THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS.

35

Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus pressed into the service; and a relic of the custom is supposed to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. The exercise of the right of might over children, and by people who wanted singers-an effeminate press-gang-would seem an intolerable nuisance; but the children were probably glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to sing and play before a court.

Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile

It

This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men.
is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes
afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston,
when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in
his female dress after the play. This custom of males
appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the
frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus

36

FESTIVALS OF THE COMMEMORATION, &c.

presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days; who, besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a boy on the stage to pretend to be himself.

One of the strangest of the old ceremonies, in which the clergy of the cathedral used to figure, was that which was performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Commemoration and on that of the Conversion of St. Paul. On the former of these festivals, a fat doe, and on the latter, a fat buck, was presented to the Church by the family of Baud, in consideration of some land which they held of the Dean and Chapter at West Lee in Essex. The original agreement made with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was, that he himself should attend in person with the animals; but some years afterwards it was arranged that the presentation should be made by a servant, accompanied by a deputation of part of the family. The priests, however, continued to perform their part in the show. When the deer was brought to the foot of the steps leading to the choir, the reverend brethren appeared in a body to receive it, dressed in their full pontifical robes, and having their heads decorated with garlands of flowers. From thence they accompanied it as the servant led it forward to the high altar, where having been solemnly offered and slain, it was divided among the residentiaries. The horns were then fastened to the top of a spear, and carried in procession by the whole company around the inside of the church, a noisy concert of horns regulating their march. This ridiculous exhibition, which looks like a parody on the pagan ceremonies of their predecessors the priests of Diana, was continued by the cathedral clergy down to the time of Elizabeth.

The modern passenger through St. Paul's Churchyard has not only the last home of Nelson and others to venerate, as he goes by. In the ground of the old church were buried, and here, therefore, remains whatever dust may survive them, the gallant Sir Philip Sydney (the beau ideal of the age of Elizabeth), and Vandyke, who immortalised the youth and beauty of the court of Charles the First. One of Elizabeth's great statesmen also lay there-Walsingham-who died so poor, that he was buried by stealth, to prevent his body from being arrested. Another, Sir Christopher Hatton, who is supposed to have danced himself into the office of her

SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON'S EPITAPH.

37

Majesty's Chancellor,* had a tomb which his contemporaries
thought too magnificent, and which was accused of "shoulder-
ing" 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;
And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing;
Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and passing comely;
And God did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling.
Nature commends her workmanship to Fortune's charge,
Fortune presents him to the court and queen,
Queen Eliz. (O God's dear handmayd) his most miracle.
Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen ;
This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd,
Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time;
First trained him in the stately band of pensioners;

*

*

*

*

And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard.
Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast
Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells,
And so, Vice-Chamberlain, where foreign princes eyes
Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels.

He then aspires, says the writer, to "the highest subject's seat," and becomes

Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:)
Robe, Collar, Garter, dead figures of great honour,
Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence,
The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar.

This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other.†

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:

"Her graces and her qualities were such

That she might have married a bishop or a judge;
But so extreme was her condescension and humility,
That she married me, a poor doctor of divinity;
By which heroic deed, she stands confest,

Of all other women, the phœnix of her sex."

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

* "His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green,
His high-crown'd hat, and satin doublet,
Mov'd the stout heart of England's queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."-GRAY.

† Maitland's History of London, vol. ii., p. 1170.

1

i

FLETCHER, BISHOP OF LONDON.

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 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. scene is taken as follows, by Mr. Brayley, out of Fox's Acts

The

STRANGE SCENE IN ST. PAUL'S.

39

"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:

"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.'

“Lord Percy.-' Wickliff, sit down! You have need of a seat, for you have many things to say.'

"Bishop of London. 'It is unreasonable that a clergyman, cited before his ordinary, should sit during his answer. He shall stand!'

"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.'

"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 church, a little to the east of the entrance of Cannon Alley. It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the space to the east * London and Middlesex, vol. ii., p. 231.