CHAP. 382 CROFT. CREKE. Nor need the Chancellor boast, whose pyramid Above the host and altar reared is, For though thy body fill a viler room, Thou shalt not change deedes with him for his tomb.5 After Elizabeth, great names become more and more rare. I cannot regret that S. Paul's ceased to receive the ashes of this inferior race. There is only one which I note from the strange title the man bore- the explorer ' of Ireland'-as if he had been the Park or Livingstone of that undiscovered region. Over the epitaph of Sir Henry Croft, King James himself might have bent in admiration and envy at its inimitable absurdity: Six lines this Image shall delineate, Hight Croft, high borne, in spirit and virtue high, Prosopopeia. The Wombe and Tombe in name be not so neere So Mors neere Mars is found. I must, for contrast, insert the close of an inscription to a civilian, a Dr. Creke : Honeste vixit, Suum cuique tribuit." These lines I omitted above. Dugdale, p. 38. Of men of letters the burial registers of S. Paul's were lamentably barren. There were a few civil lawyers, distinguished no doubt in their day, now forgotten even in Doctors' Commons. Lily the grammarian, the second master of S. Paul's School; Linacre, the physician, the friend of Colet and of Erasmus, are the best. We must absolutely sink down (can we sink lower ?) to Owen, the Latin epigrammatist, a man, however, of no slight note in his day, as his magniloquent epitaph shows: Parva tibi statua est, quia parva statura: supellex Sed nec parvus honos, non parva est gloria, quippe There were not even, as far as I can trace, any of the more famous citizens of London, the merchant princes of their day, interred in the Cathedral. I find no inscription which boasts that the deceased had borne the honourable title of Lord Mayor, excepting one. There was a sumptuous tomb to a man who had been Lord Mayor, between that of Colet and that of Sir William Cockayne. There is a singular history attached to this Sir William Hewet. Much of his splendid fortune, an estate of 6,000l. a year, through a romance of real life, devolved on the Osbornes, the ancestors of the Dukes of Leeds. Sir William Hewet lived on London Bridge; he had three sons and one only daughter. When quite an infant, the maid-servant let the daughter fall into the river. A young gentleman, named Osborne, apprentice to Sir William, plunged in There was one great artist. 'The 9th December 1641 Sir Anthony van Dyck died at his residence in Blackfriars. He was buried on the 11th, in the north side of the 'choir of the old cathedral of S. Paul's, CHAP. XVI. CHAP. after her, and, at the peril of his life, brought her safe to land. Sir William, having refused splendid offers for the hand of his daughter (one of them no less than the Earl of Shrewsbury), bestowed her upon Osborne. 'Osborne 'saved her; Osborne shall have her.' With his daughter he left part of his noble estate; the first opening of the fortunes of the House of Osborne, which culminated in the famous Earl of Danby. Maitland's London, p. 554. WILLIAM SANCROFT, at the time of the Fire, was Dean of S. Paul's. Of the Bishop, Henchman, excepting that at a later period he rebuilt the palace of the Bishops of London, at his own cost, in Aldersgate Street, and contributed generously to the new Cathedral, we know not much. The Civil Wars found Sancroft at Cambridge. After some delay (whether through interest or personal respect, extraordinary in the Puritan College), he was ejected from his fellowship of Emanuel. A firm, but, it should seem, not an obnoxious Royalist, he lived in retirement. After the King's death he went to the Continent. There he was not only able to support himself, but to assist others, which he did with great liberality. Among these was Cosin, afterwards Bishop of Durham. Sancroft returned to England at the Restoration, and Bishop Cosin was able and willing to show his gratitude. He conferred on his benefactor a golden prebend, and the living of Houghtonle-Spring, then held to be one of the best and pleasantest benefices in England. Sancroft's rise was rapid; he became Master of Emanuel College, in January 1664, Dean of York, and before the end of the same year, Dean of S. Paul's.' Sancroft was concerned in correcting the press for the amended Prayer Book. Burnet declared, that the office for January 30th, which he seems to attribute to Sancroft, was in сс so high a style that it did not sound СНАР. XVII. СНАР. 386 2 DEAN SANCROFT. After the Fire the obstinate piety of Sancroft clung to the ruins of old S. Paul's. In a sermon before the King, October 10, 1667, highly to his credit, he contemptuously repudiated all the charges of incendiarism :- And there'fore dream no longer of grenados or fire-balls, or the ' rest of those witty mischiefs. Search no more for boutfeus, or incendiaries, Dutch or French. The Dutch ' intemperance, and the French pride and vanity, and the rest of their sins, which we are so fond of, are infinitely 'more dangerous to us, than the enmity of either nation, for we have made God our enemy too; or if you will ' needs find out the incendiary, "Intus hostis, intus pe'riculum,” saith S. Jerome. Turn your eyes inward into your own bosoms. There lurks the great make-bate, 'the grand bout-feu, between earth and us.' In the rest of the sermon, Sancroft approaches sublimity. He dwells on God's mercy:-Thanks be to the Lord, who has so long showed us marvellously great kindness. I say not 'with the Psalm, in the strong city (though the strongest without Him is weakness), but in a very weak one, a city in the meanness of its materials, the oldness of the buildings, the straitness of some streets, the ill situa'tion of others, and many like inconveniences, so exposed 'to this dismal accident, that it must have been long since in ashes, had not His miraculous mercy preserved it who so long as He pleaseth, and that is just so long as we please Him, continues the FIRE to us, useful and safe, serviceable, and yet innocent, with as much 6 ease as he lays it asleep and quiet in the bosom of a flint.'3 above that which was read till within 2 During the plague the Bishop Tnbridge. Some of the London Cergy were reproved for deserting their flocks. Letter in Ellis, 2nd series, vol. iv. pp. 21-28. Sancroft's Life, by D'Oyley, p. 377 |