St George's Church, Bloomsbury
I managed to gain entry to St George’s Church at Bloomsbury this month. I have often passed it, but it has been closed or some event was taking place within. The caretaker courteously advised me of when was best to call. The inside was no disappointment, for it was beautifully designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in the latest, classical fashion. Unlike medieval churches, classical ones are light and airy, their columns a feature of beauty rather than those thick pillars impeding one’s vision.
Unusually, the steeple is stepped, and modelled on an ancient description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Wonders of the ancient world. Standing atop it, however, is not Mausolus and Artemisia, but King George I, dressed as a Roman emperor. Towards the spire’s bottom several lions and unicorns writhe and wrestle, symbolising the contemporary tensions between England and Scotland, as the Catholic Old Pretender attempted to wrest the crown from the Hanoverian Protestant.
As Horace Walpole remarked:
When Henry VIII left the Pope in the lurch,
The Protestants made him the head of the church,
But George's good subjects, the Bloomsbury people
Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple.
Much as I am glad of the Protestant Succession and the Hanoverians’ legacy, as well as the generally successful relationship between the lion and the unicorn, it is King Jesus who heads His church, not some earthly potentate or princeling. This we all agree with, until our Britannic Caesar makes more Covid-era-style demands in the next years and decades. Let us beware of governmental overreach; let us beware of Caesar's in-built desire for usurpation.
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