\ Lambeth Palace All nights reserved Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/lambethpalaceitsOOcave Lambeth Palace And its Associations BY J. CAVE-BROWNE, M.A, VICAR OF DETLING, KENT; AND FOR MANY YEARS CURATE OF THE PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY, LAMBETH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY , THE LATE ARCHBISHOP TAIT WITH ILLUSTRATIONS SECOND EDITION TO WHICH IS ADDED MEDIEVAL LIFE AMONG THE OLD PALACES OF THE PRIMACY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXIII All Rights reserved TO M R S T A I T, WHOSE KINDLY SUGGESTION FIRST GAVE FORM TO A LONG-CHERISHED WISH, AND WHOSE ENCOURAGING WORDS PROMOTED ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT, J^istorg of a palace, OVER WHICH SHE THREW, FOR TEN YEARS, THE CHARM OF CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY AND THE BEAUTY OF CHRISTIAN HOLINESS IS MOST REVERENTLY INSCRIBED. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Very mingled are the feelings with which the Author now sends forth a Second Edition of ' Lambeth Palace and its Associations.' He gratefully acknowledges the most unex- pected favour with which his work has been re- ceived by the general public, and the indulgent, and, he fears, in some cases the too flattering, judg- ments of reviewers; and accepts its rapid sale, and the immediate call for a further supply, as a proof that he has not wholly failed in his endeavour to invest what is essentially an archaeological subject with something of popular interest. But any such personal gratification is painfully tempered by the thought that he to whose encouragement during the progress of the work, and to whose interest in the subject of it, as evinced in the Introduction, — one viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. of the last productions of his pen, — it was so deeply indebted, only just lived to see it in its completed form/ Thus it has come that, while on the first edition the Author was permitted to inscribe gratefully and reverently the name of Mrs Tait, — the sec- ond, alas ! he is called on to dedicate sorrowing TO THE MEMORY OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT HIMSELF. ^ The work was published on the 15th November 1882, and Archbishop Tait died Advent Sunday, December 3d, PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. I LOVE this old house, and was very desirous of amusing myself, if I could find means to do it, with the history of its buildings." So wrote Archbishop Herring^ to his antiquarian friend Dr Ducarel, in 1754. The place he wrote about and loved was " Croydon House," in those days a very favourite residence of the Archbishops. These words exactly express the feelings which were ever uppermost in the mind of the author of the present volume, when, nearly forty years ago, his parochial duties took him daily under the walls of the far more noteworthy and famed Archiepis- copal residence, Lambeth Palace, — feelings which were encouraged by the characteristic courtesy of Archbishops Howley and Sumner, who permitted ^ Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix. p. 305. X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, him to wander freely over that venerable pile. Here, during some nine years/ was being cher- ished a love of antiquarian research, and the habit formed of collecting and storing up every particle of information — from history, or architecture, or art — bearing upon this favourite subject ; while the vision seemed to be constantly floating before his mind that he might some day be able to write a History of a place he too had learned to love, and one so rich in national and ecclesiastical associations. The call of duty, however, carried him away to far-distant scenes and different subjects ; and dur- ing some twenty years spent in India, very differ- ent subjects forced themselves on his attention, and for a time Lambeth Palace and its history of necessity fell into the background, — out of sight, though never quite out of mind. But when, soon after his return to England, he found himself again standing in his old haunts, and found too that, though Lambeth Palace had passed into other hands, its portals were as open to him as before, and even greater facilities and encourage- ment were offered to him for carrying out his long-cherished wish, he set himself strenuously to ^ The author was curate of Lambeth from 1842 to 1851. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, XI arrange and digest the data he had previously accumulated, and to add to them from every avail- able quarter. The result is now in the readers hands. Such was simply the origin of this History of Lambeth Palace ; and such the excuse, if excuse be necessary, for the attempt to write it. Not that no History of the Palace existed; or that none hitherto written was worthy of the theme ; or that he presumed to think that he could produce one more worthy than those already published. Far otherwise. There were several, — and one of them most valuable ; but they were either as antiquated in style as in subject — for the Lambeth Palace of to-day is not the Lambeth Palace of even sixty years ago ; or so rare as to be scarcely attainable by the general public : while Lambeth Palace had been so essentially a part of the history of the English Church and nation that it deserved — nay, demanded — to have its story brought within reach of every class of readers in this age of eager inquiry ; and to such the existing Histories were so many sealed books." The principal authority on this subject was Dr Andrew Coltee Ducarel, the greatest Antiquarian PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. of his day, — who, as keeper of the Lambeth Archives, Hved in the midst of the Registers and Manuscripts. Hence Ducarel's ' History of Lam- beth Palace' has been, and ever must be, the basis of all subsequent histories of the place. A few years after him, the subject was carried on by his friend, Dr Samuel Denne, Rector of Lam- beth, who prepared a volume equally valuable, as Addenda " to the previous work. These two appeared originally in that incomparable collection of Fragments " of the labours of literary men, which from their size were liable to be lost or overlooked, but were rescued from the wreck of time, and preserved by that indefatigable anti- quarian, John Nichols, by being published in his ' BiBLioTHECA TopoGRAPHicA Britannica,' in the years 1785 and 1795. Ten years after, in 1806, two enterprising publishers — Messrs Herbert & Brayley — produced a volume entitled ' Lambeth Palace, Illustrated in a series of views representing its most interesting Antiquities, in Buildings, Por- traits, Stained Glass,^ &c. This is a work of con- siderable artistic merit ; but true to its title, it is only valuable for the sake of the Illustrations, of which the letterpress, being little more than ex- tracts from Ducarel, is a running comment. Then, PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xiu in the year 1827, Mr Thomas Allen, a Lambeth resident, with a laudable zeal for the fame of his parish, compiled a volume, in which he has em- bodied most of the facts which Ducarel and Denne had brought to light. This work being somewhat less archaeological, and more popular in s^le, is really the only ordinarily available history of the Palace and the Parish generally ; and of it the History of the Palace forms but a fractional part ; but even this work is not easily to be met with : while those by Ducarel and Denne are most rare, and are practically lost to the general public, being only to be found occa- sionally in very rich archaeological libraries. Moreover, the latest of these describes a build- ing so altered as to be scarcely recognised, beyond its main external outline and character. For the very year after Allen's History was published, the whole of Lambeth Palace underwent so great a change that the descriptions then given often refer to rooms which have now disappeared ; while in those parts which have been preserved and restored, the arrangements are in many cases so different that they would only perplex instead of guiding the reader. The one work on the subject which has ap- xiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. peared since the changes effected in 1829 is 'The History and Antiquities of Lambeth,' by John Tanswell, of the Inner Temple, which was pub- Hshed in 1858. In it barely fifty pages are devoted to the Palace ; and these contain so many inaccuracies that it can never be accepted, even so far as it goes, as an authority.^ In the present volume, the author's earnest desire and aim has been to tell the tale of Lambeth — or, rather, to make those historic portions of it which belong to days gone by tell their own tale — down to the present time ; so that the general reader of to-day, as well as the Arch^ologian, may find an account, as far as he could make it intelligible and reliable, of what Lambeth Palace has been, and what it now is. He is conscious that, among other imperfections of his work, there may seem to be a want of continuity in the narrative, or of connection be- tween the several divisions of his subject, and, it may be, a difference of style in the different parts. For these he would thus account. His ^ In a collection of Essays under the head of ' Stray Studies,' by the Rev. J. R. Green, is one on "Lambeth and the Archbishops," which possesses all the charms of that author's style and graphic power of grouping historical characters ; yet is not without some inaccuracies of local description, which would seem to have been either sketched in from memory, or adopted at second-hand without being verified. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, XV original intention, which he has been able partly to carry out, was to compress each portion of his subject within the limits of an article for a Review or Magazine,^ so that, benefiting by criticisms and corrections, he might insure the greater accuracy for his completed work. This independent and distinctive treatment of each part may probably be still detected in the present volume, and betray the unskilled hand of the literary workman in joining together his pieces into a symmetrical whole. At the same time he would plead for indulgent criticism on this defect — if it be one — for the very variety in the parts seems to render this difference almost necessary. He could not, for instance, dwell upon the details of this noble Palace without indulp^ino- in an archseolosfical admiration of that art -life with which its very stones are instinct. He could not stand in that Portrait - gallery without tracing out in thought the leading traits of character which distinguished each of those Fathers in God by whose like- 1 A considerable portion of the earlier pages of this volume is an expan- sion of an Article in the ' Quarterly Review' for July 1878 ; and that refer- ring to the Portraits of the Archbishops is based on one which appeared in ' Macmillan's Magazine,' August 1879. For permission to reproduce the substance of these articles the Author would tender his acknowledgments to the Publishers of these Periodicals. xvi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. nesses he was surrounded ; or in that Library, without allowing his mind to travel over those treasures of learning and art which it contained ; still less in that Chapel, so rich in memories of the past of England's Church, without feeling the influence of the genitts loci — without a pulse quickened by recalling the stirring events, fraught with joy or woe, of which it had been the scene. In each part his irresistible impulse has been to identify himself with the spot whereon he was standing, and his desire to carry his readers with him : he has throughout laboured to portray, with all possible exactness and truth, the persons, the characters, the actions of the distinguished men who for many centuries have successively found a home at Lambeth Palace, and who, while representing, have also in many cases guided and led the mind of the English Church of their day. On one point the author feels that some apol- ogy is due to the general reader — to the Antiqua- rian who may deign to read his work no such apology will be necessary — for having burdened his pages with footnotes. Conscious that he was bringing forward many details of Palace history which had been hitherto unnoticed, and, more- PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xvii over, that he was endeavouring to refute some generally accepted local traditions, he felt called upon to justify his statements ; and therefore, at no little personal labour of research, he has striven to trace up every statement to its foun- taiji-head, in order to give his authority for making it, and to verify every reference given by other writers before becoming himself respon- sible for it. So wide has been the range of subjects em- braced, and so various the sources from which reliable information had to be sought, that the author has been compelled to tax the kindness not only of personal friends, but also of perfect strangers ; yet from every quarter, from private individuals, and from the officials in the British Museum, the Record Office, and the Heralds' College, as well as in Lambeth Palace itself, he has received most ready and valuable help ; for which he desires to record his very grateful acknowledgments. Two names he feels called on to mention as having specially encouraged him in his work, and aided him with their local as well as general know- ledge : the Ven. Benjamin Harrison, Archdeacon of Maidstone, for many years Domestic Chaplain b xviii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. to Archbishop Howley ; and the Rev. Randall T. Davidson, who no less ably fills the same office in the household of Archbishop Tait : in the one the Lambeth Palace of years gone by, in the other the Lambeth Palace of to-day, has a hearty and appreciative exponent, and to both the author is deeply indebted for information and advice. Detling Vicarage, Maidstone, 1882. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE ARCHKISHOP TAIT, . , . . . . . .P. xxvii _ CHAPTER I. HOW LAMBETH PALACE BECAME THE RESIDENCE OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. Contest between the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the Abps., 2 — Abp. Baldwin resolves to found an independent Col- lege of Seculars, 3 — He first selects Hackington (St Stephen's), near Canterbury, as the site, ib. — The monks intrigue at Rome to thwart his plans, ib. — The Hackington site abandoned for one at Lambeth, ib. — Abp. Hubert Walter carries on Baldwin's pro- ject, and obtains more land, 4 — Further opposition of the monks partially successful, 5 — Their persistent opposition accounted for, 6 — Early history of Lambeth under Saxon and Norman kings, 7 — Derivation of the name, and character of the place, 9 — Advantages of the site, natural, social, and political, 10-13 — Circumstances of the exchange for Darente, 14 — A residence for the Bishops of Rochester retained, 15 — The existence of a Manor-house on the exchanged land very doubtful, ib. — Prob- XX CONTENTS, ably none prior to the exchange, i6 — Earlier Ordinations and Consecrations probably held in Rochester House Chapel, 17, 18 — Earliest Palace records found in the Stewards' Accounts ('Com- putus Ballivorum '), 19 — Apartments first named in the ' Compu- tus' of Abp. Reynolds, ib. — The next mention of them in the ' Computus' of Abp. Chicheley, 20 — Morton's Gateway, Cranmer's Tower, Pole's Long Gallery, and subsequent additions, 21-23 — Extensive alterations by Abp. Howley in 1829, 25-28. Pp. 1-29 CHAPTER II. THE GREAT GATEWAY, OR MORTON's TOWER. Bridges, so called, over the Thames often represent only quays or stairs, 31 — Stangate Bridge {i.e., Stairs) built by Bp. John de Sheppey, 30 — Lambeth Stairs the principal point for crossing the river, 31 — Here would be the main entrance to the Abp.'s grounds, ib. — Morton's Gateway erected on the site of an earlier entrance, 32 — Its massive character, ib. — The prison in the eastern wing, 35 — Origin and use of prisons in Episcopal houses, 36 — "Muniment" or "Record Room" over the entrance-gate, for- merly Cardinal Morton's audience-chamber, 37. Pp. 30-38 CHAPTER III. THE GREAT HALL. Its external appearance, 39 — Date of original building uncertain : Magna Aula mentioned in Abp. Reynold's time, 40 — Consecra- tion Banquets held here; their character, 42— Councils, and oc- casionally Convocation, sat there, 43 — Sir Thomas More and Bp. Fisher summoned here before Cranmer, 44 — Scenes of incrimina- tion between Cranmer and Bps. Bonner and Gardiner, 45 — Oc- casional sittings of the Star Chamber here, ib. — The building destroyed, and materials sold by Colonel T. Scot, 47 — Rebuilt CONTENTS. XXI by Abp. Juxon; thence called " Juxon's Hall," zL — Resemblance in construction to the Halls at Westminster and Eltham Palace, 48 — The old painted glass and arms collected in the window at the north end, 49 — The Hall adapted by Abp. Howley for the Library, 51 — The old Cloisters, the former Library, probably built by Cardinal Pole and restored by Abp. Sheldon, 54 — Queen Elizabeth once present here, — Absence of architectural beauty, 55 — Interesting only as associated with John Foxe, Stow, Strype, &c., 57. Pp. 39-57 CHAPTER IV. THE LIBRARY. No Library belonged to the See prior to Abp. Bancroft's time, 58 — His bequest of his books proved the foundation of the present Library, 61 — He gave a reversionary interest in them to the Cam- bridge University, 62 — They were thus saved from dispersion during the Commonwealth, 63 — After the Restoration Abp. Sheldon recovered them for Lambeth, 64 — The Registers date only from John Peckham, 65 — The earlier ones were carried by Abp. Kilwardby to Rome, and never returned, ib. — The great importance of these Registers according to Ducarel and Gibson, 66, 67 — Ducarel's elaborate Index of the whole of incalculable value, 68 — Besides the Registers are a vast collection of Court- rolls, Charters, Stewards' Accounts, &c., ib. — Also a mass of miscellaneous MSS., called by Dr Todd "Codices Lambethani," 69 — Among them are " Parliamentary Surveys of Church Lands," made during the Commonwealth, 70 — Also ' Notitias Parochiales,* dated 1705,71 — The great body of the other MSS. grouped under the names of their several donors, 73 — The Wharton MSS., almost entirely bearing on English ecclesiastical history, 74 — The Carew MSS., referring entirely to the history of Ireland, 75 — The Tenison MSS., a most varied collection, nearly 300 vol- umes, 77 — Among these a black-letter copy of the Thirty-nine Articles of 1562, with the autograph signatures of Bps. and Clergy of 1604, 78 — Also Laud's "Jura etPrivilegia Clero Angli- cano adjudicata," 79 — The Gibson MSS., their history : among xxii CONTENTS. them the Bacon papers, a correspondence between Lord Bacon and his contemporaries, 80, 81 — And the Shrewsbury Papers, chiefly stewards' accounts, 82 — The Miscella7teotis MSS. comprise those presented between the time of Tenison and Manners Sutton, ib. — The Manners Sution MSS., chiefly Professor Carlyle's collec- tion, 83 — Catalogues of the several collections made by Wharton, Gibson, and Wilkins, 84 — Dr Todd prepared the first printed Catalogue, 86 — Principal gems of the collection : Aldhelm's 'De Virginitate,' 87 — Gospels of MacDurnan : a Sarum Missal, 88 — 'Notable Wise Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers': a rare manuscript, 89 — Another copy from Caxton's press, 90 — The ' Daunce of Machabre,* translated by Lydgate, 91 — The " Maza- rine Bible," long supposed to be a MS., ib. — A collection of New Testament MSS. and Versions, 93 — " The most valuable Koran of Asia," 96 — General features of the Library, 98. Pp. 58-98 CHAPTER V. THE LIBRARIANS. Henry Wharton, 99 ; Dr Edmund Gibson, 102 ; Dr David Wilkins, 103 ; Dr Andrew Coltee Ducarel, 105 ; Dr Henry John Todd, 108; Dr Samuel Roffey Maitland, ib.j Dr William Stubbs, no; Mr S. W. Kershaw, III. Pp. 99-111 CHAPTER VI. THE GUARD-ROOM. Guard-rooms necessary appendages to Episcopal Palaces, 112 — First mention of one at Lambeth, 114 — Original character pre- served in the restoration in 1829, 115 — Now used as the Portrait- Gallery, 116 — Series of Portraits unrivalled, 117 — Interesting variety in the midst of apparent sameness, 119 — Portraits : Dunstan, 121; Abps. Arundel, ib.j Chicheley, 123; Warham (by Holbein), 125; Cranmer (two portraits contrasted), 129; CONTENTS. xxiii Cardinal Pole (two portraits), 131 ; Parker (painting by Lyne, and etching by Hogenberg), 133; Grindal (by De Vos), 135; Whitgift (two portraits), 136; Bancroft, 138; Abbott, 140; Laud (by Vandyck), 142; Juxon, 144; (and a second portrait after death), 146; Sheldon, ib.; Bancroft, 149; (and a reputed like- ness when a youth), 150; Tillotson (by Kneller ; another by Mr Beale), 151; Tenison, 154; Wake (by Whood), 156; Potter, 158, (and a likeness when a boy), ib.j Herring (by Hogarth), 160 ; Hutton (by Hudson), ib.; Seeker (by Sir Joshua Reynolds), 161 ; Cornwallis (by Dance), 162; Moore (by Romney), 165; Man- ners Sutton (by Sir T. Lawrence), 166; Howley (by Sir Martin Shee), 167; Sumner (two portraits, by Eddis and Mrs Carpen- ter), 168; Longley (by Richmond), 169; Tait (two portraits, by Sant and Richmond), 170 — Miscellaneous portraits: Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 172 ; Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, ib.; Dr Christopher Wren, Registrar of the Order of the Garter, 173 — Series of Bishops after the Revolution : Wil- liam Lloyd, Bp. of S. Asaph and Worcester, 177 ; John Hough, Bp. of Worcester (by Kneller), 178 ; Simon Patrick, Bp. of Ely, 179; John Moore, Bp. of Ely and of Norwich, 180; Bps. Gar- diner of Lincoln, 181 ; Williams, of Chichester, ib.; Evans, of Bangor, ib.; Fleetwood, of Ely, ib.; Gilbert Burnet, Bp. of Winchester (by Mrs Hoadley), 181; Benjamin Hoadley, Bp. of Bangor, &c. (by the same), 182; Dr Benjamin Whichcote, ib.; Zachary Pearce, Bp. of Rochester (by Hudson), 183 ; Thomas Newton, Bp. of Bristol (by Sir Joshua Reynolds), ib.; George Berkeley, Bp. of Cloyne, 184; Bps. Hayter of London, 185; Ter- rick, of London (by Dance), ib.; John Thomas, of Winchester, ib.; Sir Thomas Gooch, of Ely (by Hudson), ib.; Mawson, of Ely, ib.; Douglas, of Carlisle (by Beechey), ib.; Warren, of Bangor (by Gainsborough), ib.; Rundle, of Derry, ib. — Peter du Moulin, 186 — Drs Gibson, Wilkins, and Wharton (librarians), ib. — Ralph Snowe, treasurer, ib. — Martin Luther ; supposed Luther and his wife, 187 — Reputed likeness of Katherine Parr, 187 — Probably that of Katherine, wife of Lord Wm. Howard, 189 — Prince Henry, son of James L, 191 — Charles L (said to be by Vandyck),/^. — The four Fathers of the Western Church, 192 — George Hardinge, a Welsh Judge (by Dance), 194 — Likenesses of members of the Townshend and Eden families, ib., 195. Pp. 112-195 xxiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. cranmer's tower, .... Pp. 196, 197 CHAPTER VIII. THE WATER TOWER, COMMONLY CALLED THE LOLLARD's TOWER. Consists of three portions, 198 — The main tower built by Abp. Chicheley, 199 — Origin of the real name, " The Water Tower," 200 — The Staircase Turret belongs to an earlier building, 201 — The "Post Room," false tradition about it, 204-206 — Laud's addition to the Water Tower on the north, 205 — The prison- room at the top of the Staircase Turret, 207 — Prisons in Bishops' Palaces accounted for, 208 — "The Lollards' Tower" a misnomer here, 210 — Dr Maitland's opinion, and Dr Hook's, to that effect, 211 — Wicklififites and Lollards to be distinguished, 212 — Abp. Arundel's persecution of the Lollards, 214 — Abp. Chicheley's clemency towards them, 216 — His character vindicated from the charge of Lollard persecution, 218 — Abp. Warham's general liberality of action, 219 — Under Abp. Cranmer Lambeth became an asylum for Continental Reformers, 221 — No record of persons imprisoned here under Mary, ib. — A "Lollard's Tower" un- doubtedly existed, but where? 223 — Stow describes it in the south-west tower of St Paul's, 224 — No mention of a Lollards' Tower at Lambeth until eighteenth century, ' ib. — This mis- application of the name accounted for, 225 — The name only applied to the Water Tower by modern topographers, 226 — Lambeth Palace an Asylum for Romanists under Abp. Parker, 228 — Lord Henry Howard imprisoned here, 229 — Lord Essex sheltered here on the way to the Tower, 230 — Lord Maltravers and his bride sent here in custody by Charles I., 232 — Lambeth Palace used as a State Prison for Royalists by Parliament, 233 — Dr Alexander Leighton appointed head-jailer, 235 — Sir Roger Twysden, Dr Guy Carleton, and others of mark imprisoned here, 237 — Great mortality among the prisoners in 1645, 239 — Some " Fifth Monarchy" men also imprisoned here, 242 — Among the later prisoners the Earls of Derby and Chesterfield, &c., 243 CONTENTS, XXV — Edward Dendy the last jailer, 244 — The names, emblems, &c., in the prison probably those of the Royalist prisoners, 245. Pp. 198-247 CHAPTER IX. THE CHAPEL. The probable date of the present building, 248 — The Crypt of earlier date, 249 — Consecrations held "at Lambeth" before it belonged to the Archbishops, 250 — Probably in a Chapel at- tached to Rochester Place, 252 — The Crypt the probable scene of Abp. Boniface's revenge, 253 — Here Anne Boleyn appeared before Cranmer, ib. — The Chapel, its architectural features, 255 — The western doorway, 256 — Cardinal Morton beautified it, 257 — ' Biblia Pauperum,* the origin and use of them, 259 — Abp. Laud's restoration of it charged against him, 261 — The subjects of the windows, 263 — The roof of the Chapel always flat, to be used as a terrace, 265 — Wickliffe's appearances in the Chapel, 266 — Abp. Parker's Consecration here, 268 — The variety of vestments on that occasion, 270 — A "Vestment" Conference held here in 1566, 271 — Abp. Parker buried here, 272 — His tomb, 273 — Abp. Laud's last service in the Chapel, 275 — Abp. Bancroft's " Non-juror" Communion here, 276 — The Chapel desecrated and Abp. Parker's tomb rifled, 277 — His bones recovered and replaced by Abp. Sancroft, 279 — The windows restored, and the Chapel decorated by Abp. Tait, 281 — Lambeth Chapel a national shrine, 284 — Upwards of 400 Consecrations held here since 1500, 286 — A larger building necessary of late years for Consecrations, 287 — First American Bishops consecrated here in 1787, 290 — Close intercourse with the American Church ever since, 294 — The first Pan-Anglican Conference at Lambeth in 1867, 295 — Bishops Selwyn and Venables, &c., at the American Convention in 187 1, lb. — The American Alms-basin presented to the English Church 296 — Bishops consecrated in Lambeth Chapel for Canada, India, Australia, &c., 298 — The second Pan-Anglican Conference in 1878, 301 — The rich historical associations of Lambeth Chapel, 303- Pp. 248-304 CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. MISCELLANEOUS ASSOCIATIONS. Archbishops of Canterbury made Cardinals, 305 — Lord Chancellors, 306 — Lord Treasurers, 307 — Royal visits to Lambeth, 308 — The "Clarendon Walk," 310 — Mary of Modena sheltering under the Gateway, ib. — The palace attacked by London mobs in 1247 and 1381, 312 — By the London Apprentices in 1640, ib. — In the Lord George Gordon riots in 1780, 313 — The "Lambeth Fig-trees," 313 — Abps. who died at Lambeth, 314 — The present relation of Lambeth to Christendom, 315 — Lambeth virtually the centre of a Patriarchate, 317. Pp. 305-317 MEDIEVAL LIFE AMONG THE OLD PALACES OF THE PRIMACY. An Archbishop's journey in great state, 318 — Many manor-houses, 320, 321 — Application of the term " Palace," 322 — Lanfranc's division of conventual property of Canterbury, 323 — Canterbury Palace, 324-333 — Lyminge, 334-337— Saltwood Castle, 337-345 — Aldington Chase, 345-350 — Charing, 350-355 — Wingham, 355, 356 — Wrotham, 356 — Maidstone, 357-362 —Otford, 362-368 — Knole, 369-373 — Ford, 373 — Teynham, 375, 376 — Gillingham, 376, 377 — Bishopsbourne, 378, 379 — Bekesbourne, 380, 381 — Slyndon, 381, 382— West Tarring, 382— Mayfield, 383-386— Mortlake, 386 — Croydon, 387-398 — Dissolution of Monasteries, 398-401 — Transfer of Archiepiscopal Manors, 402-405. SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. Pp. 318-405. APPENDICES. A. Consecrations in the Chapel, . B. The American Alms-basin, C. The Arms of the Archbishops, 407-418 419-424 425-435 Index, 437 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. THE CHAPEL, ..... . Frontispiece GROUND PLANS, ..... facing page I GARDEN VIEW OF THE PALACE PRIOR TO 1 829, 22 MAIN COURTYARD AND ENTRANCE DOOR, 25 GARDEN VIEW OF THE MODERN BUILDINGS, . 26 ENTRANCE HALL, ..... 27 CORRIDOR, ..... 28 MORTON'S, OR THE GREAT GATEWAY, FROM THE SOUTH, 33 LIBRARY AND GATEWAY, FROM THE NORTH, . 40 CLOISTERS, REMOVED IN 1 829, . 53 OLD LIBRARY OVER THE CLOISTERS, . 56 INTERIOR OF THE GREAT HALL, NOW THli LIBRARY 59 GUARD-ROOM, PRESENT DINING-HALL, . 115 REPUTED PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE PARR, 188 BRASS OF LADY (KATHERINE) HOWARD IN LAMBETH CHURCH 190 TOURELLE ON THE WATER TOWER, 246 WESTERN DOOR OF THE CHAPEL, 256 THE INTRODUCTION BY LATE ARCHBISHOP TAIT. There are in London comparatively few buildings interesting from their antiquity. The Tower, the Abbey, and here and there a parish church or an ancient hall, which has escaped demolition and restoration, — these represent almost all that now remains to us of London before the seventeenth century. Our rich prosperity has been the natural cause of this widespread demolition. New wants and abundant means have removed old buildings and substituted new in their place. Lambeth Palace, like the English Church of which it is the centre, holds a position intermedi- ate between the old and the new. The blackened " Lollards' Tower," and the Chapel by its side, xxviii INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE carry us back at once to the Middle Ages. The great brick towers which form the Palace Gateway bear the name of their builder, the Cardinal Chan- cellor of the first of the Tudors. The Library is a medieval Hall, greatly injured in the desolations of the Commonwealth, and repaired at the Restoration according to the taste of Inigo Jones ; while one half of the whole Palace is occupied by the com- modious house erected by Mr Blore, under Arch- bishop Howley, in the revived Tudor style of the nineteenth century. There is abundant historical interest in this mass of somewhat incongruous buildings. The memory of events important for the nation and the Church clings to the walls. The western towers of the Palace and the crarden below might seem to be tenanted even now by the great men who had their dwelling there in momen- tous times of old. No wonder that there has of late revived, not in England only, but across the Atlantic, a friendly interest in this old fortress of the National Church. Old and yet new. This is characteristic of the Church of England, as it ought to be of the whole Church of Christ on earth, learning from old ex- perience, both from the virtues and the errors of the past, how to regulate the present and to pro- vide for the future. Our Church's history links us with every period ARCHBISHOP TAIT. XXIX in the records of our national life. In outward organisation the See of Canterbury unites us with our earliest English ancestors, and, indirectly, even with the earlier British Church. And even if we confine our thoughts to the time — now nearly seven centuries — during which the Archbishops have lived in Lambeth, we find our- selves connected by the associations which cluster round these walls, with each step in the onward progress of our Church and people towards fuller light and higher liberty. We can find memorials here of the successful efforts made to secure free- dom from the thraldom of Rome, which marked the reigns of the later Plantagenets, and of the Lancastrian and Yorkist sovereigns. We can trace the mode in which Christian influence was maintained throughout the land in spite of ma- rauding barons and rapacious kings. We can see how the professed followers of Christ bore themselves amid the struggles preceding that great upheaval of society in which the hitherto non-privi- leged classes asserted their rights as Englishmen. We learn how the Church of England, notwith- standing the grave faults of many of its rulers, adapted itself — under the good hand of God — in all these troublous times, and in the changing days which followed them, to the real wants of the Eng- lish people. The admonitions of places are, to the XXX INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE Student of history, as powerful as the admonitions of books. Men's hearts may well be stirred, and their loyalty to the National Church confirmed, as they trace the many memorials in the architecture, pictures, and ornaments of Lambeth, which bring them face to face with the past, and so arouse their high hopes for the future. This power of adaptation to the ever-varying circumstances of the nation's life, which has secured the Church's influence through so many centuries, is not likely to forsake us now. We may see a frequent example of it in the use to which these buildings are put to-day. Juxon's Great Hall and the adjoining Guard-room," built for a very differ- ent purpose, afford abundant space and opportun- ity for those larger gatherings of clergy and laity, by which men seek to further the work of Christ in these somewhat democratic times. Two great Conferences of Bishops from every quarter of the world have met at Lambeth, as a natural centre, within the last few years. Missionary and chari- table agencies of every kind now find here their annual meeting-place ; and it may well be doubted whether, in their long history, these old halls have ever been filled with men more zealous to uphold the Church of their fathers, or more active to pro- mote the advancement of Christ's kingdom upon earth. May God, who has helped us hitherto, give ARCHBISHOP TAIT. xxxi wisdom to their counsels and vigour to their work. Except the Lo7'd build the house, their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. Mr Cave - Browne, long familiar through his studies, and his former residence in the parish of Lambeth, both with the history and with the pre- sent condition of the buildings, has done well to lay before the public the results of his research. From what I have seen of the proof-sheets, many of which have been submitted to my inspection, I am confident that he will be found to have collected a larger number of historical facts relating to Lam- beth Palace than has yet been published in any available form ; while the skill with which these copious materials are arranged and edited speaks for itself I gladly call attention to his book ; and I trust that the gates of Lambeth Palace will ever be readily opened to all who take an interest in its history, and in the work which centres within its walls. A. C. CANTUAR. Lambeth Palace, November i8Si. LAMBETH PALACE. CHAPTER I. J^oto Eambetf) palace became i^z Eesitience cf tje ^rcpisfjops of Canterijurg. For nearly seven centuries, and during a succes- sion of exactly fifty occupants of the See, Lambeth Palace, or, as it was formerly called, " Lambeth House,"^ has been the official residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. How it came to be so opens out a little-known yet very important ^ The use of the term " Palace," as now commonly applied to every Episcopal residence, is comparatively of recent date. Formerly it was ex- clusively confined to the Bishop's residence within his own Cathedral city, — all others were simply termed "Houses." This distinction was always very strictly observed : of which a notable instance is given in Wilkins's Concilia (vol. iv, p. io8), where are two letters written by Bonner, Bishop of London, the one dated "at my House at Fulham," the other "at the Bishop's Palace of London." It would seem as if the original term " Manor " [zn manerio nostro) was retained for Lambeth till Laud adopted that of " House that of " Lambeth Palace " only came into use early in the present century. — Denne's Addenda to Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. i. A 2 LAMBETH PALACE. page in English history. That they should have taken up their abode here, outside their own dio- cese, at a time when they already possessed nearly a dozen palaces, or manor-houses, within it, besides half as many more in the adjoining counties of Sussex and Surrey — and among the latter, one so near as Croydon — is itself a fact of no little his- torical interest, and indeed one of much political and ecclesiastical significance. Lambeth Palace, as will presently appear, is nothing less than a memorial of a great struggle with the Papacy ; it is a standing protest, though not successful, of the English Church of the twelfth century against the dictation of Rome ; it is a material evidence of the early assertion of her championship of the rights of the English people against Papal usurpation. It arose thus. A long- protracted contest had been carried on between the two conjoint, yet more often conflicting, authorities at Canterbury, the Archbishops of the Province and the Monks of the Priory of Christ Church in that city. These Regulars, who, like all similar foundations in this country, reflected and exerted the Papal influence in England, were constantly seeking to exercise a control, not only in minor points of local adminis- tration, but even to the extent of claiming a right in the election of the Metropolitan himself — a claim advanced on the ground that when the Archbishop was also the Prior of their Monastery the election always lay with them. To escape from such in- ITS EARLY HISTORY. 3 terference on the part of a body who were nomi- nally his coadjutors and counsellors, but in reality a rival power, Archbishop Baldwin, who came to the Primacy in 1 185, himself the elect of the suffragans, being vigorously supported by Henry II., formed the bold resolve of having somewhere outside his Cathedral city a Chapter of secular Canons inde- pendent of the Canterbury Monks, and in the midst of them a residence for himself, where he might live and act free of such interference. Hackington, now commonly called St Stephens, about half a mile from Canterbury, was the spot first selected ; and a Bull w^as obtained from Pope Urban III. in support of this project. But Hack- ington was too near to Canterbury ; and the Monks were too powerful. They no sooner saw the work beginning, than, suspecting ulterior motives in the Archbishop's design, they hurried off emis- saries to Rome to intrio^ue ao^ainst him and under- mine his plans : and they succeeded. The origi- nal Bull was revoked ; prohibitory mandates were obtained ; and the project was so far abandoned that the Hackington site was given up. But the Archbishop was not disposed to yield altogether.^ A more suitable site offered itself at Lambeth, and one presenting other and greater advantages. This site being obtained, by an arrangement which will be explained presently, the materials he had ^ " ^dilicandce basilicce locum qviidem mutavit, sed non intentionem." — Chronica Gervasii Hist. Angl. Scriptores Decern (Twysden, 1652), p. 1564^ 4 LAMBETH PALACE. collected at Hackincrton were all transferred to Lambeth ; and the building was commenced. Yet even here the Monks followed him with their oppo- sition ; and when Baldwin accompanied his king to the Holy Land the contest was still pending. His death, however, soon after gave the Monks their opportunity ; and, vaca7ite sede, they demol- ished the unfinished Chapel. But they did more ; they proceeded at once to elect as his successor one on whom they looked as a pliant nominee of their own — Reginald Fitz Josceline, Bishop of Bath. The body of suffragan Bishops of the Pro- vince, who also claimed a right to, or a share in, the selection of their Metropolitan, disputed this appointment, as having been made without their concurrence. However Fitz Josceline died before he could be confirmed in the See, and so the dispute settled itself On the vacancy thus created, a compromise was made ; the Bishops and Monks agreed to act to- gether, and their united choice fell on Hubert Walter, at that time Bishop of Salisbury. The new Primate was a man of purpose, as he soon proved. The last election, and the circumstances of his own, satisfied him that it was very desirable such a state of things should cease. He saw the wisdom of Baldwin's Lambeth project, and was re- solved to act upon it as a means of escaping alto- gether from the proximity and interference of the Monks. But, as a compromise, he offered to trans- ITS EARLY HISTORY. S fer the proposed College to Maidstone instead : this, however, was equally objected to by the Monks. So he was determined to persevere at Lambeth. Additional orround was obtained from the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, and in 1197 the Chapel beo^an to rise once more on its former site. Yet even he could not carry his point. Mandate suc- ceeded mandate from Rome ; dire anathemas were launched against him for disobedience ; and he was compelled to yield so far as to suspend operations. Still this did not satisfy the Monks, or the Pope, who proceeded to threaten an Interdict if the Chapel were not at once demolished — an Inter- dict King and Primate together could not have withstood, even had Henry II. still been on the throne ; for with his experience of the power of the Pope after the murder of Becket, he would hardly have dared to defy its authority again. But he was now dead ; and Richard had succeeded, and was far too much engaged in the war with France to mix himself up with such a struggle : nor could the Archbishop hope to succeed single-handed and un- supported. So the doom of the Chapel was pro- nounced. It had nearly reached completion — this nucleus of the long-wished-for College — only to be aofain levelled with the orround ;^ and with it van- ished all hopes of a Lambeth Chapter. But al- thouofh Hubert Walter mio^ht not have his Collecre 1 " Capella solo tenus diruta est." — Chronica Gervasii (Decern Scriptores), Twysden's ed., p. 1572. 6 LAMBETH PALACE. and his Canons, he was resolved to have his resi- dence at Lambeth.^ The motives for this persistent and increasing opposition of the Monks are not far to seek. They foresaw that their Metropolitical Priory of Christ Church would thus cease to be paramount among the Monasteries of England — the prestige which now centred in the shrine of St Thomas would be imperilled, and the offerings which were being poured lavishly into their treasury would fail." Thus the glory and the wealth of their body would be in imminent danger of being lessened by the foundation of a distinct and designedly rival Col- lege, founded, too, in honour of the blessed mar- tyr St Thomas ;^ and then their own power and influence over future Primates and the Church at large would decline and eventually disappear. It was against such a contingency that they strove to guard ; such a virtual extinction of themselves they hoped to avert. And as with their fall or decay the Papacy would lose one very powerful agency in the country, they found Pope after Pope only too ready to identify himself with their cause."^ 1 The whole history of this prolonged controversy, here briefly summa- rised, is given by the old Canterbury monk Gervase. — See Twysden's edition, already quoted, of Decern Scriptores ; Imaginationes, p. 1304, &c. ; Chronica, pp. 1 564- 1622. ^ Cardinal Morton says: "The annual offerings on St Thomas's shrine averaged from £'iooo to ;^io,ooo ; on that of 'Our Lady,' about £200; while on the high altar, to Christ, they varied from twelve to five marks ! sometimes nil ! ! " Matthew Paris, Hist. Major (Wats, 1640), p. 195. Camden thus forcibly describes the state of mind of the monks : " Cum ITS EARLY HISTORY. 7 Such was the controversy and the struggle which resulted in the possession of Lambeth by the See of Canterbury. It may be well to explain here more fully how this now^ historic site was originally acquired. Of the early history of Lambeth in Saxon times nothing is known. ^ It would seem to have been a royal manor,^ as the adjacent one of Kennington certainly was. The earliest period at which the ownership of the manor can be assigned is the reign of Edward the Confessor, when, according to Domesday-Book, it belonged to the Countess Goda,^ the king's sister, and wife of Walter, Earl of Mantes (Maigne), and afterwards of Eustace, Earl of Bouloo^ne. To her is ascribed in ' Reo^is- trum Roffense ' the honour of having granted the manor to the Bishop and Convent of Rochester. It, however, soon passed back from the Church to the Crown. Lying at the western extremity of the canal which Canute had dug across the swamps of Southwark to enable him to bring his ships up ecclesiolam Collegiatam hie etiam molirentur, Deus bone, quot Romam a Cantuariensibus Monachis advolarunt appellationes, quot inde fulmina, mince, et censurce a Romano Pontifice in Archiepiscopos emissa ? Male enim metuerunt illi Monachi ne fundi sui foret calamitas, et in Archiepiscoporum electionibus, illis prEejudicaret. Nec sedatce fuerunt hae tempestates donee inchoata Ecclesiola instantibus Monachis solo adcequaretur." — Camden's Britannia {folio ed. 1607), p. 217. 1 Ducarel's Lambeth Palaee, p. 2. 2 A charter is extant (dated 1062) in which Edward the Confessor granted the manor, or rather confirmed the grant, to the Abbey of Walt ham in Essex. " " Goda comitissa tenuit soror R[egis] E[dwardi]." — Domesday-Book. 8 LAMBETH PALACE. above London for an attack from that side, it assumed a position of considerable strategical importance in the subsequent wars between the Saxons and the Danes, and was seized by Harold as a point d'apptd against the invaders. From Harold it passed to the Conqueror, who gave part of the Manor to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. William Rufus, however, restored the whole manor and the advowson of the Parish Church (which the Countess Goda had retained), to the Prior and Convent of Rochester ;^ and this re- grant was confirmed by Henry I., and expressly assigned for the maintenance of the Monks of Rochester.^ A small portion of the Manor was obtained by Archbishop Baldwin when he first contemplated the erection of his College ; but of the exact cir- cumstances of that exchange no record appears.^ When, however, Hubert Walter determined to carry out this project, vialgrd Monks and Pope, he thought it necessary to extend the site ; and as 1 Thorpe's Registrum Roffense, p. 2 ; Hearne's Textus Roffensis, p. 213. The original deed of gift is preserved among the Charters in the British Museum. — L, F. C. vii. i. The confirmation of the grant by Henry I, is given in Hearne's Textus Roffensis, p. 224. '-^ " Ad victum monachorum." — Hearne's Textus Roff., p. 153, ^ Gervase of Canterbury very clearly distinguishes between the hvo ex- changes., and mentions them at different times, — See Histori^e Anglicanse Scriptores Decem (Twysden). " Anno 1191 ; Facta cum episcopo et mona- chis Roffensibus commutatione quarundam terrarum quas habebant in terri- torio vill^e eorum quae vocatur Lainhee,'''' &c. — Chronica, p. 1564. And subsequently, — *' a.d. 1197 ; Archiepisc. Cantuar cum monachis Roffensibus . . . dedit eis villam de Rente (Darente?) nomine in concambium et per- petuam possessionem pro villa de Lamhee,'''' &c. — Ibid., p. 1597. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 9 the Lambeth lands lay inconveniently distant from Rochester, while the Archbishop of Canterbury possessed the much more handy manor of Darente, and the rich grazing - ground ^ attached to the Chapel of Helles (or Hells), a further exchange was proposed, and Darente and Helles, with their belongings, were given up for Lambeth. This was finally effected in 1197 between Archbishop Hubert Walter and Gilbert de Glanville, Bishop of Rochester, and at that time also Rector of Lambeth.^ Lambeth doubtless in those days retained much of the character to which it is currently believed to have owed its name, as being little better than a muddy river-bank or landing-place : for the gener- ally accepted derivation of the name is from lam or loam, Saxon for mud," and hee, hitJie, or hythe, haven" or 'landing - place, and has the high sanction of Leland and Camden : ^ yet no less weighty an authority than Ducarel himself sug- gests that the first syllable must be the Saxon word lamb, because the letter b occurs in the Saxon chronicles and " the ancientest authors ; " ^ Unam bercariam . . . cum ducentis viginti ovibus. " — Chartce Misc., Lambeth MSS., vol. xi. No. 17. 2 The original Charters for the exchange of these lands, and the confirma- tory Royal grants, are to be found among the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum, the Lambeth MSS., and the Registrum Roffense, and are most of them printed in extenso in Ducarel's History of Lambeth Palace, Ap- pendix, pp. I- 1 1. 3 Camden's Britannia — " Lamhith sive Lomehith, i.e., statio sive portus luteus" (folio ed. 1607), p. 216. lO LAMBETH PALACE. and adopting this theory, ''canting heraldry" has assigned a lamb for the parish arms ! ^ It was not, however, without its local advantages in those and even earlier days. In the most ancient Charter in which the name occurs (dated a.d. 1062) its favourable surroundings were mentioned, as also in the Charter in which William Rufus restores the Manor to the See of Rochester. Both land and water could be put into requisition to supply the monastic larder — no trifling consideration in those days. The Thames evidently abounded with lam- prey at this point ; for Gundulph, the great and good Bishop of Rochester, ordered a supply of five hundred to be sent every year from this Manor to enable him and the monks to exercise hospitality.^ A successor of his, Bishop Earnulph, seeking spe- cially to honour the memory of one who was re- garded as their founder and benefactor, ordered Lysons (Environs of London, vol. i. p. 257) says of this derivation that "the greatest objection is that it has no meaning." Ducarel (Lambeth Palace, p. i) gives no less than sixteen different forms in which this name appears, from Lainhei to LaiJibhitJia . Lanchei, which occurs twice in Domes- day-Book, is evidently a clerical error of the copyist for Lamhei. It has been suggested to the writer that Lambeth was a corruption of Llan-Bedr, from the Celtic words Llmi^ a sacred enclosure, and Bedr, Peter, and on this derivation was based the theory that Lambeth was once connected with the neighbouring Abbey of St Peter's, Westminster — a derivation in which ethnol- ogy and history are alike set at defiance ; for, however common and natural Llan-Bedr may be in the land of the Celt, it were strangely out of place in a district essentially Saxon. Scarcely more incongruous, not to say ludi- crous, is the derivation humorously suggested in the ' Saturday Review,' that lama being the Mongolian term for "the chief priest," and beth the Hebrew for " house," the two combine to give the name Lambeth to the residence of the English Primate, as meaning " the house of the chief priest " ! - Cotton MSS. Domitian A.X. 9, f. 98.— Thorpe's Registr. Roff., p. 6. ITS EARLY HISTORY. II that one salmon should always be supplied from Lambeth to the monks on Bishop Gundulph's anniversary.^ So late as Queen Elizabeth's time, the adjacent marsh and lowlands, now teeming with human life — a very network of streets and alleys only broken by occasional factories — must have been amply provided with game ; for in the seventh year of her reign a licence was granted to Andrew Perne, D.D., Dean of Ely, then re- siding at Stockwell, for the killing of " bustards, wyld swans, barnacles, all manner of sea - fowls and fen-fowls, teals, cootes, ducks, and all manner of deare, red, fallow, and roo." ^ Lambeth, too, had many social advantages ; it could boast a Royal residence, besides others of lower degree. Kennington had long been a Royal demesne, as its name indicates ; it is called in Domesday CheningtMne, or " the Town of the King." Here had been the scene of Hardicanute's sudden death ; ^ here, too, according to Lam- ^ Thorpe's Registr. Roff., p. 7. ^ Tanswell's History of Lambeth, p. 15. The theological opinions of Dr Perne seem to have been as varied as his sporting tastes, for he is said to have changed his religion four times in twenty years. — See Strype's Life of Archbishop Whitgift, whose Chaplain Dr Perne had been. Fuller, how- evei', in his History of Cambridge, credits Dr Perne with having exercised such moderating influence in the University as Master of Peter House, and as Vice-Chancellor, to which office he was elected five times, that by "his flexible principles " he screened it from the persecution under Mary. Among those whom he thus saved was Whitgift, at that time Fellow of his own College. — Denne's Addenda to Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, pp. 206, 207. ^ Camden (p. 216) says of it : "Canuti fortis Anglorum regis morte olim Celebris, qui ibi inter pocula animam eructavit." Holingshed, on the authority of Simon of Durham and Matthew of Westminster, says of Hardi- 12 LAMBETH PALACE. barde/ on the authority of WilHam of Malmes- bury, the wise and good but ill-starred Harold had placed the crown on his own head on hearing of the death of Edward the Confessor.^ Moreover, to Archbishop Hubert Walter it offered special attractions ; it was close to West- minster and the Court, and on that ground very desirable for the residence of a Primate hicrh in favour with his King, already Chief Justiciary for England, and expectant Chancellor. The Crown of England had now passed from Saxon to Norman brows ; the Court had moved from Winchester to Westminster ; so it seemed necessary that the occu- pant of the Metropolitical See, now rising in poli- tical importance and influence, should take up his abode in the new Metropolis of the kingdom. Thus the Primacy, which had come to be at once the stay and the check of Crown and Court, passed from the retired banks of the rippling Stour to the more busy shores of old Father Thames. Such, then, was the raison d'etre of Lambeth Palace. London was in other respects, also, at this time adapting itself to its new character. Its first stone bridge, to replace the old wooden structure which had been destroyed by fire, was now in course Canute's death : " As he sat at table in a great feast holden at Lambeth, he fell downe suddenlie with the pot in his hand, and so died, not without some suspicion of poison." ^ Perambulations in Kent, p. 189. " Much doubt would seem to be entertained as to the truth of this state- ment, it being an act so utterly foreign to Harold's generally received char- acter and conduct. Freeman does not mention it. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 13 of erection, bearing witness to the commercial development which was beginning to mark Lon- don as the real capital of England. This bridge was commenced in 1 1 76 and completed in 1 209. Then, too, the disaffection and turbulence of " Earl John" (as he was called) against his brother Rich- ard rendered defensive measures necessary for the safety of the Tower. According to old Stow, " William Longschamps, Bishop of Elie," who was then Chancellor of England (a.d. 1190), "enclosed the Tower and Castell of London with a outward walle of stone imbattailed, and also caused a deepe ditch to be cast about the same." ^ Meanwhile other Prelates and Nobles were flocking Londonwards to be in proximity to the Court. Longschamps of Ely was already in Hol- born ; from Temple Bar to " the village of Char- intre" the Strand was beino^ friuQ^ed with residences of Courtiers and Nobles. Across the Thames the same change was going on ; Southwark already had its Diocesan at Winchester House ; while a few years later the semi-royal Howards erected for themselves a family residence close to the walls of Lambeth Palace ; ^ and in the reign of 1 Stow's Survey (ed. 1603), p. 46. Hasted, in his History of Kent, vol. xii. p. 348, credits Hubert Walter with this work of "encompassing the Tower with a strong wall and a deep moat," and Tanswell adopts that view, p. 78 ; but in 1190, Hubert Walter was in the Holy Land with Richard, where he performed the last funeral rites to his friend and patron, the Cru- sader Primate Baldwin (who died in that year), and then returned to England, to be shortly his successor in the See of Canterbury. - The site of old "Norfolk House" is now occupied by a large distil- 14 LAMBETH PALACE. Henry VIII. Lambeth had become ''very much the resort of the nobles of Henry's Court, and was considered as a very pleasant retreat, with its beautiful orchards and gardens sloping down to the banks of the Thames." ^ To return to the subject of the exchange of Lambeth and Darente between these two Kentish Sees of Canterbury and Rochester. It may seem strange that so small a county as Kent should boast of two Sees ; but this may be easily accounted for. In Saxon times it was divided into two kingdoms — one king residing at Canter- bury, the other at Rochester ; so Augustine, having persuaded Ethelred to found a See at the former city, persuaded his lesser neighbour at Rochester, on his conversion, to follow the superior king's example, and himself nominated the first bishop — a right which was claimed by his successors at Canterbury for many years. Thus from the earliest times there existed a close connection between the two Sees — the Bishop of Rochester holdincr a suffraQ^an or vicarial relation to the Archbishop of Canterbury ; a relation which only ceased a few years ago, on the enlargement of the former diocese. Indeed the Bishop of Rochester is still ex officio Provincial Chaplain of Canterbury. lery, and not a vestige remains of the Ducal dwelling, save that the name still attaches to a small alley and a dirty lane ; while the traditional site of what formerly composed the Norfolk House garden is preserved in the at present by no means appropriate name of " Paradise Street." 1 Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vol. iii. p. io6. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 15 Moreover, in the exchange of the lands a small portion at the north corner was retained, and a house built on it, for the Bishop of Rochester, which was long known as Rochester Place," ^ and was used by the Bishops of that See until, on the attainder of good Bishop Fisher in 1535, it was appropriated by Henry VIII., and afterwards given by him to the See of Carlisle. It then came to be called " Carlisle House." ^ To assign even an approximate date to the ori- ginal building of Lambeth Palace is now impossible, from the failure of all the earlier Registers and records prior to Peckham's time. Some difference of opinion has been expressed by Antiquaries as to the early existence, on the ground transferred to the Archbishops, of a dwell- ing-house befitting the dignity of a king's sister.^ But no distinct mention is made in ancient records of any princely Manor-house, or anything approach- ing a Mansion, on this spot. On the contrary, it is expressly stated that prior to Bishop Gilbert's time none such existed.^ Probably whatever build- ^ It is constantly termed " de Place," or "la Place," in the Rochester Register in the latter part of the fifteenth century. — Denne's Addenda to Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 242. ^ This building was taken down some years ago to make room for a street, which, under the name of Carlisle Street, still marks the site. ^ Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 10. See also ibid., pp. 89-132, the lawsuit (in 1776) in which the liability of the Archbishop to pay poor-rates to Lambeth parish was argued. Bishop Gilbert of Rochester, after restoring his Cathedral, erected houses i6 LAMBETH PALACE. ing stood here was at best a Manor " lodge " — ordi- narily occupied by the steward who managed the affairs and farmed the land for the Countess Goda, and afterwards probably by one of the Monks who performed the same office for the Rochester Priory — and containing apartments capable of being used as a " resting-house " for the Countess, or the Prior, on any official or casual visit to London. In the Deed of transfer the word curia is used [Anglzce, Court), and this is generally supposed to represent a place where Courts, Baron or Leet, were held for the exercise of Manorial rights and powers, rather than a residence. Moreover, in those days even royal and princely dwellings seem to have aspired to but little of magnificence or ornament. Spaciousness was their chief merit. The Long Barn at Kennington, which was stand- ing not many years ago, may be accepted as a specimen ; for it is believed to have been the scene of the grand and sumptuous banquets at which the Black Prince, with the honours of Crecy and Poitiers fresh upon him, nobly entertained his courtly and civic guests. If any buildings did exist, and if it was upon them that Hubert Walter, and after him Stephen Langton, expended in repairs part of the Papal grants received for that purpose, they had evi- dently fallen into decay in the days of Boniface, on several of the Manors — "similiter apud Lamheiam, ubi numquam prius Roffens, propriam habuit mansionem," &c. — Thorpe's Text. RoE, p. ii. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 17 who was called upon, only a few years after, either to repair his houses at Lambeth, or to build new ones." ^ It is doubtful whether he was the real founder of the oldest portion of the present range of buildings, or only repaired and greatly added to the work of his predecessors. W e know that the Monks of Canterbury had the malicious satisfaction of seeing Archbishop Walter s Chapel, the most advanced part of his proposed College, razed to the ground when it was all but completed. And not even the present Crypt, which is undoubtedly the oldest portion, contains a vestige of architec- tural work anterior to the beginning of the thir- teenth century. The roof of the Crypt would, in- deed, seem to point to a rather earlier period than that of Boniface — that is, earlier than 1 245 — and it is probable that he raised the present Chapel over the already existing Crypt ; and perhaps (as Du- carel suggests) he laid the foundation of the Great Hall. The fact that several of the earlier Archbishops had held Ordinations and Consecrations at Lam- beth long before they became possessed of that Manor, is sometimes used as an argument for the early existence of a lordly Manor-house and a Chapel attached to it ; yet the relation of the two ^ The Bull of Urban IV. is thus worded : Concedimus tibi ut antiqua sedificia tua in loco congruo apud Lamheiam reosdificandi, vel nova con- struendi, . . . sicut prsedecessores tui a quadraginta retro annis habuisse noscuntur, liberam habeas facultatem." — Cotton. MSS., Cleopatra E, i. f. 199. B i8 LAMBETH PALACE. Sees already alluded to offers a simple solution of the difficulty. For of these Consecrations and Or- dinations it is only said that they were held apud Lanihee or Lamhethe, and not in the subsequent form, in cape lid maneiai nostri de Lanihee ; and it is probable that the Parish Church close by, or a private Chapel attached to Rochester Place, already mentioned, was the scene of these Archiepiscopal services. This view is certainly confirmed by some notices of Consecrations held here by An- selm,^ and by the fact that in iioo he held a Council announcing the intended marriage between Henry I. and Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, " in the Ville of St Andrew of Roch- ester, situated near London, called Lanihetar ^ It is singular that one of these early recorded Consecrations at Lambeth^ was that of Baldwin, A.D. 1 1 80 (to the See of Worcester, whence he was translated five years after to that of Canter- bury), with whom, as has been shown, originated the exchange, completed by his successor, which made Lambeth the future Archiepiscopal resi- dence ; and that no subsequent Archbishop was consecrated here till Cardinal Morton, just three hundred years after (a.d. 1480) whose consecra- tion took place in capella nianerii de Lanihethe, ^ See "Vita S. Anselmi," prefixed to Anselmi Opera (Ed. Gerberon, 1675), ^'^d Eadmeri Historia, lib. iv. p. 77. " " In villa Sancti Andrese de Rovecestra, quoe Lamheta vocatur." — Ead- meri Historia, lib. iii. p. 57. ^ See Appendix A. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 19 and who became in his turn so liberal a benefactor to the Palace. Before proceeding further, the reader must bear in mind that, about fifty years ago, the appearance of Lambeth Palace underwent so great a change that any description of an earlier date conveys a very vague and confused impression of its present appearance ; yet it is to that earlier building, or rather to the remaining portions of it, that the present history mainly belongs. Thanks to the minute accounts which were kept by the Stewards or Bailiffs of the early Arch- bishops, and are still preserved among the archives of the Palace, under the title of * Computus Balliv- orum ; ' it is still possible to trace the growth of these buildings. So early as the year 1321, the fifteenth of the reign of Edward II., we learn that Archbishop Reynolds effected extensive repairs, and in this record,^ mention is made of the follow- ing rooms as then existing : there were — my Lord's Chapel (probably a private oratory), my Lord's Chamber, the Hall, the Chancellor's Chamber, the 1 Computus Ballivorum, Rotulae Arch. Reginaldi, 15 Ed. II., Lambeth MSS., 1193(545)- The entry runs thus: "Ad reparandum defectus pari- etis Wardrob?e juxta Capellam Domini, . . . camerae domini, . . . cameras juxta Aulam, . , . camera; Cancellatii, . . . et pro aureola* (sic) Magn^e Capella; . . . coquin^e (cook-room) . . . pistrina; (bakehouse) . . . Wardrobae pro fratribus, . . . Camerte vocata; Storehous, . . . domus feni (hay-loft) . . . longi stabuli . . . magnas portae," &c. * When this occurs again, a few lines after, it is spelt "oriolse," doubtless meaning "an oriel." 20 LAMBETH PALACE. Great Chapel, the Great Gate at the entrance, two Wardrobes, or closets, besides divers minor do- mestic apartments. It is also recorded that the wages for specified mechanics then employed — carpenters, tilers, plumbers, and plasterers — were at the rate of yd. a-day. The next Steward's Account " of any note oc- curs a century later — when the munificent Chicheley was erecting his Tower, and repairing the other parts of the building.^ The number of rooms had by that time greatly increased, unless some are mentioned again under different names ; for, besides the Great Hall [Magjia Azila), the Archbishops Oratory and Chapel, there were the Guard Cham- ber {Camera Armigeroruni), the Great and Little Cloister (Claustrtcvi Magnum et Parvzim), the Great Chamber, the Little Chamber {Prolocutorium), the Parlour (?), the Steward's Chamber, Auditor's Chamber, Registry, and Register's Chamber, Clerk of the Kitchen's Apartment, besides many other meaner apartments." The chief items of expense appear to have been then — as is certainly the case now — under the head of " labour ; " but then a brick- layer's wages were 4d. a-day with, or 6d. without, victuals ; while a labourer's were respectively 3d. and 4d. At the end of the ' Computus,' or Daily Account, is a short abstract showing that the total cost of the Tower was ^278, 2s. u^d.l which Computus Ballivorum, 3 Henry VI., Lambeth MSS., 1193 (561). Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, pp. 13, 14. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 21 would represent something like ;^3000 of the pres- ent currency. Fifty years later, the present Gateway was erected by Cardinal Morton.-^ Towards the close of another half-century Cranmer is said to have built the small Tower at the north-east of the Chapel. A MS. note in the copy of Parker s ' De Antiquitate Brit- annica ' in the Lambeth Library, referring to ad- ditions made by Cranmer, also says, " Coenaculum inferius (hodie- dictum, ^/le Great Parloui^ apud Lambeth construxit ; " which expression would seem to point to the spacious dining-room which lay to the east of the Tower, having above it a corresponding room, which was probably that called " the Chamber of Presence," mentioned in Parker's Will.^ Some writers, however, would ascribe these rooms to Pole. Doubtful though it may be whether Cranmer or Cardinal Pole built the rooms immediately adjoin- ing the Tower on the east, it is always asserted that Pole added on the Long Gallery^ (and most probably also the narrow Cloister, or piazza, on which it ran), stretching further to the east into the 1 Morton's Register, f, 237, 238. Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 15. ^ The clause runs thus: "Do successoribus meis illud magnum instru- mentum, quasi abacum, cum suis appendiceis, jam locatum in cubiculo illo quod ministri Regii vocant FrcTscnticp" &c. — Strype's Life of Parker, (folio ed. 171 1), Appendix, p. 186. Annals (folio ed. 1725), vol. i. p. 158. 3 Godwin's Catalogue, under Cardinal Pole (edition 1601), p. 175. Aubrey's Antiquities of Surrey, vol. v, p. 272. Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 16. LAMBETH PALACE. garden, or bowling-green. This must not be con- founded with the one which existed over the Great Garden Vierv prior to 1829. or Inner Cloister, and was for more than a century used as " the Library." The walls of this Long Gallery the Cardinal evi- dently lined with the choicest of his pictures ; pre- eminent among them hung the portraits of Warham and Erasmus by Holbein/ and the still more historic group of the " Four Latin Fathers." " This Gallery Parker in his Will calls Dea7nbulatormni, and not inappropriately, for it would have served as an ex- cellent exercising-ground on a wet day, being about ninety feet long. Parker himself seems to have ^ "Imagines tabulatce Episcopi Warhami prsedecessoris mei, et Erasmi Rotherodami, in Deambulatorio sitce," &c. — Parker's Will, given in the Appendix to Strype's Life of the Archbishop (folio ed. 171 1), p. 186. ^ History of Laud's Troubles and Trial (1695), P- 3^4- ITS EARLY HISTORY. 23 added but little to the accommodation at Lambeth, though he expended considerable sums in cover- ing the roof of the Great Hall with shingle, and in improving the drainage.^ His munificence was chiefly conspicuous in Canterbury Palace. Laud's Primacy, though so troubled, saw the restoration of the Chapel windows, and the addition of the smaller Tower on the south face of Chicheley's Water - Tower ; the chief object of which no doubt was, as will be shown presently, to provide a better staircase to the apartments in the earlier Tower, and more comfortable rooms for the Chap- lains : thouo^h additional accommodation would hardly seem to have been necessary, considering there were already upwards of 130 apartments, including those in the Gateway and the other Towers.^ Juxon's three years were marked by costly repair of Puritan desecration and demolition in Chapel and Hall. During the next century and a half each succeeding Primate appears to have made some addition, or supposed embellishment. A second line of buildings was thrown out into the main yard ; one Archbishop built a servants' hall — an- other a range of apartments for the ladies of his family ; a third, a magnificent new drawing-room," ^ Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. i6. - See a list of the apartments preserved in the State Paper Office, Do- mestic Series, Charles I., 1635, vol. 310, No, 16; and printed in Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, pp. 84, 85, where it is stated erroneously as '"Temp. Eliz. vel Jacob. " 24 LAMBETH PALACE. called "the Velvet Room," because it was hung with purple and red velvet ; ^ a fourth added a large kitchen ; and a fifth a spacious laundry ; while one covered the noble oak panelling of the rooms in the Gateway with painted scrollwork and cherubs ; and another, with even more ruthless modernising zeal, tore down the rich hangings of the " Velvet Room," and, still worse, the grand old tapestry of the " Presence-Chamber," and replaced both velvet and tapestry with painted wainscot ! ^ The result of these successive additions was that the more strictly domestic portion of the Primate's residence consisted of two parallel ranges of rooms, large and small, utterly without system, or order, or regard to comfort, which ran out at right angles eastward, one from Cranmer's Tower, and the other from the Guard - room, forming an open square, with a kitchen-garden in the middle. Such was the Palace when Archbishop Howley was appointed to the Primacy in 1828. While preserving with appreciative reverence, and carefully restoring, all that was really ancient and historic, his architectural zeal and taste ^ impelled him at once to sweep away this patchwork jumble of more recent dwelling-apartments, and to substi- ^ " Camera qugedam vocata la velvet room infra y^des Lambethanas." — Archbishop Wake's Register, f. 366, b. Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, pp. 17-20. When Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford he had rebuih the Profes- sor's house ; when Bishop of London he had built anew the official residence, London House, in St James's Square, and also extensively restored Fulham Palace. 26 LAMBETH PALACE. tute for them, at a cost of some ^60,000 — half of which came from his own private purse — the pres- ent handsome range of buildings, which form one long line, extending eastward from Cranmer's Tower, and presenting both in the main Court- yard and in the Garden, an imposing battlemented Garden View. frontage, effectively broken by irregular projections of bay-windows and oriels, and relieved by grace- ful turrets. The entrance from the Courtyard opens into a spacious hall, where a broad flight of steps leads to a lofty corridor running at right angles, above 130 feet long, on either side of which are distributed the principal apartments — the line of drawing - rooms, the private dining- room, the Archbishop's study and library, rooms for the Chaplains, &c., and waiting-rooms for visi- ITS EARLY HISTORY. 27 tors ; while the storey above, with corresponding corridor reaching from end to end, is occupied by sleeping-apartments. Thus have public conveni- ence and domestic comfort been happily combined with architectural effect.^ ^ With the profounder knowledge since acquired of the true principles of Gothic architecture, ecclesiastical and domestic alike, this new range may draw down some strictures from the archaeologists and architects of to-day ; yet we may ascribe it in no slight degree to the cultivated mind and refined taste of Archbishop Howley himself that, such as it is, it was in advance of 28 LAMBETH PALACE. It is of the older portions that we purpose to treat in the following pages — not exactly in their The Corridor. chronological succession, but in the order in which they meet the eye from the river-side, and in which the times half a century ago. Mr Blore, the architect, is justly entitled to the credit of having been one of the earliest to attempt the introduction of a taste for true medieval restoration, of which the new portion of Lambeth Palace is no unworthy specimen of the Tudor style. ITS EARLY HISTORY. 29 an inspection of them can be most advantageously made. To any one standing on the deck of a steamboat as it glides down the river, the Great Gateway beside the Tower of the Parish Church first comes in sight ; passing on, beyond it rises the lofty roof of the Great Hall ; next to it, a little in the background, and not quite so elevated and conspicuous, may be detected the roof of the old Guard - room ; then the solid pile of grey stone, properly designated the Water - Tower," though commonly known as the Lollards' Tower/' abut- ting out almost to the Embankment ; passing on still, round the angle, and beyond its north face, the eye detects among the trees within the grounds another but a less imposing square pile already mentioned as Cranmer's Tower;" and betw^een these, three bays of elegant lancet-windows, which mark the site of the Chapel. Thus — though very few may be conscious of it — the everyday passer-by on the stream of old Father Thames can command a view of every ancient part of this time-honoured Palace of the Archbishops. Of these we will speak in their order. 30 CHAPTER II. Wi)t (Great (Katctoau, or iSlorton*5 Eoijjer. It involves no slio-ht effort of the imao^ination to conceive that, until the middle of the eighteenth century,^ the Thames flowed on in uninterrupted stream, its course unbroken by a single bridge between Putney and London Bridge ; and that between those two points the only mode of crossing the river from the Surrey to the Middlesex side, for man or beast, was by ferry-boat. Frequent mention, indeed, is made by old his- torians of bridges as existing on the Thames at an early period; for instance, in 1357, John de Sheppey, Bishop of Rochester, obtained permission from Archbishop Islip to erect one at Stangate for the convenience of his own dependants and friends.^ But it must be borne in mind that the word ^ It was not until within ten years of George III. coming to the throne, that a second bridge crossed the river. This was the one at Westminster, which was completed in 1750. Then followed in rapid succession those of Blackfriars and Waterloo. 2 " Noveritis nos concessisse . . . Johanni de Sheepey Dei gratia Rof- fensi episcopo . . licentiam construendi et erigendi in solo nostro in Lam- beth in quodam loco vocato Stangate unum pontem ad aysiamenta predicti THE GREAT GATEWAY. 31 pons used by the old Monkish chroniclers did not always mean a bridge in the modern sense of the word, but far more often a quay, or sialics, from which travellers miorht take boat to cross the river.-^ And old maps of London show that the river-bank on either side was well supplied with such landing- places, under the name of bridges. Now, clearly the most direct, and therefore the most frequented, route from the Southwark side to Westminster, would be ordinarily between Lambeth Stairs^ and the old Horse Ferry Road at West- minster, nearly corresponding with the line which the present Suspension Bridge takes as it spans the Thames at this point. Here, then, would naturally be the main entrance to the enclosed land, whether of the Court-house of the Countess Goda, or of a small farm belonging to the Monks of Rochester. Here, certainly, would be the entrance to the buildings which gradually rose up to form the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. The humble wicket, or gate, which Episcopi familie sue, et aliorum ibidem secum Tamisiam transeuncium, vel aliorum ad eum quacunque causa ultra Tamisiam transire vel redire volen- cium," &c. — Tslip's Register, f. 138. ^ An instance of the more recent use of the word "bridge," in the sense of a landing-stage or stairs, occurs in " Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, &c." (1589), p- 323, where the Russian ambassador, on his visit to Queen Mary in 1556-57, is described as being publicly received " at Westminster Bndge," when it is clearly meant that he landed from a barge at Westminster Stairs ; for no bridge existed here till nearly two hundred years after. - The ferry at this point represented one of the rights attached to the Palace ; the profits arising from the ferry-boat were granted by patents to some of the Palace officials ; and when Westminster Bridge was completed in 1750, compensation was given by Act of Parliament for the loss of these profits. — Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 79. 32 LAMBETH PALACE. might suffice for the Court-lodge or farmstead, would, in the course of time, give place to a more substantial and imposing gateway. Such we find to have existed at least as early as 132 1. In the ' Computus Ballivorum ' of Archbishop Reynolds mention is made of Mao-na Porta} And no doubt on the site of that older one, some 160 years after, arose the present noble Tower, commonly known as Morton's Gateway," which formed a conspic- uous portion of the extensive repairs carried out by that princely Primate between a.d. i486 and 1502; for he found Lambeth, like nearly all the manor-houses of the See, in a ruinous state after the destructive wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster ; and here, as everywhere else, he left his mark as the building Archbishop." This stately yet somewhat sombre pile of build- ings, red brickwork with stone quoins and dress- ings, forms no unworthy portal to an Archiepisco- pal Palace : scarcely can England produce a finer specimen of the early Tudor style of brick building in so good a state of preservation. Indeed, in size and height, in massiveness of character and har- mony of design, Morton's Gateway may almost claim to be without a contemporary rival. ^ Other ^ Siip-a, p. 19. - The most noteworthy specimens now extant, which have any pretension to rival it, are, perhaps, the Gateway of St John's College, Cambridge, and those of Layer Marney Hall in Essex, and Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. These being of earlier date and more decorated in character, are more striking in general appearance, but lack the massive grandeur of Morton's Gateway at Lambeth. 34 LAMBETH PALACE. such, which may have vied with it in past times, have crumbled away, or have been demoHshed, or ''improved" out of all their original character, while this stands unchanged, and little injured, at the close of its fourth century. A wide-spanned Tudor doorway, with a smaller one beside it, having richly moulded arches, and a three-light perpendicular window above, constitutes the two-storeyed centre, which is flanked by two large massive square towers, five storeys high, that nearest the river being considerably broader than the other ; the entire range heavily battlemented. On entering, the bold groining of the roof, and the imposing proportions of the open arch on the north face, loftier and wider, at once attract the eye. On the right hand a small arched doorway gives admission to the central room, now used as the porter's lodge — of which more presently. On the left hand a corresponding doorway leads into a spacious apartment, originally appropriated to the Registrar of the Prerogative Court,^ but now utilised as the porter's kitchen. Outside the large arch, running down the angle, is a very substantial leaden water-pipe, which has evidently weathered the storms of nearly four cen- turies, for on the square head appears distinctly a to7i, with the letter M upon it — the rebus of the ^ "Locus registrars communis fuit situs et existens ex opposite domus hospicii janitoris in novo opere portae novitur edificatae apud manerium de Lamebith." — Morton's Register, f. 237. THE GREAT GATEWAY. 35 founder Morton's name. In the outer courtyard to the right is a low plain doorway, opening on a spiral stone staircase, which formerly led to the upper apartments in the Eastern Tower — a portion quite distinct in its internal arrangements from the rest of the building. Here may still be observed what, now used as a small cupboard, was originally designed for a very different purpose — an opening in the inner wall, guarded with strong iron gratings, through which the warder on duty in the middle room could observe every one passing up or down the stairs ! For it must be remembered that this and all other Episcopal residences had prisons at- tached (the origin of which will be explained in the account of the so-called Lollards' Prison ") ; these were used not merely, as is commonly imagined, as places for incarceration, but more frequently for de- tention ; ^ where even Nobles accused of disaffec- tion, as well as Churchmen suspected of heresy, were placed under surveillance, in the hope that reflection, or argument, or influence, might convert them to loyalty, or to orthodoxy. Indeed, in some cases a committal to the care of the Archbishop ^ A MS. noticed in the Hist. MSS. Commission Report, No. 985, as in the possession of Miss Conway Griffiths of Anglesea, throws much light on this point. We read there, that in answer to complaints made by certain gentlemen detained at Ely Palace that they were subjected to "needless hardships," the Lords of the Council (a.d. 1590) passed the following Order : " You are to take care . . . and permit them to enjoye the libertye of the gardens and orchardes and the leades to walk in : and for the better preservacion of ther healthe you shall not onelye suffer them to take the aire of a mile or two in your companye, but the companye of such other trustie parsons as you may be assured of, so they may be in safety. " 36 LAMBETH PALACE. proved equivalent to a respite, or even a reprieve, for some condemned prisoner of note. Among these may be instanced the case of Hugh Latimer, who, in 1 53 1, having been excommunicated for a supposed act of contumacy, was committed to the safe custody " of Warham, in his manor of Lam- beth/ Yet the sterner aspect of such confinement was not wanting even here. On the opposite side of that centre room, in which the warder could see, as they passed to and fro, those who were enjoying this restricted hberty, ran a passage through a very massive wall, with heavy double doors, leading to an inner room — now used as a scullery ; the extreme thickness of the walls, the massive double doors, the small windows with their iron bars, the heavy rings still remaining fixed in the wall, the names still legible on the sides, proclaim this to have been one of the prisons for the refractory, or the recusant. And here are traces of a custom now emphatically condemned as un-English. Where the present entrance into this inner chamber has been cut through, the wall was originally only a single brick in thickness, so that any one sitting in the recess thus formed in the outer face of the wall could overhear the conversations of the prisoners within, who, wholly unconscious that there were eavesdroppers on the other side of a thin partition, may have often sealed their own fate, or involved ^ Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. i. p. 162. THE GREAT GATEWAY. 37 that of others, by unguarded conversations with their fellow-prisoners. In a turret projection on the north wall of the Western Tower, a similar arched doorway still re- mains, though the door is closed up. Here another spiral staircase (which is now reached by an inner door), used to give access not only to the apart- ments in that Tower, but also to the central room over the Gateway. The first floor of this Tower clearly constituted Archbishop Morton's sitting- room, with a small sanchtm beyond. Here white- wash and paint have left but little of the original woodwork of walls and ceiling visible. Over a spacious fireplace appear in a painted panel the arms of Archbishop Tillotson, with the date mdcxci (the year of his consecration) ; and all the fine old oak wainscotinor reachiuQ^ from floor to ceilincr is smeared with paint in panels of corresponding date and taste ! The second floor (as also each of the others above) was originally a single room, occupy- ing the entire storey ; in it a recess in the wall, closed by oaken doors, is supposed to have held Archbishop Morton's folding-bed. One other room remains to be noticed. On this landing is a massive door, with its original hinges and locks, opening into the central apartment, which extends over the entire space of the arched entrance between the two towers. It is now com- monly known as the Record," or Muniment Room," because in it were kept for many years the 38 LAMBETH PALACE. ancient records and archives of the See, until they were removed to a more fitting and secure apart- ment adjoining Juxon's Hall. This is a room of goodly proportions. Here ceiling and walls still retain their original character ; the boldly moulded beams and rafters, the polished oak which covers the entire surface of the walls, a fine stone fireplace with slightly but elegantly carved spandrels, all seem to indicate a State apartment. This room, airy and light, no doubt constituted the Audience- chamber " of the Palace during the close of the fif- teenth and early part of the following century ; and though long since denuded of all ornament, and requiring strong uprights to support the beams, in which cracks gape wide and threatening, the general character of the room probably remains much as it was when, with rush-matted floor and skirting, it received the State visitors of the Lord High Chancellor Cardinal, Archbishop Morton, its builder. 39 CHAPTER III. Eijt (great l^alU Passing under this main Gateway, the outer Court is reached ; here, on the right hand, stretching nearly the whole length of the eastern side, lies the Great Hall," now commonly called Juxon's Hall." Five lofty windows of three lights, reach- ing from within a few feet of the ground to the cornice, and lying deeply recessed between but- tresses, form its centre, while the two end bays, containing broader and longer three-light windows, project into the yard, like wings. In the nearest of these a broad doorway formerly occupied the lower portion, with a semi-window above ; but the door has been removed, and the window brought down to correspond with that in the northern wing : while entrance is now gained into the Hall through a small doorway under the arch which leads to the main Courtyard. The Hall itself is a nobly proportioned room, nearly a hundred feet long, fifty high, and thirty- 40 LAMBETH PALACE. eight broad. The effect of spaciousness which, this area presented, when broken only by a row of soHd oak tables and benches running along either side, must have been grand ; yet the loss of it is more than compensated for by the present far more useful Viciu of Library and Great Gateway. arrangement of well-filled book-cases, which line the sides and project at intervals into the room. Of its original erection no authoritative record is forthcoming. The loss of the earlier Registers in the time of Archbishop Kilwarby has thrown this and many other points of the Old Palace history into obscurity. That such a building existed, under the name of Magna Aula, as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, is clear ; for mention is made of it in the ' Computus Ballivorum,' under Arch- bishop Reynolds, already alluded to.^ Ducarel in- See S2ipra, p. 19. THE GREAT HALL. 41 clines to the opinion that it formed part of the original design of Boniface : for Hall, Cloister, Guard-room, and Chapel, constituted at that period the recognised requirements of every such group of buildings, whether Baronial or Monastic ; and these at Lambeth would partake of both charac- ters. The hand of Chicheley may undoubtedly be traced here : the ' Computus Ballivorum ' of his time show that the extensive repair, if not the vir- tual rebuilding, of the Hall, in addition to the erec- tion of the Water-Tower, may be included among the works on which he lavished wealth and taste ; and Juxon, in his careful restoration, preserved, as will be presently seen, many traces of that master- mind. A stately Hall formed a necessary adjunct to the residence of a noble in feudal times. Here, sur- rounded by a vast body of retainers and depend- ants, would be dispensed a lavish hospitality, so prominent a feature of the social life of those days. And Lambeth had among its occupants many who were distinguished for that virtue ; notable among them stood Robert Winchelsea, out of the super- abundance of whose banquets arose the well-known Lambeth Dole," ^ the remains of the feast distri- ^ The " Lambeth Dole," after having been continued for centuries, until it degenerated into a promiscuous supply of the demands of all comers, the strongest and the most importunate being of course the first served, was by Mrs Howley in 1830 reduced to a system by which the most deserving poor of the neighbourhood were liberally supplied with a meal two or three times a-week ; a system which has been maintained ever since. 42 LAMBETH PALACE. buted promiscuously among the crowds of hungry appHcants at the gate. In later years the hospi- tality of Cranmer, Parker, and others, has become historical. The Great Hall at Lambeth had, moreover, a distinction peculiarly its own, in the Consecration Banquets," which were almost always held here on the occasion of each addition to the Episcopate of the Southern Province. Of these the most cele- brated, as being said to have eclipsed all others in its magnificence, was that of William of Wykeham, in 1367, who, though consecrated at St Pauls by his friend and early patron Archbishop Simon de Langham, kept the feast at Lambeth. In later years these banquets were held in the Guard-room, or Dining-hall. They were discontinued at the consecration of Bishop Wilberforce in 1845, compliance with his own request.^ One feature of this now obsolete ceremonial deserves notice. The newly raised Bishop had the privilege of sit- ting at the head of the table with his cap on his head, while the rest. Archbishop and all, sat un- covered.^ ^ Even 250 years ago the banquet used to cost the new Bishop ;^iio State Papers Calendar, 1626, p. 514. 2 An account of a Consecration-feast held at Lambeth in the year 1828 will show how long this custom was preserved. "It is the custom of the day " (writes Bishop Coplestone on the day of his own consecration) "to give the new Bishop precedence after his consecration. He walks first with the Archbishop, and sits at the head of his table — formerly it was with his head covered ; and even now the ceremony is kept up of putting on the cap after the company are seated, although it is immediately taken off again." — Memoir of Bishop Coplestone, by his Son, p. 119. THE GREAT HALE 43 The Great Hall was also used on other occasions for special exercise of hospitality, as, for instance, when in 1408 all the members of Convocation who had been assembled at St Pauls, with many others eminent in every branch of literature, to a num- ber not easy to be computed, were entertained by Archbishop Arundel with elegance and great pro- fusion of viands."-^ Councils also of the English Church have sat at Lambeth, — one under Boniface in 1261, another twenty years after under Peckham ; again in 1330 one was convened by Simon de Meopham,^ and four minor Councils between 1350 and 1370 by his successors Archbishops Islip and Langham.^ Here, moreover. Convocation met for the trans- action of business in 1452, when the infirm state of Archbishop Kempe rendered it necessary to adjourn the session from St Paul's ; and again in 1588, when Archbishop Whitgift, from a similar cause, adjourned it from Westminster/ Of the many changeful and startling scenes through which the English Church passed in the course of the sixteenth century, this Hall has wit- nessed some of the most memorable ; and some ^ Denne's Addenda, p. 177. Wilkins's Concilia, vol. i. p. 309 — lit onuii epiilariini abiindaniid kmtiss 'une conviviavitT 2 Wilkins's Concilia, vol. i. p. 756; vol. ii. pp. 50, 51. ^ Landon's Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, pp. 281, 282. * The expression used by Wilkins {vol. iii. p. 562), quoted in Denne's Ad- denda, p. 179, is in alta Camera Alajori, which leads to the inference that possibly the Guard-room and not the Great Hall, generally called Magna Aula^ was used on that occasion. 44 LAMBETH PALACE. of the saddest are those associated with Cranmer. Here in 1534 was held the Special Commission, with the Archbishop at its head, to extort from the London clergy the Oath which transferred the Supremacy from the Pope to the King, and also assigned the Royal succession to the heirs of the then exultant Anne Boleyn. Here on that mo- mentous occasion stood the wise and brave Sir Thomas More, the only layman summoned, and "the noblest layman England ever had" — he who had been the close companion of Henry's early and better youth, but had now fallen into disgrace with his capricious master — and with him his scarcely less noble fellow-prisoner, the aged John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who had been the Confessor and trusted counsellor of the Kinor's illustrious <_> grandmother, " the Lady Margaret," Countess of Beaufort. The oath, with its preamble, had been craftily drawn — the one it was thought they might accept, but not the other ; this was to be the crucial test ; this was the trap set for men who were too true, too honest, for reservation. They, knowing full well that refusal would seal their doom, steadfastly refused, rather than do violence to their own consciences. And from that Hall they passed back to their dungeons in the Tower, and ere long to the scaffold.^ Here, too, in 1550, after the boy Edward had mounted the throne, and the Reforming party ^ Strype's Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer (folio ed. 1694), p. 26. THE GREAT HALE 45 were in full power, was heard that unseemly inter- chano^e of incrimination and abuse between the now jubilant Cranmer and his deadly foe Bonner ; when the Bishop of London, and Gardiner, his brother of Winchester, stood charged with defiance of the King's orders, for which they were deposed from their Sees and consigned to prison.-^ And on the same spot, only five years after, was enacted another and a far different scene, when all the chief actors had changed places. Edward was dead, Mary was on the throne ; Cranmer the prisoner ; Cardinal Pole sat in the Primate's chair, with Bonner and Gardiner seated by his side, to demand from the Reform - tainted or suspected Bishops and Clergy a retractation of their views, and to offer them absolution from their heresies.^ The following ninety years present little note- worthy in connection with this Hall, save that in Abbot's time it seems to have been used, instead of the Star Chamber, for the sittinors of the Hio-h Commission, the expenses incidental to this ar- rangement furnishing that Primate with a ground of complaint. Since I was Archbishop " (he says), " this thing alone hath cost me out of my ^ Strype's Memorials of Cranmer, Book II, chap. xix. (folio ed. 1694), p. 223. - It was in this Hall that " the Bishops' Book," as it was called, "The Godly and Pious Institution of a Christian Man," had been compiled in 1537, by an assembly of Divines, consisting of Cranmer, Stokesly, Tunstall, Latimer, Fox (of Hereford), and Shaxton ; and here also met that self-con- stituted body who, under the aged and enfeebled Whitgift, endeavoured to palm "the Lambeth Articles" on the English Church, 46 LAMBETH PALACE. private estate one thousand pounds and a half ; and if I did say two thousand, it were not much amiss. Under Archbishop Abbot this Hall was also used for a special Court of Inquiry, on an occasion in which grave political as well as reli- gious interests were involved. In the year 1622 a Commission assembled here under the presi- dency of Abbot, with the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Lincoln, and other members of the Privy Council, to investigate charges against Anthony de Domini, Archbishop of Spalatro, who had come to England in the guise of a convert from Romanism, and had received a cordial wel- come at Court and at the Universities. He was even permitted to take part in the consecration of Bishops Felton and Monteigne in Lambeth Chapel in 16 1 7, and was subsequently appointed by Charles to the Mastership of the Savoy. It was, however, proved that he was all the while an emissary from Rome, in constant correspondence with the Pope — probably the forerunner of that body of dis- guised Jesuits who were poured into England during the next decade, with the view of restoring Popery, either by conversion or by reunion. The result of the inquiry was, that he was ordered to quit the country in twenty days, and never again to return to England. Then came the dark days of the Rebellion, when the Palace had passed into the sacrilegious hands of two of Cromwell's minions ^ Whifelock's jNIemorials, vol. i. p. 452. THE GREAT HALL. 47 — Colonel Thomas Scot,^ who was his Secretary of State, and Matthew Hardy (or Hardynge, as it is sometimes spelt) : and then, while every part of the noble pile was desecrated and more or less injured, the Hall was demolished, and its materials sold by auction. At the Restoration, Archbishop Juxon found the whole Palace " a heap of ruins." During an episcopate of less than three years, he laid out nearly ^15,000 in repairs, of which above two- thirds were expended in the rebuilding of this noble Hall. His determination, in spite of the persuasion of men deeply imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance architecture of that day, was to make it as nearly as possible a i^estoration ; and so anxious was he that this character should be pre- served, that he inserted in his Will the following proviso : If I die before the Hall at Lambeth be finished, my executors to be at the charge of finishing it according to the model made of it, if my successor shall give leave." It was, then, but a fitting meed of praise, that the building should thenceforth have been known as " Juxon's Hall." Its noble open roof, wherein lies its chief archi- tectural beauty, attests the earnestness of the de- sire which thus found expression in his Will, to retain all that was possible of the medieval char- acter, and shows how nearly he succeeded. Here ^ Scot had taken part as one of the Commissioners in the trial of Charles I., and was among the first of the Regicides executed after the Restoration. 48 LAMBETH PALACE. are the massive projecting hammer-beams with upper and under braces, telHng of the days of the Plantagenets ; these originally, no doubt, were only less rich in decorated mouldings and carved pendants than those of its nobler contemporary in Westminster Hall, or its earlier rival of Eltham Palace ; but while the original lines of construction have been preserved, the more elegant adornments have given place to the round lathe-turned bosses, which, like the large balls or globes that do duty for finials on the walls outside, betray a tardy and reluctant concession to the intrusive demands of the Renaissance. On the centre of the roof rises an elegant louvre, or lantern, carrying a vane, on which appear the arms of the See of Canterbury impaling those of Juxon, the whole surmounted by a mitre. These arms, and the date 1663, appear also on the massive leaden gutters that run under the cornice. From Juxon's days to those of Archbishop How- ley, this noble Hall had lain comparatively unused, save as a covered thoroughfare to the private apart- ments. To him it owed its restoration to use, and its adaptation to the purposes of a Library. We must still linger a while in this Hall to dwell upon a few of the most attractive relics and memorials that yet remain of its early past. In the window in the north bay have been collected together, from the different windows in the old buildings, such portions of ancient glass as escaped THE GREAT HALL. 49 the hands of the Parliamentarian Vandals. Here are now placed the likenesses of Saints Jerome and Gregory, which were formerly in the old " Pre- sence-Chamber/' the existence of which among the earliest of the Palace antiquities may have some connection with the painting of the " Four Latin Fathers," of which an account will be given in due time. St Jerome appears wrapt in medita- tion on a vision of angels, with his hands clasped upon an open book, — a human skull on the table at his left hand, and a lion crouching by his left side. Under it is the following inscription: — " Devout his life, his vokimes learned be ; The Sacred Writt's Interpreter was he ; And none ye Doctors of the Church amonge Is found his equal in the Hebrew tongue." [He lived at the tyme of Pope Damasus, Anno Do. 376.] While the likeness of St Gregory, richly arrayed in pontificals, his hand resting on a closed book, and his pen laid aside, has its tale thus told : — " More holy or more learned synce his tyme Was none that wore the triple diadem ; And by his prayerful studies he is one Among the chiefest Latin fathers knowne." [He lived about the year of our Lord 594-] A third painting of a similar character, pur- porting to be a likeness of St Augustine, was formerly in a window in the Steward's Parlour, but D 50 LAMBETH PALACE. has since disappeared. Under it ran the following lines : — " So careful of his charitye, so meeke a minde, So deeply learned, so Christianlye inclined ; And one that hereticks did more confound Synce the Apostle's tyme hath not beene found." [He died in the year of our Lord 440 ; of his age 70.] ^ In this window is also a likeness of Archbishop Chicheley, which was formerly in one of the win- dows of the Gallery ; it is a work of considerable beauty, with the finish of a miniature painting, and is remarkable for the unusually youthful character of the face. By a strange anachronism it is en- circled by a scroll containing fragments of Cran- mer's motto, No see teipsuni et Deum? Two other panes of glass, which originally had their place in the Gallery, are here, containing figures, in outline, of a globe with a serpent en- twined round it, a dove perching upon its head, the whole surrounded by a scroll bearing Cardinal Pole's motto, " Estate prudentes sicuti serpentes et simplices siciit colu7nbce to which are added the words " Simplicitas amor que recti!' From the same place have been brought together 1 Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 56. - Ducarel (ibid.) says these words were "the motto of Archbishop Staf- ford, and were improperly placed here in Herring's time ; " but the character indicates a much later period ; and Strype in his life of Cranmer expressly mentions that his motto was Nosce teipsum et DeiimP Fragments of this scroll are also to be found inserted in other parts of this window ; and local tradition always assigns them to Cranmer. THE GREAT HALL. 51 here some coats of arms of great antiquity ; one bearing the inscription "Guakerus Reynolds, 1313/' another of Kempe, dated 1452 ; while one still more ancient is supposed to represent the arms of Boniface : here, too, are those of Chicheley and Bourchier ; ^ and one, conspicuous for its gorgeous blazonry, displays the arms of Philip of Spain as a Knight of the Garter, which, while in the window in Pole's Gallery, must have been a cause of con- stant self-imposed torture — a daily memento of disappointed hopes — to the Cardinal Cousin, and would-be husband, of Mary. Here also appear the Royal Arms, quartering those of England and France, enclosed within the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, apparently of the date of Edward III., and possibly commemorative of that king's visit to Archbishop Stratford in 1345, when John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, did homage to Edward in the Palace. Besides these, are the coats of arms of the Primates from Cranmer to Sancroft, which, accord- ing to Wharton, Sancroft introduced into the win- dows of rooms which have since disappeared.^ To these Archbishop Howley added the arms of the subsequent Primates, and brought all together into this window ; including among them, on a larger scale, Juxon's and his own — the one having rebuilt the Hall, the other having adapted it to its ^ Herbert and Brayley's Lambeth Palace Illustrated, p. 46. - Denne's Addenda to Ducarel's Lambeth Palace (Bibl Topogr.), p. 165. 52 LAMBETH PALACE. present use ; while, conspicuous on a panel at the north end of the Hall itself, he placed those of Bancroft, with whom the Library originated, and at the south end those of Seeker, to whom it w^as indebted for so many of its choicest treasures/ Before proceeding to describe those treasures, it may not be out of place to notice here more fully the Galleries in which they were formerly placed. Two Cloisters are mentioned in the ' Computus Ballivorum ' as existing in the time of Archbishop Reynolds, there described as magmmi et pai^vuni claiistrtuji? Of these the latter, probably only a single line, supported by a row of twelve pillars, ran along the north, or garden side, of the Chapel, being little more than a covered walk in wet weather, access to which was gained through the door, which still remains, opening out of Cranmer s Tower. This Cloister was removed by Archbishop Herring.^ The Great Cloisters ^ were quadrangular in form, lying between the south side of the Chapel and the north end of the Hall, with the Guard-room on the ^ One other feature of the Hall must be noticed. The doorway at the north end of the east side, opening into the vestibule, is a remarkable speci- men of the Italian style of architecture, which, if not designed by an Italian artist, bears striking resemblance to renaissance work so frequently met with in Italy. ^ See page 19. Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 46. ^ Aubrey in his Antiquities of Surrey (ed. 17 19), vol. v. p. 273, calls these the "Inner Cloysters"; while Ducarel (p. 46) applies that term to the others on the north of the Chapel. THE GREAT HALL, 53 54 LAMBETH PALACE. east, and on the west opening out into the outer courtyard, and commanding a view of the Thames. Aubrey,^ who was his contemporary, ascribes the building of these Galleries over the Cloisters to Archbishop Sheldon: but Lysons^ suggests that he only restored them, and adapted them to the purposes of a Library, for the reception of Ban- croft's legacy, which he had succeeded in recover- ing from the University of Cambridge. This is far more probable ; for Galleries undoubtedly ex- isted here in Elizabeth's time ; and the tradition may not be unfounded which assigns them, as well as the Long Gallery over the eastern colonnade, to Cardinal Pole. There is little of historical interest connected with them ; beyond the single incident recorded in the " Progresses of Queen Elizabeth," " that on a Wednesday in Lent, in 1573, on the occasion of one of Queen Elizabeth's visits to the Archbishop, a pulpit was placed near the pump which stood in the centre of the quadrangle, and Dr Pearce, at that time one of the Chaplains of his Grace, preached a sermon ; the Queen with her nobles and courtiers listening to it in the galleries round, while the people, who filled the quadrangle below, " divided their attention between her Ma- jesty and the preacher." Judging from the engravings^ of these Cloisters ^ Antiquities of Surrey, vol. i. p. 9. - Environs of London, vol. i. p. 265. Edited by J. Nichols, vol. i. p. 325, Two are given in Herbert and Brayley's Lambeth Palace Illustrated. THE GREAT HALL. 55 and Galleries, they possessed as little of architec- tural beauty as they did of historical interest. All traces of early work, if any remained, were lost in subsequent repairs and plasterings : whatever there might have been of arches or columns had disap- peared in favour of a line of small square latticed casemates in wooden frames, just large enough to li^ht what had ceased to be used otherwise than as covered passages ; while in the galleries above were five large windows on each of the four sides, of the plainest, poorest style possible — certainly nothing in Cloisters or Galleries to entitle them to be rescued from demolition, when their removal helped to turn the area they occupied to more useful purpose, and also to bring out into greater prominence the other nobler portions of the Palace. A passing regret, however, may be pardonable on the removal of these Galleries, from the personal associations they would recall. For while they constituted the Library of the Palace, they were no doubt the resort of some of England's greatest students and historians. John Foxe, the martyr- ologist, whose earlier days had been spent in Nor- folk House close by, when he was tutor to the Earl of Surrey, and who, after his return from Basle, whither he had fled in the Marian persecution, found a welcome and an asylum under the same roof for the remaining years of his life, was most probably a frequent visitor here ; Stow, the anti- quarian, the friend of Archbishop Parker, we know LAMBETH PALACE. THE GREAT HALL. 57 was ; ^ so too John Strype, the grand old Church historian, who rejoiced in Archbishop Tenison as his admiring and congenial patron ;^ not to mention Henry Wharton, Edmund Gibson, David Wilkins, and Andrew Ducarel, whose literary powers and fame imparted a glory to the office which they successively filled, of Librarians at Lambeth. The very presence of men such as these, whose names are so worthily woven into the history of the Eng- lish Church, would doubtless to some extent endear to after-ages the place in which they daily spent hours in laborious study and research, the fruits of which they have left for our enjoyment. Still, the loss of those old Galleries, with their homely book- shelf linings, and their arctic-region temperature, which defied all attempts at warming,^ is surely more than compensated for by the present very advantageous transfer of their contents into Juxon's Hall, — which we would now consider in its new character of the Library. ^ Strype's Life of Parker. ^ Strype's Annals (folio ed. 1709), vol. i. p. 159, &c. Archbishop Tenison gave Strype the Sinecure Rectory of Tarring, in Sussex, in 1724. ^ Sir N. Harris Nicholas used to say that "in v^dnter only men like Cap- tain Parry and his crew could make use of such a place." 58 CHAPTER IV. €\\t 3Ltljrarg, The 30,000 and more volumes which fill these handsome shelves, do not represent a very ancient appanage of the See ; even though it can boast a greater antiquity than the Library at the British Museum, with its more than a million and a quarter of printed books, and about 50,000 volumes of manuscripts. It was not till the year 1753 that the far-famed collection which Sir Hans Sloane had made passed from private into public hands ; and that really formed the nucleus of the great National Library : whereas Lambeth had received her great literary legacy nearly 150 years before. To Archbishop Bancroft it is indebted for the first collection of books which was to become a permanent possession of the See ; of which Aubrey^ says that a large portion of them had belonged to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the once power- ful favourite of Elizabeth ; a tradition which has 1 Survey of Surrey, vol. v. p. 277, THE LIBRARY. 59 TJic Great Hall, no-u< tlie Library, 6o LAMBETH PALACE, certainly some support in the fact that the name and arms of Leicester appear in several of the volumes which formed part of Bancroft's original bequest. Primates before him had been men of equal and even greater learning, and had doubtless pos- sessed extensive collections of books. Chicheley, it would seem, could boast of a library/ Bourchier, the son of a man who was one of the most active promoters of printing in this country, may be reasonably accredited with literary tastes. Mor- ton certainly had more of the politician and the statesman than the scholar : but Warham, the great patron of literature, would assuredly surround himself with the works of those who had crone before, and still more of the men whose labours he so liberally encouraged. Cranmer was himself a scholar of rare powers. Yet nothing is known of their libraries. When we come to Parker, the munificent patron of learning, we can trace the library he so loved to its destination : his choice and invaluable MSS." he bequeathed to Bene't College (Corpus Christi), Cambridge, ''his mn^se!' Laud, again, divided his books between the Bod- leian Library and St John's, Oxford, of which Col- 1 Archbishop Chicheley's Register, ii. f. 57, as under date Feb. 12, 1419, has the following entry : Hen. Chichele in libraria sua infra manerium suum de Lambhith, &c.," quoted in Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 47, n. 2 So Strype renders it — Life of Parker (folio ed. 1711), p. 518; the express words of his Will are — "ubi primos progressus in literis fecerem." — Ibid., Appendix, p. 187. THE LIBRARY. 6i lege he had been successively Scholar, Fellow, and President. Sancroft had actually arranged all his books on the shelves at Lambeth,^ and in an early Will he designed them as a legacy to his successors : but on his expulsion from the See he transferred them all to his old College (Emmanuel) at Cam- bridge ; while Wake bestowed his, some 5500 volumes, besides 200 MSS., with a collection of nearly 7000 coins, on Christ Church, Oxford ; fear- ing, it is said, that Gibson, who was then Bishop of London, would be his successor at Lambeth. Thus many before Bancroft, and some since, willed their collections of books either to a favour- ite college, or to some friend,^ or even to be dis- persed under the hammer among the literati of the day. So the library at Lambeth, to adopt John Evelyn's simile at even a later date, ebbed and flowed, like the Thames running by it, with every Prelate."' Bancroft's legacy served as the dam by which at least a certain volume of the liter- ary stream was pent up and preserved, while beyond this it would rise more or less with each succes- sive Primate. How carefully its future safety was provided for, is evinced by the terms of Bancroft's ■ 1 D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 465 ; vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. - Archbishop Howley left the great bulk of his to his domestic chaplain and friend, the Venerable Benjamin Harrison, Archdeacon of Maidstone, and a fitting place has been found for them in the old Chapter Library at Canter- bury, now restored, and designated " Bibliotheca Howleiana." In the days of the Priory of Christ Church, this building was the Prior's Chapel, the Monastic Library occupying the chamber above it. Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 247 : letter to Pepys, dated 1688. 62 LAMBETH PALACE. Will, in which he bequeaths it thus : I give all my books in my study over the Cloisters unto my successors and to the Archbishops of Canterbury successively and for ever," subject to certain con- ditions ^ to be drawn up by his successor, to guard against any possible attempt to alienate them from the See — " otherwise I bequeath them all to his Majesty's Colledge to be erected at Chelsey/ if it be erected within these six years ; or otherwise I give and bequeath them all to the publique library of the University of Cambridge." That condition once saved it ; for when, after Laud's imprisonment, the Palace was taken pos- session of by the Parliamentarians, the Library was in great danger. A rumour of this evidently reached Laud in the Tower ; for early in Novem- ber 1642 he petitioned that, ''as his house at Lam- beth is taken for some public service, the Library there and his own study of books may be placed in security." " \\\ consequence of this representa- tion no doubt, the order was passed on the 23d of the following December, that Mr Glyn, Mr Whit- lock, and Mr Hill, or any two of them, should take 1 These conditions were drawn up by no less brilliant a legal luminary than Sir Francis Bacon, at the request of Archbishop Abbot, and at the command of James I. - The original design to which this Legacy refers, for the establishment of a College devoted to the study of controversial Divinity, was never carried out, so that the claim to Bancroft's books lapsed. "Chelsea Hospital" was not founded till 1682. ^ MS. Joi-^nial of the House of Lords, Nov. 9, 1642 ; History of Laud's Troubles and Trial (folio, 1695), pp. 64, 197. THE LIBRARY. 63 care for the securing of the public Library belong- ing to the See of Canterbury ; the books, writings, evidences, and goods, in Lambeth House, and to take the keys into their custody."^ Yet the re- sponsibility seemed to weigh as an incubus on the mind of Parliament ; for when Dr Leighton was placed in charge of the prisoners who were being poured into Lambeth House, he claimed the books and everything belonging to the Archbishop.^ In the following October a subsequent Order made over the charge to Dr Wincocke : ^ even this, however, did not set their minds at rest, so in the October of 1644 a further Order was passed, giving the Library to Sion College/ But it was evident that, amid all these changes and movings, the books were gradually disappearing : some were found in the comparatively safe hands of Thurloe, Secretary of State under Cromwell — for Thurloe was a man of letters and of high principle ; but others had been abstracted by men like that pulpit buffoon," as Dugdale calls him, Hugh Peters, Cromwell's favourite Chaplain. Then, happily, John Selden interfered : who, though a Parliamentarian, was among the noblest and wisest of that party, himself a man of learning and a great collector of books, as the "Selden End" of the Bodleian Library at Oxford testifies. He saw the danger to which these 1 History of Laud's Troubles and Trial, Dec. 23, 1642, p, 198. - Ibid., May 9, 1643, P- 203. ^ A Perfect Diurnal, &c., October 3, 1643. ^ Whitelock's Memorials, p. 106. 64 LAMBETH PALACE. literary treasures were exposed, and pressed upon the University of Cambridge to assert its rever- sionary claim ; and thus the Library was saved. Several of the missing volumes were recovered, and the whole collection transferred to the safe custody of the University. During the Primacy of Sheldon it was restored to Lambeth, and has formed the nucleus round which bequests and gifts have centred ever since. But valuable, and in some points unrivalled, as is the collection of printed books here presented to the eye, it must be remembered that out of sight, stowed away in a separate fire - proof room, are volumes upon volumes of still greater value — Regis- ters, Court-rolls, Charters, and miscellaneous docu- ments connected with the See, and other Manu- scripts, embracing centuries of English Church history, which really form the distinctive and most valuable portion of the Archiepiscopal Library. First let us speak of the Registers. Every English diocese has preserved more or less com- plete records of the transactions of the See. Some date from a more remote period than others : those of Lincoln claim the greatest antiquity, beginning with the episcopate of Hugh de Wells in 1209;^ 1 Dr Ducarel, in a MS. Letter to Archbishop Herring, inserted in the first volume of his Index to Peckham's Register, and quoted by Bishop Gib- son in the Preface, p. 13, to his Codex, &c., says that the Lincohi Regis- ters should date from the Conquest, and form an unbroken series from Remigius de Feschamps to the present day ; but that the earlier ones were borrowed by Archbishop Wake, and never returned ; and he suggests that they might have gone astray among that Archbishop's MSS. to Christ Church THE LIBRARY. 65' those of Worcester with Bishop Giffard in 1268; while those at Lambeth only date back to John Peckham in 1279, in the reign of Henry III. All the Registers of the earlier Archbishops are believed to have been carried to Rome by Kil ward- by ; and neither the demands made by the energetic Peckham/ nor the efforts of subsequent Primates, have availed to recover them — the plea being that they are not forthcoming there. Nor is the Lam- beth series quite so complete as that of Lincoln or of Worcester, which are only broken during the Com- monwealth. Here those of the Archbishops Simon de Meopham, John Stratford, and Thomas Brad- wardine are wanting, making a gap between the years 1328 and 1349: these also appear to have been taken to Rome by Bradwardine when he resigned the See,^ and have never been restored. Library ; but through the courtesy of the Rev. Prebendary Wickenden, in charge of the Lincoln Muniments, the author is able to remove this imputa- tion, and explain the mystery of the supposed loss. A book was borrowed by the Archbishop, by him called " Registrum Antiquissimum," which did find its way to Christ Church ; but it was not a Register — only a volume of copies of Charters, &c., of the thirteenth century ; and it has been long since restored to the Lincoln Chapter Library. ^ Peckham's Register (Lambeth MSS.), f. 152. His letter to Rome is a grand specimen of outspoken remonstrance. After acknowledging with thanks some articles which, when sold at Kilwardby's death at Rome, had been bought, and were said to be on their way to England as a present to the See of Canterbury, he says : "At quidem miror valde quod Camerarius S. Memoriae domini N. Papse bona ipsa diversorum generum, quae ultra sum- mam quinque millia marcarum dictus pr^edecessor noster de bonis Cant, ecclesie secum tulit, in suis vel mercatorum manibus, quae nobis et ecclesise forsitan restituisset aliquo tempore, si vixisset, taliter sequestravit ut sic a manibus nostris crudeliter elongentur, . . . et circa hoc non quaerimus pecuniam sed justitiam." - On being made a Cardinal he resigned this for the wealthier see of Portua. E 66 LAMBETH PALACE. With that exception, and the period of the Com- monwealth, the series is complete to the present time. For more than a century the series at Lam- beth ceased with Potter, all later Registers being preserved in the Prerogative Court ; but these also have been lately brought to Lambeth, and are now complete to the death of Archbishop Longley. In early days these Registers were preserved in the Priory Church of St Gregory at Canterbury ; and the date of their transfer to Lambeth is un- known. Here they were for years piled away in the spacious room over the gateway in Morton's Tower, which is still known as the Record Room" or Muniment Room ; " but in the extensive alter- ations made by Archbishop Howley in 1829, the present more convenient and safer room was ar- ranged for their reception at the south end of Juxon's Hall, over the arch leading into the main courtyard. Of these Registers Dr Ducarel ^ says : The Records of the See of Canterbury afford fuller information upon most heads, not only than the Records of any other See, but more than the Records of all the other Sees put together, as con- taining the whole exercise of Metropolitical as well as ordinary jurisdiction through a long series and succession of Archbishops : not to mention a vast variety of other matters relating to the government of the Church, which I doubt will be sought for in 1 His letter to Archbishop Herring already referred to, p. 64, n. THE LIBRARY. 67 vain in the Records of any private See." And again : " The Registers of your See, my Lord, are much talked of and little known. Whenever they are, and not before, a good History of the Church of England may be compiled by any person of discernment who will go to them as the Fountain- head of Truth, entire and unmixed." Here are recorded not only the transactions of the Diocese or the Province, such as Consecrations, Inductions, Monitions, Homages, &c., of successive Primates, but also State documents bearing on great national events. Among them are Papal Bulls, scattered over the several volumes, of the deepest interest in the ecclesiastical world; while no less than 122 are bound up separately in two volumes dating from the days of Alexander HI. (1155) to those of Clement VH. (1534). Here are also, inter- spersed with other matter, Letters to Popes and to Cardinals, and also to Kings ; Wills, too, of many eminent and distinguished men. Such a mass of documentary lore would more than justify the strong terms in which Ducarel describes the im- portance of these Records. Yet he was the first to realise their full value. Librarians who had preceded him were content to extract from their deep recesses such data as met their own needs ; but to the outer world each of these Registers remained a sealed book. With- out classification or order, beyond something like chronological arrangement, they were utterly inac- 68 LAMBETH PALACE. cessible to the general reader — a very mine of literary wealth lying practically buried and useless, for lack of the means by which it could be brought to the surface and utilised. Truly did Archbishop Herring, writing in 1754, describe what these re- cords then were, and what they might be made, when he said, They are now a treasure ; and a good Index would convert them into ready cash." ^ And to Dr Topham's recommendation to Arch- bishop Herring was Lambeth really indebted for the man who may fairly rank as its greatest bene- factor, Andrew Coltee Ducarel ; for, as with a ma- gician's wand, — save only that the work, instead of being instantaneously effected, was the achieve- ment of years of labour, — did Ducarel give the stamp of currency to that mass of hitherto un- worked ore, by a most elaborate and complete Index of these Registers, embracing every entry, however short and seemingly unimportant. Nor were these Registers the only part of the Lambeth treasures on which Ducarel left his mark. Besides these, there were also boxes and bags filled with parchment rolls, containing Miscel- laneous Records connected with the See — Rotuli (Court-rolls), Chartce (Charters), Compuhis Balli- voriim (bailiffs' or stewards' accounts), ranging from the reign of Edward I. to that of James I., and 1 Letter to Dr Topham, who had been Master of the Faculties and Judge of the Prerogative Court at York Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. vi. p. 394. THE LIBRARY. 69 capable of throwing light on the minutest details of social and domestic life between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here, too, the hand of the indefatigable Ducarel may be traced. He deci- phered and catalogued these miscellaneous piles of parchment. One copy of this most laborious catalogue is in the Library itself ; and a copy of it, written also chiefly by his own hand, is preserved in the British Museum.^ Yet it must be admitted that this latter portion of his unwearying labours is less full and satisfactory than his great work on the Registers, and has been quite recently sup- plemented and completed by an expert from the State Paper Office, under whose practised eye and hand these also, by being more fully indexed and calendared, now offer greater facilities for exam- ination, and present a comparatively new field for inquiry and research to the student of ecclesiastical and social life in the Middle Ages. These Registers and Court-rolls may be re- garded as the " Lambeth Records proper" — for they have ever been the property of the See, and refer almost exclusively to matters more or less directly connected with it ; and yet so wide is their range, that they are of national importance and interest, according to the already quoted opinion of the learned Ducarel. Allusion has been made to the break which occurs in these Registers in the middle of the 1 Cole's Additional MSS., No. 1606. 70 LAMBETH PALACE. seventeenth century, from 1633^ to the appoint- ment of Juxon in 1660. A similar lacuna appears in all Diocesan Registers throughout England ; for when the fell Ordinance of Parliament swept away all the Bishops, it of course closed all their Regis- ters ; their functions were suspended — there was nothing to record. But in one way Lambeth has fared better than the rest : in them all there re- mains the hiatus; here, and here only, are pre- served other records which help, if not to fill up the gap, to supply at least some contemporary in- formation of great value ; which, while they openly proclaim the system of spoliation then adopted in the name of religion, reveal also some attempts made by these legalised spoliators to remedy a few of the evils, if not to redress any of the wrongs, resulting from their action, — records, too, which proved of great ulterior use, as will be explained. Here are volumes of " Parliamentary Surveys of Church Lands," the result of inquiries instituted by a body called in mockery the " Crown Commis- sioners," but really creatures of Parliament. They contain a mass of information respecting the value, condition, and distribution of all Church lands dur- ing that troublous period. These volumes had, like the Library itself, a few years later, a very narrow escape from destruction. They were stowed away in an office in Broad Street, in the City, ^ Laud actually exercised his functions till 1643 ; but it is probable that the Registers during the later years were seized by his enemies and destroyed. THE LIBRARY. 71 when, in the excitement of the Restoration, a tur- bulent rabble broke in and were ransacking them. By an Order of the House of Commons, dated 6th August 1660, it was required that all that had been abstracted should be recovered, and the whole delivered unto the Lord Archbishop of Canter- bury, who is desired to take care for the preserva- tion thereof" ^ So they came to Lambeth. And here they served a purpose which, in their origi- nal design, was never contemplated : they greatly facilitated the restitution to the Church of all the property of which she had been then spoiled ; while, for all historians of that period, they have preserved a mass of data of incalculable interest and importance. Besides these are several volumes recording the ''Augmentation of all Benefices for the maintenance of Preaching Ministers," based on these " Surveys ; " and others containing the '' Pres- entations to Benefices, Leases of Church Lands," &c., &c., under the Commonwealth. Here may be noticed, as being similar in char- acter, though properly coming under a subsequent head, six volumes, entitled ' Notitiae Parochiales.' ^ These contain Returns made in the year 1705, by the Incumbents themselves, of the value and con- dition of their respective parishes. The history of these volumes is interestingf. To a Briefs issued o 1 Todd's Catalogue of Lambeth MSS., p. 269. - Lambeth MSS., numbered 965. ^ Briefs, which are mentioned in the rubric of the Communion Service after the Nicene Creed, were Letters Patent or Licences, issued by the 72 LAMBETH PALACE. for a collection for the rebuilding of All Saints' Church at Oxford, Mr Harley, then Secretary of State (aftewards Earl of Oxford), appended a series of questions to be answered by the clergy of the smaller parishes of England. Answers were re- turned from only 1606 parishes. The information thus obtained seems to have never been utilised ; probably because Mr Harley resigned his office the following year. These papers, being left in loose sheets, and having somehow escaped from the often too close security of official pigeon-holes, were in danger of being destroyed or lost, when Archbishop Seeker, hearing of them, purchased all he could find, 1579 in number, and had them bound and deposited in the Library.^ From these we pass to the extensive collec- tions of miscellaneous MSS., which here, as in the great national treasure-house, the British Mu- seum, are distinguished by the names of their re- spective collectors. But first among them comes a very large group, extending over nearly 600 volumes, which forms a connecting-link between the two classes. These are designated by Dr Todd ''Codices MSS. Lambethani;" and though they have little or no distinct relation to the See Court of Chancery in the name of the King, for making collections for the repair of churches, &c., and were sent to every parish. This mode of raising funds became grievously abused by men "farming" them, who were called brief-jobbers. It was therefore discontinued ; and " King's Letters," for the Incorporated Societies, were for some years substituted for them. ^ Appendix to Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 137. THE LIBRARY. 73 of Canterbury, as the Registers and Court -rolls have, they form a very important part of its liter- ary possessions. The former constitute its chron- icles, and in some sort its title-deeds, for many generations ; while these latter will rank among its richest and most precious heirlooms. Of the more noteworthy of these, particular mention will be made presently. For the first printed catalogue of them, as also of the whole collection of MSS., the Library is indebted to the industry of Dr Todd, who filled the post of Librarian in the early part of the present century. This catalogue, which is now very rare, contains a detailed ac- count of every MS., while the Preface to it con- veys a most interesting insight into their general character. He thus classifies them : — I St, The Lambeth MSS., of which we have already spoken ; these extend over no less than 576 volumes. 2d, The Wharton MSS., over 18 volumes, from Nos. 577 to 595. 3d, The Carew MSS., 42 volumes, from Nos. 596 to 638. 4th, The Teiiison MSS., no less than 289 volumes, from Nos. 639 to 928. 5th, The Gibson MSS., 13 volumes, from Nos. 929 to 942. 6th, Miscellaneous MSS., 231 volumes, from Nos. 943 to 1 174. 74 LAMBETH PALACE. 7th, The Marnier s Sutton MSS., 46 volumes, from Nos. 1 175 to 122 1. Each of these groups is of importance enough to demand a brief notice ; and the intrinsic value of some of them will be enhanced by a knowledge of the circumstances under which they were col- lected and brought together here. It will be seen that of these 1200 volumes and more, nearly half have been the gradually accumulating inheritance of the See from very early times ; while nearly all the remainder have really been collected by two Archbishops — Tenison and Manners Sutton : for as to those which, for convenience, are distin- guished as Whartonian and Gibsonian, the Library was almost as directly indebted to Tenison for them as it was for that colossal collection which bears his own name ; and the great mass of the later additions w^ere due to the liberality of Man- ners Sutton. The first in order is that which bears the name of Wharton. Henry Wharton (of whom a fuller account will be given when we come to speak of the Librarians), though he died at the early age of 31, had held the office of Librarian under three successive Primates, Sancroft, Tillotson, and Ten- ison. The great mass of documents, transcripts, extracts, notes, on which he had based his ' Anglia Sacra,' were arranged under the title of Collectanea, and bequeathed by him to his last patron and friend, Archbishop Tenison, by whom they were THE LIBRARY, 75 presented to Lambeth Library, and now appear worthily under the name of the Librarian who collected them, and not under that of the book- loving Primate by whom they were really pre- sented. The Carew MSS. come next to be spoken of, and hold a very important place in this collection. They originally consisted of 72 volumes, of which only 42 are now at Lambeth. Of the missing 30, six have been discovered among the Laudian MSS. in the Bodleian ; but of the fate of the others nothing is known. Their value consists in their bearing upon a particular subject — the history of Ireland ; beginning with the conquest of that coun- try in the reign of Henry IL, and continuing to the w^ars in the province of Munster in the reign of Elizabeth, and the administration of Ulster under James L They were collected under peculiarly favourable circumstances by Sir George Carew — afterwards Earl of Totnes — during the time that he held the ofifice of Lord Deputy of Ireland ; his object being to gather materials for writing a history of that country. Not living to carry out this intention himself, he bequeathed this mass of records, ex- tracts, notes, which he had accumulated, to Sir Thomas Stafford, his natural son, who prepared a Digest of them, which he published in 1633 under the title of ' Pacata Hibernia.' The value of this collection seems to be generally acknow- 76 LAMBETH PALACE. ledged, as containing an inestimable mass of evi- dence on the social and political condition of Ireland. Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy and Mr Brewer in their Report have recorded their opin- ion that they are unique, and of the greatest value and importance," and that no faithful history of Ireland can be written until their voluminous contents are made public;" while Professor Stubbs, who was for some time Librarian at Lambeth, de- clares that "the Carew Papers are more frequently consulted than any other MSS. at Lambeth." ^ How this important collection found its way here is very doubtful. Dr Todd includes them, among those for which the Library is indebted to Arch- bishop Tenison, and supports this view by the statement that Tenison bequeathed them in his Will : but this is inaccurate, for there is no special mention of them in the Archbishop's Will ; nor is this generally received tradition supported by other collateral evidence. Indeed such evidence runs directly counter to it. In the three volumes of a catalogue which Sir George Carew himself prepared, is to be found the undoubted signature of Sancroft, proving that they must have been at Lambeth before Tenisons time. Moreover, another tradition exists assigning their introduction 1 Report on the Carew Papers at Lambeth, by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy and Rev. J. S. Brewer, pp. 11-13. Of these Papers the portion referring to the period between the years 15 15 and 1624 have been calendared, and pub- lished in six volumes under the direction of the Master of the Rolls among the State Papers. THE LIBRARY. 77 here to Laud ; and this receives corroboration from the fact that, of the 30 volumes which are wanting to complete the series, six, as already mentioned, have been found among the MSS. given by Laud to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The vast collection, filling nearly 300 volumes, which stands under the name of the Tenison MSS., bears testimony to the indefatigable energy of that great bibliophile. In him truly the organ of ac- quisitiveness must have been largely developed. Wherever he went, he made and left his mark in the shape of a Library, — and also of a school ; for both St Martins and Lambeth can still boast their Tenison s Schools," which he erected and endowed. As Vicar of St Martin's-in-the- Fields he collected and left behind him a Parochial Library, which was without its equal in any par- ish in England. But this, under the plea of its having become obsolete and useless with the change of the public mind and taste, was some years since scattered to the winds under the ham- mer of the auctioneer! At St Paul's Cathedral, too, with which he was connected for a short time as Archdeacon of London, his name is held in honour as having liberally and largely contributed towards the purchase of a collection of books made by the Rev. Robert Grey, Vicar of Islington, which formed the nucleus of the present Chapter Library; while a third, the largest and most valuable gift of all, collected during the twenty years of his 78 LAMBETH PALACE. Primacy, was added by him to that which his pre- decessor, Bancroft, had founded at Lambeth. For this Library it appears that all his MSS., the most important portion of the gift, were reserved. They embrace a mass of miscellaneous information — " historical, topographical, genealogical, legal, and polemical" — as various, perhaps, as those which comprise the far better known but scarcely more valuable Harleian Collection. The most important of them is probably that portion which contains the Archbishop's own extensive correspondence w^ith the leaders of the different Protestant or Re- forming bodies in France, Germany, and Geneva ; from which may be obtained the clearest and full- est insight into the real state of religion, and the various phases of religious opinion through which the nations of Europe were passing between the times of the Commonwealth and the Revolution. Here is a Black Letter" copy of the XXXIX Articles of 1562, printed by Daye in 1593, to which is appended a memorandum, "Wee, the Byshops and whole Cleargy of the Province of Canterbury, assembled in the Convocation holden at London, upon a publique readinge and delib- erate consideration of the sayed Articles on the loth day of May 1604, have willingly and with one accord consented and subscribed." ^ Then 1 This volume, of great historic interest, originally belonged to the Library, but had disappeared from Lambeth for many years, and was regarded as lost. Its recovery is thus noted in Dr Todd's Catalogue (No. 879)— "This THE LIBRARY. 79 follow the Autograph Signatures of the Members of both Houses of Convocation. Among more recent MSS. is one entitled *'Jura et Privilegia Clero Anglicano adjudicata," comprising copies of all Records relating to the rights and privileges of the English Clergy, extracted from the Rolls of Parliament between 20th Edward I. and 14th of Edward IV. These were compiled and written out for Laud, and are referred to in his Diary, under the year 1637, as My book of the Records in the Tower which concern the Clergy, which I got done at my own charge, and have left in my Study at Lambeth for posterity." Here also are 16 folio volumes of Records, designated Chartse Antiquae et Miscellanea," to many of which the original seals are appended. These were strongly bound and indexed at the expense of Archbishop Howley, as a Latin in- scription from the pen of Archdeacon Harrison testifies. The next group, though ranged separately as the Gibson MSS., might almost with equal pro- priety be included under the preceding head ; for they, too, were mainly collected by Archbishop Tenison ; but not having been already deposited by him in the Library, they passed, by his Will, to his two chief literary friends — Dr Edmund Gibson (who had been his Chaplain and Librarian, and book was delivered to Archbishop Potter, and by his command deposited in this Library." Its autograph vahie placed it rightly among the MSS. 8o LAMBETH PALACE. was then the Rector of Lambeth), and Dr Ben- jamin Ibbot, who had succeeded Gibson as Libra- rian. The latter of these two dying first, in 1725, the whole of the literary bequest of the Arch- bishop devolved on Dr Gibson, who had mean- while been promoted to the See of London ; and he, having added largely to the collection, left the whole by Will to take their place beside the stupendous MSS. folios of his beloved patron and friend. Among those which appear under the name of the Gibson MSS. are three volumes which must not be passed over without special notice. They are known as the Bacon," and the Shrewsbury Papers." Of these, the Bacon Papers," com- prised in two volumes, contain a correspondence, of no little personal and political interest, between Sir Francis Bacon (afterwards Viscount St Albans) and his brother Antony, and other persons of greater note. The history of these papers, and how they found their way to Lambeth, is given at length in Dr Thomas Birch's Preface to his ' Collection of Lord Bacon's Speeches, Letters, &c.,' and may be thus briefly told. While Dr Tenison was yet little known to fame in his quiet Parish of St Peters Mancroft, Norwich, he had intrusted to him for publication by a college friend, Mr Rawley — descendant of the Dr Raw- ley who had been Lord Bacon's Chaplain — a large collection of private papers of the great Chancel- THE LIBRARY. 8i lor; these appeared in the year 1679 under the name of * Baconiana/ with the editorial initials T. T. Besides these was a mass of other papers, of which he judged that, they, touching matters of State, did tread too near to the heels of truth, and to the times of the persons concerned," to be then given to the world. Dr Tenison's rapid promo- tion following soon after, left him no leisure to make a close examination and selection of these documents, though they bore upon the private life and feelinors of a man whom he so much o admired ; and thus they remained untouched, and passed, under his Will, among the undisposed- of papers, to Drs Gibson and Ibbot, and were eventually placed, with the other MSS. already mentioned, in the Library at Lambeth, where the industrious Ducarel arrano^ed them in order. Among these are letters to the Earl of Essex and to Lord Burghley ; many to the Duke of Buckingham, and the Duke's replies ; eight or ten to King James ; letters from the King him- self, and one from the Queen of Bohemia ; some to Count Gondomar, and Gondomar s replies ; his letter to Casaubon, in Latin ; and a large number between himself and his brother/ As a whole, they form a valuable supplement to the vast col- lection of his Letters arnxone the Harleian MSS. ^ A selection from them has been printed by Dr Birch, and appears in the fifth and sixth volumes of his edition of Bacon's Works, published in 1826. F 82 LAMBETH PALACE. as giving an insight into the more private con- cerns and incidents of his eventful life. Of the Shrewsbury Papers " it must be ad- mitted that they are disappointing. A mass of documents under this title, bearing date the latter half of the sixteenth century, not unnaturally leads to the hope of some correspondence between the noble George, Earl of Shrewsbury, and the still more distinguished Robert, Lord Burghley, show- ing how, on the one hand, the chivalrous Earl Marshal sought to mitigate the trials and suffer- ings of his royal prisoner, Mary Queen of Scots, and on the other, the powerful Lord High Treas- urer was ever jealous for the safety and honour of his royal mistress, Elizabeth ; but instead of this, these volumes contain little more than Stew- ards' accounts of royal and private manors, ex- penses of journeys, leases, &c., and an occasional Order in Council — a strange medley, — though even these are not without interest, as giving an insight into the daily life and customs of that age. Then follow what are called the Miscellaneous MSS. These 230 volumes may be roughly de- scribed as comprising all that were deposited here between the days of Tenison and Manners Sutton. Here are folios rich in contributions from Arch- bishops Wake, Herring, and Seeker; papers bear- inor on the troublous times throuorh which the French and Vaudois Protestants passed ; corre- spondence held by these Primates themselves THE LIBRARY. 83 with the leaders of the Foreign Churches and the nobihty for the rehef of the refugees — explaining, among other objects of international religious his- tory, the circumstances under which the use of the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral was originally given up to the French refugees in the reign of Elizabeth for worship according to their own Reformed faith. Here, too, is the autograph cor- respondence between Laud and Bishop Williams, so fully illustrating the state of mind of Church- men at home as they w^atched the portentous clouds of the Rebellion gathering around them. The last series appears under the name of the Manners Sutton MSS., and is chiefly remarkable for that collection, in itself a library, which had been made by the distinguished Oriental scholar, T. D. Carlyle, Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, and is believed to be unrivalled in the number and variety of Biblical MSS. which he had himself collected in Syria and at Constantinople with the intention of publishing an edition of the Greek Testament as the result of a most careful collation of them all. He fell an early victim to overwork ; and all his papers being sold after his death, the xA.rchbishop became their purchaser, and added them to the Library. Nor have these 1200 and more volumes of MSS., which have been spoken of under their several heads, wanted the friendly aid of the Indexer to render their otherwise unknown treas- 84 LAMBETH PALACE. iires accessible to the public. It is indeed re- markable that in the ' General Catalogue of MSS. in England and Ireland,' published in 1697, these in the Lambeth Library have no place ; ^ the im- pression would seem in consequence to have pre- vailed that up to that time they had remained uncatalogued ; and that it is to Dr Todd that the Library is indebted for the first attempt that was made to brino- these MSS. treasures within reach of the student. Dr David Wilkins, who was himself Librarian in the early part of the last century, has no doubt helped to confirm this impression, if we may judge from some expressions used by him in a letter written from Lambeth House, October 21, 171 8," to his friend Dr William Nicholson (afterwards Bishop of Carlisle and of Derry, and ultimately Archbishop of Cashel) ; for he seems to have been ignorant of, or else to have ignored, the labours of previous Librarians. He describes the MSS. as "yet in great confusion;" ''my predecessors" (he goes on to say) " indulging their ease, and taking as little trouble as they could." ^ Yet among those predecessors were the indefatigable Henry Whar- ton and the scarcely less learned Edmund Gibson, and each of these had, as we know, prepared ela- ^ This omission is the more remarkable, since Tenison, to whom, as we have seen, this Library was so largely indebted, took an active and influential part in encouraging the publication of that Catalogue, - Bp. W. Nicholson's Correspondence, 6cc., edited by J. Nichols (1809), vol. ii. p. 479. THE LIBRARY. 85 borate Catalogues of different parts of the Library. Wharton not only made the first attempt at classi- fying the MSS., but very carefully catalogued what are now known as the Codices Lainbethani, This Catalogue is at the present day in the Library, and is spoken of by his biographer^ as ''giving such an instance of his wonderful diligence as cannot easily be paralleled." Considerable mystery, how- ever, seems to hang over the earlier history of this Catalogue : for many years it was undoubtedly missing — either borrowed, or stolen, or mislaid — and when and how it reappeared is equally mys- terious ; its loss and recovery are alike unrecorded. Yet here it now is, to testify to Wharton's con- scientious labours as a Librarian, as the ' Anorlia Sacra ' does so signally to his powers as a scholar. The temporary loss or absence of this Catalogue may have caused the strictures of Wilkins ; yet Dr Todd says, that '' Wharton's Catalogue may be considered as the foundation on which all suc- ceeding Catalogues have been formed." These remarks refer only to the MSS. Of the PRINTED BOOKS a Catalogue appears to have formed a part of the original arrangements for providing for their preservation, and for giving the Library an extended usefulness. Sir Francis Bacon, in carry- ing out the wishes of James L that it should ''be a monument of fame within his kino^dom, and of great use to himself and his successors, as well as ^ See Preface to Todd's Catalogue of Lambeth MSS., p, ii. 86 LAMBETH PALACE. to the Church of God," and that ''the custody of the Library might be estabhshed, and that, by the neghgence of those that came after, so excellent a work might not be frustrated to the hurt of the Church and Commonwealth," had directed that a Catalogue of the books " should be carefully and exquisitely made," a copy of which was to be pre- served in the archives of the Dean and Chapter, and the original in the Library at Lambeth, in the hope of binding each successive Archbishop to preserve the Collection intact. This Catalogue would seem to have been but imperfectly amplified to keep pace with the subsequent additions made to the Library ; for it is especially noted that Dr Edmund Gibson marked his tenure of office as Librarian by making " a full catalogue of the printed books then there." To the learned and methodical Dr Todd, how- ever, the Library owed, as has been already said, its first printed catalogue, embodying the suc- cessive labours of those who had preceded him as Librarian, and completed at the expense of Archbishop Manners Sutton in 1812. The most important addition since made was by Dr S. R. Maitland, who, though confining himself to the works printed before the year 1600 — beyond doubt the most valuable part of this collection — has pro- duced a work, to be subsequently noticed, so full and exhaustive as to form a rare repository of his- torical and typographical learning. THE LIBRARY. 87 Having- spoken of the MSS. under their several heads, and sketched the history of each group, rather than attempted to describe its contents, it will not be out of place here, availing ourselves of the Catalogues and Indexes already mentioned, to bring to special notice some of the more famed and valuable among the works, whether MSS. or printed books, which the Library contains. Among these grand heirlooms of the See, the place of honour, for antiquity, if not for beauty, must be accorded to a work entitled ' De Virgini- tate,' by Aldhelm, the distinguished Abbot of Malmesbury and afterwards Bishop of Sherburn — a work of the seventh century. Aldhelm was a Saxon by birth, but would seem to have been in advance of his age and his race ; for at a time when the Saxon language was in full force he wrote this work in Latin, being said to have been the first of his nation ^ who mastered what was just beginning to be recoofnised in Engrland as the lanofuao-e of learning and worship. This copy, judging from the style of the writing, is generally assumed to have been made in the following century, and is supposed, though on what authority it is not stated, to have been the work of no less bright an ornament of that age than Alcuin, himself a Saxon of noble birth, who, in later years, became the friend and counsellor of Charlemagne. If so, ^ *' Primus ex AngloriDii gente erat, jiixta CambdenH?n, qtii Latini scripsit.'''' — Cave's Historia Literaria, vol. i. p. 466. 88 LAMBETH PALACE, it presents an interesting connecting-link between his native tongue and the foreign one in which it was written ; for several of the letters — for in- stance — are formed distinctly on the Saxon type. It contains, as a frontispiece, a quaint representa- tion in outline of the learned bishop, on a some- what grotesque chair, or sella, supposed to be in the act of presenting a copy of his work to the abbess and nuns of the religious house for whose use it was composed.^ Ranking second to it in age, being of the ninth century, yet really the most precious of all the manuscript treasures of the Library, is an illumi- nated copy of the ' Gospels of MacDurnan,' as they are called. An inscription in the fourth page states that the work was either written for, or was in the possession of, Maelbrigid MacDurnan, Abbot of Derry and Bishop of Armagh in the ninth century. It thus bears testimony to the devotion and skill of the monks of " the Holy Island" at a time when Christianity was but at a low ebb in Enorland itself^ It is written in Latin, with a letter in Saxon from Archbishop Wulfstan of York to Canute ; and its intrinsic ^ A very rare engraving of this appears as the frontispiece to Todd's Catalogue of the Lambeth MSS. ^ For a fuller account of this choice work, and, indeed, of all the illumi- nated gems of this collection, the reader is referred to a very interesting and elaborate work on the 'Art Treasures of the Lambeth Library,' by the present Librarian, S. W. Kershaw, M.A., to which source the writer acknowledges himself to be indebted for much information on this part of his subject. THE LIBRARY. 89 value is enhanced by the tradition that, as a note on the fly-leaf states, This MS. was a present from King Athelstan to the city of Canterbury." How, or when, it passed from the Metropolitical City to the Metropolitan's Palace, is unknown. A Sarum Missal, also of great beauty, has a special interest attaching to it, as having probably been the property of Archbishop Chicheley, whose arms appear on two leaves, richly emblazoned. Another beautiful MS., supposed to be a work of the thirteenth century, of the * Apocalypse of St John,' with a short Latin exposition, is of great interest, with its nearly eighty brilliantly illuminated representations in fine preservation. Another MS. of the fifteenth century is of still greater historical value; it is entitled 'The Not- able Wise Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, translated out of French into English, by Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, finished December 24, anno 16 Edward IV.' Of this curious work the Library possesses two copies in different forms, the one in manuscript, the other printed. The former, a work of great beauty, is written in a fair, regular, and even a Roman hand, as if it were printed ; and has prefixed a fine illumination said ^ to represent the Earl introducing Caxton the printer to King Edward IV., in the presence of the Queen, the Duke of York, his infant son, afterwards Edward V., and many others of the ^ Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 60 ; though this is doubted. go LAMBETH PALACE. nobility. The colours in this little picture are beautifully vivid, and the drawing of considerable merit for the age.^ It has much historical value, as containing what was long regarded as the only authentic likeness of Edward V. now extant ; as such it was engraved by Vertue in his series of the English Monarchs ; nor has the subsequent discovery of a likeness of him in the east window of the church at East Malvern,^ and the rude painting on the screen in Windsor Chapel, robbed this exquisite illuminated page of its pre-eminent distinction as the true representation of the ill-fated young king. The printed copy is of much interest, as being one of the earliest issues from Caxton's own press, {circa 1490). In it Caxton has, in a preface of his own composition, pointed out with much dry humour certain omissions made by the noble author on the subject of women, and suggests as an explanation of such omissions, that the Earl doubtless thought that, however much the nations of Greece might be benefited by such salutary admonitions, the ladies of England did not need them ; they," he says, be right good, wise, ^ It has been engraved for Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. ^ The figures of the King, the Prince, and the Duke of York also appear in the great north window of the west transept over the "Martyrdom" in Canterbury Cathedral. This window was presented by Edward IV. him- self ; and is the one regarding which the story is told that the Puritan preacher, Richard Culmer, mounted a ladder to break, as he said, " Becket's glassy bones." Traces of his mutilation still remain in the window; but the figures of the royal family have been recently repaired. THE LIBRARY. 91 pleasant, humble, discrete, sober, chaste, . . . and virtuous in all their works, or at least should be so!' Another and even earlier work of Caxton's is to be found here, the ' Confessio Amantis ' of the poet Gower, bearing the well-known monogram and the word " Westminster," and has been pronounced by Dr Dibdin to be the finest extant. Here is also another volume of still earlier date, from a foreign press. It is thus described : A most uncommon book on vellum, without date, printed at Paris, with very ancient Gothic types, containing thirty-five very beautiful illuminations, representing ' The Daunce of Machabre ' (com- monly called Death's Dance), with French ex- planatory verses." This is supposed to be printed from a French MS. translated by Lydgate, the poetic monk of Bury,-^ who flourished in the time of Henry VI. One volume in this Library supplies a singular link between the sa^ipto^Htnn of the monastery and the press of the printer, connecting the manuscripts amonof which it lono- ranked, with the earliest specimens of typographic art. It is the New Testament portion of the Vulgate Version ; and is a copy of what was known as the * Mazarine Bible,' a name given to it from the fact of one copy having been found in the library of the great Cardinal statesman. It was always regarded ^ Botfield's Notes on the Cathedral Libraries, p. 253. - Even Todd in his Catalogue describes it as a MS. 92 LAMBETH PALACE. as a 7namtscript of exquisite workmanship. Its general character, its finely illuminated capitals and rich ornamentation, the vellum, too, ruled with horizontal and perpendicular lines, such as were in use among the earlier copyists, all helped to confirm this impression ; as also did the most primitive boldness of the type, closely resembling the hand-formed characters of the laborious scribe : but on closer examination it was discovered to be a pri7ited book, and nothing less than a copy — perfect so far as it goes, but containing only the New Testament — of the ' Guttenberof Bible/ ^ It is a large folio, on vellum, and is considered to be the earliest printed edition of the Bible known. It bears date 1455, twenty years before Caxton's first printed book made its appearance in England. So vast and varied is this accumulation, repre- senting centuries of research, and centuries many more of labour, that it would be impossible to describe all even of the most noteworthy of these literary gems. Here is the 'Codex Ephesinus ' containing the Four Gospels in Greek ; a beauti- ful copy of St Jerome's Version; a very ancient French Version and Exposition of the Apocalypse, ornamented with miniature paintings ; and a Latin copy also beautifully illuminated, and admitted by no less an authority than Mr Astle, to be a work of the thirteenth century ; Latin Psalters, too, ^ So called because it came from the press of Guttenberg and P^ust at Mentz. THE LIBRARY. 93 several of them of great beauty ; and one with an interhnear Saxon Version of the tenth century. Of EngHsh translations of the Bible, here is an un- doubted copy of Wickliffe's Version of the Old and New Testament ; another written apparently late in the fourteenth or beg^inninor of the fifteenth century; while Missals are in abundance; a very beautiful one of the Church of Limoges ; and also the very elegant one of the ' Sarum Use,' noticed above, which was once the property of Archbishop Chicheley. Mention has been already made of the very large body of MSS. of the New Testament — Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian — which were col- lected by the learned Professor Carlyle, for the purpose of collation ; on whose death, re in/ectd, the entire collection was purchased by Archbishop Manners Sutton. They are believed to have proved of great use to more than one of the members of the present Revision Commission. There is also a volume at the end of the Miscel- laneous MSS. which bears witness to the indi- vidual labours of research and criticism of one of the occupants of the Metropolitan See, whose fame during life was rather that of a preacher than of a scholar or a divine, Archbishop Seeker. Speak- ing of this work, Mr Black says : ^ "Its peculiar ^ In a paper read at Lambeth in 1S56, at a meeting of the Surrey Arch?eo- logicai Society, quoted in Tanswell's History of Lambeth, p, 58. Perhaps some sober-minded critics may pronounce this to be exaggerated praise. 94 LAMBETH PALACE. value is such as especially to interest those who long for a scientific correction of the original text of the Hebrew Scriptures, and for a thorough re- vision of the Authorised Version. No place in the world" (he goes on) ''contains a nobler mon- ument of Biblical scholarship, or more precious contributions to sacred literature, than the private closet where are deposited Seeker's interlarded Hebrew and English Bibles, and voluminous notes and disquisitions on passages of Scripture. When it is considered that Seeker projected and pro- moted Kennicott's great collations, and anticipated by his sound critical judgment many of the results of examinations of Hebrew MSS. which he had never seen ; and when we find under what vast obligations Bishop Lowth, Archbishop Newcome, and others have been to his unpublished MSS., it must be admitted that this sinorle article deserves more notice than if it applied to a single volume. It is a library in itself Here, too, is a volume entitled ' Christian Prayers and Meditations,' which, indeed, can boast of no artistic value, yet may lay claim to much histori- cal interest, as havino^ belono^ed to Oueen Eliza- beth. Its history has been thus traced : it bears the date 1569, and was printed by the celebrated John Daye, who was employed by Parker at Lam- beth. A MS. note on the fly-leaf says that from Elizabeth's days to those of Cromwell it was kept in a wardrobe at Whitehall, when it fell into THE LIBRARY. 95 private hands. Botfield ^ says it eventually came into the hands of Queen Anne, by whom it was presented to Tenison, and so found its way into Lambeth Library. Of the great mass of printed books it would be impossible to give in these pages any adequate description. Nor is it necessary. The student's need is amply supplied as regards the earlier volumes by Dr Maitland's exhaustive Index, and a Catalogue of the later publications is now in course of preparation by the present energetic Librarian. There is one other volume, however, ranked in- deed among the MSS., which may not be passed over unnoticed — Archbishop Parkers * Historia de Antiquitate Britannicse Ecclesiae.' This is a unique copy. Its intrinsic value as a work of profound scholarly research is enhanced by a very large collection of original charters, letters, notes, &c., distributed throughout and bound up in it.^ The copy in the Cambridge University Library is believed to be the only other perfect one of the first edition in existence ; and it of course lacks all the valuable MSS. additions. 1 Botfield's Cathedral Libraries, p. 253. - Ducarel adds to the interest which centres in this vohime by telling us, " It had been missing ever since the year 1720, as appears by Dr Wilkins's Catalogue (where it is noted as Wanting). The Lord Bishop of Durham, Dr Trevor, having had the good fortune to find it in the Sunderland Library, recovered it, and was generously pleased, in May 1757, to present it to the late Archbishop Hutton for the use of the Lambeth Library." — History of Lambeth Palace, Appendix, p. 40. 96 LAMBETH PALACE. Nor may we omit to note two copies of the Koran — one of which demands special mention from its historic value, and from the circumstances under which it was deposited in this Library. It has been pronounced by no less an authority than Claudius Buchanan, the zealous Oriental scholar, but better known as the Missionary - hearted Bengal Chaplain, to be the most valuable Koran of Asia." In the first cover page of the work itself appears the heading, Alcoran Mohammedis Arabice. In initio Codicevi commendant hcsc verba. " This book is presented by the College of Fort- William, in Bengal, with permission of Richard, Marquis Wellesley, Governor - General of India, to the Most Reverend Charles Manners Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth Palace." Then follows an extract from Dr Buchanan's letter to Archbishop Manners Sutton, in which he gives the history of the volume : — " This valuable copy of the Mohammedan Koran in folio, beautifully ornamented with paintings and oriental enamel, was written by the pen of Sultaun Allavuddeen Siljuky about four hundred years ao-o. It has descended to these times in the line of Emperors, and was found in the library of Tippoo Sultan at Seringapatam, after the reduc- tion of that capital by the British armies. By depositing the most valuable Koran of Asia in the ancient library of the Archbishop of Canter- THE LIBRARY. 97 bury, the College of Fort-William would intimate that the sway of the East, once usurped by the Arabian impostor, has now reverted to a Christian power ; and would express the hope that, in re- turn for this volume of emblazoned delusion, the Church of Enorland will exhibit to all nations the dutiful act so long expected, and send forth to the inhabitants of Asia the true revelation of God. — • C. Buchanan, Vice-Provost. " College of Fort-William, lotJi November 1805." ^ There is some difficulty in identifying the Im- perial scribe, according to the description here given. Sultan Ali-ed-din, to whom it is tradition- ally ascribed, could not have been a Seljuki, for none of that race ever had footinor in India. It was most probably the work of AH-ed-din, the last of the Syed Sultans of Delhi, who was ex- pelled by the Afghan house of Lodi about 1450. These Syeds, claiming to be lineal descendants of the Prophet, and being the hereditary Scribes and Levites of Islam, one of their number, though an ex-Sultan, might not inappropriately occupy his dethroned leisure in copying the Koran. Such, though cursorily described, are some of the contents of this noble Library. Here are treasures of medieval art on which the savant will 1 The entire letter is given in Dean Pearson's Life of Buchanan, vol. i. pp. 368-378. G 98 LAMBETH PALACE. dwell with rapture, while the mere dilettanti idlers, and the most superficial sight-seers, will find no ordinary pleasure in glancing over the beauties they contain. Here are folios, priceless and match- less, old Registers and Records, and still older Manuscripts, as well as documents of later date, public and private, which form a collection such as, for historical value, even the British Museum cannot surpass. Here is a fountain-head at which the real student of the history of the English Church can drink deeply. And perhaps it is the Biblical scholar who will find here the richest re- ward for his labours in the Manuscripts of the New Testament, little known and therefore little used, in which this library is so rich. 99 CHAPTER V. 2r{}c iLthrarians. Any account of Lambeth Library and its contents would be incomplete without some notice of the distino^uished men who have been connected with it as Librarians ; for among- them are some who hold no ignoble place in the literature of the country.^ Like the portrait-gallery close by, which begins its series so worthily with the far-famed Holbein of Warham,^ Lambeth places first on its list of regular Librarians the name of Henry Wharton, " the youthful pride of Cambridge," the favourite pupil of the great Newton, the favour- ite chaplain of Sancroft."^ Though he died at ^ For the order in which the earlier ones came we are indebted to a list given by Ducarel (Lambeth Palace, pp. 63-76), and a later one by Todd in the preface to his printed Catalogue ; while one by W. D. Thoms in Noies and Queries, 4th series, vol. i. pp. 48-50, January 186S, brings it down to that date. - Those of Chicheley and Arundel are not ignored ; but, as will appear under the head of the Portrait-Gallery, even Chicheley's is doubtful as being a genuine likeness, while Arundel's is generally pronounced to be a fiction. ^ As a mark of favour Bancroft ordained him priest with his own hands, which is said to have been " the only instance, perhaps, of an ordination by lOO LAMBETH PALACE. the early age of thirty-one, this " prodigy of learn- ing" had in that short young life attained an eminence which it is granted but to very few to reach, even at the close of a prolonged manhood of labour. That colossal work the ' Anglia Sacra,' and the Appendix to Cave's ' Historia Literaria,' had already been given to the world, before Whar- ton received the post of Chaplain and Librarian, which Sancroft conferred on him in 1688. This office he retained under Tillotson and Tenison ; the latter of whom had indeed been one of his earliest friends. He published many treatises of more ephemeral character and lesser note — yet of great value — of which it is impossible here to speak at any length. One work edited by him demands special mention, ' The Troubles and Tryal of Archbishop Laud,' the original MSS. of which Sancroft had bequeathed to him on his deathbed ; an act which he himself described as the most fortunate transaction of his whole life.^' Barely six months after, he was himself carried to his grave — having only lived to publish the first volume : the second appeared six years later. His body received worthy burial in Westminster Abbey, and was followed to the grave by several bishops, with Archbishop Tenison at their head.-^ Lambeth Library itself contains but little to an Archbishop since the Reformation." See " Excerpta," by Dr Birch, from an autobiography of Wharton in MS., in the Lambeth Library, printed in the Appendix to D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol. ii. p. 135. ^ Life of Wharton, prefixed to his Sermons. THE LIBRARIANS. lOI mark his tenure of office — which he held for six years, and that under three Archbishops — beyond the Catalogue already alluded to, and portions of an autobiography in Latin which Seeker pur- chased and deposited here.-^ The adjoining por- trait-gallery contains a remarkable likeness of him (the only one known), in which, out of a smooth, boyish, yet thoughtful face, surrounded with long curly hair, beam eyes full of light and fire, indic- ative of the rare intelligence and energy of his mind. His literary achievements are thus tersely recorded on his monument in Westminster Abbey : " Multa ad agendam et illustrandam Rem Liter- ariam, multa pro Ecclesia Christi, conscripsit ; plura moliebatur. Obiit 3 Non. Mart., a.d. mdcxciv. ^tatis suae xxxi." Second on the list Todd places the name of Paul Colomiez, better known in its Latinised form of Colomesius ; yet he could only have been an as- sistant to Wharton ; for after Colomiez retired on the deprivation of Sancroft, Wharton still retained the office. He appears to have been a French Protestant, and had been invited over to England by that strange divine," Isaac Vossius, whom Charles H. had made one of the canons of Wind- sor. Colomiez was chiefly known as the author of ' Gallia,' ' Italia,' and ' Hispania Orientalis,' con- taining accounts respectively of French, Italian, and Spanish writers who had been versed in ^ D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, see ante, p. 99, note 3. I02 LAMBETH PALACE. Oriental literature. As Librarian he left behind him no mark. Dr Edmund Gibson was really Wharton's suc- cessor, though there was an interval of six years between the death of the one and the appointment of the other ; for Gibson did not occupy the Librarian's chair till 1700. He had already been known as a distinguished Antiquarian and Anglo-Saxon scholar, as well as a Theologian ; for he had published his noble edition of ' Cam- den's Britannia,' and his ' Reliquiae Spelmaniacai ' before he was taken by the hand by the great littdratettr Tenison, and received into the Lam- beth household as Chaplain and Librarian. Four years after he was appointed Rector of Lambeth, and then Archdeacon of Surrey. Still living under the walls of the Palace, and within reach of the Library, and breathing the very at- mosphere of literary life, he undertook his greatest work, the one which, most of all, will perpetuate his memory — ' Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani ' — and left behind him, as an invaluable memento of his presence in the Library, the first complete Catalogue of its contents, into which he incorpor- ated the earlier one by Wharton. On the death of his patron and friend, Archbishop Tenison, in 1 71 5, and Bishop Wake's translation to Canterbury, Gibson was appointed to the vacated See of Lin- coln, and five years after to that of London. Of him, as of Wharton, the adjoining gallery contains THE LIBRARIANS. 103 a portrait, of which an engraving appears in Du- carel's History of the Palace ; and a list is there given of his voluminous publications, great and small, thirty-four in number. As in the case of Wharton, so in that of Gibson, it would seem that, when the accumulated duties of other offices pressed upon him, an assistant or coadjutor Librarian was appointed ; for the name of Dr Benjamin Ibbot stands in Dr Todd's list as becoming Librarian in 1 704 ; whereas Gibson's con- nection with the Library clearly continued till 1715, when he was promoted to the See of Lincoln. Whatever may have been Dr Ibbot's repute among his contemporaries, his appointment as Boyle Lec- turer at Cambridge in 171 3, as Chaplain also to George L, and still more his selection by Tenison for the Lambeth Library, would imply that he was a man of some mark ; ^ though no works of his have come down to us to indicate his fitness to take his place between two such men as Gibson and Wilkins. For when we come to speak of Dr David Wil- kins, we find ourselves brought in contact with another of the o^iants of learninor — a man whose name is associated with such works as ' Novum Testamentum Copticum ' (1716), ' Pentateuchus Copticus ' (1731), 'Leges Anglo-Saxonies Ecclesi- asticae et Civiles ' (1721), and 'Concilia Magnae 1 Ducarel calls him "an ingenious and learned writer. " — Lambeth Palace, p. 70. I04 LAMBETH PALACE. Britanniae ' (1736); — one to whose extensive and varied learning the epitaph in Hadleigh Church does no more than justice; ''In omni fere liter- arum orenere versatus fuit." Brief as was Wilkins's connection with the Library — only from 1 7 1 5 to 1 718 — the three years sufficed to enable him to complete a good work there, a still fuller Cata- logue of all the MSS. and printed books, down to his own time. His successor was John Ott, a native of Zurich. Intellectual gifts and high literary attainments had raised three at least of his predecessors to what they had helped to make a post of honour. But personal feeling alone seems to have guided the next appointment. Ducarel says that Archbishop Wake had, while on the Continent, in his younger years, ^ "received many civilities" from the father — an influential resident at Zurich — and " remem- bering his former kindness, had made one of his sons his Librarian." " Mr Ott the elder was a crreat Rabbinical and Oriental scholar ; but the son seemed to inherit none of the qualifications for an office then much sought for by leading scholars and divines of the country. He was great as a numismatist,^ and ^ Archbishop Wake had, in early life, been Chaplain to Lord Pi-eston when Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of France, and had been thus brought into contact with the several bodies of Continental Protestants ; to which may be traced the desire evinced by him, when Primate, to bring about intercom- munion with the English Church. — Chambers's Biographical Dictionary. ^ Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 74. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 6:c., vol. i. p. 335. \ THE LIBRARIANS. -105 had made a large collection of coins ; and in this he appeared to have a strong congeniality of taste with the Archbishop ;^ on whose death, in 1737, he retired from Lambeth. His place was, for a short time, from 1737 to 1 74 1, filled by Mr John Jones, of whom little is known save that, as he brought no fame, he left no mark ; vacating the post on being appointed to one of the Archbishop's livings in Kent.^ So, too, the next in order, the Rev. Henry Hall, a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He was appointed Librarian in 1747, by Archbishop Potter, and re- tained the post under Herring ; on whose death, in 1757, he retired to his country living at Harble- clown. Ducarel says that " his learning and abili- ties were great, but not superior to his modesty." ^ Yet of his ten years' connection with that noble Library, Lambeth and the literary world alike have nothing to tell. On the succession of Dr Matthew Hutton to the Primacy, the post of Librarian was at once filled by one who more than restored its prestige. In Andrew Coltee Ducarel the Palace received a man who was regarded as the greatest Antiquarian of his day, and who proved the most useful of all her ^ See supra, p. 61. 2 " He was ordained deacon on March 14, 1741, created M.A. by the Archbishop on the 15th, ordained priest on the following Sunday, and collated to the vicarage of Postling, in Kent, the day after — a good eight days' promotion." — Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 75. 3 Ibid. io6 LAMBETH PALACE. Librarians. Wharton had been the scholarly his- torian ; Gibson, the profound canonist ; Wilkins, the man of many languages — Saxon, Coptic, and Latin ; and each in turn laborious in investigating and digesting the successive accumulations of liter- ary treasures deposited in the Muniment-room and Library ; but Ducarel supplemented their work : he undertook that which they had left untouched, — those folios of Reo^isters ranorino^ over five cen- turies he explored and indexed, laying open to the future student what had hitherto been little better than sealed books.-^ Others lived and worked in their several lines for the literary world at large : he, in his own line too, lived and work- ed, but it was for Lambeth and its hidden treas- ures, that they might be brought to light. For though he wrote the History of Croydon and of Lambeth, and several smaller Antiquarian treat- ises, his fame chiefly lives in the Indexes he made to the Lambeth Recristers and MSS. And the o value of this work is, if possible, enhanced by the recollection of the physical difficulties under which he performed it. Early in life an accident de- prived him of the sight of one eye, and that of the other was so imperfect and weak, that he could only see to read at all by holding the page close to his face ; " yet thousands upon thousands of parch- 1 The circumstances of Ducarel's appointment are referred to at p. 68. - Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix. p. 66i. A portrait of him is prefixed to each volume of his Indexes. THE LIBRARIANS. 107 ment folios, written in the cramped, crabbed, often almost illegible, characters of the thirteenth and following centuries, did he decipher ; and every note and index was written originally in his own large, bold hand (irrjXiKOLf; ypdiiiiacnv),^ — those signs of defective sight bearing witness to the phys- ical labour of his work. During more than thirty years' connection with Lambeth Palace, he was the valued official of no less than five Archbishops^ — the friend of Herring in 1754, the librarian of Hutton in 1757, as also of Seeker, Cornwallis, and Moore, till his death in 1785.^ On the death of Ducarel, the Rev. Michael Lort, whom Archbishop Moore had appointed his Chaplain six years before, became Librarian ; but with much antiquarian taste and historical know- ledge, he seems to have been rather a collector than an author ; and so neither the Library itself nor the literary world has retained any traces of his presence. So little, indeed, was his five years' connection with Lambeth known, that Thoms, in 1 Galatians vi. ii. 2 Horace Walpole contemptuously sneers at him as " a poor creature" (Walpoliana, i. 73), because, forsooth, he was loath to let him take a copy of the choice illumination in ' the Notable Wise Dictes and Sayings of Philo- sophers ' (mentioned at p. 89) for his proposed work on ' Royal and Noble Authors.' It may be that the profoundly learned Librarian reciprocated the feeling, and justly gauged the 'literary merits of the brilliant but superficial dilettante. ^ The name of Edward Rowe Mores — not noticed by Todd or by Thoms in their lists — should not be passed over in silence. He was not indeed a librarian, but for some time a very valuable assistant to Ducarel. See Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. vi. pp. 394-396. ^ Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 594. io8 LAMBETH PALACE. his list of Librarians, makes no mention of him as havinor been one of the number/ The same may be said also of his successor, John Topham, who, like Ducarel, was a layman, and whose deep knowledge of antiquities, and especially of ancient law, had obtained for him an important post in the State Paper Office. He was appointed Librarian on Lort's death in 1790, and died in 1803; Y^^, like his predecessor, he passed away from Lambeth, and left no mark. Then came one of far other stamp, Dr Henry John Todd, no unworthy occupant of the chair which even a Ducarel had filled. His Lives of Cranmer and of the Deans of Canterbury, his Commentaries on Spenser and Milton, still live as proofs of his assiduity and research ; while his an- alytical and methodising powers are well known in his edition of 'Johnson's Dictionary,' and were scarcely less shown in the classified and printed Catalogue, already mentioned, of the promiscuous mass of MSS. in the Library which he thus re- duced to order. He eventually became Arch- deacon of Cleveland ; in which post he continued his literary labours. We now pass to one whose literary life, like that of his great predecessor Ducarel, was mainly identified with Lambeth and its Library. Dr Samuel Roffey Maitland, brought to the notice of Archbishop Howley by his friend Hugh James 1 Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. i. p. 50 (Jan. 18, 1868), THE LIBRARIANS. 109 Rose, renounced a home of lettered ease at Glou- cester in order to revel more freely and fully in the literary banquet presented to him at Lambeth. His literary productions were unhappily but few ; 'The Dark Ages' and 'Essays on the Reforma- tion ' being the principal among them. One other, which he never lived to finish, must not be passed over unnoticed, though its existence is almost un- known, consisting of annotations and corrections made on the voluminous writings of Strype, which he left in MS. form to the University of Cam- bridge, where they are still preserved. He re- garded his appointment to Lambeth as laying on him the duty of doing all he could to make known to the outer world the real value of the Library intrusted to his keeping. To effect this he com- piled and published, in 1843, what he modestly called " A List of some of the early printed books in Lambeth Library ; " and two years after, an " Index" — yet in its details far more than a mere Index — "of such English Books printed before the year MDC." as are now there. As a bio- graphical production this Index" is unique : it is a marvel, not only of his industry, but of his varied literary knowledge. The greater portion of these gems of typographical art are arranged in the first compartment in the Hall, in which, shut out from the eye of the general body of sight-seers by a panelled screen, Dr Maitland used to sit and work in the midst of the tomes he so highly prized. 1 lO LAMBETH PALACE. Many still living will, with the writer, endorse the opinion so happily expressed by his old friend Mr Thorns,^ that " all who frequented the Library while it was under his charge — and probably at no period since it was established was it so much used as during his Librarianship — will be anxious to bear testimony to his anxiety at all times to as- sist them in their researches, not only by placing the whole resources of the Library at their dis- posal, but also from his own vast stores of infor- mation." With the life of his patron and friend, Archbishop Howley, Dr Maitland's connection with Lambeth ceased, to the great loss and regret of the literary world. On Bishop Sumner's succeeding to the Pri- macy he appointed his son-in-law, the Rev. John Thomas, to the joint-offices of Chaplain and Libra- rian. Under him the paramount and more pressing duties of Chaplain threw those of the Librarian into the background ; thus any qualifications he might really have possessed for so important a post had no chance of beinor brouo^ht to lio'ht. His tenure of the office began and closed with the primacy of Archbishop Sumner. Dr Longley, on being translated from York to Lambeth, selected for his Librarian the Rev. Wil- liam Stubbs, whose already established reputation as a scholar at Oxford, and the antiquarian and his- torical research attested by his small but invalua- ^ Notes and Queries, January i8, 1868. THE LIBRARIANS. Ill ble ' Reeistrum Sacrum AnMicaiium,' marked him out as peculiarly fitted to fill a post over which Wharton, and Gibson, and Wilkins, and Ducarel had shed such a glory. His five years, from 1862 to 1867, were all too short for the interests of Lam- beth ; yet long enough to show how contact with those historical treasures was affecting and stimu- lating his literary taste and powers. From Lam- beth he returned to his Alma Mater as Reo^ius Professor of Modern History, and Curator of the Bodleian Library, and now worthily holds a Canonry in St Paul's Cathedral ; still conferring the benefits of his vast ecclesiastical knowledge on the litera- ture of the day in the publication of the works, little known and rarely accessible, of the medieval chroniclers. On Dr Stubbs's retirement from Lambeth, the post was conferred on Mr S. W. Kershaw, the present Librarian, whose tastes have prompted him to adopt a line which his predecessors had left open to him, the careful examination of what he happily terms " The Art Treasures " which the Library contains. The results of his labours in this direction have been given to the w^orld in the valuable work on that subject already mentioned ; and will further appear in the forthcoming work entitled ' Studies of Lambeth Library.' 112 CHAPTER VI. Efjt ffiuarti^Eoom or ©ming^l^all; anU its 3|ortrait=ffiallcrg. Scarcely inferior in the interest of its associa- tions to the Great Hall itself is the Guard-Room, now used as the Dining-Hall. The earlier name is sucrcrestive of times when Primates were feudal Barons and hio^h Law officers of the Crown as well as spiritual Peers ; and although Lambeth cannot boast of a Prelate so bellicose as he of Beauvais, who at the battle of Bouvines proved himself cap- able of wielding the mace as effectively as the crosier, or one like the famous Bishop of Ely who defended his island and his Cathedral arainst the invading Dane- — yet, before Lambeth days, Canterbury had an Archbishop Alphege, who (in loio) for twenty days defended his city and palace against the same ruthless invaders, only less successfully from the presence of a traitor in his garrison ; and Baldwin, too — though not strictly a Lambeth Primate, yet the first Primate THE GUARD-ROOM. 113 who owned a single acre of land in Lambeth — the Crusader-Primate, who, conspicuous in hel- met and cuirass, with the banner of St Thomas unfurled before him, at the head of a regiment of cavalry, fought beside England's lion-hearted king, and won a soldier s grave amid the sands of Palestine ; while Lambeth itself had a Cardinal- Archbishop, John Kempe, who, accompanying Henry V. to France, witnessed the grand victory at Agincourt. An order, indeed, was once issued by Edward IIL, calling on the Prelates and Clergy to take up arms in defence of the country.^ Moreover, the position of the Archbishops as Chancellors and Judges and Counsellors was such as to make them frequently the objects of politi- cal intrigue or personal malice ; as in the case of Archbishop Stratford, who, becoming the object of a conspiracy, so narrowly escaped with his life from his palace at Charing in 1 340 ; or exposed them to the lawlessness of a rabble, against whom not even the sanctity of their office was sufficient safeguard, as was shown in the fate of Simon Sudbury, the victim of the popular riot of Wat Tyler's followers in 138 1. In such days as those, then, it became a necessity that exalted Church- men, though in their calling men of peace," should have their staff of men-at-arms to protect their per- sons as well as their property. Thus the troublous character of those times ^ Collier's History, vol. iii. p. 130. H 114 LAMBETH PALACE. accounts for the existence of a Guard-Chamber as part of the entourage of an Archiepiscopal Palace ; and its usual position, between the entrance-gate and the private apartments, was not without its significance as a means of protection or defence rather than of mere display. Now the existence of one at Lambeth was clearly as early as the year 1424; for such an apartment is mentioned in the * Computus Ballivorum ' of that year, under the name of ca77iera armigerorian ; though it does not appear in that of Archbishop Reynolds in 1321. But as a change came over the spirit of the nation — when the wars of the Roses, like those of the Barons, had become things of the past, and the ordinary peaceful and orderly condition of the country rendered such armed pre- cautions less necessary — the living men-at-arms disappeared, and the empty coats of mail and rusty weapons figured on the walls as mementos of a bygone state of social life. Thus the old Guard-Chamber was changed into an Armoury, and even in Laud's time it was said that there remained armour enough for two hundred men. Much of this — comprising old muskets and ban- doleers of ancient make — existed, but lay lumber- ing about, so late as Archbishop Potter's time. But all have since disappeared ; and nothing remains save the traditional name to mark the early use of the apartment. Otherwise the character of this building has THE GUARD-ROOM. "5 undergone but little change. In the extensive restoration of 1829 the intention was to adhere closely to the original design ; but when it was discovered that the walls were merely rubble, and the one at the south end showed signs of falling, it was considered necessary to rebuild the whole ; the noble old roof, however, as a part of the original building, was religiously preserved ; it was carefully propped up, and the walls rose to receive it again. Only, the large four-light perpendicular window, which, according to prints of the last century/ appeared on the east side, and had clear- The CrJiard-Room, now the Dhiiug-HalL ly been an insertion of the Tudor period, was not replaced, but four two-light Early-English win- dows were introduced, with tracery closely har- ^ See Herbert and Brayley's Lambeth Illustrated, p. 32. ii6 LAMBETH PALACE. monisin^ with the rich old carvinor of the roof; while in the south gable a spherical window was inserted. On the west side, the old fireplace, apparently of gigantic proportions, with its mantel running up to the corbels of the roof, gave place to one, smaller and more suited to modern re- quirements. The general elevation of the room has also been changed ; in order to give greater height to the apartments below, the present floor was raised three feet hio^her than the old one, while the panelling, which formerly ran up to the corbels, now rises barely six feet from the floor — an arrangement which admits admirably of the introduction, between the panelling and the cornice, of the series of portraits of successive Archbishops from the days of Henry VII. to those of Queen Victoria ; thus imparting a special interest to the Dining- Hall, by making it also the Portrait-Gallery of the See. Although for the fastidious eye of the artist this array of portraits may present fewer attractions than many smaller collections — though it can boast but few that are rich and rare," compared with the choice gems of art which many private galleries contain — yet it has a value std geneins ; it can show a succession more extensive and more complete than is to be found even in the most princely of England's baronial halls. What other gallery, — not even the Royal Collection at Windsor,^ inclu- 1 The series of the Bishops of Chichester is sometimes pointed out as being THE PORTRAITS. 117 sive of miniatures, — can boast an unbroken series of representatives for nearly four centuries — a descent of twenty-six generations ? Such is the display Lambeth can produce. Here Warham and Tait, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the later years of the nineteenth, are connected together by an unbroken chain. Thus, what it may lack of art value — though it can boast a Holbein, a Vandyck, a Kneller, a Hogarth, and a Sir Joshua — is more than made up by its his- toric interest and importance. In that Guard-Chamber, so rich in associations peculiarly its own, who could stand, surrounded by those "counterfeits" of once living men of mark, without recalling, — here with patriotic pride, there with profound admiration, or w^ith subdued sym- pathy, — as he scans the lineaments of each face in turn, the momentous events in which each one here portrayed bore his part — events which have taken their place in the country's annals ? Here the true lover of history will find a succession of studies ; such, too, as even the critical eye of the artist may occasionally rest upon with no little pleasure. It is in such a spirit, however imper- fectly we may be able to give expression to it in language, that we desire to take our stand in this the most perfect ; but of them the highest local authority says the early ones were all painted by an ItaHan named Bernardi in the sixteenth century ; the earliest real likeness being that of Bishop Sherburn, the last of the Roman line ; those preceding being "just as authentic as the portraits of the Scot- tish kings in Holyrood Palace." ii8 LAMBETH PALACE. Guard- Chamber, and to dwell in thought among the great and the good whose portraits adorn its walls. To adopt the beautiful language of Cole- ridge — • " Their several memories here — Even like their persons in their portraits clothed With the accustomed garb of daily life — Put on a lowly and a touching grace Of more distinct humanity." Thus would we contemplate them, each and all, in connection with their personal and historical associations ; delighting, as we pass on, to mark the traits of character which each picture discloses, and to read in those lines the workings of the inner man, as they were developed and displayed in the life-career of each. A word, however, as to the general effect of this series. The mere casual observer will be unfavour- ably struck by a sense of sameness.^ No doubt the seeming similarity of dress has this effect. It for the moment disappoints ; for it throws into the background the more salient individualities, the differences of expression which furnish the true index of character. It must be admitted that in this respect this gallery labours under a disadvan- tage. It lacks that telling yet indescribable charm which variety of costume always gives to a collec- tion in which are mixed here and there portraits 1 "They are all so wonderfully alike," is a remark which often describes the first impression of a visitor. THE PORTRAITS. 119 of warriors or statesmen with more sombrely clad divines. There is a relief to the eye in falling on more varied objects ; the chain-armour of a crusader, the glittering cuirass of a cavalier, the long sweep- ing mantle of a Chancellor or Lord Chief- Justice, the ''curt cloak" of a dandy of the thirteenth cen- tury, the patchwork-looking or piebald dress of the beau of the early part of the fourteenth, the padded shoulders and tight-laced waist of the Plantagenet age, the gorgeously emblazoned tabard and the bright jerkin or the gaily slashed doublet and stiff collar of the Tudors, the loose open collar and flowing curls of the Royalist — these, inter- mino^led with costumes of more modern times or graver hues, help to brighten most of our large private collections. But in the Lambeth series there is, of course, none of this variety. There seems to be little more than a constant repetition of the plain white rochet and lawn sleeves, relieved only by the dark stole or scarf ; with the single exception of the scarlet cape of Cardinal Pole. Yet a more careful examination will detect variety even here, and variety not without interest. The close-fitting skull-cap of Warham spreads out at the four corners on the heads of Cranmer and Parker, till it assumes monstrous proportions over the face of Sheldon, and with Tillotson is stiffen- ing into the " trencher - cap " as retained in the Universities of to-day. Again, the plainly but- toned rochet of the earlier Prelates becomes I20 LAMBETH PALACE. Stiffly frilled round the necks of Abbott and Laud, turns into a plain roll-collar with Juxon, and expands into a broad flat one with Sheldon and Sancroft ; and then, being nearly covered by the stole, the collar disappears, leaving only the ends visible, which pass into mere broad bands with Tillotson, and as such are still in use on the Epis- copal bench. With Tillotson came another change. Up to his time, in spite of the universally preva- lent lay custom of false curls, which had come in with the Stuarts, the bishops always wore their own hair, at first very short, and gradually de- scending into somewhat shaggy curls, as seen in the portraits of Sheldon and Sancroft ; but with Tillotson came in again short hair and the wig with stiff curls ; these were somewhat reduced in size by each succeeding Prelate, until, as worn by Manners Sutton, and Howley, and Sumner, they hardly deserved the name, which still clung to them, of the full-bottomed wiof : with the latter even this entirely disappeared, except on State occasions. But to take the collection in detail. The two earliest in point of time can lay no claim to being original, or true to the life ; the}^ are probably little more than the embodiment of an early painter's fancy, based it may be upon, or adapted from, some elaborate title-page or illuminated initial of monkish chronicle or legend, or taken from the quarry of a painted window, or the marble figure on an altar-tomb, long since passed away. THE PORTRAITS. 121 Such is certainly the case with the portrait of Dunstan/ who died in 988. Any representation of one who Hved Httle short of nine hundred years ago must, we naturally suppose, have been drawn from the imagination. Yet even here are depicted a firmness of character and a force of will such as might have belonged to one who in youth was a favourite in Athelstan's camp, who in maturer years became the prime minister of Edred, and the bold, wise, though unwelcome, counsellor of the thoughtless Edwy ; one who in every stage, whether in favour or disgrace, was "a power" in the land, and the Church's true Champion. The legendary symbol of the Tempter " perched upon his crosier, beyond question proclaims it to be a medieval work of fiction.^ It is not without some reluctance that one con- sents to place in the same category of apocryphal portraits that of Archbishop Arundel, which comes next in point of time ; for it is separated from our own days by but half so great an interval. This portrait is certainly very characteristic of the keen politician and bold Churchman, who, intriguing with his brother the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester against Richard II., was banished the land, to return eventually as the friend and sup- porter of tlenry Bolingbroke, whom he crowned. 1 This hangs, not in the Guard-Room or Dining-Hall, but in the adjoining Gallery. '■^ It holds a place here as a curiosity rather than as a work of merit. 122 LAMBETH PALACE. He held the Primacy from 1396 to 1414. Of this portrait itself, all that is known is, that it is a copy, presented to Lambeth by Archbishop Cornwallis, of a painting at Penshurst Castle ; ^ the name of copyist and original artist alike unknown. It re- presents this scion of a noble house, cleric though he was, enrolled among Royal Princes and Nobles as one of the Constables of Oueenborough Castle," in the Isle of Sheppey ; in those days a post of great honour and trust, like that of the Warden of the Cinque Ports in after -years. The haughty, hard lines of that face may not untruly represent the man with whose name is associated the fam- 0SW71 statutum, De heretico combttrendo',' legalising the burning of heretics in England. Over his head is the following inscription : — Thomas Fitzallenus Filivs CoMiTis Arvndellie Arc HIEPISCOPVS Cantvariensis CONSTABVLARIVS CASTRE DE Qveenbovrgh, 27 Ap^ LIS ANNO DECIMO ReGINI Henrici Qvarti. 1 Ducarel (Lambeth Palace, p. 86, n.) says of it that *'it is undoubtedly the oldest portrait of any English Archbishop now extant ; and of any Prel- ate of this kingdom, except Walter de Merton, founder of Merton College, and William ofWykham, founder of Winchester and New College, Oxford ;" but a critic of evident judgment and authority, though anonymous, in ' Notes and Queries' (August i6, 1879, p. 140), pronounces it to be "a copy from a false picture at Penshurst Place, made falser still by the copyist ; " and goes on to say it is "a very poor parody of the one of Warham, so much later, by Holbein, with a few of the accessories displaced." Under such conflicting opinions its authenticity may well be doubted. THE PORTRAITS. 123 In the left-hand upper corner are the arms of Arundel and of the See of Canterbury per pale ; in the opposite one the red rose of Lancaster. The portrait of his successor, Henry Chicheley ^ (from 141 4 to 1443), may lay more claim to be a real likeness, and is probably a faithful one. Illus- trious as a statesman, and still more so as a bene- factor to the Church, he is represented with the softer features indicative of that gentler mind which gave so much grace to his life, and was especially conspicuous during the nearly thirty years of his Archiepiscopate." The picture represents this eminent patron of art and architecture, the muni- ficent and pious founder of All Souls (already the founder of St Bernard's, out of which eventually arose St John's College, Oxford), in the attitude of pronouncing the benediction ; a man who, accord- ing to Dr Hook, though not a Luther," desired to be, in the highest sense of the word, a Re- former of the corruptions and abuses which were then debasing the Church."^ Along the top of the picture runs the following — Henricvs Chicheley Archiep. Cantvar. and at the bottom — FVNDATOR COLLEGIJ AnIMA'. O'i'VM FiD. DEf\ OXON. 1 Another very interesting likeness of Chicheley on glass, preserved in the large window in Juxon's Hall, has been already mentioned at page 50. - Chicheley's character will be more fully examined and vindicated in the description of the (so-called) Lollard's Tower, which he built. 2 Hook's Lives of the Archbishops, vol. v. p. 79. 24 LAMBETH PALACE. Then followed five occupants of the See ; their Episcopates covering rather more than half a century : John Stafford, John Kempe, Thomas Bourchier/ John Morton, and Henry Dene or Deny. Of none of these is there any even apo- cryphal portrait in the Lambeth Gallery, and of only one anywhere else. The claims of the one of Cardinal Kempe, formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection, though warmly supported by Ho- race Walpole, have been long since disallowed. Of Morton there has been lately discovered a sup- posed likeness in fresco on a panel in the retired but interesting church of Plymtree in Devonshire, where it appears in appropriate company with those of Henry VH. and Prince Arthur." He is represented — and this supplies one of the grounds of identification — as " carrying frankincense, not in a censer, or thurible, of any ordinary pattern, but in a vessel made in the form of Morton's Rebus, a tun or cask, with the letter M upon it." In the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral is a recumbent marble effigy on Morton's tomb ; but the face is 1 In a 'History of Arundel Church* there is an engraving entitled " Por- trait of Thomas Bourchier," &c., representing a bishop with an open book, and a crosier, and a scroll with the letters " S. Ambrosivs" on the mitre. But of this print C. A. Buckler, Esq., who can speak with no little authority on matters connected with Arundel, writes to the author : "There is part of the mutilated figure of a bishop in cope and mitre, but the word 'Ambrose ' does not exist. Had the figure been meant for Archbishop Bourchier it would have had the a-oss and not the crosier, and probably a cardinal's cap. The etching is a made-up affair." " Henry VH., Prince Arthur, and Cardinal Morton. By Rev. T. Moz- ley, Rector of Plymtree. P. lo. THE PORTRAITS. 125 SO mutilated, the nose and chin destroyed, and the mouth injured, that all clue to likeness is lost. It is when we reach the first years of the six- teenth century that we feel we are treading on surer ground ; ^ then the real begins to supersede the ideal, and fact takes the place of fancy. It is then that this far-famed series actually commences ; and it commences worthily with a genuine Holbein' of William Warham, who was Archbishop from 1503 to 1533. Here is one of those portraits which vividly reminds us of the lines of the poet Cowley : — Who to the life an exact piece would make, . . . before his sight must place The natural and living face." This Holbein did : in the words of Allan Cun- ningham, " he was skilful in plain fidelity of resem- blance, and could imitate whatever stood before him in flesh and blood ; " ^ and he has enabled suc- ceedinof venerations to see what he saw, and as he saw it, to a degree few painters have ever done. This may be said of all his portraits — except per- haps the memorable miniature of Anne of Cleves ;^ and notably so of this, of which his enthusiastic 1 "A List of the Portraits in Lambeth House, September i794," has been preserved among the "Cole's Additional MSB." (6391, f. 191) in the British Museum, on which, supplemented by notices in Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, the following account of the pictures in this gallery has been mainly based. Lives of British Painters, &c., vol. i. p. 23. Miss Strickland's Queens of England, vol. iii. p. 49. 126 LAMBETH PALACE. biographer Wornum thus makes special mention : " I instance this picture," he says, "as an illustra- tion that Holbein had the power of seeing what he looked on, and of perfectly transferring to his picture what he saw." He calls it a remarkable specimen of the painter's powers — it is a picture as well as a portrait. All the accessories are excellent." ^ It is believed to have been one of the first por- traits of importance which Holbein painted after his arrival in this country, and was presented by himself, or, as some think, by his first patron. Sir Thomas More, to the Primate. As we look upon " that noble face of seventy years," so full of char- acter and expression, which for nearly four cen- turies has handed down to thousands of admirers the impression of what Warham was like, and almost makes us see what Warham was, our thoughts irresistibly turn to the youthful artist himself, not yet, as Allan Cunningham describes him, " with a swarthy, sensual face, a strong frame, a neck like a bull, and an eye unlikely to endure contradiction ; " but, as his own canvas has repre- sented him, with the ''fair, frank, manly face, the sweet gentle mouth, and the heavy red cap fling- ing its shade over the mobile melancholy brow."^ Such he appeared when he landed in England, a stranger, with a letter of introduction to the ^ Wornum's Life of Holbein, p. 217. - Stray Studies. By J. R. Green. P. 123. THE PORTRAITS. 127 powerful Chancellor More, and another to the Primate, from the early friend of his youth at Basle, the scholar Erasmus ; letters which proved the passport to favour at Chelsea and Lambeth, before his own successes had secured for him the almost monopolising and exacting patronage of Henry VIII. at Whitehall. When Holbein presented this picture to the Archbishop, he ac- companied it with a likeness he had already painted of Erasmus ; thus as it were bringing together two men who should in the course of time become fast friends. For more than a century the two pictures hung fitly side by side.-^ In the desecration and sacrilege perpetrated by the Parliamentarian iconoclasts, both'were carried off, and for a time lost to Lambeth : that of Eras- mus was never recovered ; happily this one was found and restored to its place. Sir William Dugdale discovered it and presented it to Arch- bishop Sancroft." It has been said of this por- ^ These two pictures would seem to have been included among the personalty of the successive Primates, and to have passed from Archbishop to Archbishop on payment of a sum of money, like many other fixtures of the Palace. Parker, by his Will, sought to remove them from that category, and attach them thenceforth to the See (on condition that his estate was exempt from Dilapidations in recognition of the large sums he had himself expended at Lambeth and Canterbury). The clause in his Will referred to is thus worded (Strype's Life of Parker, Appendix, p. 186) : "Do etiam suc- cessoribus meis in perpetuum imagines tabulatas Episcopi Warham prse- decessoris mei, et imaginem Erasmi Rotherodami in Deambulatorio sitas." But this arrangement does not appear to have been formally carried out, for Laud also inserts in his Will a conditional clause, " As for the pictures in the Gallery at Lambeth, I leave them to succession, as well those which I found there as those I have added." 2 Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 43, n. 128 LAMBETH PALACE. trait that, " memorable as it is in the annals of art, it is more memorable as marking the close of the ereat intellectual movement which the Reformation swept away." ^ Now is this true ? Warham, second only to Sir Thomas More, was the Maecenas of his age ; under him Lambeth was the home, the shrine, of literature and art ; to him Erasmus himself owed his first source of income in the Enorlish Church as Rector of Aldington, near Ashford (though he never resided there), and soon after a more congenial sphere of labour in a professor's chair at Oxford ; yet the intellectual movement, the Augustan age of England and of her Church, cannot be said to have closed with him — nay, it had not yet fully dawned. Warham inauofurated the revival of true classical learningf in the land ; and under him, if not from himself,-^ after a century of suppression and persecution, reappeared and flourished in the persons of Eras- mus, Dean Colet, and others, the germ of that Reformation which was to prove a still nobler revival. A picture, then, which connects in our minds Warham, Erasmus, and Holbein, the fathers of the renaissance of literature, theology, and art, is, besides its intrinsic merits as a work of art, of rare value in the richness of its historic associations. In the private library of the Archbishop, there is also a likeness of Warham, now inserted in the 1 Stray Studies. By J. R. Green. P. 123. - Canon Dixon's History of the Church of England, vol. i. passim. THE PORTRAITS. 129 wainscoting over the fireplace (probably a copy of the Holbein) full of interest in itself, and deserv- inor of notice even in the collection which contains the noble original. Another, equally striking, and only differing in the colour of the background, was formerly at Lambeth, but has been transferred to the Archbishop's country residence at Addington Park. Of Thomas Cranmer, Warham's successor, who filled the See from 1533 to 1556, there are two portraits, which present a noteworthy contrast be- tween the Cranmer of Henry VHI. and the Cran- mer of Edward VI. The earlier one is on panel : it represents him in middle life ; the eye is full of intellect ; the whole face bespeaks honesty and single-heartedness ; but the mouth betrays weak- ness of purpose — those indications of character which his Royal patron and master had not been slow to detect and make use of.- Already may be traced on this smooth face the lines of a plastic disposition ; already the individuality of the man seems to be disappearing, and his nobler impulses suppressed, under the arbitrary control of the King. It is already a careworn face ; mistrust begins to show itself there — such as made him wish that he were only free to join in the escape, and share the exile, of brother prelates and divines, who, like himself, feared the selfish caprice, yet were not so closely bound down by obligations of place and favour to the Court of the unscrupulous I I30 LAMBETH PALACE, Henry. The history of this picture is unknown ; but it bears a striking resemblance to one which was in the British Museum/ and has been recently removed to the National Portrait Gallery in South Kensington, where it appears in the Catalogue under the name of Gerbacus Flicius,^ an un- known painter." The other portrait, also by an unknown painter, shows Cranmer with the noble silvery beard with which he is more commonly represented. Now it is a matter of history that, after Henry's death, Cranmer never allowed the razor to touch his chin : ^ he suffered his beard to grow in token of mourninp^ for the master whom he rerarded with strangely mingled feelings of undoubted attach- ment and yet of dread. Here is still apparent the weakness of purpose by which he now sub- jected his own individuality to the imperious Pro- tector Somerset, as he had done before to Henry, and by which he was being borne onward, with the current of popular opinion, against his own more sober convictions, till he found himself power- less to withstand the daily increasing influence of foreign Reformers, or to restrain the irreligious conduct of the "Protestant" nobility, who were 1 Two portraits of Cranmer token about the same period — one at Jesus College, Cambridge, the other in the possession of Captain Byng — are sup- posed to be by Holbein. - A beautiful engraving from this picture is given in Lodge's Portraits, and the supposed painter's name is there spelt " Gerbicus Flicciis." ^ Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. vii, p. 126, n. THE PORTRAITS. 131 enriching themselves by the further spoHation of the Church. The careworn expression on his face seems now to have given place to a settled melan- choly, which rests upon him as though he had a sad foreboding of the end that awaited him, when the alloy of human weakness was to be purged away in the smelting fires of martyrdom. Cardinal Reginald Pole, who comes next in order, and was Primate from 1555 to 1559, ap- pears in guise worthy of his noble birth and in- trinsically noble character. It is a fine picture, full of power and spirit. He appears such as he might have been when he sat as one of the Papal Legates in the earlier Sessions of the Council of Trent, in all the splendour of his new Cardinal's cap and cape. The expression is very similar to the well-known portrait by Piombo in the Barberini Palace at Rome, but with a much less luxuriant beard. There is another portrait of Pole on panel, by an unknown, but, from its hard stiff character, by some inferior, probably contemporary, artist, which represents him as having grown much older (prem- ^ Lysons (Environs of London, vol. iv. p, 594) says it is a copy of Piom- bo's, and that it was presented to Lambeth by the then Archbishop, Moore, (1796). It certainly is not mentioned by Ducarel among those existing in his time (1785), for he only mentions one of Pole, and that is the smaller one on panel ; nor is it in the list given in Cole's Additional MSS. in the British Museum, u^hich is dated 1794. Lysons is therefore probably right in ascrib- ing to Archbishop Moore the appearance of this fine picture in Lambeth, though evidently v^rong in calling it a copy of the one in the Barberini Palace. 132 LAMBETH PALACE. aturely so, for he only attained the age of 58) : his beard is much reduced in size ; and deep Hues, whether of disappointment, or of disease, or of Papal persecution, have marked the face which but a few years before seemed to be without a care. Over his head runs the inscription — Reginaldus polus R. Cardinalis CoLLEGij Corporis Xti Oxon olim socius ElECTUS in DCTM COLLEGIU' 14 FEB.l — and by the side the arms of Pole and Canterbury per pale, surmounted by a cardinal's cap. Along the bottom of the picture are traces of an inscrip-" tion, now quite illegible, but which Ducarel gives as being decipherable in his time, with a conjec- tural explanation : — NATALIS PR^?^2TAS doctrine SKlvAqiie VIRT?/J Te JUI/^NE inCl.arent totim . . . ALT^ ver ORBE;;/. Ducarel considers this to have been an original and probably faithful likeness ; ^ but the other, like all the more common engravings, which represent Pole with a large flowing beard, he considers to have been imaginary, or at least exaggerated. The smaller portrait is now relegated to the walls of the private dining-room. ^ The Admission Book of the Fellows of Corpus Christi College enables VIS to supply the year — 1523 — which on the portrait has become illegible. The word electus is scarcely correct ; as Pole, having been nominated by the founder himself (Bishop Fox) should have been described as assnmptus. A likeness of the Cardinal, very similar to this, was in the possession of the Poole family in Dorsetshire. — Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 86. THE PORTRAITS, 133 It is scarcely possible to stand before that of Pole's successor, Matthew Parker, without feel- ings of surprise and regret that the portraiture of such a man should not have been given to posterity by a more distinguished painter of his day. Filling as he did so prominent a post in those eventful years of England's history, the early ones of Eliza- beth's reign — from 1559 to 1575 — the English Church by general consent acknowledges her debt of gratitude to him as the true Anglican Primate of the Reformation period. Firmly withstanding alike the intrigues of the specious Romanist, and the renewal of foreign Protestant zeal to which Cranmer had weakly yielded, he was, under God, the instrument for replacing the Church of the nation on its Apostolic and Primitive lines : more- over, h6 was a very Prince of the Church in liber- ality as well as dignity ; a great patron, too, of art and literature, having among his staff at Lambeth painters, engravers, and printers. And yet, al- thouorh the Court of Elizabeth could boast of men like Sir Antonio More, Mark Garrard, and Hill- yard, Matthew Parker has found no one better than a comparatively mediocre painter, Richard Lyne, whose name has no place in the list of our known national artists, to perpetuate his face on canvas, to take its place between a Holbein and a Vandyck. And even for the recovery of this one, which appears to have been for a time lost to the Palace, it is, according to Ducarel, indebted to the 134 LAMBETH PALACE. great benefactor to this Portrait - Gallery, Arch- bishop Cornwallis/ It is, however, rather to a delicate line engraving by Remigius Hogenberg, who was also in the household of Parker, that we owe the most reliable representation of what the good Archbishop was like in his ripe old age. The history of this beautiful limning " is thus given by Ducarel : ^ it is ''in the original copy of the Statutes given by the Archbishop to Benet College, Cambridge;" this was ''exactly traced off and etched by the late excellent Mr Tyson, fellow of that College, 1769, a copy of which is placed in the Lambeth Library." This is pro- nounced by Vertue to have been the first portrait that was engraven in England.^ Here we have a face bearing the impress of thought and high pur- pose ; a happy blending of the personal humility with the dignity befitting his office, and the firm resolve necessary to carry out its duties unflinch- ingly. A comparison of the engraving with the painting tempts one to think that, instead of the engraver following the painter, the painter had in this case followed the engraver, and that Lyne, a 1 It was ''formerly in the possession of James West, Esq., afterwards of John Ives, Esq. of Yarmouth, who presented it in 1772 to Archbishop Cornwallis, by whom it was placed in the picture-gallery at Lambeth Palace." — Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 62, n. - Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 61, n. ^ This engraving appears in ' A Genealogy of Kings of England from the Conquest to Elizabeth,' with the inscription : " Remigius Hogenbergius Servus D. Matt. Archiep. Cant, sculpsit. 1574." The etching by Mr Tyson is at the end of the Life of Parker, in the copy of his ' Historia de Antiquitate Britannicse Ecclesiae ' in the Lambeth Library. THE PORTRAITS. 135 mere copyist, had taken Hogenberg's clear ex- pressive plate as the groundwork for his painting, closely retaining the several details of book, casket, inkstand, and hour-orlass. The portrait of Edmund Grindal, who suc- ceeded, from 1575 to 1583, is said, according to an engraving by S. Trotter, to have been the work of De Vos (Martin ?), and may be accepted as being very expressive of his character. For while he equalled his predecessor in kindness of heart, he unhappily fell far short of him in that firmness of purpose which had preserved Parker from ever conceding any vital Church principle. During the dark period of Mary's reign, Parker, though so closely connected in former days with the unhappy mother of Elizabeth, and with the young princess herself, had remained in safe retirement in Eng- land ; while Grindal, with his more pronounced views and more active temperament, having made himself a far more marked man, was forced to seek for safety in flight abroad ; and being there brought into close contact with Continental Reformers, he was so much influenced by them, that, despite all his earlier training as the Chaplain and friend of the Catholic-minded Bishop Ridley, through his increasing sympathy with Luther, Bucer, Melanc- thon, and also Calvin, his mind became so famil- iarised with laxer views of Church doctrine and discipline, that he was led to make concessions, even in regard to those vital principles of Church 136 LAMBETH PALACE. order which his predecessor had so wisely laid down, and so steadfastly maintained. Grindal's face in this portrait tells all this ; his was a gen- tle pliancy of disposition. And yet he could be resolute, as he found to his cost when opposing Elizabeth on the subject of the " prophesyings ; " for his resistance to the Oueen's wishes cost him the royal favour, and the latter years of his life were spent in disgrace. His leaning to the foreign Reformers betrayed itself even in his dress, for it is said of him that never, when he could avoid it, would he wear Episcopal robes. Next to him comes John Whitgift, whose occupancy of the Primacy from 1583 to 1604 was justly regarded as a turning-point in a most critical period of the English Church ; indeed his character and influence are thus described by good old Isaak Walton,^ where, speaking of the several offices Whitgift had filled at Cambridge, Ely, Lincoln, and Worcester, he adds, "In all which removes he was like the Ark, which left a blessing on the place where it rested." In his person the friendly con- nection between Lambeth and Whitehall, for a time broken by Grindal, was again happily re- stored ; for Elizabeth, with all her foibles, "liked an honest man," and Whitgift's consistency, cour- age, determination, and, above all, disinterestedness, commanded her respect, even when he ventured to differ from her, as he did very firmly, when she, ^ Life of Richard Hooker. THE PORTRAITS. 137 as Henry's own daughter, would have sanctioned further spoHations of Church property ; and again when, with the decaying powers of advancing years, he assented to the Lambeth Articles," which in her turn she, supported by Burghley, strenuously resisted. So sincere, however, was her regard for him, that old Isaak says she used to call him " her little black Imsband.'' Lovingly as well as loyally did the aged Primate close his Queen's eyes ; and it was no trifling mark of personal respect that her successor, James, stood in tears beside the Arch- bishop's dying bed, and gave utterance to an earn- est prayer that his life might be prolonged — only to hear in reply the failing breath falter forth, " Pro E celesta Dei I pro Ecclesid Dei / " ^ The 'portrait in the Guard - Room represents Whitgift with the clustered pillars and window of a cathedral in the background, the whole within a plain oval. But another and far more expressive likeness of him hangs in the Long Gallery, and is evidently the one referred to in the list in Cole's Additional MSS.," where it is exactly described as containing over the figure "the crest, a \\ox\s> gainb (paw) holding a wreath, with forefinger of his left hand in a book ; a head with a black beard ; pic- ture on board ; " the arms also are painted in the margin.^ No mention is made in that list of another portrait of Archbishop Whitgift being in the collec- 1 Walton's Life of Richard Hooker. - A beautiful engraving of this picture was published by Vertue in 171 7. LAMBETH PALACE. tion. This second likeness, which has the post of honour in the series, was probably the one be- queathed by Archbishop Wake.^ In it we delight to dwell upon a countenance indicative of firmness and strength of purpose, and to contemplate him, not so much as the bold and able opponent of Travers and Cartwright, but as the true friend and fearless patron of the ''judicious Hooker," and of the only less learned Saravia. For some time during the declining years of Whitgift, Richard Bancroft, at that time Bishop of London, had to a great extent administered the See of Canterbury : consequently, on the death of the aged Primate he was naturally looked to, and readily accepted as his successor; but his tenure of the office was only from 1604 to 16 10. It was Bancroft's misfortune to have his life chiefly writ- ten by men who, in the fervour of their Puritanism, could see in his administration of the Church no- thing but what was censurable, and who imagined a grievance in every necessary act of discipline ; yet few that have filled that high post proved them- selves more loyal and true sons of their mother Church, few were more justly entitled to be called Fathers in Israel," than he of whom old Fuller says that ''a great statesman he was, and grand champion of Church discipline." ^ Receiving the reins of power from the hands of his enfeebled ^ See infra, page 157. 2 Fuller's Worthies, vol. i. p. 544. THE PORTRAITS. 139 friend and patron Whitgift, his was no uneventful Episcopate, for it included the Hampton Court Conference, the Consecration of Bishops for the Scotch Church, and, noblest work of all, the trans- lation of the Bible, now known as the Authorised Version." And by the bequest of his own exten- sive collection of books he laid the foundation of the noble Public Library at Lambeth. It must indeed have saddened his later days if he surmised that the power he so vigorously wielded would be transmitted to one so directly opposed to him in feelings and in principle as the new Court favour- ite, George Abbott : and he evidently did forebode coming changes upon the Church ; for in an early Will he had bequeathed large sums of money for Church purposes : but fearing that all Ecclesiastical Corporations were in danger, he cancelled those bequests by a later Will ; and even when be- queathing his "great and famous library of books of divinity " to the See, as already mentioned,^ he seemed to do it in fear and trembling, for he pro- tected it by the wise condition that if it should be in danger at Lambeth it should be transferred to the University of Cambridge. So it befell, as he seemed to fear. Although on his death men's eyes were turned to Lancelot An- drewes, then Bishop of Ely (and afterwards trans- lated to Winchester), universally regarded as the most learned divine and most powerful preacher, 1 Page 62. I40 LAMBETH PALACE. or to Overall, the profoundest Canonist, of that day ; yet Court favour triumphed, and George Abbott (who had been formerly Chaplain to the Earl of Dunbar, the late powerful favourite of James), though he had barely a year before been consecrated to the See of Lichfield and Coventry, and after one month translated to London, was within the year raised to the Primacy, over such men as Andrewes and Overall — and that on the plea that his strongly avowed Calvinism would conciliate the Presbyterians ! A satirist of the day thus describes the appointment: ''Abbott," he says, "had been blown over by a strong north wind across the Thames to Lambeth."-^ Another says, " Dunbar carried Lambeth by a coitp de mainy Abbott's stern austere manner kept all men aloof ; the laity shunned him ; while the severity of his judgments made the clergy dread him, though the gentle Fuller^ pleads that this severity was prompted by his desire to save them from "being punished by the Lay Judges to their greater shame : " thus the affections of the people, lay and clerical alike, were alienated from the Church in his person. This may account for the almost utter absence of personal commiseration for him during the period of his deprivation, in conse- quence of the sad accident when he killed one ^ Letter from Sir George Calvert (afterwards Lord Baltimore), Principal Secretary of State to James I., addressed to Sir Thomas Edwards. 2 Fuller's Worthies, vol. ii. p. 360. THE PORTRAITS. 141 of Lord Zouch's keepers, while on a shooting- party at Bramzil Park. With him Christianity seemed to be summed up, not in the Gospels, but in the " Institutes" of Calvin ; nothing less, and nothing more. On the one hand, language seemed to fail him to give full expression to the bitter feelings he enter- tained against Popery ; ^ and on the other, he seemed to think that the Primacy of an Established Church required of him that he should visit with the severest penalties of the law any man who dared to dissent from or go beyond his interpreta- tion of its teaching. Thus under him, while the Romanist was denounced, the fires of Smithfield, which had been suffered to die out since the death of Mary, were again lighted, and two Anabaptists, Leggett and Whitman, were brought to the stake as heretics. A Latin poet, speaking of the two ends of a pastoral staff, says — " Curva trahit mites, pars pungit acuta rebellos ; " but Abbott seemed to regard all his flock as rebels, and to use only the goad. Perhaps this thought was in the mind of Bishop Racket when, contrast- ing his gentle and wise predecessor's system of administration with that adopted by Abbott, he ^ Clarendon said, " Abbott considered Christian religion no otherwise than as it abhorred and reviled Popery." — History of the Rebellion (Oxford ed., 1843), p. 36. 142 LAMBETH PALACE. said, Bancroft considered the pastoral staff was made to bring back a wandering sheep, not to knock it down." The portrait is remarkable for its richness of colour and force of expression, and deserves to have rescued the artist's name from oblivion in- stead of adding another to the list of "unknown painters ; " and if Clarendon's description of the Archbishop be true, that he was " a man of very morose manners and a very sour aspect, which at that time was called gravity,"^ the picture, in addi- tion to its merits as a work of art, may be accepted as having been a "speaking likeness." To the twenty-three years of his Primacy, which lasted from 1610 to 1633, may be traced much of the trouble which subsequently befell the English Church. From Abbott we pass to him on whom the mitre of Canterbury next devolved, and proved an in- heritance so wofully encumbered and imperilled through his predecessor s failings and indiscretions ; while his own want of prudence and judgment greatly increased the difficulties and dangers of his position. The portrait of William Laud, who held the Primacy from 1633 to 1644, is an undoubted Van- dyck, and, like that of Warham by Holbein, was a present from the artist himself. One cannot con- 1 Racket's Life of Lord-Keeper Williams, p. 97. - Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, p. 38. THE PORTRAITS. 143 template that face without mingled feelings : re- spect for that conscientious steadfastness which made him dare and do what he believed to be his duty ; regret for that lack of judgment and con- sideration which made him so uncompromising and unconciliatory in the performance of it, to his own ruin, and to some extent to that of his Royal master ; and admiration of the heroism with which, at the age of threescore years and ten, still true to his lifelonor convictions — still unbendinQ^ before the malice of his enemies, unwavering in his sense of duty, unshaken in his trust in God — the old man closed a career of trouble and trial on the block. That " roughness of his uncourtly nature " ^ is here ; that firm dignity, not to say severity, that stern uncompromising spirit, that almost proud resigna- tion, seem to look down upon us from the lifelike canvas of Vandyck. This picture is itself the subject of an incident recorded in the Archbishop's diary. One day near the close of the last October he spent at Lambeth (1640), he was entering his upper study, when, to use his own words, " in that study hung my pic- ture taken by the life ; and, coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor, 1 " It is true the roughness of his uncourtly nature sent most men discon- tented from him : yet would he often of himself find ways and means to sweeten many of them when they least looked for it." So wrote Sir Edward Bering in vindication of the man against whom, at the persuasion of the de- signing Puritans, he had been the first to move the House of Commons. — Southey's Book of the Church, vol. ii. p. 397. 44 LAMBETH PALACE. the string being broken by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parliament ; God grant this be no omen ! An omen, however, too true it proved ; for in a few weeks he was a prisoner in the Tower, and after weary and vexatious mental torture worthy of the Inquisition, he too fell from his high place, his fate supplying a connecting-link between those of his colleague Strafford and his patron Charles. It is not without some sense of relief we turn to the portrait of his successor, William Juxon, whose brief tenure of office only extended from 1660 to 1663. Step by step he had followed Laud, as Fel- low, and then President, of St John's College, as Bishop of London, and eventually as Primate : and yet, while identified with him in almost every act of those troubled times, how different their fates ! It was no doubt the personal character, the amen- ity of temper and gentleness of manner, that won for Juxon the nation's confidence and praise, while Laud's lack of these graces was only drawing down upon him hatred and mistrust. Antony Wood de- scribes him as a person of primitive sanctity, of great wisdom, piety, learning, patience, charity, and apostolic virtues;"^ and even Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, who. Royalist though he was of the noblest type, was a bitter opponent of the Bishops 1 Laud's Diary, p. 59 (Oct. 17, 1640). - Wood's Athence Oxonienses (Bliss's ed., 1820), vol. iv. p. 819. THE PORTRAITS. 145 sittinof in Parliament, and one who sometimes launched upon the Episcopal Bench the keenest invective, could make exception in favour of Juxon, and say of him, that, in an unexpected place and power, he expressed an equal moderation and humility, being neither ambitious before, nor proud after, either the crosier or white staff," ^ in allusion to his having been Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer. And to this general respect it may be attributed that, though he was once seized and brought before the High Court of Justice, no charge was estab- lished against him, and he was immediately set free, and suffered to enjoy an unmolested retire- ment durinof the Commonwealth. His portrait, in pose and dress little more than the counterpart or repetition of that of Laud, with face reversed, is a copy of one at Long Leat, where it appropriately holds its place in the house which a quarter of a century after furnished a home to the saintly Bishop Ken. The names of artist and copyist alike are unknown : by some, the original, which was placed at Long Leat by the first Vis- count Weymouth about the year 1 700, is attributed to Vandyck, but without any sufficient authority. The copy was inserted in the Lambeth series by Archbishop Cornwallis. There is a current tradition that Juxon, with characteristic humility, persistently refused to sit 1 Hook's Life of Archbishop Juxon. K 146 LAMBETH PALACE. to any painter, and that the picture at Long- Leat, as also the better known one at St John's College, Oxford (which is also the work of an unknown artist), were executed from memory — or perhaps rather upon an adaptation of the Laudian dress and bearing, the face being painted in after death ; for which much facility was offered by the body lying in state in the Oxford Divinity School for two days. That sad face seems as if the echoes of the mysterious word " Remember ! " addressed to him by Charles I. on the scaffold, were still floating around him. There is also another very remarkable likeness of Archbishop Juxon hanging over the doorway of the adjoining Long Gallery, which represents him in the stillness and repose of death : this was no doubt taken under the circumstances already al- luded to.^ Gilbert Sheldon, who was Archbishop from 1663 to 1667, was the son of a favourite domestic of Lord Shrewsbury's household, — another instance of a man rising from a comparatively humble origin to the highest position in the English Church. The twelve years of the Protectorate which Juxon had enjoyed in undisturbed retirement, because he had remained comparatively inactive, had been spent by Sheldon in active though covert support ^ This is probably the picture of Juxon mentioned in Archbishop W^ake's Will, see infm^ p. 1 57, n. 2, as the one in the series is otherwise accounted for. THE PORTRAITS. 147 of the exiled house of Stuart ; and soon after their return to power, he received his reward at their hands, and fulfilled the predictions of his early life — for, according to Lord Clarendon, he was early " looked upon as very equal to any preferment the Church could yield him ; " and even the Parlia- mentarian, Sir F. Wenman, said of him that he was born and bred to be Archbishop of Canter- bury." In Sheldon we see a political Churchman rather than a Divine. Contact with the rampant hypocrisy of many leading Puritans made him sus- pect all pretence to special piety as being nothing but a cloak for disloyalty and dishonesty. Per- sonal wrongs, and the wrongs of the Church, had formed in him a seeming severity against Noncon- formists generally ; and as they were the chief his- torians of the day, his name has come down to us blackened with all the obloquy which reciprocated dislike could cast upon it. This feeling was no doubt mutually embittered by protracted acrimoni- ous and futile Conferences held at the Savoy, in which, in the absence of the aged and infirm Juxon, he was called upon to take principal part as Bishop of London. Yet be it remembered of Sheldon that he dared to rebuke the immoralities of Charles IL and his Court; and also exhibited a personal as well as moral courage not to be lightly regarded; for when, in 1665, the plague raged in ^ Life of Lord Clarendon (1843), P^^^t I., A.D. 1635 ; History of the Rebellion, vol. ii, p. 928. 148 LAMBETH PALACE. London, and almost every one who could fled from the doomed city, not only did he never leave Lam- beth, though victims were dying in numbers at the very gates of the Palace, but he ministered freely to their wants of his own wealth, and from funds which, at his solicitation, were supplied from all parts of the country. To his liberality Oxford bears witness in that noble buildinor called after him, the " Sheldonian Theatre," built entirely at his own cost. He was also a liberal contributor to the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral ; and to him the See of London was indebted for the Episcopal house in St James's Square ; which was taken down by Archbishop Howley, when Bishop of London, to make room for the present worthier building. He was the friend of Ussher, Hammond, Sander- son, and other kindred spirits ; and yet the linea- ments of his face, as given in either of the two portraits of him in the Palace, seem, with their severe and almost repellent expression, to explain how, with self-reliant reserve, he failed to secure the oreneral esteem and fittinof recosfnition of his contemporaries, and that position in the Ecclesias- tical history of his country to which his natural gifts and conspicuous career entitled him.^ Of the two portraits, one is a copy from the picture in Broom Hall, presented by Archbishop Cornwallis ; the other, by an unknown artist, apparently a copy ^ See Hook's character of Sheldon, Lives of the Archbishops, vol. xi. pp. 424-42S. THE PORTRAITS. 149 from one by D. Loggan, formerly in the possession of the Earl of Home.^ The appointment of William Sancroft, whose Episcopate ranged from 1678 to 1691, marks an- other crisis in the history of the English Church. He, like Sheldon, had raised himself by his own merits and ability as a controversialist. His first appointment of importance was to the Deanery of St Paul's, and also to the dignified position of Prolocutor of the Lower House of Convocation ; and then, probably as much to his own surprise as to that of others, he was selected to fill the post vacated by the death of Sheldon. It is not on Burnet's description of Sancroft, who seemed to seize every opportunity of depreciating him, that an estimate must be formed of his intellectual power and his high-minded zeal ; nor is it by the futile tenacity with which he clung to Lambeth after his deprivation, that his real character must be judged. A jealous assertion of the Church's endangered rights, and loyalty and devotion to the house of Stuart, though for it he had suffered much, were the principles on which he and his brother Bishops based their resistance to what they regard- ed as the unconstitutional demands of James H. on the one hand, and those of William HL on the other. However much men may question the soundness or wisdom of his subsequent Non- juror action, they can hardly withhold admiration ^ Of which Vertue has published an admirable engraving. ISO . LAMBETH PALACE. for the constancy with which he and his fellow- prisoners bore themselves throughout the memor- able trial, or fail to sympathise with the exulta- tion of the nation on the still more memorable acquittal which followed. Yet so strong was the tendency to depreciate his worth on the part of the ruling powers at the time, that scant justice was done to his memory. Indeed it has been well said, that for many years after the Revolu- tion not one of his successors had the spirit or generosity to hang up his picture in the Palace, till Archbishop Cornwallis (observing the portrait of him by P. Lens in the gallery at Emmanuel Col- lege, Cambridge, to which he had been so liberal a benefactor) obtained leave to have a copy of it taken ; which now occupies its place in the Lam- beth series. Another portrait of Bancroft, by Lut- trell, once hung in the Gallery, and from it was taken the engraving by Meyer which appears as the frontispiece of D'Oyly's Life of the Archbishop. This appears to have been the private property of Archbishop Manners Sutton, and only temporarily deposited here.^ In the Library is preserved a beautiful little oval portrait of Bancroft drawn on parchment, in lead pencil, probably by Loggan — a style in which this artist excelled. In the Long Gallery appears a picture tradition- ally reputed, though on what authority is not ^ D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol. ii. p. 77, n. Notes and Queries, Aug. 16, 1879, p, 140. THE PORTRAITS. known/ to be a likeness of Sancroft in early life. It represents a young man in the character of a student, book in hand, but with no conceivable resemblance to the features of the Archbishop as portrayed in the authentic likenesses ; and along the bottom of the frame are printed the words Rapido conti^arms orbiT These words occur in the earnest remonstrance of Phoebus against Phaethon's rash desire to drive the chariot of the Sun;^ and in their supposed application to Sancroft they would certainly have been almost prophetic of his fate, for he learned by bitter experience how incapable he was of resisting the forces of political revolution with which he was surrounded. The date, however, 1650, which appears at the foot of the picture, disposes of the tradition ; for at that time Sancroft must have reached his thirty-fourth year, whereas the picture represents a youth of little more than half that age. Many and striking have been the contrasts which Lambeth has witnessed in the succession of its Primates ; but perhaps never — not even in the transition from Bancroft to Abbott — was the con- trast greater than when the crosier passed from the reluctant hands of William Sancroft into those of John Tillotson. Sancroft was hereditarily 1 In the list in "Cole's Additional MSS." it is only named anonymous, with the date and quotation given. Ducarel (Lambeth Palace, p. 86), notices it as "supposed to be Archbishop Sancroft when young." " The passage runs thus : — " • • • . Non me, qui csetera, vincit Impetus; et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."— Ovid's Metam., ii. 73. 152 LAMBETH PALACE. and by conviction a High Churchman ; Tillotson, born of Presbyterian parents, his wife a niece of OHver Cromwell, was distinctively a Latitudinarian (a term then first coming into vogue), and any tinge of Calvinism he might have inherited must have been very slight, for the leading revivers of Calvinism of that day would not own him. The one was a profound scholar ; the other, without any high claims to theology, was the most popular preacher of his day. The contrast may be summed up by saying that Bancroft's was a Court appoint- ment under Charles II., Tillotson the personal selection of William III. His brief tenure of the Primacy, from 1691 to 1694, sufficed to justify the selection, for it has been said that "his clear head and sweet temper" fitted him admirably for mas- tering the difficulties and allaying the strifes of his time. He must have possessed in a rare degree the gift of winning to himself men of most opposite views, since Lord William Russell had entreated his attendance upon him in the Tower and at the block,^ while he himself died in the arms of Robert Nelson.2 He must have been as much distinofuished for graces of person as of mind. The two portraits of him preserved at Lambeth agree in representing him as k man of strikingly attractive presence ; and 1 Dr Birch's Life of Tillotson (ed. 1753), p. 10 1. He had borne witness to Lord W. Russell's noble character at his trial. - Ibid., p. 315- THE PORTRAITS. 153 have a special interest as marking the transition in the style of head-dress adopted at that time by the bishops. In the one by Sir Godfrey Kneller/ which worthily occupies the place of honour in the series on the walls of the Guard- Room, he appears, as in all other portraits of him^ by that painter, in his natural hair, the familiar skull-cap of his predecessors being laid aside ; while in the other, hanging in the adjoining gallery, he wears the full - curled wig now first appearing in the Episcopal dress ; and is represented as seated, not in a spacious plain library-chair, as in Sir God- frey's, but in one far more pretentious, the back culminating in a mitre, and the whole enclosed in an oval flat border. This portrait is said to have been the work of Mrs Maria Beale, a favourite pupil of Sir Peter Lely, who is known to have painted several likenesses of the Archbishop.^ The more youthful character of the face leads to the impression that this likeness was taken before he was raised to the Primacy ; and the mitre and lawn sleeves subsequently introduced, and by some less skilled hand.'* On the sudden death of Tillotson, many eyes were turned on Stillingfleet, the learned and able ^ Lysons (Environs of London, vol. iv. p. 595) says it is a duplicate of one by Sir Godfrey, and was presented to the Palace by Archbishop Moore. 2 One of which was in the gallery of Lord Somers, and another was in the possession of the then Master of the Rolls. In all of which he appears in a wig. Lysons (Environs of London, vol. iv. p. 595, n. ) clearly favours this view. 154 LAMBETH PALACE. Bishop of Worcester, as his most fitting successor ; but Court opinion ruled that both his notions and his temper were too high," and pronounced in favour of Thomas Tenison as having one important quali- fication for the post, that ''he would do no harm."^ His antecedents were not, however, insignificant. In early life he was Rector of St Andrew's the Great at Cambridge ; and when the plague broke out and scattered nearly all the members of his College, he remained manfully at the post of duty and danger ; and when subsequently appointed to the Royal Parish of St Martin's - in - the - Fields, which Burnet calls the o^reatest Cure in Engf- land," he boldly denounced and opposed the efforts of James II. to restore Popery. On the accession of William III., the strong recommenda- tion of his friend the newly appointed Primate Tillotson secured for him the Bishopric of Lincoln, from whence he soon passed to be his successor at Lambeth.^ His career at St Martins had not been uneventful. He had ministered at the death- bed of Nell Gwynne, and also attended the unfor- tunate Duke of Monmouth on the scaffold. He, too, presented a striking contrast to his prede- cessor in person as in intellectual power ; a gentle, amiable, retiring student, described by Mackay as ''a plain, good, heavy man," following one in ^ Burnet's History of his own Time (1857), p. 606. - Ibid., p. 130. ^ Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 253. THE PORTRAITS. 155 whom the effect of brilliant eloquence was height- ened by an attractive and commanding bearing. Gilbert Burnet, never over-ready to praise his contemporaries, said of him, in his administration of the Cure of St Martin's, that he had many friends and no enemies," and that he, when Arch- bishop, more than once rebuked William III. for his intrigues with Lady Elizabeth Villiers. The philanthropic Garth has strongly testified to his worth — " Good Tenison's celestial piety At last has raised him to the sacred See." ^ The opinion generally held of him by his con- temporaries is best shown in the soh'iqiiet by which he appears to have been known ; he was commonly called the Rock," on account of his steadfastness of character." But perhaps the most valuable testimony to his excellence, and one hav- ing a special bearing on our -present subject, is that of Mary, with whom he was not perhaps a great favourite, who yet, when some Courtiers attempted to sneer at him, and prejudice her against him for having dwelt in his funeral sermon on the penitence of the unhappy Nell Gwynne, replied, If I can read a man's heart through his looks, had she not made a truly pious and Christian end, the Doctor would never have 1 The Dispensaty, canto ii. 65 [var.) 2 See Hoadley's Works, vol. i. p, 556, n., quoted in Perry's History of the Church, vol. iii. p. 277. 156 LAMBETH PALACE. been induced to speak well of her." Such is the face, painted by Simon du Bois/ homely but honest, hanging beside the handsome Tillotson, of the man who succeeded him in the See, and held it from 1694 to 1717 — the studious book- loving Tenison, who has left his mark in Lam- beth Library as no other occupant of the See has done. ■ . Tenison was succeeded by William Wake, who held the Primacy for some twenty years from 1716 to 1737. He was said by Hasted to have been a member of an influential Dorsetshire family ; but believed to have been also connected with the old Lincolnshire Wakes, of pre - Norman ancestry, who claim descent from Hereward Wac, or de Wac, the Anglian patriot and hero who so bravely resisted the Conqueror in the Eastern Counties.^ Archbishop Wake was a divine of considerable learning, and the author of many valuable works, chiefly controversial. The first which brought him into note was a very powerful reply to a work from no less formidable an antag- onist than Bossuet, then Bishop of Meaux. Atter- bury also found in him one of his most trenchant opponents. He made a vigorous though futile attempt to bring about an amalgamation with ^ So noted in the List of Portraits preserved among "Cole's Additional MSS." in the British Museum. '■^ Tliis descent is certified by Sir Henry St George, Clarenceux ; and is recorded in a MS. Memoir by the Archbishop, in the possession of Mrs Best, of Park House, Boxley, Kent. THE PORTRAITS. 157 foreign Churches, to which his early residence abroad as Chaplain to Lord Preston, then am- bassador at the French Court, had doubtless in- clined him. He is generally believed to have greatly disappointed his Whig patrons, who looked for . grateful support in their Arian sympathies ; but they soon found him too stanch a supporter of Church principles and doctrine to fall in with their views. Although he could not resist the force of the stream of Court favour which was carrying Hoadley from See to See, he was able to prevent Rundle, as an avowed Arian, if not a Deist, being appointed to an English Bishopric.^ It is one of the traditions of Lambeth that he was the last Archbishop who went to Parliament by water ; and from his time it would seem that the State Barge fell into comparative disuse. It is not so generally known that he too was a benefactor to this collection of portraits, though those which he bequeathed, of Whitgift, Bancroft, and Juxon,^ are probably the duplicates hanging in the Long Gallery, and not those which occupy their places in the series in the Guard- Room. His portrait is ascribed to Isaac Whood. Still more conspicuous for learning was the next 1 Perry's History of the English Church, vol. iii. p. 399, - Extract from Archbishop Wake's will : "I bequeath to my successors . . . . the pictures of Archbishops Whitgift, Bancroft, and Juxon, all which are hung up or lye in my gallery at Lambeth ; together with that of 'the Disciples afishing,' which hangs over the chimney in the Presence- Chamber, and which I bought of the exors. of my predecessor." — Lambeth MSS. 158 LAMBETH PALACE. occupant of the Archiepiscopal See, John Potter (1737 to 1747), the author, among other learned works, of ' Archaeologia Grseca.' His advancement to the Primacy is another striking illustration of the possibility of men of lowly birth rising to the highest offices in Church or State by their own individual merits. His appointment was under remarkable circumstances. Gibson, then Bishop of London, was looked upon as Wake's successor — so much so, that he was often called the Heir- Apparent of Canterbury ; " ^ but his opposition of Walpole's attempt to carry the Quakers' Relief" Bill threw him into disfavour, and cost him the Primacy." ^ There hangs in the adjoining gallery a picture in which may be traced, somewhat singularly, the promise of Archbishop Potter's early life : it repre- sents a boy with a face full of intelligence, his hand inserted between the pages of a well-bound book, while a scroll records — " cEtatis suce VI a7ino 1679." The appearance of this picture in Lambeth is not without interest. In the year 1842, a yeoman Churchwarden of a Northamptonshire parish cas- ually mentioned to his Rector that there had de- scended to an ancestor of his, and was now in his possession, a picture which family tradition said was the likeness of a very clever little boy, the son ^ It was currently said that the fear of Gibson being his successor induced Wake to will away his Library to Christ Church, Oxford, instead of leaving it at Lambeth. '•^ Coxe's Life of Walpole, vol. ii. p. 373. THE PORTRAITS. 59 of a linen-draper at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, who at the age of six years could read the Greek Tes- tament (and had read it up to the place marked in the book he holds in his hand), and who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. Now Arch- bishop Potter was the son of a Wakefield linen- draper, and was born about the year 1674, which would place him in his sixth year in 1679, the date thus confirming the tradition, and supplying a clue to the identification : the little volume, too, looks as if it might well have been a Greek Testa- ment ; and the boy's mind must have been one of unwonted precocity, such as is always ascribed to Potter, to find pleasure in such reading at six years of age. The picture itself, probably the work of some local artist, — showing a bright, intelligent child, with long flaxen curls, — is not without merit ; and, rescued from oblivion in a small bedroom in a Northamptonshire farmhouse, and presented to Archbishop Howley, is appropriately and happily preserved within the Palace of which the subject was so distinguished an occupant during the last ten years of his life.^ On Potter's death the Primacy was offered to Sherlock, Bishop of London, and next to Butler of Bristol ; but on its being declined by both, it was ^ For these particulars the author is indebted to a private letter from the late Rev. Thomas James, Rector of Sibbertoft and Theddingworth, in Northamptonshire, dated Nov. 28, 1842, to his friend the Rev. Benjamin Harrison, then Domestic Chaplain to Archbishop Howley, and now Arch- deacon of Maidstone. i6o LAMBETH PALACE. then offered to Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York, who held it for ten years, from 1 747 to 1757. He was a man of cultivated mind, but more distinguished for political activity than for admin- istrative power. Indeed he is supposed to have owed his speedy promotion from York to Canter- bury to the strong support he gave to the house of Hanover in the memorable rising of '45. His is one of the comparatively few portraits from the easel of Hogarth, so much better known for his satirical or home-scene paintings. Next to him came Matthew Hutton, also pro- moted from York ; but his tenure of the Primacy was a very brief one, extending only over a few months (1757 to 1758). He seemed to come of a family of Bishops, and was the direct lineal descen- dant of his namesake, the Dr Matthew Hutton who had preceded him in the See of York in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His portrait is by Hudson, who was by some regarded as the first portrait-painter of the day,'' and even as another Vandyck incognito;'' while a modern critic has described his art as containing the very dregs of the old traditions.''^ A gallery which can boast its Holbein, its Van- 1 Coming between his father-in-law, Richardson, ' ' to whom he was much inferior," and the illustrious painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was for a short time his pupil, Hudson's fame and popularity can only be accounted for, as it is by Sir Joshua's biographer, Leslie, on the ground that only for want of a better he became the principal portrait-painter in England. — Leslie's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. i. p. 20. THE PORTRAITS. i6i dyck, and its Hogarth, should not be without its Sir Joshua ; and from the easel of that distinguished painter we have the portrait of Thomas Secker, who was Archbishop from 1758 to 1768. From Seeker's antecedents, his rise to the Primacy could have been little anticipated, for he, like his school- fellow and lifelong friend, the distinguished Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, was the son of Dis- senting parents. The gift of preaching, so rare in the Church at that day, but so much cultivated in the Nonconformist connection to which he be- longed, probably helped to bring him into note after he had been admitted into English Orders. His rise, considering the many stages through which he passed, was one of almost unprecedented rapidity. Ordained in 1722, within twelve years he was Rector of the Royal Parish of St James's, Westminster ; two years after, Bishop of Bristol ; in another two years translated to Oxford ; and raised to the Primacy in 1758. He was an elegant rather than a profound scholar. The memorials which he left behind of his zeal and activity are to be found, not in writings of his own, but in a collection of books, and manuscripts, and collations, which are among the most valuable of the treasures in Lambeth Library.-^ Unhappily in this as in other portraits in the Palace and elsewhere by the same hand, the too common defect of the pigments used by Sir Joshua Reynolds during a particular 1 See p. 93. L LAMBETH PALACE. period of his life betrays itself, leaving a deathlike or rather leprously pallid complexion. The succession of men who had attained to the highest dignity in the Church from comparatively humble origin — notably among them Sheldon, Sancroft, Tillotson, Potter, Seeker — is here broken by the advancement of a scion of a noble house, Frederick Cornwallis, a younger son of Charles, fourth Baron Cornwallis, the first Primate of high birth since the days of Cardinal Reginald Pole. At a period when life and energy were so rare in the Church at large,^ we must not be surprised that so little remains to be recorded of his Episcopate, which extended from 1768 to 1783. What may sound as faint praise in the latter part of the nine- teenth century, w^ould be regarded a hundred years ago as a high tribute to a Primate's worth, that he " discharored the duties of his hicrh office with at- tention, punctuality, and decorum." To which the same contemporary authority adds — In shining talents and extensive learning, other Prelates may have been superior to him ; but in solid sense and understanding, in a right discernment of men and ^ An instance of the general laxness prevalent among high ecclesiastics at that time is given by Jesse in his Memoirs of the Reign of George III., vol. ii. p. 58. The King felt called upon to address to the Primate in 1772 an autograph letter remonstrating with him for having permitted routs to make their v^ay into the Palace, — "a residence," says the King, then a young man, " which for many centuries has been devoted to divine studies, religious retire- ment, and the extensive exercise of charity and benevolence ; a place where so many of your predecessors have led their lives in such sanctity as has thrown lustre on the pure religion they professed and adorned." THE PORTRAITS. 163 things, in prudence, moderation, and benevolence, in affability, candour, and hospitality, none of his predecessors have exceeded him."^ Be it also noted to his honour, that he effected a change in the domestic arrangements of Lambeth, which came from him with all the better grace, — it could not, without considerable difficulty, have come from any one who was not himself of high birth, — he abolished "that odious distinction"^ which had hitherto assigned to the Chaplains a lower place in the Dining-Hall, and received them as compan- ions at his own table. There is a fine portrait of him by Dance, in which are happily represented all these gentler traits of his character. It would be unjust to pass on from the portrait of Archbishop Cornwallis without special mention of the gifts with which he adorned this gallery. To him, as has been inci- dentally noted, or more correctly perhaps, to his widow, it is indebted for copies of the likenesses of several of his predecessors, — that of Arundel from Penshurst Place, of Juxon from Long Leat, of Shel- don from Broom Hall, of Sancroft from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, — by which so many gaps in the series have been filled up ; and also for a small portrait on panel, of /Vrchbishop Parker, bearing the date 1572.^ ^ Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, &c., vol. viii. p. 15. ^ See Dr Denne's character of the Archbishop, ibid. 2 Ducarel's Lambeth Palace, p. 87. 164 LAMBETH PALACE. We now again see the Primacy conferred upon one who, like so many before him, had risen out of the middle classes, and who attained this high position under circumstances of pecuHar interest. On the death of CornwalHs, the vacant Primacy was at once offered to Bishop Lowth, whose re- fined and profound learning was shedding no ordi- nary lustre on the See of London ; but he declined the Archbishopric out of sincere affection for his own diocese, and on the plea of advanced age. It was then offered to Bishop Hurd, of Wor- cester, a brilliant scholar, and at that time in high favour with the King and the Royal family; but he also declined it on the plea of old age and " love of lettered ease." Each of the two was then separately asked by George III. to recommend the most fitting man for the post ; and both without previous concert named Dr John Moore, at that time Bishop of Bangor.^ The general Ecclesiastical stagnation of the time rave little occasion for the exercise or display of his undoubted talents ; and although his name is too frequently associated with the prevailing nepotism of that age, in which per- haps he was only more noted than others from the greater opportunities afforded by his high office, it should ever be remembered that he rendered his Episcopate, from 1783 to 1805, memorable by being the first Primate who succeeded in obtain- ing a public recognition of the claims of the ^ Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, &c., vol. viii. p. 95, n. THE PORTRAITS. 165 Colonies to Episcopacy. The Churches of North America and of Nova Scotia rejoice to trace their ApostoHc Succession from his hands ; as will be more fully dwelt upon in speaking »of the Chapel. Romney's portrait of Archbishop Moore does full justice to the intellectual vigour of mind which accompanied a strikingly handsome face and digni- fied bearino^. Another likeness of Moore hancrs over the fire- o place in the private dining-room. The peculiarity of the attitude, the face being turned away and only one cheek visible, is not without its signifi- cance ; for during the latter years of his life an eruption on one cheek is reported to have some- what marred the fine countenance for which he had been distinguished, and all likenesses taken during this period were in profile. The appointment of Archbishop Moore's suc- cessor was attended with some circumstances of more than passing interest, as showing how Church patronage had come to be dispensed, and how George III. on this occasion personally asserted the Royal prerogative. The illness of the Arch- bishop was known to be serious, and his death imminent ; and men assigned, in anticipation, the vacant See to Bishop Tomline (who two years before had dropped the name of Pretyman) ; for he had been Pitt's private tutor at Cambridge, and had remained ever since his friend and favoured LAMBETH PALACE. protegd. Already had he been raised to the See of Lincoln, and was regarded as Archbishop elect ; for his patron Pitt was then in the zenith of his power. However, the Deanery of Windsor was at that time held by Dr Charles Manners Sutton, who was also Bishop of Norwich, and in high favour with Royalty. Directly the intelligence of Archbishop Moore's death reached the King, he at once rode down to the Deanery, and calling the Dean away from the dinner-table, where he was en- tertaining a party of friends, he took him by both hands and greeted him — " My Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, I wish you joy ! ^ Now, not a word, — go back to your guests." The next morning Pitt arrived at Windsor with the recommendation of his friend Bishop Tomline for the Primacy, when the King told him, It can't be — it can't be ; I have already wished Sutton joy, and he must go to Canterbury." ^ That, at any rate, was a " Crown appointment," and one which, though based mainly on personal friendship, did full justice to the King s choice ; for in those days, when qtdeta non move^^e seemed to be the principle of Church rule. Manners Sutton's high-bred courtesy and cultured mind met the moderate demands of the age probably more successfully than the greater ^ "My Lord's Grace of Canterbury, you are very welcome!" was the greeting with which James L met Laud when summoned to Whitehall two days after Abbott's death. — Denne's Addenda to Lambeth Palace, p. 183, " The incident is given fully in Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. iv. p. 252. THE PORTRAITS. talents but less independent spirit of Tomline would have done. The gentleness and nobility of his character have been happily embodied in the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and seem fully to justify the high praise of a contemporary writer who, ten years before the appointment was made, had said, ''No man appears to me so peculiarly marked out for the highest dignity of the Church, sede vacante, as Dr Manners Sutton." ^ William Howley followed next in order, and held the See for twenty years — from 1828 to 1848. He possessed a high order of intellect, and a richly cultivated mind. He was a finished classic, and a theologian of no mean power ; and while the gentleness of his nature led him to be ever seek- ing after peace, he yet possessed a judicial firmness of purpose which refused to compromise in any way a vital principle. This steadfastness was sig- nally shown in the closing days of his life, when the question was pending as to the obligation to con- secrate a nominee of the Crown whose orthodoxy was gravely called in question.'-^' During twenty momentous years did he control the religious move- ments of the ao^e with such orentle firmness that the o o control was scarcely recognised ; his gentleness conciliating all parties, yet his firmness keeping all within bounds — so that men of either extreme loved ^ The Pursuits of Literature, p. 316, n. ^ With reference to the appointment of Dr Hampden to the See of Here- ford in 1846. LAMBETH PALACE. and respected him. His character has been well described by Bishop Doane of New Jersey, as ''the impersonation of Apostolic meekness, sweetening Apostolic dignity." ^ To his active co-operation was greatly due the rapid increase of the Colonial Episcopate ; and although he was prevented by sickness from taking part in the memorable conse- cration of five Bishops in one day — St Bartholo- mew's Day, 1842 — in Westminster Abbey, he was permitted himself, five years after, to consecrate four more in the same noble buildino^. When he was raised to the Primacy there were only five Colonial Bishoprics ; before his death no less than twenty-two Bishops were spread over our Colonial Empire. Nor must an Act more directly affecting the Home Church be overlooked — the passing of which was mainly due to his zealous efforts — that by which the pulpits of the English Church were opened to the bishops and clergy of Scotland and America. One who knew and honoured him may be forgiven for expressing a regret that that beautiful combination of benignity with decision is not more happily and faithfully expressed in the portrait by Sir Martin Shee, which has its place in the Gallery. He was succeeded by John Bird Sumner, who had for many years been Bishop of Chester. He, too, had in early life been credited with a ^ Introduction to Sermons on Various Subjects,