was obliged to fill the water-vessels with her own noble hands, and, apparently, unassisted and unattended by either servants or husband. These are the incidents that paint an age. Nothing can bring more forcibly home to us than such a strange narrative as this the difference between the London of our own day and that of three hundred years ago. It makes one wonder if the sun shone then as it does now-if our ancestors of that remote date were actually wide awake, and did not move about in a sort of mere somnambulous condition-at any rate, if they possessed any sense of the ludicrous or faculty of laughter, that they could look on gravely while such fantastic tricks were played before high heaven.

Another remarkable appearance, also of a penitential character, that was made at Paul's Cross some years after this, is likewise described, with all its details, by Stow-the recantation of the learned and pious Reginald Pecocke, bishop of Chichester, who "having laboured many years," says the annalist, "to translate the holy scripture into English, was accused to have passed the bounds of divinity and of Christian belief in certain articles." On the 4th of December, 1457, he was brought to Paul's Cross, and there renounced his heresies, and made profession of his deep contrition and entire submission to holy church in a formal harangue "in his mother tongue," which Stow gives at full length. And "after this," concludes the account, "he was deprived of his bishoprick, having a certain pension assigned unto him for to live on in an abbey, and soon after he died.” And, doubtless, he himself then felt that it would have been better had he died somewhat sooner.

Little more than two years before these high-handed proceedings against Bishop Pecocke, which may be regarded as a sort of commencement of the war between the old and the new opinions in religion, the first swords had been crossed at St. Alban's in the war of the Roses, which was to make the best blood in the land flow like water throughout the greater part of the next quarter of a century. Passing over that space, comprising the remainder of the reign and life of Henry VI., and the whole of the reign of Edward IV., we come, in what may be called the last act of the long, tumultuous drama, to perhaps the most remarkable day in the history of Paul's Cross. It is towards the latter end of June, in the year 1483. The young king, Edward V., who had been escorted from Hornsey to the bishop's palace, close by the cathedral, on the 4th of May, by the lord mayor, the sheriffs, "and all the other aldermen in scarlet, with five hundred horse of the citizens in violet," had been soon after, along with his brother, carried "from thence through the city honourably into the Tower, out of which after that day they never came abroad;" Crookbacked Richard directed all things as Lord Protector; Lord Hastings, arrested in the council-room at the Tower on the morning of Friday, the 13th of June, had had his head immediately struck off, "upon a long log of timber," on "the green beside the chapel;" the Lord Grey, with his fellow-prisoners, had been executed before the gate of Pontefract Castle, on the same day; Lord Rivers lay there in his dungeon, about to follow his friends to the scaffold; Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely, were all under the lock and key of the tyrant; "then thought the Protector, that, while men mused what the matter meant, while the lords of the realm were about him out of their own strengths, while no man wist what to

think, nor whom to trust, ere ever they should have space to dispute and digest the matter and make parties, it were best hastily to pursue his purpose, and put himself in possession of the crown, ere men could have time to devise any way to resist." The story has been told, as Herodotus himself might have told it, by Sir Thomas More; and we shall follow his lively and graceful narrative with little abridgment. The first concern of Gloucester and his confederates was, how the matter "might be first broken to the people, in such wise that it might be well taken;" and for this purpose, while they took into their counsels Sir Edmond Shaw, the lord mayor, that he "upon trust of his own advancement, whereof he was, of a proud heart, highly desirous, should frame the city to their appetite," they also associated to themselves "of spiritual men such as had wit, and were in authority among the people for opinion of their learning, and had no scrupulous conscience;" and "among these had they John Shaw, Clerk, brother to the Mayor, and Friar Pinker, Provincial of the Augustine Friars, both Doctors of Divinity, both great preachers, both of more learning than virtue, of more fame than learning. For they were before greatly esteemed among the people, but after that never. Of these two the t'one had a sermon in praise of the Protector before the coronation; the t'other after; both so full of tedious flattery, that no man's ears could abide them." With Pinker's sermon, which was delivered at St. Mary's Hospital, on Easter day in the following year, we have here nothing to do: More states that he "so lost his voice, that he was fain to leave off and come down in the midst." As for Shaw, it was determined that he should forthwith lay before the people the Protector's claims as the legitimate heir to the crown, in a sermon at Paul's Cross. Accordingly, on Sunday the 22nd of June, the Doctor presented himself in the pulpit at the Cross before a great audience,—“ as alway assembled great number to his preaching,”—and taking for his text the words from the Book of Wisdom, Spuria vitulamina non agent radices altas "Bastard slips shall not strike deep roots," he proceeded to address the multitude. The introductory portion of his discourse consisted of an attempt to show that heaven, although it might sometimes suffer the legitimate line to be set aside for a season, never permitted it to be ultimately or long supplanted by those born out of wedlock, or their descendants, especially if the offspring of adultery. "And when he had laid for the proof and confirmation of this sentence," continues More, "certain examples taken out of the Old Testament and other ancient histories, then began he to descend into the praise of the Lord Richard, late Duke of York, calling him father to the Lord Protector, and declared the title of his heirs unto the crown, to whom it was, after the death of King Henry the Sixth, entailed by authority of parliament. Then showed he that his very right heir of his body lawfully begotten was only the Lord Protector. For he declared then that King Edward was never lawfully married unto the Queen, but was before God husband under Dame Elizabeth Lucy, and so his children bastards. And, besides that, neither King Edward himself nor the Duke of Clarence, among those that were secret in the household, were reckoned very surely for the children of the noble Duke, as those that by their favours more resembled other known men than him. From whose virtuous conditions he said also that King Edward was far off. But the Lord Protector, he said, the very noble prince, the special pattern of knightly prowess, as well in all princely

behaviour as in the lineaments and favour of his visage represented the very face of the noble duke his father. This is, quoth he, the father's own figure, this is his own countenance, the very print of his visage, the very sure redoubted image, the plain express likeness of that noble duke. Now was it before devised, that, in the speaking of these words, the Protector should have come in among the people to the sermon-ward, to the end that those words, meeting with his presence, might have been taken among the hearers as though the Holy Ghost had put them in the preacher's mouth, and should have moved the people even there to cry King Richard! King Richard! that it might have been after said that he was specially chosen by God, and in manner by miracle. But this device quailed, either by the Protector's negligence, or the preacher's over-much diligence. For while the Protector found by the way tarrying lest he should prevent those words, and the Doctor, fearing that he should come ere his sermon could come to these words, hasted his matter thereto, who was come to them and past them, and entered into other matters ere the Protector came. Whom when he beheld coming, he suddenly left the matter with which he was in hand; and, without any deduction thereunto, out of all order and out of all frame, began to repeat those words again :— This is the very noble prince, the special pattern of knightly prowess, which, as well in all princely behaviour as in the lineaments and favour of his visage, representeth the very face of the noble Duke of York, his father; this is the father's own figure, this is his own countenance, the very print of his visage, the sure undoubted image, the plain express likeness of the noble duke, whose remembrance can never die while he liveth.' While these words were in speaking, the Protector, accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, went through the people into the place where the doctors commonly stand in the upper story, where he stood to hearken the sermon. But the people were so far from crying King Richard! that they stood as they had been turned into stones, for wonder of this shameful sermon. After which once ended, the preacher got him home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of sight like an owl. And when he once asked one that had been his old friend what the people talked of him, all were it that his own conscience well showed him that they talked no good; yet when the other answered him, that there was in every man's mouth spoken of him much shame, it so strake him to the heart, that within few days after he withered and consumed away."

It has been sometimes stated, that another famous exhibition, got up by the Protector at this crisis with the same view of winning the voices of the multitudehis exposure of poor Jane Shore-also took place at Paul's Cross; but this is a mistake—the penance imposed upon the frail, but merry and kind-hearted mistress of Edward IV., was to walk before a cross carried in procession through the streets. Her story, therefore, likewise so interestingly told by More, may stand over for the present. But very soon after this date, it became customary to adjudge persons who performed penance-especially the unhappy followers of the new opinions in religion-to stand before Paul's Cross during the sermon after they had been paraded in the procession. Thus, Fox tells us, that on Sunday the 17th of January, 1497, "two men, the one called Richard Milderale, and the other James Sturdie, bare fagots before the procession of Paul's, and after stood before the preacher in the time of his sermon." "And upon the

Sunday following," he adds, "stood other two men at Paul's Cross all the sermon time; the one garnished with painted and written papers, the other having a fagot on his neck. After that, in Lent season, upon Passion Sunday, one Hugh Glover bare a fagot before the procession of Paul's, and after with the fagot stood before the preacher all the sermon-while at Paul's Cross. And on the Sunday next following four men stood, and did there open penance at Paul's, as is aforesaid: in the sermon time many of their books were burnt before them at the Cross." Again, he notes that in 1499 "many were taken for heretics in Kent, and at Paul's Cross they bare fagots, and were abjured. And shortly after, the same year, there were thirteen Lollards afore the procession in Paul's, and there were of them eight women and a young lad, and the lad's mother was one of the eight, and all the thirteen bare fagots on their necks afore the procession." This last exhibition seems to be the same mentioned by Fabian as having taken place on Sunday the 23rd of July, in that year, when, he says, twelve heretics stood before the Cross "shrined with fagots." The fagots were of course designed to signify the death by burning which the bearers had deserved, and which they only escaped by undergoing this humiliating penance, and making abjuration of their heresies. Sometimes they were condemned to wear ever after the badge of a fagot in flames on their clothes-an awkward coat of arms.

In one case which Fox records at great length, that of "James Baynham, lawyer and martyr," the fagot borne at the Cross turned out to be prophetic as well as emblematical. Baynham having adopted some of the opinions of Wyclif, was, towards the end of the year 1531, arrested and brought before Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, at his house in Chelsea. Fox is an honest, but a very prejudiced and credulous writer; and it is to be hoped, for the honour of genius and elegant letters, that his zeal has led him to impute some things to More, which such a man, even in that age, could hardly have been guilty of. He tells us that he detained Baynham with him in a sort of free custody for a while, but that, when "he saw he could not prevail in perverting him to his sect, then he cast him in prison in his own (More's) house, and whipped him at the tree in his garden, called the Tree of Troth, and after sent him to the Tower to be racked; and so he was, Sir Thomas More being present himself, till in a manner he had lamed him, because he would not accuse the gentlemen of the Temple of his acquaintance, nor would not show where his books were; and because his wife denied them to be at his house, she was sent to the Fleet, and their goods confiscated." However, the result was that Baynham at last consented to make abjuration, and on a Sunday in February, 1532, he did penance by first

walking in procession, and then standing with a fagot on his shoulder at Paul's

Cross during the sermon, on a sort of scaffold erected before the pulpit, in the fashion which the martyrologist has represented in a rude but curious woodcut. But Baynham had been at home little more than a month, after having recovered his forfeited life by this submission, when, vehement remorse and shame conquering the fear of death and every other feeling, he called his friends together and expressed to them the bitterest regret for what he had done; " and immediately, the next Sunday after, he came to St. Austin's with the New Testament in his hand in English, and the obedience of a Christian man in his bosom, and stood up there before the people in his pew, there declaring openly with weeping tears that he had denied God, and prayed all the people to forgive him, and to beware of his weakness, and not to do as he did." He was now, as a relapsed heretic, beyond the pale of mercy in this world, and, as his judges believed, in the next also. Urgent methods, however, were used to make him recant before he should be committed to the flames. Being again arrested, "for almost the space of a fortnight," according to the martyrologist, he lay in the bishop's coal-house in the stocks, with irons upon his legs: then he was carried to the Lord Chancellor's and there chained to a post two nights: then he was carried to Fulham, where he was cruelly handled by the space of a sevennight; then to the Tower, where he lay a fortnight, scourged with whips, to make him revoke his opinions from thence he was carried to Barking, then to Chelsea, and there condemned, and so to Newgate to be burned." He was burned in Smithfield at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the 30th of April. Such tragic and brutal work as this, still more even than the solemn comedy of Lady Strange's penance, goes to make it difficult for us to feel, when we read of it, that the sky was as blue and the earth as green in England three centuries ago as they are now.

In another remarkable instance, which occurred soon after this, the scaffold of penance at Paul's Cross was in like manner only a stepping-stone to a more fatal scaffold. Hither, in the end of the year 1533, was brought to make public confession of their imposture, Elizabeth Barton, called the Holy Maid of Kent, with Richard Master, the parson of the parish of Aldington, where she lived, who had sought, by means of her hysteric outcries and pretended inspirations, to raise the fame and attraction of the wooden Virgin in his chapel at Court-atStreet; her confessor, Dr. Bocking, of whom, as Burnet tells us, there were violent suspicions that he did not, in his intercourse with her, confine himself strictly to his spiritual duties; Richard Deering, who wrote the most popular book of her revelations and prophecies; and half a dozen more of her accomplices. Having been "brought into the Star-chamber," says Burnet, "where there was a great appearance of many lords, they were examined upon the premises, and did all, without any rack or torture, confess the whole conspiracy, and were adjudged to stand in Paul's all the sermon time; and, after sermon, the king's officers were to give every one of them his bill of confession, to be read openly before the people; which was done next Sunday, the Bishop of Bangor preaching, they being all set on a scaffold before him." It was thought, he adds, that this public exposure would be the surest way to satisfy the people of the imposture of the whole affair; and it had, it seems, very generally that effect. Their penance and confession, however, did not save either the nun herself, or her chief confederates: on the 20th of April following, she, Master, Bocking, Deering, and two more of those who