St Paul's Cross
Paul's Cross (alternative spellings – "Powles Crosse") was a preaching cross and open-air pulpit in St Paul's Churchyard, the grounds of Old St Paul's Cathedral, City of London. It was the most important public pulpit in Tudor and early Stuart England, and many of the most important statements on the political and religious changes brought by the Reformation were made public from here. The pulpit stood in 'the Cross yard', the open space on the north-east side of St Paul's Churchyard, adjacent to the row of buildings that would become the home of London's publishing and book-selling trade.[1]
A monumental memorial column called "Paul's Cross" with a golden statue of St Paul stands in this area of the Cathedral precinct since the early 20th century, but it is not on the exact spot where Paul's Cross stood. A stone carved with the words 'Here stood Paul's Cross' marks the actual location of the pulpit as it stood from 1449 until 1635, when it was taken down during Inigo Jones' renovation work.
History[edit]
Pre-15th century[edit]
The eastern half of the Cross churchyard had been controlled by the Corporation in the Middle Ages: it was the site of the London 'folkmoot' (or general assembly of the people).[2] The earliest folkmoot known to be held here was by John Mansell, a king's justice, on St Paul's Day (29 June) in 1236, to announce that Henry III wished London to be well-governed and its liberties guarded. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the King attended the next such meeting we know of, in 1259, at which Londoners came to swear their allegiance to the latter and to his heirs (though under duress, as a royal army was holding the city gates at this time). They also gathered here later to swear allegiance to Henry's opponent Simon de Montfort.
A Richard Walker from Worcester, a chaplain, pleaded guilty to sorcery charges here in c.1422 but, after forswearing such practices and being arraigned by the Bishop of Llandaff (then John de la Zouche), he was marched to Cheapside with his two magic books open upon him, where the books were burnt and he was freed without any other punishment. Reginald Pecock, Bishop of St Asaph, attacked Lollardy from this cross in 1447 but himself did public penance there in 1457 (by which time he was Bishop of Chichester) before a mob of 20,000 and the Archbishop of Canterbury, throwing various examples of his own heretical writings into a fire. Thomas Netter also preached against Lollardy here.
Jane Shore, mistress of King Edward IV was brought before the cross in 1483 and divested "of all her splendour".
On Sunday 22 June 1483, a Cambridge Doctor of Theology, Ralph Shaa, was commissioned to preach a sermon from St Paul's Cross, in which he set forth Richard, Duke of Gloucester's claim to be King of England. This was a key stage in the process of Richard III usurping the throne of his nephew Edward V, one of the Princes in the Tower.[3]
15th century[edit]
Bishop Thomas Kempe rebuilt the cross in 1449 in grand architectural form, as an open-air pulpit of mostly timber with room for three or four inside it, set on stone steps with a lead-covered roof and an ambulatory around it.[4] This ambulatory would be closed in with a low wall in the early seventeenth-century. In all, the pulpit building formed an octagon about thirty-seven feet in diameter.[5]