"In her penance she went," says Holinshed, "in countenance and pace demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie, save her kertle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the wondering of the people cast a comlie rud in her cheeks (of which she before had most misse), that hir great shame wan hir much praise among those that were more amorous of hir bodie, than curious of hir soule. And manie good folks that hated her living (and glad were to see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance, than rejoiced therein, when they considered that the Protector procured it more of a corrupt intent than any virtuous affection."
"Rowe," continues Pennant, "has flung this part of her sad story into the following poetical dress; but it is far from possessing the moving simplicity of the old historian."[35]
Submissive, sad, and lonely was her look;
A burning taper in her hand she bore;
And on her shoulders, carelessly confused,
With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung;
Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread;
Feeble she seemed, and sorely smit with pain;
While, barefoot as she trod the flinty pavement,
Her footsteps all along were marked with blood.
Yet silent still she passed, and unrepining;
Her streaming eyes bent ever on the earth,
Except when, in some bitter pang of sorrow,
To heaven she seemed, in fervent zeal, to raise,
And beg that mercy man denied her here.
"The poet has adopted the fable of her being denied all sustenance, and of her perishing with hunger, but that was not a fact. She lived to a great age, but in great distress and miserable poverty; deserted even by those to whom she had, during prosperity, done the most essential services. She dragged a wretched life even to the time of Sir Thomas More, who introduces her story in his Life of Richard the Third. The beauty of her person is spoken of in high terms; 'Proper she was, and faire; nothing in her body that you would have changed, but if you would have wished her somewhat higher. Thus sai they that knew hir in hir youth. Albeit, some that now see hir, for she yet liveth, deem hir never to have been well visaged. Now is she old, leane, withered, and dried up: nothing left but shrivelled skin and hard bone; and yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, might gesse and devise, which parts how filled, would make it a faire face.'"[36]
To these pictures, which are all drawn with spirit, may be added a portrait in the notes to Drayton's Heroical Epistles, referring to the one by Sir Thomas More.
"Her stature," says the comment, "was mean; her hair of a dark yellow, her face round and full, her eye grey, delicate harmony being betwixt each part's proportion, and each proportion's colour; her body fat, white, and smooth; her countenance cheerful, and like to her condition. That picture which I have seen of her, was such as she rose out of her bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich mantle, cast under her arm, over her shoulder, and sitting in a chair on which her naked arm did lie. What her father's name was, or where she was born, is not certainly known; but Shore, a young man of right goodly person, wealth, and behaviour, abandoned her bed, after the King had made her his concubine."[37]
Richard, in the extreme consciousness of his being in the wrong, made a sad bungling business of his first attempts on the throne. The penance of Jane Shore was followed by Dr. Shawe's sermon at the same cross, in which the servile preacher attempted to bastardise the children of Edward, and to recommend the "legitimate" Richard, as the express image of his father. Richard made his appearance, only to witness the sullen silence of the spectators; and the doctor, arguing more weakness than wickedness, took to his house, and soon after died.[38]
In the reign of the Tudors, Paul's Cross was the scene of a very remarkable series of contradictions. The government, under Henry the Eighth, preached for and against the same doctrines in religion. Mary furiously attempted to revive them; and they were finally denounced by Elizabeth. Wolsey began, in 1521, with fulminating, by command of the Pope, against "one Martin Eleutherius" (Luther). The denouncement was made by Fisher (afterwards beheaded for denying the King's supremacy); but Wolsey sate by, in his usual state, censed and canopied, with the pope's ambassador on one side of him, and the emperor's on the other. During the sermon a collection of Luther's books was burnt in the churchyard; "which ended, my Lord Cardinal went home to dinner with all the other prelates."[39] About ten years afterwards the preachers at Paul's Cross received an order from the King to "teach and declare to the people, that neither the pope, nor any of his predecessors, were anything more than the simple Bishops of Rome." On the accession of Mary, the discourses were ordered to veer directly round, which produced two attempts to assassinate the preachers in sermon-time; and the moment Elizabeth came to the throne, the divines began recommending the very opposite tenets, and the pope was finally rejected. At this Cross Elizabeth afterwards attended to hear a thanksgiving sermon for the defeat of the Invincible Armada; on which occasion a coach was first seen in England—the one she came in. The last sermon attended there by the sovereign was during the reign of her successor; but discourses continued to be delivered up to the time of the Civil Wars, when, after being turned to account by the Puritans for about a year, the pulpit was demolished by order of Parliament. The "willing instrument" of the overthrow was Pennington, the lord-mayor. The inhabitants who look out of their windows now-a-days on the northern side of St. Paul's may thus have a succession of pictures before their mind's eye, as curious and inconsistent as those of a dream—princes, queens, lord-mayors, and aldermen,
A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings,
Jane's penance, Richard's chagrin, Wolsey's exaltation, clergymen preaching for and against the pope; a coach coming as a wonder, where coaches now throng at every one's service; and finally, a puritanical lord-mayor, who "blasphemed custard," laying the axe to the tree, and cutting down the pulpit and all its works.
The next appendage to the old church, in point of importance, was the Bishop's or London House, the name of which survives in that of London House Yard. This, with other buildings, perished in the Great Fire; and on the site of it were built the houses now standing between the yard just mentioned and the present Chapter House. The latter was built by Wren. The old one stood on the other side of the cathedral, where the modern deanery is to be found, only more eastward. The bishop's house was often used for the reception of princes. Edward the Third and his queen were entertained there after a great tournament in Smithfield; and there poor little Edward the Fifth was lodged, previously to his appointed coronation. To the east of the bishop's house, stretching towards Cheapside, was a chapel, erected by the father of Thomas Becket, called Pardon-Church-Haugh, which was surrounded by a cloister, presenting a painting of the Dance of Death on the walls, a subject rendered famous by Holbein.[40]
Another chapel called the Charnel, a proper neighbour to this fresco, stood at the back of the two buildings just mentioned. It received its name from the quantity of human bones collected from St. Paul's Churchyard, and deposited in a vault beneath. The Charnel was taken down by the Protector Somerset about 1549, and the stones were employed in the building of the new palace of Somerset House. On this occasion it is stated that more than a thousand cart-loads of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields where they formed a large mount, on which three windmills were erected. From these Windmill Street in that neighbourhood derives its name. The ground on which the chapel stood was afterwards built over with dwellings and warehouses, having sheds before them for the use of stationers. Immediately to the north of St. Paul's School, and towards the spot where the churchyard looks into Cheapside, was a campanile, or bell-house; that is to say, a belfry, forming a distinct building from the cathedral, such as it is accustomed to be in Italy. It was by the ringing of this bell that the people were anciently called together to the general assemblage, called the Folkmote. The campanile was very high,