iam the Conqueror.
Innumerable events connected with the history of the City happened here,
from the killing a bishop at the north door, in the reign of Edward II.,
to the public exposure of Richard II.'s body after his murder; while at
the Cross in the churchyard the authorities of the City, and even our
kings, often attended the public sermons, and in the same place the
citizens once held their Folkmotes, riotous enough on many an occasion.
Great men's tombs abounded in Old St. Paul's--John of Gaunt, Lord
Bacon's father, Sir Philip Sydney, Donne, the poet, and Vandyke being
very prominent among them. Fired by lightning in Elizabeth's reign, when
the Cathedral had become a resort of newsmongers and a thoroughfare for
porters and carriers, it was partly rebuilt in Charles I.'s reign by
Inigo Jones. The repairs were stopped by the civil wars, when the
Puritans seized the funds, pulled down the scaffolding, and turned the
church into a cavalry barracks. The Great Fire swept all clear for Wren,
who now found a fine field for his genius; but vexatious difficulties
embarrassed him at the very outset. His first great plan was rejected,
and the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) is said to have insisted on
side recesses, that might serve as chantry chapels when the church
became Roman Catholic. Wren was accused of delays and chidden for the
faults of petty workmen, and, as the Duchess of Marlborough laughingly
remarked, was dragged up and down in a basket two or three times a week
for a paltry L200 a year. The narrow escape of Sir James Thornhill from
falling from a scaffold while painting the dome is a tradition of St.
Paul's, matched by the terrible adventure of Mr. Gwyn, who when
measuring the dome slid down the convex surface till his foot was stayed
by a small projecting lump of lead. This leads us naturally on to the
curious monomaniac who believed himself the slave of a demon who lived
in the bell of the Cathedral, and whose case is singularly deserving of
analysis. We shall give a short sketch of the heroes whose tombs have
been admitted into St. Paul's, and having come to those of the great
demi-gods of the old wars, Nelson and Wellington, pass to anecdotes
about the clock and bells, and arrive at the singular story of the
soldier whose life was saved by his proving that he had heard St. Paul's
clock strike thirteen. Queen Anne's statue in the churchyard, too, has
given rise to epigrams worthy of preservation, and the