Gossip at Paul’s Walking Author Dominic Carlone Markup Editor Kate LeBere Data Manager Tye Landels Junior Programmer Joey Takeda Programmer Martin Holmes Associate Project Director Kim McLean-Fiander Project Director Janelle Jenstad The Map of Early Modern Londonhttp://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/includes.xmlVictoria, BC, Canada
Department of English P.O.Box 3070 STNC CSC University of Victoria Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3W1
2016University of Victoria978-1-55058-519-3 Janelle Jenstad london@uvic.ca

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Though it was still a functioning church, St. Paul’s was also a centre of trade and socializing for early modern Londoners. This phenomenon, known as Paul’s-walking, made Paul’s the centre for the dissemination of news, true or false, in early modern London.

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 Updated legacy encoding. Standardized respStmts for JENS1, MCFI1, and HOLM3 and added TAKE1 as Junior Programmer. Added XInclude for listPrefixDef in the header. Added global publicationStmt through XInclude. Eliminated superfluous catRef elements from the header. Put change elements inside revisionDesc into the correct (latest first) order. Added profileDesc containing document type information expressed in catRef elements. Converted @rend to @style, through XSLT transformation. Transformed existing byline elements into a respStmt element in the header. Left byline elements in place for the moment. Added front element with docTitle as part of a normalization process. This will be used as the definitive page title on rendering. Added Dominic Carlone’s XML:id. Corrected quotation to match ISE text of Richard the Third (modern) and added link to ISE page. Transferred content from original location, STPA2.xml. Gossip at Paul’s Walking
This is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings, Which in a set hand fairly is engrossed That it may be this day read over in Paul’s. And mark how well the sequel hangs together[.] Shakespeare, Richard III 3.6.1–4

Richard III is a play about rumour and gossip. The events depicted in the play took place over a hundred years before Shakespeare wrote about them. Even in 1483, such a proclamation could reasonably have been expected to be made at St. Paul’s. However, this mention would have rung with contemporary significance in the ears of Shakespeare’s audience members, for, in Elizabethan and early Stuart London, the great temple of rumour and gossip was St. Paul’s.

Though it was still a functioning church, St. Paul’s was also a centre of trade and socializing for early modern Londoners. Francis Osborne gives the following account of a phenomenon known as Paul’s-walking: It was the fashion of those times, and did so continue till these for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions not merely mechanic, to meet in Paul’s Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six, during which times some discoursed on business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not first or last arrive here And those news-mongers, as they called them, did not only take the boldness to weigh the public but most intrinsic actions of the state, which some courtier or other did betray to this society. qtd. in Thomson 1

This is the atmosphere in which John Chamberlain found the material for his famous Letters. Chamberlain lived in the vicinity of Paul’s and spent a great deal of his time at Paul’s-walking taking in the hot gossip of the day, which was, thankfully, preserved for us in his letters.

The din and clamor of Paul’s secular uses was a serious annoyance to those who still wanted to use the church as a church. Pilkington gives a testimony of the state of Paul’s in 1561, with a perspective less tolerant than Osborne’s: the south alley for usury and poperey, the north for sorcery, and the horse fair in the midst for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawlings, murders, conspiracies, and the font for ordinary payments of money, are so well known to all men as the beggar knows his dish. qtd. in Douglas-Irvine 417

We must take such an account with a grain of salt, but there is an essential truth conveyed in it; the combination of sacred and secular at St. Paul’s was a marriage made in hell. In the time of John Donne’s deanship, visitors met to exchange gossip at Paul’s, and even brought their children to play there. Combined with the noise of tradespeople, this social activity made mass in the adjacent choir almost impossible (Bald 403).

For better or for worse, Paul’s was the centre for the dissemination of news, true or false, in early modern London. In all likelihood, its vast throngs of tradespeople and gossipers grossly outnumbered its parishioners on any given day. Shakespeare’s Richard III, a master of spinning lies, knew that the place to transform rumour into truth was Paul’s. An inveterate gossip like Chamberlain was in heaven there, but a simple churchgoer was in hell.