Then a perfect tempest arose. Some of the crowd rushed into the church, declaring that they would murder the Duke; others went off to his Palace in the Strand, determined to break into it and pillage it, in order to punish him for his insolence. And they were in such deadly earnest that they would have carried out both threats had not Bishop Courtenay himself interfered, and saved his enemy from their violence. Just before the Reformation the great church was at the very height of its glory--from an outward point of view, at least. We read that there were no less than one hundred and thirty clergy who were supposed to minister there, and that there were so many people connected with it--schoolmasters, schoolboys, singing-men, choir-boys, bedesmen, bookbinders, sextons, gardeners, bell-ringers, etc.--that employment must have been given to more than a thousand people. It all seems very grand and glorious; but if we read further, we find that it had grown just like the Temple in our Lord’s time: there was a great deal of outward magnificence, and yet the very purpose that the church had been built for--the Service and Worship of God, was in danger of being forgotten. Instead of being kept as God’s house, entirely for His Worship, we find that the great nave was the fashionable meeting-place of the good folk of London, and they used it as we should use a promenade to-day. Francis Osborne, an old historian, writes: ‘It was the fashion in those days ... for the principal Gentry, Lords and Courtiers, and men of all professions, to meet in S. Paul’s by eleven of the clock ... and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three till six, during which time some discoursed of business, and others of news.’ Then came the Reformation; and, as always happens when a great change like that is taking place, people were so zealous to sweep away all the abuses that had crept in, that they ‘lost their heads,’ as we say, and did many wrong and unseemly things. It was right and needful that the Church should be reformed; but it was not right nor needful that all the splendid carving, and decorated stonework, and beautifully illuminated books, and gold and silver altar vessels, which had been given for the Service of God by pious men and women, should be broken by hammers, or burned, or carried away and melted down, to fill the pockets of worthless noblemen. It was right that the nave should no longer be the place of resort for all the fashionable loungers in the city; but it did not improve matters when the same nave was turned into cavalry barracks for Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers, and the rough men were allowed to play games and behave in any way that they liked in the church.