at Christmasse, and other honest tymys of recreacyone, among yourselfe usyd, in absence of seculars in alle wyse."
Of the two aisles that form the church, the "Nuns' Aisle" is that to the left as you enter, and the steps to their destroyed cloister (now blocked up) open out of it. The little garden plot outside the church is neatly kept, and on my last visit I noticed some gardeners putting in a plentiful supply of bulbs for spring blooming. Doubtless, the "Black Nuns" enjoyed among their other "recreacyones," a lovely and a well-ordered convent garden outside their cloister; "cherry trees" are specially mentioned in St. Helen's register; and, as we know, the London of that day grew many luscious fruits.
Farther down Bishopsgate Street, is the tiny church of St. Ethelburga, uninteresting as regards its interior, but one of the oldest existing churches in London, and certainly the smallest. It escaped the ravages of the Great Fire, and history mentions it as early as 1366. I passed it three times without noticing it, for its little spirelet rises but slightly above the roofs of the intervening shops, and its tiny doorway, labelled itself like a small shop, is easily overlooked between two projecting windows. (The smallness of the place can be imagined from the fact that, only a few doors from it, no one can be found to direct you to it.) The verger lives in a very picturesque and overhanging slum-alley close by; though his abode suggests Fagin, he is, nevertheless, an amiable and obliging gentleman.
