Paul's at the end of the twelfth century. The
church was rebuilt, about the year 1399, by Sir Thomas Knowles, Mayor of
London, who was buried here, and whose odd epitaph Stow notes down:--

"Here lyeth graven under this stone
Thomas Knowles, both flesh and bone,
Grocer and alderman, years forty,
Sheriff and twice maior, truly;
And for he should not lye alone,
Here lyeth with him his good wife Joan.
They were together sixty year,
And nineteen children they had in feere," &c.

The epitaph of Simon Street, grocer, is also badly written enough to be
amusing:--

"Such as I am, such shall you be;
Grocer of London, sometime was I,
The king's weigher, more than years twenty
Simon Street called, in my place,
And good fellowship fain would trace;
Therefore in heaven everlasting life,
Jesu send me, and Agnes my wife," &c.

St. Antholin's perished in the Great Fire, and the present church was
completed by Wren, in the year 1682, at the expense of about L5,700.
After the fire the parish of St. John Baptist, Watling Street, was
annexed to that of St. Antholin, the latter paying five-eighths towards
the repairs of the church, the former the remaining three-eighths. The
interior of the church is peculiar, being covered with an oval-shaped
dome, which is supported on eight columns, which stand on high plinths.
The carpentry of the roof, says Mr. Godwin, displays constructive
knowledge. The exterior of the building, says the same authority, is of
pleasing proportions, and shows great powers of invention. As an apology
for adding a Gothic spire to a quasi-Grecian church, Wren has, oddly
enough, crowned the spire with a small Composite capital, which looks
like the top of a pencil-case. Above this is the vane. The steeple rises
to the height of 154 feet.

[Illustration: THE CRYPT OF GERARD'S HALL (_see page 556_).]

The church was rebuilt by John Tate, a mercer, in 1513; and Strype
mentions the erection in 1623 of a rich and beautiful gallery with
fifty-two compartments, filled with the coats-of-arms of kings and
nobles, ending with the blazon of the Elector Palatine. A new morning
prayer and lecture was established here by clergymen inclined to
Puritanical principles in 1599. The bells began to ring at five in the
morning, and were considered Pharisaical and intolerable by all High
Churchmen in the neighbourhood. The extreme Geneva party made a point
of attending thes