I STIENTS IN CLD S. PAUL'S. CHAPTER XVI ISTIESTS IN OLD S. PAUL'S. Tax line of the Erman satirist quan bi quidem dara sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris— § mi a zelockily Dnstration in S. Paul's. With the Cathedral pershed all the monuments. Of the whole, very Sew, almost shapeless, caltined, and hardly distinguishable Samorata pemain preserved with due respect in the crypt of the new Cathedral Yet the loss is not so grievous as might be supposed. Considering that S. Paul's was the matheimil of the metropolis, it is surprising how few famous Tem before the Reformation, reposed under its pavement, or were broomed with stately monuments. S. Full's was never the burial-place of the Kings of England Surrendering to Westminster, the mythic beler. S. Fazl boasted of only two Saxon sovereigns. She of these was Setta. King of the East Angles, for whom the only wrather was a tablet, suspended on the wall near what was supposed to be his grave. According to the Inscription. Setta was converted by Bishop Erkenwald, in the year 677. After thirty years' reign he abdicated his crown, and received the cowl from the hands of Bishop Water, the successor of Erkenwald. The other was the bed the Unready. In the inscription near his grave, the proverbial mendacity of epitaphs does not err on the sile of fattery. Against Ethelred Archbishop Dunstan tered his awful prophecy: As thou hast won the crown by the aid of thy infamous mother, and by the death of 6 MONUMENTS IN OLD S. PAUL'S. 375 thy brother, the avenging sword shall never cease from thy house, and thy kingdom shall pass away to a foreign 'ruler.' The sin of Ethelred, the sin of his mother, the sin of his Council, was visited by the fulfilment of the Saint's prophecy. Ethelred, after many battles with Sweyne, the Dane, and with his son Canute, fled and was besieged in London, and died, worn out by a twenty-six years' reign of tribulation, A.D. 1017. What other Saxon Kings were commemorated on Sir Paul Pindar's screen does not appear.1 Under our Norman Kings London was hardly the capital of England. Our Norman Kings rested at Caen, at Winchester, at Reading, at Faversham; the two first Plantagenets at Fontevraud, John at Worcester. After Henry III., except the murdered Edward II. at Gloucester, Henry IV. at Canterbury, the usurper Richard III. at Leicester, the exile James II. at S. Germains, the first Brunswick at Hanover, all our Sovereigns repose at Westminster or Windsor. Nor did any of their families find rest in S. Paul's. The only royal sepulchre was that of John of Gaunt.2 Over John of Gaunt rose a noble monument adorned with the chivalrous insignia of the Duke of Lancaster, who claimed the crown of Castile. The helmet and spear of the gallant old knight, and his target covered with horn were hanging on the tomb, where lay the recumbent images of John himself and his second wife, Catherine of Castile. His third wife, Catherine Swinford, though a woman of exquisite beauty, and a faithful consort, who bore him many children, was not thought worthy of that honour. In the first Iconoclastic outburst, under Edward VI., this tomb being in danger, 'Dugdale, p. 64. 2 The inscription over John of Gaunt's tomb was of a later period. It boasts of his being the ancestor of CHAP. XVI. XVI. CHAP. was specially protected by order of the government. It can hardly have escaped the second, the reckless and wanton mischief of the rude or fanatic Cromwellian soldiery quartered in the church. By what strange fancy good Duke Humphrey was translated from S. Alban's to usurp the splendid Beauchamp monument, and become the patron of dinnerless parasites, it is not easy to conceive. Of her own Bishops S. Paul's had a long line in her vaults, commencing with her second patron, Saint Erkenwald. The tomb of William the Norman, once the Confessor's Chaplain and the Conqueror's Bishop, with the annual pilgrimage of the grateful citizens of London, has been already described, A.D. 1070. In the thirteenth century there had been a succession of noble prelates, famous in their day: Eustace Fauconberg (1228), Roger Niger (1241), Fulk Basset (1259), Henry Wengham (1262). Under the same rich canopy were the tombs of Fauconberg and the great pluralist Wengham. Roger Niger's graceful monument was between the choir and the north aisle. The tombs of other Bishops went to ruin in the first year of Edward VI. : Henry de Sandwith, Richard de Gravesend, Ralph de Baldock, Richard de Newport, Michael de Northburgh, Richard de Clifford, Richard Hill, Richard Fitz James. It is believed that the others, engraved by Dugdale, escaped that merciless destruction; but, in the later more general demolition, fell the chantry of Fulk Basset, and the mortuary chapel of Thomas Kemp, between the nave and north aisle; their rich Gothic fretwork, their sculptured images, their mitred recumbent Bishops, would mark them out for special insult and desecration. The tomb of Richard Braybroke in the choir escaped inviolate, as far as the body of the Bishop. He was the prelate |