Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul: An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical SketchDimock, Arthur
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul: An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch
Dimock, Arthur
St. Paul's Cathedral (London, England)
=The Wars of the Roses.=--With this period St. Paul's is closely
associated. At St. Paul's the Yorkist leaders pledged their allegiance
to the unhappy Henry VI. on the Sacrament--only to break it. After
Barnet the dead bodies of the king-maker and his brothers were
exposed, and after Tewkesbury the murdered corpse of Henry received
similar treatment. Most striking of all is the grim figure of Richard
of Gloucester. He it was who caused Jane Shore to be put to open
penance on the ground that she had bewitched him, she "going before
the Cross on a Sunday with a taper in her hand," says Stow, "out of
all aray saue her kirtle only." Hastings, the successor of Edward in
her affections, was implicated with her, and his offence read from
Paul's Cross. At Paul's Cross, newly restored by the bishop, the
younger Kempe, and while the boy king was a prisoner in the palace
hard by, that worthless sycophant, Dr. Ralph Shaw, the preacher (May
19, 1483), took for his text, "The multiplying brood of the ungodly
shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay
any fast foundations" (Wisdom, iv. 3). His sermon went to prove to the
citizens that Richard was the only, or at least the senior, legitimate
member of the royal family. Richard was present to hear his own mother
dishonoured; and the preacher, pointing dramatically to him, argued
that, unlike his three elder brothers, he resembled the late Duke of
York. But the people showed no sympathy, would not cry "Long live King
Richard," and dispersed, fearing the worst for the poor lad immured in
the bishop's palace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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