then distributed among the resident canons. This offering was a species of tenure, by which Sir William held twenty-two acres of land, which the canons had granted to him. The buck and doe were, until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, regularly presented and received with great formality at the steps of the choir by the resident canons, clothed in their sacred vestments with garlands of flowers on their heads. Camden, who had witnessed the ceremony, says, the horns of the buck were carried on a spear in procession, round the inside of the church, the men blowing horns. When the buck or doe was offered at the high altar, a shilling was (according to the will of Sir William) given, by the dean and chapter, for the entertainment of the servants who brought it.

St. Paul's was the place where, in the reign of Edward the Third, the flagellants, to the number of 120 men and women, exercised their castigations. "Each day," says Lingard, in his History of England, "at the appointed hour, they assembled, ranged themselves in two lines, and moved slowly through the streets, scourging their naked shoulders, and chanting a hymn. At a known signal, all, with the exception of the last, threw themselves flat on the ground. He, as he passed by his companions, gave each a lash, and then also lay down. The others followed in succession, till every individual, in his turn, had received a stroke from the whole brotherhood. The citizens gazed and marvelled, pitied and commended; but they ventured no farther. Their faith was too weak, or their feelings were too acute; and they allowed the strangers to monopolize to themselves this novel and extraordinary grace. The

missionaries made not a single proselyte, and were compelled to return home, with the barren satisfaction of having done their duty in the face of an unbelieving generation."

While these devotees were flogging each other in public at St. Paul's, twice a day, until the blood came, Edward the Third was complaining to the Bishop of London, of the grossest abuses in the cathedral,— that the refectory of the canons was become the eating-place and office of mechanics, the lurking-place of worthless females, and the scene of other enormities, which royal decency forbade him to mention. Other profanations of a less offensive nature appear to have prevailed in the succeeding reign, when Robert de Braybrooke, bishop of Loudon, by a special mandate, in the 9th of Richard the Second, on pain of excommunication, prohibited any buying or selling within it, as also, that "no person should defile it, or the churchyard, nor presume to shoot arrows, or throw stones at crows, or any birds making their nests thereabouts; or, to play at handball, either within or without it."

After the battle of Bosworth-field, which gave to the Earl of Richmond a victory and a crown, the king, on arriving in London, "rode through the city to the cathedral church of St. Paul, (says a MS. in the Lansdown collection, No. 250,) where he offered his three standards in the one was the image of St. George; in the second was a fiery dragon, beaten upon white and green sarsnet; the third was a yellow tarterne, in which was painted a dun cow; and, after prayers and Te Deum was sung, he departed to the Bishop's palace, and there sojourned a season."

On the 6th of April, 1492, the nobles, with the lord mayor and corporation, attended St. Paul's in great state, when Dr. Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor, addressed them in a long oration, on occasion of the King of Spain having taken Granada from the Moors. Te Deum was sung and great rejoicings followed.

Queen Mary, of detested memory, seems to have had particular attention paid to her at St. Paul's; not, however, in the solemn rites of the church, but in amusements, rather befitting a theatre than a place of worship. On one occasion, when the queen rode through the city to Westminster, as she passed through St. Paul's churchyard, a Dutchman, of the name of Peter, stood on the weathercock of St. Paul's steeple, holding a streamer in his hand, five yards long, and, waving it, stood some time on one foot, at the same time shaking the other; "and then," says Stowe, "kneeling on his knees, to the great marvail of all the people." The Dutchman had, however, adopted the precaution of constructing two scaffolds under him, which would have saved his life, had he fallen from this perilous height. The city gave him twenty-five marks for his "cost and paines;" which, though not much, was a better reward than James the First bestowed on the man who climbed to the top of Salisbury cathedral; the king conferring on him a patent for performing the feat exclusively.

On the marriage of Philip and Mary, when the king and queen passed the churchyard, a fellow," says Stowe, came slipping upon a cord, as an arrow out of a bow, from Paul's steeple to the ground, and

lighted with his head forwards on a sort of feather bed, and after he climbed up the cord again, and did certain feats," all of which were repeated on the coronation of Edward VI.

Old St. Paul's was the scene, however, of more imposing ceremonies than mere pageants. It was here that the pusillanimous King John signed the resignation of his crown and kingdom to the haughty legate of the pope. Here too, Queen Elizabeth publicly returned thanks to the Deity, for the victory over the Spanish armada; and the colours taken from the enemy still stream in gloomy triumph, under the sacred dome of the cathedral.

It must be confessed, however, that in later times, St. Paul's had lost, in the eyes of the people, much if not all of that sacredness and solemnity with which it was originally regarded. The terrors of excommunication by which it was endeavoured, in the time of Richard the Second, to guard it from profanation, had either gradually lost their power, or ceased to be fulminated by the priesthood; for, long even before the zeal of the reformers lent its aid to the destruction and defilement of our sacred places, St. Paul's had fallen into "a household commonness," and the visits to her altars and shrines, to a "most cheap familiarity."

In the reign of Philip and Mary, we find, that the cathedral was a place of common resort and thoroughfare; and that, not only porters and carriers of goods, but beasts of burden were suffered to pass through it. The dean and chapter, too, instead of checking this concourse, turned it to their profit, by imposing a toll on each passenger, as we learn from the following

lines which were affixed to a pillar over an iron box kept to receive donations :

"All those that shall enter within the church doore With burden or basket, must give to the poore; And, if there be any aske, what they must paye To this box? a penny-ere they pass away."

The abuse at length became so flagrant, that an act of common council was issued to restrain it. This act, which was dated the 1st of August, in the first year of the reign of Philip and Mary, gives a curious picture of the manners of the time. It states, that

"Forasmuch as the material temples of God were first ordained for the lawful and devout assembly of people, there to lift up their hearts, and to laud and praise Almighty God, and to hear his divine service, and most holy word and gospel, sincerely said, sung, and taught; and not to be used as markets, or other profane places or thoroughfares, with carriage of things. And, for that now of late years, many of the inhabitants of the city of London, and other people repairing thither, have, and yet do commonly use and accustom themselves very unseemly and irreverently, the more the pity, to make the common carriage of great vessels fuli of ale and beer, great baskets full of bread, fish, flesh, and such other things; fardels [packs] of stuff, and other gross wares, and things, through the cathedral church of St. Paul's. And some in leading moyles, [mules,] horses, and other beasts, through the same university, to the great dishonour and displeasure of Almighty God, and the great grief also, and offence of all good people."