f Arimathea, are mere
monkish legends. The Londoners again became pagan, and for thirty-eight
years there was no bishop at St. Paul's, till a brother of St. Chad of
Lichfield came and set his foot on the images of Thor and Wodin. With
the fourth successor of Mellitus, Saint Erkenwald, wealth and splendour
returned to St. Paul's. This zealous man worked miracles both before and
after his death. He used to be driven about in a cart, and one legend
says that he often preached to the woodmen in the wild forests that lay
to the north of London. On a certain day one of the cart-wheels came off
in a slough. The worthy confessor was in a dilemma. The congregation
under the oaks might have waited for ever, but the one wheel left was
equal to the occasion, for it suddenly grew invested with special powers
of balancing, and went on as steadily as a velocipede with the smiling
saint. This was pretty well, but still nothing to what happened after
the good man's death.

St. Erkenwald departed at last in the odour of sanctity at his sister's
convent at Barking. Eager to get hold of so valuable a body, the
Chertsey monks instantly made a dash for it, pursued by the equally
eager clergy of St. Paul's, who were fully alive to the value of their
dead bishop, whose shrine would become a money-box for pilgrim's
offerings. The London priests, by a forced march, got first to Barking
and bore off the body; but the monks of Chertsey and the nuns of Barking
followed, wringing their hands and loudly protesting against the theft.
The river Lea, sympathising with their prayers, rose in a flood. There
was no boat, no bridge, and a fight for the body seemed imminent. A
pious man present, however, exhorted the monks to peace, and begged them
to leave the matter to heavenly decision. The clergy of St. Paul's then
broke forth into a litany. The Lea at once subsided, the cavalcade
crossed at Stratford, the sun cast down its benediction, and the clergy
passed on to St. Paul's with their holy spoil. From that time the shrine
of Erkenwald became a source of wealth and power to the cathedral.

The Saxon kings, according to Dean Milman, were munificent to St.
Paul's. The clergy claimed Tillingham, in Essex, as a grant from King
Ethelbert, and that place still contributes to the maintenance of the
cathedral. The charters of Athelstane are questionable, but the places
mentioned in them certainly belonged to St. Paul's till the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners brok