To the north-east of the cathedral stood Paul’s Cross, the out-door pulpit whence many notable sermons were preached. It is described by Stowe. “About the middest of this Churchyard is a pulpit-crosse of timber, mounted upon steps of stone, and covered with Lead, in which are Sermons preached by learned Divines, every Sunday in the fore-noone. The very antiquity of which Crosse is to me unknowne.” The earliest scene he records as taking place at this “crosse,” was when Henry III., in 1259, commanded the Mayor to cause “every stripling of twelve years of age and upward to assemble there,” to swear “to be true to the King and his heires, Kings of England.” In later times, the most distinguished preachers of the day were summoned to preach before the Court and the Mayor, Aldermen and citizens, and the political significance of such harangues may well be imagined. It was here Papal Bulls were promulgated; here Tyndal’s translation of the New Testament was publicly burnt; here Queen Elizabeth listened to a sermon of thanksgiving on the defeat of the Armada--only to mention a few of the associations that cling round the spot, which, until within the last fifty years, was marked by an old elm tree which kept its memory green. Now it is treated with scant respect. There is, indeed, a little wooden notice-board, like a giant flower-label, stuck into the ground by an iron support, which records the fact that here stood Paul’s Cross, destroyed by the Fire of 1666. The notice is not so large or conspicuous as the one a few feet from it, beseeching the kindly friends of the pigeons not to feed them on the flower-beds! It is to be hoped that before long the bequest of £5000 of the late H. C. Richards, for the re-erection of the Cross, may be embodied in some visible form. What a picture such recollections call up!--the excited crowds with all the colour of Tudor costumes, the eager, fanatical faces of the “defenders of the Faith,” the sad and despondent faces of the intensely serious Reformers, as they see the blue smoke curl upwards, and the flames consume the sacred volumes.