Today (Thursday October 17th 2013) I
attended the 371st annual “Lion Sermon” in the church of St
Katharine Cree on Leadenhall Street. It was by Shami Chakrabarti, the Director
of Liberty, and on the subject of, and I paraphrase, “Freedom, and what it means in the
metaphorical Lion’s Den of the modern world”.
Freedom, and the Human Rights of Dignity, Equality and
Fairness (“and the greatest of these is Equality”). Admirable sentiments, especially resonant in a
church that at the time of the Civil War in the 1640s stood for the supposed
“divine” rights of the king over those of the commoner.
The sermons
have been given in the church on the
nearest Thursday to 16th October every year since 1643, in
remembrance of the Merchant Adventurer (of the Levant Company) and later Lord
Mayor of London Sir John Gayer being spared by a lion in Syria on that day.
The church
itself was originally built in the grounds of Holy Trinity Priory sometime
before 1291 (being mentioned in the Taxatio
Ecclesiastica of Pope Nicholas IV), and possibly around 1280, and rebuilt
between 1500-4, in the Late Gothic
style, and again between 1628-31, this time in a style transitional between
Late Gothic and Neo-Classical. It was undamaged by the Great Fire of
1666, although later required to be restored in 1878-9, and again, after being damaged by
bombing in the Blitz of the Second World War, in 1956-62.
The interior contains some Late Gothic elements, such as the east
window, in the form of an elaborately stylised Katharine Wheel, and the
intricately ribbed ceiling; and some Neo-Classical ones, such as the Corinthian
columns in the nave. It also contains
monuments to Sir Nicholas Throkmorton (d. 1570) as well as to Sir
John
Gayer (d. 1649). The church was consecrated in 1631 by Archbishop Laud, who
went on to be executed in 1645 for his close association with the then-king, Charles
I, and for his persecution of Puritans. The Father Smith organ, once played by
Purcell and Handel, dates to 1686.
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