On the south side of the church were St. Paul’s Brewhouse and Bakehouse, and also a house which, in 1570, was handed over to the Doctors of Civil Law as a “Commons House.” These civilians and canonists had previously been lodged at “a mean house in Paternoster Row.” South of the nave was the Church of St. Gregory-by-Paul’s adjoining the wall up to the West Front. Between that and the South Transept was a curious cloister of two stories, running round three sides of a square, and in the middle of this square was the Chapter House. It was built in 1332, and was very small—only thirty-two feet six inches in internal diameter. The remains of it have been carefully preserved on the ground, and are visible to the passers-by. The Deanery I have mentioned, but we shall have more about it hereafter. The open space before the West Front was claimed by the citizens, as well as the east side; not, like that, for a folkmote, but for military parade. The arms were kept in the adjoining Baynard’s Castle.
[Footnote 1: In old times the name Ludgate Hill was given to that part which ran up from the Fleet to the City Gate. Inside the Gate the street was called “Bowyer Row,” from the trade carried on in it. But it was also frequently called “Paul’s.” Ludgate was pulled down in 1760, and then Ludgate Hill became the name of the whole street.]
* * * * *
THE INTERIOR OF OLD ST. PAUL’S.
Fine coup d’oeil on entering the Nave—“Paul’s Walk”— Monuments in Nave—Sir John Montacute—Bishop Kempe—Sir John Beauchamp, wrongly called afterwards Duke Humphrey’s—The Choir—Shrine of St. Erkenwald—Nowell—Braybrooke—two Kings—many Bishops—Elizabethan Worthies.
The aspect of the Nave, on entering the western door, must have been magnificent. There were twelve bays to the nave, then the four mighty pillars supporting the tower, then the screen closing in the choir. The nave was known as “Paul’s Walk,” and not too favourably known, either, under this title. Of this more hereafter. At the second bay in the North Aisle was the meeting-place of Convocation, closed in as a chamber. Here, too, was the Font, by which was the Monument of Sir John Montacute. He was the son of the first Earl of Salisbury, and it was his mother of whom the fictitious story about the establishment of the Order of the Garter by Edward III. was told. John de Montacute’s father was buried in the Church of the Whitefriars. The son was baptized in St. Paul’s, and directed in his will, “If I die in London I desire that my body may be buried in St. Paul’s, near to the font wherein I was baptized.”