St Paul's Cross
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Paul's Cross (alternative spellings – "Powles Crosse") was a
preaching cross A preaching cross is a Christian cross sometimes surmounting a pulpit, which is erected outdoors to designate a preaching place. In Great Britain, Britain and Ireland, many free-standing upright crosses – or high crosses – were erected. Some ...
and open-air
pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, access ...
in the grounds of
Old St Paul's Cathedral Old St Paul's Cathedral was the cathedral of the City of London that, until the Great Fire of London, Great Fire of 1666, stood on the site of the present St Paul's Cathedral. Built from 1087 to 1314 and dedicated to Paul of Tarsus, Saint Paul, ...
, City of London. It was the most important public pulpit in Tudor and early Stuart England, and many of the most important statements on the political and religious changes brought by the
Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
were made public from here. The pulpit stood in 'the Cross yard', the open space on the north-east side of
St Paul's Churchyard St Paul's Churchyard is an area immediately around St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. It included St Paul's Cross and Paternoster Row. It became one of the principal marketplaces in London. St Paul's Cross was an open-air pulpit from whic ...
, adjacent to the row of buildings that would become the home of London's publishing and book-selling trade. A monumental memorial column called "Paul's Cross" with a golden statue of
St Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
stands in this area of the Cathedral precinct since the early 20th century, but it is not on the exact spot where Paul's Cross stood. A stone carved with the words 'Here stood Paul's Cross' marks the actual location of the pulpit as it stood from 1449 until 1635, when it was taken down during
Inigo Jones Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable archit ...
' renovation work.


History


Pre-15th century

The eastern half of the Cross churchyard had been controlled by the Corporation in the Middle Ages: it was the site of the London ' folkmoot' (or general assembly of the people). The earliest folkmoot known to be held here was by John Mansell, a king's justice, on St Paul's Day (29 June) in 1236, to announce that Henry III wished London to be well-governed and its liberties guarded. The
Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...
and the King attended the next such meeting we know of, in 1259, at which Londoners came to swear their allegiance to the latter and to his heirs (though under duress, as a royal army was holding the city gates at this time). They also gathered here later to swear allegiance to Henry's opponent
Simon de Montfort Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester ( – 4 August 1265), later sometimes referred to as Simon V de Montfort to distinguish him from his namesake relatives, was a nobleman of French origin and a member of the English peerage, who led the ...
. A Richard Walker from
Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Engla ...
, a chaplain, pleaded guilty to sorcery charges here in c.1422 but, after forswearing such practices and being arraigned by the
Bishop of Llandaff The Bishop of Llandaff is the ordinary of the Church in Wales Diocese of Llandaff. Area of authority The diocese covers most of the County of Glamorgan. The bishop's seat is in the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (the site of a ...
(then John de la Zouche), he was marched to
Cheapside Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St. Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where ...
with his two magic books open upon him, where the books were burnt and he was freed without any other punishment.
Reginald Pecock Reginald Pecock (or Peacock; c. 1395– c. 1461) was a Welsh prelate, scholastic, and writer. Life Pecock was probably born in Laugharne and was educated at Oriel College, Oxford. Having been ordained priest in 1421, Pecock secured a master ...
,
Bishop of St Asaph The Bishop of St Asaph heads the Church in Wales diocese of St Asaph. The diocese covers the counties of Conwy and Flintshire, Wrexham county borough, the eastern part of Merioneth in Gwynedd and part of northern Powys. The Episcopal seat is loca ...
, attacked
Lollardy Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic ...
from this cross in 1447 but himself did public penance there in 1457 (by which time he was
Bishop of Chichester The Bishop of Chichester is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers the counties of East and West Sussex. The see is based in the City of Chichester where the bishop's seat ...
) before a mob of 20,000 and the
Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...
, throwing various examples of his own
heretical Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
writings into a fire.
Thomas Netter Thomas Netter (c. 1375 – 2 November 1430) was an English Scholastic theologian and controversialist. From his birthplace he is commonly called Thomas of Walden, or Thomas Waldensis. Life Born at Saffron Walden, Essex, as a young adult he ent ...
also preached against Lollardy here.
Jane Shore Elizabeth "Jane" Shore (née Lambert) (c. 1445 – c. 1527) was one of the many mistresses of King Edward IV of England. She became the best-known to history through being later accused of conspiracy by the future King Richard III, and compelled ...
, mistress of
King Edward IV Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in Englan ...
was brought before the cross in 1483 and divested "of all her splendour". On Sunday 22 June 1483, a Cambridge Doctor of Theology,
Ralph Shaa Ralph Shaa (sometimes erroneouslyRichard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...
usurping the throne of his nephew
Edward V Edward V (2 November 1470 – mid-1483)R. F. Walker, "Princes in the Tower", in S. H. Steinberg et al, ''A New Dictionary of British History'', St. Martin's Press, New York, 1963, p. 286. was ''de jure'' King of England and Lord of Ireland fro ...
, one of the
Princes in the Tower The Princes in the Tower refers to the apparent murder in England in the 1480s of the deposed King Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. These two brothers were the only sons of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville sur ...
.


15th century

Bishop
Thomas Kempe Thomas Kempe was a medieval Bishop of London A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governanc ...
rebuilt the cross in 1449 in grand architectural form, as an open-air pulpit of mostly timber with room for three or four inside it, set on stone steps with a lead-covered roof and an ambulatory around it. This ambulatory would be closed in with a low wall in the early seventeenth-century. In all, the pulpit building formed an octagon about thirty-seven feet in diameter.


16th century

For much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, sermons were preached here on a weekly basis all year round. The preachers were appointed by the bishops of London. For important events or at politically sensitive times, senior clerics (including deans and bishops) would be called on to preach; on less important Sundays, the bishop and his chaplains looked to newly ordained preachers from Oxford and Cambridge, or to local London preachers, to fill the rota. Early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it was sometimes difficult to find preachers willing to undertake a two-hour sermon at Paul's Cross. With better funding for the sermon series in the Jacobean period, however, preaching 'at the cross' became a mark of an ambitious young cleric. John Earle's 'bold forward man' would 'if hee bee a scholler ... ha's commonly stept into the Pulpit before a degree; ... and his next Sermon is at ''Pauls'' Crosse, and that printed'. Indeed, from the 1580s onwards, it was increasingly usual to print the sermons for distribution to a wider audience; approximately 370 Paul's Cross sermons are now extant, with over 300 titles surviving in print. Because the pulpit stood in one of the few open spaces within an increasingly crowded city, and because royal proclamations were often delivered here, Paul's Cross was the site of several political disturbances in the early modern period. It was a speech here that triggered the 1517
Evil May Day Evil May Day or Ill May Day is the name of a xenophobic riot which took place in 1517 as a protest against foreigners (called "strangers") living in London. Apprentices attacked foreign residents ranging from "Flemish cobblers" to "French royal co ...
anti-foreigner riots. Ultra-Lutheran Robert Barnes attacked
Stephen Gardiner Stephen Gardiner (27 July 1483 – 12 November 1555) was an English Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I and King Philip. Early life Gardiner was b ...
from it, and in 1566 Matthew Hutton, later
Archbishop of York The archbishop of York is a senior bishop in the Church of England, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and the metropolitan bishop of the province of York, which covers th ...
, preached here. The first sermon preached here after Catholic Queen Mary's accession (by Bishop Bourne) provoked a riot – a dagger was thrown at Bourne (but missed him, sticking in one of the side posts) and he had to be rushed to safety in St Paul's School. Thus, Mary's successor
Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...
kept the pulpit empty for a long time after her accession to keep the people from rioting. However, when it finally came to Dr Samson's appearance at the Cross to announce Elizabeth's religious policy, the keys to the Cross's pulpit were found to be mislaid and the Lord Mayor ordered the door to be forced. In the early years of Elizabeth's reign, Paul's Cross was one of the most important means of popularising the Elizabethan Settlement. On 15 June 1559,
John Jewel John Jewel (''alias'' Jewell) (24 May 1522 – 23 September 1571) of Devon, England was Bishop of Salisbury from 1559 to 1571. Life He was the youngest son of John Jewel of Bowden in the parish of Berry Narbor in Devon, by his wife Alice Bell ...
preached his famous 'Challenge' sermon (which he would repeat on 26 November that year), in which he promised to convert to Roman Catholicism if his opponents could show evidence for specific Catholic teachings and practices from the first six hundred years after Christ. The so-called 'Challenge Controversy' started by this sermon led to ninety-six publications by 1570. There was also preaching against the Puritan Movement in 1572, in response to th
Admonition Controversy
and anti-puritan preaching became more common after 1589 when Richard Bancroft launched an attack on puritan activism in a sermon preached 9 February 1588. During the
Essex Rebellion Essex's Rebellion was an unsuccessful rebellion led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in 1601 against Queen Elizabeth I of England and the court faction led by Sir Robert Cecil to gain further influence at court. Background Robert Devereux, ...
, the Earl timed his arrival in London so that he and his followers arrived at St Paul's just before the end of the Paul's Cross sermon, in the hope of gaining the support of the London aldermen.


Audience

References to Paul's Cross sermons in contemporary diaries and other texts suggest that the sermons were popular in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I but that they declined in popularity in the 1630s, particularly after 1635 when they moved into the relatively confined space of the Cathedral choir. One Elizabethan guide to learning French, Claudius Hollybrand's ''The French Schoolmaster'' (1573) describes a visit to the Paul's Cross sermons and reports that members of the court and senior clerics might be seen there. Attendance by the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London and their wives was far more common than the nobility, however. The guildsmen also attended Paul's Cross sermons, often sitting together formally in their guilds for special occasions like the Accession Day sermon. Attendance at the Paul's Cross sermons became an important means for the corporation to make their civic rituals compatible with Protestant teachings in the years after the Reformation.


The end of Paul's Cross

William Dugdale Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. Life Dugdale was born at Shustoke, near Coleshi ...
claimed that the pulpit cross was destroyed under the Ordinance for 'Removing monuments of Idolatry' in 1643 at the start of the
First English Civil War The First English Civil War took place in England and Wales from 1642 to 1646, and forms part of the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. They include the Bishops' Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, the Second English Civil War, the Anglo ...
. Archival evidence demonstrates that the pulpit cross had already been destroyed by 1641, however, and it is most likely that the pulpit was taken down in 1635, when this area of the Cathedral close was used as a masons' yard during renovation work on the cathedral.


20th century

Between 1908 and 1910 a new structure was erected near the site of Paul's Cross, from funds provided by the will of the barrister Henry Charles Richards. Richards had hoped that the medieval preaching cross would be reconstructed, but the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral decided that this would be out of keeping with the architectural setting, Sir
Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches ...
having rebuilt the cathedral in the 17th century. The resulting monument is to a
Baroque revival The Baroque Revival, also known as Neo-Baroque (or Second Empire architecture in France and Wilhelminism in Germany), was an architectural style of the late 19th century. The term is used to describe architecture and architectural sculptu ...
design by Sir
Reginald Blomfield Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield (20 December 1856 – 27 December 1942) was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period. Early life and career Blomfield was born at Bow rectory in Devon, w ...
, with a statue of
Saint Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
by Sir
Bertram Mackennal Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal (12 June 186310 October 1931), usually known as Bertram Mackennal, was an Australian sculptor and medallist, most famous for designing the coinage and stamps bearing the likeness of George V. He signed his work "BM". ...
standing on a
Doric column The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...
of
Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...
. The cathedral authorities' use of Richards's funds aroused a short-lived controversy. In 1972 the monument was listed at
Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
.


References


External links


St Paul's Cross
– Britannia.com *E. Beresford Chancellor's ''St. Paul's Cathedral'' (1925) *Benjamin Vincent's ''A Dictionary of Dates'', London 1863 {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Paul's Cross Grade II listed buildings in the City of London 15th-century establishments in England 1643 disestablishments in England 1910 establishments in England St Paul's Cathedral 17th-century disestablishments in England Richard III of England