Canterbury, St. Paul's was burnt, and the same year rebuilt. Both before and after this London suffered from the ravages of the Danes.

The Primate Elfege, the victim of a drunken rabble, was buried at St. Paul's (1014), as was Ethelred the Unready (1017), and nearly fifty years later Edward the outlaw, the representative of the house of Cerdic and of Alfred.

William the Norman, bishop (1051-1075) in spite of the Confessor and his nominee the Sparrowhawk, occupied the see long enough to greet his countrymen on taking possession; and just before his death would be present at the great council held in his cathedral presided over by Lanfranc. Norman though he was, he was in touch with the citizens around his church, and earned their enduring gratitude and friendship by obtaining a fresh grant of their privileges, as he did for the cathedral. "I will," said the Conqueror, "the said church to be free in all respects, as I trust my own soul to be at the Judgment Day."

The Normans.—Maurice, of course a Norman, had been only recently elected bishop in the room of Huge de Orivalle, when the tenth century church of Bishop Elfstan was destroyed in a fire that consumed the greater part of the City (1086 or 1087).

He set to work to build another on a larger scale and after the approved Anglo-Norman method. Fresh ground was procured, and houses pulled down for the enlargement of church and churchyard. "Barges," says Mr. J.R. Green, "came up the river with stone from Caen for the great arches that moved the popular wonder, while street and lane were being levelled to make space for the famous churchyard of St. Paul's." Maurice died before the work was anything like finished, but Richard de Belmeis, a most munificent prelate, devoted his episcopal revenues for the purpose.

An earthquake in the second year of Rufus, followed two years later by a destructive November storm, impeded the progress, but in spite of all drawbacks and hindrances, builders and workmen toiled on, Henry I. exempting the stone from toll. "Such is the stateliness of its beauty," said William of Malmesbury, "that it is worthy of being numbered amongst the most famous of buildings; such the extent of the crypt, of such capacity the upper structure, that it seems sufficient to contain a multitude of people." It was the variation of an inch or two in the regularity of the arching of Maurice's new nave that afterwards sorely vexed Wren.

We have now come to a time when Domesday gives us some interesting information. A commencement had been made of endowing separate stalls. Certain of the estates were parcelled out in this way, partly because they may have been safer from alienation, partly that the canons might be responsible, if necessary, for the services of religion in the manors and townships in which their endowments, technically known afterwards as corpses, were situated. In Domesday, St. Pancras, Rugmere (in St. Pancras), and Twyford, in Willesden, appear, and may fairly be set down as the three original prebends, although the term "prebend" does not yet appear, neither do the distinctive names of the stalls. To these three some would add Consumpta-per-Mare in the Essex Walton, so called because the glebe was consumed by the encroachments of the sea. We will dismiss this obscure subject by anticipating a little, and stating that, what with parts of the old endowments and what with additions, by the end of the twelfth century the thirty prebends were complete. The names and inscriptions will be found in the account of the interior of the present Choir.

The two Caddingtons were a gift in Bedfordshire in the diocese of Lincoln; the remaining twenty-eight were in Middlesex and Essex. The corporate property of the Chapter by the same date must have reached 24,000 acres.[7]

The Conquest brought other changes in its train. Originally the bishop was head of the Chapter, and the canons his assistants. But, beginning not later than with Maurice, who held high office under the Crown, the bishops became more and more immersed in politics, and found no time to preside, while the Chapter would naturally raise no objection to greater independence. What our French neighbours now call a doyen, a senior from among the canons, took the bishop's vacant place, and became dean.

John de Appleby, so late as 1364, dean by virtue of papal proviso, was only allowed to summon the Chapter, and could not preside until he had obtained a prebend by exchange. A hundred and fifty years later Colet was a prebendary. I find no traces of archdeacons—London, Essex, Middlesex, or Colchester—prior to the Conquest, but these eyes of the bishop soon appear afterwards; and the Chanter becomes Precentor; the Sacrist, or keeper of the plate, vestments, and other valuables, becomes Treasurer; and the Master of the Schools, Chancellor. For the sake of convenience looking forward a little, these changes, begun in Norman times, were completed not long after.

The Plantagenets.—As in the tenth century and as in the eleventh, that evil demon Fire for a third time, "three days before the Christmas of 1136," partially destroyed, or at least seriously injured, St. Paul's, during a conflagration which reached from London Bridge to beyond the Fleet. In rebuilding, the then method was to throw a coating of the more refined Romanesque of the day over the older work;[8] and this is how I explain an obscure passage in Pepys—"It is pretty here to see how the late church was but a case wrought over the old church; for you may see the very old pillars standing whole within the wall of this."[9] The old pillars of the nave were restored, and furnished with graceful engaged columns, and vaulting shafts rising from the ground. As the choir was afterwards superseded by another, we cannot tell what was done to it.

We have now come to a time when it is impossible even to catalogue the numerous stirring events which the cathedral witnessed. William Fitzosbert the Longbeard, for thundering forth at Paul's Cross—where the citizens' folk-mote was wont to be held—against tyranny and corruption in high quarters, suffered the extreme penalty. But people in a higher position were soon to do the same. When John and Innocent formed their strange alliance against the national liberties, it was at St. Paul's that Stephen Langton produced the Charter of Henry I. Here John publicly handed over his kingdom to the Pope, and received it back as a vassal. Here came the counterblast, when Louis, son of King Philip II. of France, received the kingdom from the assembled magnates. After the death of John and Innocent the papal claims were upheld; and at a council in 1232, at which the papal legate presided, he took for his text, "In the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts."[10] The four beasts were not the four Evangelists, but four opposition prelates, including the two primates and the Bishop of London, Roger the Black. It was the great bell of St. Paul's which in the days of Simon de Montfort summoned the citizens to rise against their king.

Old St. Paul's completed.—Whilst