HISTORY. The tradition that a Roman temple dedicated to Diana stood on the commanding site now occupied by St. Paul's was repudiated by Wren, but it is still a matter of controversy. There is no record of a Christian church on the site until the 7th century, when a church is said to have been founded here by Bishop Mellitus and endowed by Ethelbert, King of Kent, part of the endowment being the manor of Tillingham, in Essex, which still belongs to the cathedral. This church was burned down in 1087 and its Norman successor was partly destroyed by fire in 1136 but immediately restored. In the 18th century, the steeple was rebuilt and the choir was extended eastwards, incorporating the site of the old church of St. Faith, whose congregation was thenceforth permitted to worship in the crypt beneath the new choir. At this date the cathedral was surrounded by a wall with gates, and on the south side were a cloister and a small chapter-house, a few traces of which are still to be seen. This was the noble church of Old St. Paul's, in which John Wycliffe was tried for heresy in 1377 and Tyndale's New Testament was publicly burned in 1527. It was the longest cathedral in England (600 feet). The central tower was surmounted by a steeple, which, at the lowest estimate, was 460 feet high (50 feet higher than Salisbury spire) but was destroyed by lightning in 1561 and never re-erected. The south-west tower was the original Lollards' Tower; it was adjoined on the south-east by the small church of St. Gregory, which really formed part of the cathedral. For a long period the church was sadly neglected, but restorations were begun under Charles I. Inigo Jones added a classic portico to the west front, one of his objects being to divert from the church the secular rabble that for over a century had used the middle aisle of the nave ('Paul's Walk') as a place of business and intrigue. Interrupted by the Civil War, the work was resumed after the Restoration, but in 1666 the cathedral was practically burned down in the Great Fire. Sir Christopher Wren planned an entirely new cathedral; building was begun in 1675; the first service was held in the choir in 1697; and the last stone was placed in position in 1710. Between 1666 and 1723 the amount spent on the cathedral was about �748,000, most of which was raised by a tax on sea-borne coal entering London, for which reason the Lord Mayor was appointed a trustee of the church along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. St. Paul's is the only English cathedral partly under the jurisdiction of a layman. Wren's original ground-plan, designed in the form of a Greek cross, was modified at the demand of the court party, who looked forward to the restoration of the old religion, for the ceremonies of which a long nave and side-chapels were required. His first scheme moreover contemplated a much lighter dome than the present one, which weighs 32,000 tons; and in 1913 a very necessary strengthening of the supporting piers was begun. About ten years later an appeal for funds for a still more drastic restoration of the fabric was speedily met by a world-wide subscription of over �250,000; and in April 1925 the entire east end of the church was screened off from the nave by a lofty partition and surrendered to the restorers.
Of the innumerable National Services of which St. Paul's has been the scene, two of the most recent and most significant are the Service of Consecration on April 20th, 1917, marking the entrance of the United States into the Great War: and the National Thanksgiving Service on July 6th, 1919.
