A little time afterwards, Boniface determined to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, and call upon the Bishop of London for his tithes or first-fruits. He may have been acting quite within his rights to do this: I do not know; but the citizens, at any rate, made up their minds that, if he came with his demands to their Cathedral Church, he would find out what they thought of him. So the big bell was rung, and they gathered round the Cross in their thousands. Archbishop Boniface heard of this in his Palace at Lambeth, and, although he would not be turned from his purpose, he put on a suit of armour under his robes before he ventured near the Cathedral. When he arrived there, he found, to his rage, that the citizens had closed the gates against him, and instead of being awed by his angry remonstrances, they jeered and hooted at him, and even threatened him with violence, so that at last he thought it wise to go home. But worse was to follow. Now that an Italian Archbishop sat on the throne of Canterbury, a great many Italian priests came over, and were given the best livings in the Church. Their manners were no better than those of their countryman, and the citizens became so enraged at the behaviour of these foreigners, and at the unjust way in which the Pope had forced them upon them, that they determined that not one of them should set foot in the church that they looked on as especially their own. And they were in such deadly earnest that it actually came about that, when two of these priests attempted to enter the precincts one day, the people crowded into the churchyard and killed them on the spot. After this they rushed to Lambeth, and besieged the Palace there, uttering such threats that Boniface, the ‘Handsome Archbishop’, as they called him, was glad to escape as best he could, and fly abroad for safety. He never came back, and we can fancy that the Pope was more careful in future whom he sent to England, for the citizens of London had taught him a lesson, and shown him that he could not lord it over them with impunity. Just one more story about these old days, and then we must come to the St. Paul’s that we know. It was in the reign of King Edward III., and the Church of England had lost its first purity, and grown rich and corrupt. Many of the Bishops and clergy had forgotten what they had been made ministers of God for, and, instead of thinking about the needs of their people, they thought only of how much wealth they could heap up for themselves, and how luxuriously they could live.