and the
duke's head, adorned with a mocking paper crown, was sent, by the
she-wolf of a queen, to adorn the walls of York.

The next year, however, fortune forsook Henry for ever, and St. Paul's
welcomed Edward IV. and the redoubtable "king-maker," who had won the
crown for him at the battle of Mortimer's Cross; and no Lancastrian
dared show his face on that triumphant day. Ten years later Warwick,
veering to the downfallen king, was slain at Barnet, and the body of the
old warrior, and that of his brother, were exposed, barefaced, for three
days in St. Paul's, to the delight of all true Yorkists. Those were
terrible times, and the generosity of the old chivalry seemed now
despised and forgotten. The next month there was even a sadder sight,
for the body of King Henry himself was displayed in the Cathedral.
Broken-hearted, said the Yorkists, but the Lancastrian belief (favoured
by Shakespeare) was that Richard Duke of Gloucester, the wicked
Crookback, stabbed him with his own hand in the Tower, and it was said
that blood poured from the body when it lay in the Cathedral. Again St.
Paul's was profaned at the death of Edward IV., when Richard came to pay
his ostentatious orisons in the Cathedral, while he was already planning
the removal of the princes to the Tower. Always anxious to please the
London citizens, it was to St. Paul's Cross that Richard sent Dr. Shaw
to accuse Clarence of illegitimacy. At St. Paul's, too, according to
Shakespeare, who in his historic plays often follows traditions now
forgotten, or chronicles that have perished, the charges against
Hastings were publicly read. Jane Shore, the mistress, and supposed
accomplice of Hastings in bewitching Richard, did penance in St. Paul's.
She was the wife of a London goldsmith, and had been mistress of Edward
IV. Her beauty, as she walked downcast with shame, is said to have moved
every heart to pity. On his accession, King Richard, nervously fingering
his dagger, as was his wont to do according to the chronicles, rode to
St. Paul's, and was received by procession, amid great congratulation
and acclamation from the fickle people. Kemp, who was the Yorkist bishop
during all these dreadful times, rebuilt St. Paul's Cross, which then
became one of the chief ornaments of London.

[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S AFTER THE FALL OF THE SPIRE, FROM A VIEW BY
HOLLAR (_see page 244_).]

Richard's crown was presently beaten into a hawthorn bush on Bosworth
Field, and his de