The continuing presence of the shrine of the 7th century bishop Saint Erkenwald made the cathedral a site of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.

During the Reformation, the open-air pulpit in the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, became the place for radical evangelical preaching and Protestant bookselling.

[8][9] Bishop Maurice oversaw preparations, although it was primarily under his successor, Richard de Beaumis, that construction work fully commenced.

Beaumis was assisted by King Henry I, who gave the bishop stone and asked that all material brought up the River Fleet for the cathedral should be free from toll.

The parish later moved to the Jesus chapel during the reign of Edward VI and was merged with St Augustine Watling Street after the 1666 fire.

"[16] According to the architectural historian John Harvey, the octagonal chapter house, built about 1332 by William de Ramsey, was the earliest example of Perpendicular Gothic.

[18] This is confirmed by Alec Clifton-Taylor, who notes that the chapter house and St Stephen's Chapel at the medieval Westminster Palace predate the early Perpendicular work at Gloucester Cathedral by several years.

[22] The alliterative Middle English poem St Erkenwald (sometimes attributed to the 14th-century "Pearl Poet") begins with a description of the construction of the cathedral, referring to the building as the "New Werke".

[28] Later that year, William Fitz Osbern gave a speech against the oppression of the poor at Paul's Cross and incited a riot which saw the cathedral invaded, halted by a plea from Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury.

[33] The first historical reference to the nave, "Paul's walk", being used as a marketplace and general meeting area is recorded during the 1381–1404 tenure of Bishop Braybrooke.

Now in regard of the universal there happened little that did not first or last arrive here ... And those news-mongers, as they called them, did not only take the boldness to weigh the public but most intrinsic actions of the state, which some courtier or other did betray to this society.

In his play Englishmen for my Money, William Haughton (d. 1605) described Paul's walk as a kind of "open house" filled with a "great store of company that do nothing but go up and down, and go up and down, and make a grumbling together".

[41][42] In his Microcosmographie (1628), a series of satirical portraits of contemporary England, John Earle (1601–1665), described it thus: [Paul's walk] is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain.

Many of these former religious sites in St Paul's Churchyard, having been seized by the crown, were sold as shops and rental properties, especially to printers and booksellers, such as Thomas Adams, who were often Protestants.

In 1554, in an attempt to end inappropriate practices taking place in the nave, the Lord Mayor decreed that the church should return to its original purpose as a religious building, issuing a writ stating that the selling of horses, beer and "other gross wares" was "to the great dishonour and displeasure of Almighty God, and the great grief also and offence of all good and well-disposed persons".

[49] In 1753, David Henry, a writer for The Gentleman's Magazine, revived a rumour in his Historical description of St Paul's Cathedral, writing that a plumber had "confessed on his death bed" that he had "left a pan of coals and other fuel in the tower when he went to dinner.

[49] Whatever the cause, the subsequent conflagration was hot enough to melt the cathedral's bells and the lead covering the wooden spire "poured down like lava upon the roof", destroying it.

[51] Queen Elizabeth I contributed £1,000 in gold towards the cost of repairs as well as timber from the royal estate[52] and the Bishop of London Edmund Grindal gave £1200, although the spire was never rebuilt.

The poet Henry Farley records the king comparing himself to the building at the commencement of the work in 1621: "I have had more sweeping, brushing and cleaning than in forty years before.

"[54] In addition to cleaning and rebuilding parts of the Gothic structure, Jones added a classical-style portico to the cathedral's west front in the 1630s, which William Benham notes was "altogether incongruous with the old building ...

It was no doubt fortunate that Inigo Jones confined his work at St Paul's to some very poor additions to the transepts, and to a portico, very magnificent in its way, at the west end.

"[55] Work stopped during the English Civil War, and there was much defacement and mistreatment of the building by Parliamentarian forces during which old documents and charters were dispersed and destroyed, and the nave used as a stable for cavalry horses.

[58] Dugdale embarked on his project due to discovering hampers full of decaying 14th and 15th century documents from the cathedral's early archives.

[59][60] In his book's dedicatory epistle, he wrote: ... so great was your foresight of what we have since by wofull experience seen and felt, and specially in the Church, (through the Presbyterian contagion, which then began violently to breake out) that you often and earnestly incited me to a speedy view of what Monuments I could, especially in the principall Churches of this Realme; to the end, that by Inke and paper, the Shadows of them, with their Inscriptions might be preserved for posteritie, forasmuch as the things themselves were so neer unto ruine.

[63] He wrote in his 1666 Of the Surveyor's Design for repairing the old ruinous structure of St Paul's: It must be concluded that the Tower from Top to Bottom and the adjacent parts are such a heap of deformaties that no Judicious Architect will think it corrigible by any Expense that can be laid out upon new dressing it.

[64] This, he reasoned, would prevent the need for extensive scaffolding and would not upset Londoners ("Unbelievers") by demolishing a familiar landmark without being able to see its "hopeful Successor rise in its stead.

"[65] The matter was still under discussion when the restoration work on St Paul's finally began in the 1660s but soon after being sheathed in wooden scaffolding, the building was completely gutted in the Great Fire of London of 1666.

[73] Wren's approved "Warrant design" sought to reconcile the Gothic with his "better manner of architecture", featuring a portico influenced by Inigo Jones' addition to the old cathedral.

[73] However, Wren received permission from the king to make "ornamental changes" to the submitted design, and over the course of the construction made significant alterations, including the addition of the famous dome.

"[74] Meanwhile, others were less approving, noting its similarity to St Peter's Basilica in Rome: "There was an air of Popery about the gilded capitals, the heavy arches ...