London - Edward Rutherfurd [426]
But the next morning when O Be Joyful arrived at work, a shock awaited him. They had brought in the drawings for the roof.
“He’s putting that on a church?” he cried. He was not the only workman to gaze at the drawings in horror. For over the central crossing Wren had designed a huge drum, ringed with columns; and over that, rising magnificently into the sky, an august and mighty dome. “He cannot!” the carver protested.
No one there could possibly have missed its significance. No church in England had ever been disgraced with such a thing. From the shape of the dome, the Corinthian columns – every detail had suddenly fallen into place – this was clearly, if not a copy, then the very brother of that infamous dome that hung over what every Puritan knew was the great house of iniquity itself. “Dear Lord!” he cried. “It’s just like St Peter’s – at the Vatican. It’s the church of Rome.” And, in terror, he ran out of the workshop.
“The form of the building does not affect the religion,” Meredith assured him an hour later, after the terrified carver had come to his house. “The Catholics themselves,” he pointed out, “worship in churches of every possible shape. Wren himself,” he added encouragingly, “is the son of an Anglican clergyman. He’s no papist.” But still, he could see, O Be Joyful was unconvinced.
“Wren may be all you say,” he cried. “But what about the king?” And that, Meredith thought, was not so easy.
When Charles II had been restored to England, it had all seemed straightforward. The Church would be Anglican – the Church of his father and grandfather, the compromise of good Queen Bess. Puritans might not like it, but popery was at least banned. And that, for better or worse, was that.
Or was it? The Stuart court had always had Catholic overtones, but since being exiled during the Commonwealth, it had become still more so. The king’s wife was Catholic, so was his sister in France, so were many of his friends. Charles II, it was true, had always played his Anglican role staunchly. Yet as the years went by, it seemed to many that he was on rather too friendly terms with his kinsman Louis XIV, the most Catholic king of France. When they had joined together recently to try to crush England’s trading rivals, the Protestant Dutch under William of Orange, the English Parliament had grown restive.
“Weaken the Dutch: yes. They’re our rivals. But don’t destroy them. They are also fellow Protestants. And we don’t want all the seaboard opposite us in the hands of the Catholics, do we?” As Charles’s friendship with Louis continued, Parliament had begun to wonder. And to make sure of their ground they had suddenly sprung a new measure on the king. The Test Act of 1673 demanded that anyone holding public office must not only be Anglican, but must deny the miracle of the Roman Catholic Mass under oath. No conscientious Catholic could do that. They waited to see what would happen. And two months later, the Duke of York, the king’s own brother, resigned as Lord High Admiral. He was a secret Catholic.
James was a decent, conscientious man. Few disliked him; most remembered his role in the Great Fire. All agreed that he had acted honourably now, but the shock was severe. Though Charles II had, as far as was known, some thirteen bastard children, none of his legitimate babies by the queen had so far lived. James might, therefore, be next in line. Charles, fortunately, seemed in rude good health. Perhaps he’d outlive his brother. And James’s own two daughters were declared to be Protestant. It was not a crisis. Royalists like Sir Julius Ducket rallied round to assure everyone that the king was sound, the English Church secure. “But is it?” O Be Joyful now asked Meredith.
“It is. I promise you,” the clergyman said.
Sadly, with doubt in his heart, O Be Joyful had returned to work. More than once he had asked Gibbons to give him other tasks, but his work was too good to be spared. Slowly he carved the columns and capitals round the great dome, sadly he put the finishing touches, from a ladder,