Old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, by Wenceslas Hollar 1647.

After converting from Catholicism to Anglicanism under pressure from King James I, in 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading (and well-paid) position in the Church of England and one he held until his death in 1631. St. Paul's was exceptionally massive, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, and its vast interior became a major social and cultural centre in Elizabethan London. The associated buildings around it were secularized at the Reformation and many were occupied by printers and publishers of authors such as Shakespeare Courtesy of the Yorck Project, under GNU Free Document License