"This," says Brayley, on the authority of Fox's Martyrology, "was the scene of at least one 'foul and midnight murder,' perpetrated in 1514, on a respectable citizen, named Richard Hunne, by Dr. Horsey, chancellor of the diocese, with the assistance of a bell-ringer, and afterwards defended by the Bishop Fitz-James and the whole body of prelates, who protected the murderers from punishment, lest the clergy should become amenable to civil jurisdiction. Though the villains, through this interference, escaped without corporal suffering, the King ordered them to pay 1,500_l._ to the children of the deceased, in restitution of what he himself styles the 'cruel murder.'"[41]
The clergy, with almost incredible audacity, afterwards commenced a process against the dead body of Hunne for heresy; and, having obtained its condemnation, they actually burned it in Smithfield. The Lollards' Tower continued to be used as a prison for heretics for some time after the Reformation. Stow tells us that he recollected one Peter Burchet, a gentleman of the Middle Temple, being committed to this prison, on suspicion of holding certain erroneous opinions, in 1573. This, however, is, we believe, the last case of the kind that is recorded.
It remains to say a word of St. Paul's School, founded, as we have already mentioned, by Dean Colet, and destined to become the most illustrious of all the buildings on the spot, in giving education to Milton. We have dwelt more upon the localities of St. Paul's Churchyard than it is our intention to do on others. The dignity of the birth-place of the metropolis beguiled us; and the events recorded to have taken place in it are of real interest. Milton was not the only person of celebrity educated at this school. Bentley, his critic, was probably induced by the like circumstance to turn his unfortunate attention to the poet's epic in after life, and make those gratuitous massacres of the text, which give a profound scholar the air of the most presumptuous of coxcombs. Here also Camden received part of his education; and here were brought up, Leland, his brother antiquary, the Gales (Charles, Roger, and Samuel), all celebrated antiquaries; Sir Anthony Denny, the only man who had the courage and honesty to tell Henry the Eighth that he was dying; Halley, the astronomer; Bishop Cumberland, the great grandfather of the dramatist; Pepys, who has lately obtained so curious a celebrity, as an annalist of the court of Charles the Second; and last, not least, one in whom a learned education would be as little looked for as in Pepys, if we are to trust the stories of the times, to wit, John Duke of Marlborough. Barnes was laughed at for dedicating his _Anacreon_ to the duke, as one to whom Greek was unheard of; and it has been related as a slur on the great general (though assuredly it is not so), that having alluded on some occasion to a passage in history, and being asked where he found it, he confessed that his authority was the only historian he was acquainted with, namely, William Shakspeare.