6

CHAP. aghast. March 6, 1636, he writes in his diary, William

XIII.

Juxon, Lord Bishop of London, made Lord High Treasurer of England. No churchman had it since Henry the 'Seventh's time. I pray God to bless him, and carry it so 'that the Church may have honour, and the King and the 'State service and contentment by it. And now, if the 'Church will not hold themselves up, under God I can do no more.' But Juxon was a wiser man than Laud. From London Laud ascended to his haughty throne at Canterbury, to the primacy, which he would fain have made a popedom. From Canterbury he descended to Tower Hill -to 'Canterbury's doom'-let me venture to say, to be the victim of the most barbarous crime of those dark days; a crime, because it was an act of wanton, unnecessary revenge. As long as Strafford lived, Strafford might be dangerous. Laud in the Tower was as harmless as Laud in his grave. He died (he was above seventy years old) with calm resignation. His scrupulous attention to small things, his superstition, took a touching form, when he besought the executioners to stop up the chinks in the platform of the scaffold, lest his blood should fall on the people below.

But sager Juxon, on the first opportunity, when it was supposed that the High Treasurership might win over the Earl of Bedford, willingly, or rather eagerly, withdrew from the proud but perilous office. He retired to quiet Fulham, where he was allowed to live in peace, in respect, without disturbance, till 1647. Two years after, Jan. 30, 1649, he was permitted to stand by his master to offer his ministrations on the scaffold at Whitehall, obnoxious to none, passionately loved by the loyal for this act of fidelity."

To Bishop Juxon Charles submitted his case of conscience, whether he could give a temporary compliance to the abolition of Episcopacy, with a ' resolution to recover and maintain

'that doctrine and discipline wherein 'I have been bred.' The letter, sadly characteristic of the King, is in Ellis, 2nd series, vol. iii. p. 325.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

347

CHAPTER XIV.

S. PAUL'S UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH.

THIS must be a short sad chapter. With Puritanism in the
ascendant, S. Paul's became a vast useless pile, the lair
of old superstition and idolatry. Why cumbereth it the
ground? The prodigal expenditure of Charles and Laud;
the brilliant creation of Inigo Jones; the munificence of
Sir Paul Pindar, might seem the dressing-up of the victim
for sacrifice, or rather for contemptuous exposure to slow
decay and ruin. The Cathedral was not destroyed, for it
would have been a work of cost and labour to destroy it.
Lord Brooke, who fell at the siege of Lichfield (a manifest
judgement as the loyal churchmen, as Laud himself, de-
clared), even if he had lived, would not have seen his
prayers fulfilled.
The stones still remained upon the

stones.

One of the first acts, however, of the Parliament was to seize and appropriate to other uses the sum remaining out of the subscription for the repairs of the church in the chamber of the city of London. This sum amounted to above 17,000l. The scaffolding erected around the tower was assigned to Col. Jephson's regiment for 1,746l. 158. 8d., due as arrears of pay. On striking the scaffolding, part of the south transept, with its roof, came down.

But Bishops, Deans, and Canons are more easily swept away than Cathedrals. Even as early as July or August 1641, the year of Strafford's execution, there was a debate in Parliament on the abolition of Cathedral Chapters, and for the appropriation of their revenues to better purposes.

CHAP.
XIV.

CHAP.
XIV.

S.

The Universities petitioned in their favour; they were defended before the Committee, by Dr. Hacket, Archdeacon of Bedford and Prebendary of S. Paul's. But it was the weak and desponding defence of a lost cause. The Bill passed the Commons, but the Bishops were not yet expelled from the House of Lords; the Bill dropped. In 1642 appeared the Ordinance for the removal of crucifixes, and other monuments of superstition, from churches. Paul's is named with other cathedrals. Ordered May 31, That the Committee for pulling down and abolishing all 'monuments of superstition and idolatry do take into 'their custody the copes in the Cathedrals of Westminster, 'Paul's and Lambeth; and give order that they be burnt (the gold separated from the gilt by fire), and converted to 'the relief of the poor in Ireland.' December 15. Ordered that the Committee for taking away superstitious ornaments 'do open Paul's church, and that they shall have power to 6 remove out of the said church all such matters as are 'justly offensive to godly men.' But, if the work of Sir Paul Pindar was spared, there was not much to destroy. I doubt if there were any precious painted windows in the Cathedral.

In January 1644-5, was an order that my Lord Powys's house in Aldersgate Street, and the Deanery of 'S. Paul's, should be prepared for the reception of certain 'prisoners from Chichester or elsewhere." In April came darker signs of spoliation. It was ordered that the chest, or silver vessels in S. Paul's shall be sold to the best advantage, towards the providing of necessaries for the train of artillery, by the Committee at Grocers' Hall. The Deanery had probably been vacated by Winnif, who had received the profitless nomination to the Bishopric of Lincoln; Dr.

1 Quoted in Malcolm, vol. iii. p. 143.

Steward, appointed to the Deanery, had not appeared. In May of the same year came the fatal mandate to the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen to seize and sequester all the revenues of the Dean and Chapter of S. Paul's with the sole reservation of 400l., to be paid quarterly to Dr. Cornelius Burgess as lecturer in the Cathedral. The Dean, Steward, though in a later Act named in possession of the Deanery, had not been installed. I have not thought it necessary to trace out the expelled Canons in Walker's 'Sufferings of the Clergy,' or other documents. They were no doubt scattered, such as refused the Covenant, each to his place of retirement. The former

mandate was followed by a second Act (April 23), constituting Cornelius Burgess Lecturer of S. Paul's (a part of the eastern end of the Church was walled in for his preaching house), and putting him in possession of the Deanery.

Cornelius Burgess is, of course, a different man in the pages of the Puritan Neal and the rampant loyalist Wood. In Neal, he is among the most moderate of the Parliamentary Divines; he declined, till threatened with ejection (he held the living of Watford), to sign the Covenant. He was the antagonist of Hacket in the debate about the abolition of Chapters. He complained of their unprofitableness, of the debauchery of singing men, and of their ' vicious conversation;' he spoke against music in churches as useless and hurtful. But he summed up with declaring, that he held it necessary to apply these foundations to better purposes; it was by no means lawful to alienate them from pious uses, or to convert them to any private personal profit. According to Wood, he began by preaching a Latin sermon at S. Alphege before the London Clergy, in which

CHAP.

XIV.

CHAP.

XIV.

This was done with Hence his popularity Paul's. The lecture

he spoke strongly of the connivance of the Bishops at the
growth of Arminianism and Popery. He was summoned
before the High Commission Court, and from that time
became implacable against the Bishops. He exercised
great authority, with a Captain Venn, over the populace of
London. He had become a zealous Covenanter.
It was
usual for him, with Venn, to lead up the tumult of the
City apprentices and the rest to the Parliament doors to
see that the godly party in the House (for so their faction
was called) were not outvoted, and then turning back to the
rabble would say, 'These are my bandogs, and I can set
'them on, and I can take them off.'
especial violence at Strafford's trial.
in London, and his nomination at S.
in the evening at the Cathedral was appointed at the
desire of some of the Aldermen of London, who were un-
willing that S. Paul's should be altogether silenced. But
the first motion, if Wood is to be believed, proceeded from
the militia of London, among whom the Doctor was wont
to ride with a case of pistols, to be called colonel, and to
share their plunder. On the other hand, it cannot be
doubted that Burgess headed the daring petition of the
London Clergy against the execution of the King. The
petition ended with these memorable words, 'that God
'would restrain the violence of men, that they may not
' dare to draw upon themselves and the kingdom the
'blood of their Sovereign."3

The Anti-Dean, Cornelius Burgess, was a man of no despicable power. His sermons rank high, for vigour and something at times bordering on the eloquence of his age, among the preachers of the day. Burgess is somewhat proud of his small Hebrew, which he inflicts at length on the patient House of Commons. There is one sermon

3 The petition and signatures, Neal, vol. iii. p. 536.