St. Paul's was founded in 604 as the episcopal seat it has remained; its early foundation helped make it an integral part of the city and city life, rather than the imposition of a rival authority as was the case with cathedral-priory foundations in some other English cities (although this did not prevent jurisdictional disputes between city and chapter). Londoners' pride in St. Pauls was reflected in his figure being placed on the common seal of the city. The structure that existed in the Late Middle Ages was even more of a landmark than the present building, with a spire considerably higher than the current dome; it was the largest church in England, and even few continental cathedrals surpassed it. In that period the cathedral was surrounded by a sizable wall-enclosed precinct that consumed a large chunk of the western end of the city; the roads leading west out of the city had to circumvent this obstacle.

The precinct was a lively place. The bishop had his palace there, the canons and cathedral officials their residences; St. Paul's brewery and bakery, nearby, furnished bread for that community. The cathedral drew the citizenry to services, particularly on important holy days, and there were even two parish churches incorporated within the precinct. St. Paul's was a sanctuary and so among those it attracted were undesirables The folkmoot had its traditional meeting-place in the northeast corner of the precinct. Although there were few such gatherings in the Late Middle Ages, that area attracted congregations who came to listen to sermons or public proclamations delivered from St. Paul's Cross, near the folkmoot site, and the churchyard was a common assembly point for crowds. Because of the large area consumed by the precinct, it was inevitably a thoroughfare for the citizens, whether on daily business or taking part in civic parades. Men of trade and commerce met within the precinct, and even the cathedral itself, to make business deals; by the sixteenth century it had become notorious for this.

Bishop Braybroke's complaint and injunction is indicative of the alarm that the resident religious community was feeling because of the familiarity with which the citizens treated St. Paul's. From his perspective, things were getting out of hand. His was the earliest known of a series of efforts to prevent the cathedral precinct from being used as a place for inappropriate activities; the efforts continued up to the seventeenth century. From another perspective the abuses are indicative of the importance of churches in the everyday life of medieval townspeople.

As another instance of Bishop Braybroke's battle against contempt for the Church, in 1391 he sent instructions to the parish priests of London to warn barbers and scriveners among their parishioners not to conduct business on Sundays or religious festivals, but to abstain from work and attend mass instead. He attributed this disregard of holy days as due to sloth and greed. Yet the underlying concern was not simply with matters of immorality jeopardizing the souls of the offenders, but with the fear that Sunday opening of shops would spread to other crafts. The scriveners, who recorded a copy of the bishop's instructions in their company records, blamed the problem on outsiders practicing the craft without being subject to control of the company wardens, and used the concerns of the Church as a lever to try to assert more influence over practitioners, including a prohibition of Sunday work. Despite this, in February 1396 five scriveners were accused before the wardens of opening their shops, hanging outside the signs of their trade, and doing business on holy days. They and other scriveners of like mind put up an opposition to the wardens, who however appealed to the city authorities and had a ringleader thrown in gaol.