Walks in London, vol. 2
Hare, Augustus J. C.
1878
Chapter IX: Lambeth.
Chapter IX: Lambeth.
On crossing we are in , originally a swamp, traversed by the great to Newhaven, now densely populated, and covered with a labyrinth of featureless streets and poverty-stricken courts. The name, by doubtful etymology, is derived from Lamb-hithe, a landing-place for sheep. | |
[The Road-well known from [n.404.1] for horsemanship-leads to , the King's Town, where a royal manor existed from the time of the Anglo-Saxon Kings to that of the Stuarts, when Charles I. was its last inhabitant. It was here that () Hardicanute died suddenly at a wedding-feast- --while he was drinking. Nothing remains now of the palace. | |
At the junction of and is the new , best known as . It was called Bedlam even by Sir Thomas More,[n.404.2] in whose time it was already a lunatic asylum. The Hospital was only | |
405 | transported to its present site from near Bishopsgate in -. Till was of the regular of London, and the public were allowed to divert themselves with a sight of the unfortunate lunatics for the sum of penny. The patients, both male and female, were chained to the walls till , when the death of a man named Norris, who had lived for years rationally conversing and reading, yet chained to the wall by a ring round his neck and iron bars pinioning his arms and waist, led to an inquiry in Parliament, which resulted in their better treatment: now nothing is left to be desired. |
In the entrance-hall are preserved the famous statues of Melancholy and Madness, by , which stood over the gates of old Bedlam, and were there attacked by Pope in his satire on Colley Gibber, the son of Caius Gabriel.
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Many others have abused the statues, but, in this case, public opinion has outweighed all individual prejudices. | |
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Facing the eastern wing of the Hospital is , the Roman Catholic Cathedral, a beautiful work of . It was opened . Cardinal | |
406 | Wiseman was enthroned here, . It is curious that the most important Roman Catholic church in England should have been raised on the very spot where the ? rioters were summoned to meet Lord George Gordon in , and, distinguished by the blue cockades in their hats, to attend him to . The scene, says Gibbon, was [n.406.1] |
(now Park) became famous in from the great revolutionary meeting of Chartists under Feargus O'Connor, which was such a ludicrous failure. It was here that commemorated in Shenstone's ballad, was hung, drawn, and quartered () for the rebellion of . Whitefield sometimes preached here to congregations of people, and here he delivered his farewell sermon before leaving for America. | |
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From , runs to the right with a beautiful stone terrace along the river. The frightful row of semi-detached brick buildings belongs to , removed hither (-) from ; their | |
407 | chief ornament is thoroughly English--a row of hideous urns upon the parapet, which seem waiting for the ashes of the patients inside. The Hospital originated in an Almshouse founded by the Prior of in . It was bought by the City of London at the Dissolution, and was refounded by Edward VI. In the court in front of the present building is a statue of Edward VI. by , set up by Charles Joyce in : in the court is a statue of Sir Robert Clayton, a benefactor of the hospital- of Dryden's -in his Lord Mayor's robes. |
Passing under the wall of the Archbishop's garden, and beneath the Lollard's Tower, with its niche for a figure of St. Thomas, we reach and Church. It was beneath this church tower that Queen Mary Beatrice took refuge on the night of . | |
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The , was formerly of the most interesting churches in London, being, next to | |
408 | Canterbury Cathedral, the great burial-place of its archbishops, but falling under the ruthless hand of it was rebuilt (except its tower of ) in - by , and its interest has been totally destroyed, its monuments huddled away anywhere, for the most part close under the roof, where their inscriptions are of course wholly illegible I High up in the south porch, behind a hideous wooden screen, are the curious bust and tablet of Robert Scott of Bowerie, , who In the chancel are the tombs of Hubert Peyntwin, auditor to Archbishops Moreton and Wareham, and Dr. Monpesson, Master of the Prerogative for the Archbishop of Canterbury; in the north transept are tablets to Archbishop Matthew Hutton, , and Archbishop Frederick Cornwallis, , and near these the brass of a Knight (Thomas Clerc, ?). At the northern entrance of the chancel is the brass of a lady of the Howard family, to which, before the there were many interesting memorials here. No other monuments of importance are now to be distinguished. Amongst those commemorated here before the were Archbishop Bancroft, (within the altar-rails); Archbishop Tenison, (in the middle of the chancel); Archbishop Secker, ; Archbishop Moore, ; Alderman Goodbehere; Madame Storace, the singer; John Dollond, , the discoverer of the laws of the dispersion of light and inventor of the achromatic telescope; Edward Moore, , author of the successful tragedy of which is still a favourite; Thomas Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, ; and Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, , founder of the Ashmolean Museum and author of the History of the Order |
409 | of the Garter- [n.409.1] |
In digging the grave of Bishop Cornwallis, the body of Thomas Thirleby, and last Bishop of , was found entire, dressed like the pictures of Archbishop Juxon He died in an honourable captivity as the guest of Arch. bishop Parker in . | |
The Register records the burial here of Simon Forman, the astrologer, . Here also was buried Cuthbert Tunstall, the Catholic Bishop of Durham, deprived by Elizabeth for refusing the oath of supremacy. He was given to the charge of Archbishop Parker in , and died as his honoured guest in on the in the same year. He is described by Erasmus as excelling all his contemporaries in the knowledge of the learned languages, and by Sir Thomas More as
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Almost the only interesting feature retained in this cruelly abused building is the figure of a pedlar with his pack and dog (on the window of the north aisle) who left to the parish, on condition of his figure being always preserved on of the church windows. The figure was existing here as early as . | |
In the churchyard, at the east end of the church, is an altar tomb, with the angles sculptured like trees, spreading | |
410 | over a strange confusion of obelisks, pyramids, crocodiles, shells, &c., and, at end, a hydra. It is the monument of John Tradescant () and his son, of the earliest British naturalists. The elder was so enthusiastic a botanist that he joined an expedition against Algerine corsairs on purpose to get a new apricot from the African coast, which was thenceforth known as
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His quaint medley of curiosities, known in his own time as was afterwards incorporated with the Ashmolean Museum. has been for more than years the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, though the site of the present palace was only obtained by Archbishop Baldwin in , when | |
411 | he exchanged some lands in Kent for it with Glanville, Bishop of Rochester, to whose see it had been granted by the Countess Goda, sister of the Confessor. The former proprietorship of the Bishops of Rochester is still commemorated in , on the site of a house which was retained when the exchange was made, for their use when they came to attend Parliament. The is full of beauty in itself and intensely interesting from its |
associations. It is approached by a noble of red brick with stone dressings, built by Cardinal Moreton in . It is here that the poor of have received for hundreds of years. In ancient times a farthing loaf was given twice a week to people. | |
Adjoining the Porter's Lodge is.a room evidently once used as a prison. On passing the gate we are in the outer | |
412 | court, at the end of which rises the picturesque Lollards' Tower built by Archbishop Chicheley, -: on the right is the Hall. A gateway leads to the inner court, containing the modern (Tudor) palace, built by Archbishop Howley (-), who spent the whole of his private fortune upon it rather than let Blore the architect be ruined by exceeding his contract to the amount of ,. On the left, between the buttresses of the hall, are the descendants of some famous fig-trees which were planted by Cardinal Pole. |
The was built by Archbishop Juxon in the reign of Charles II., on the site of the hall built by Archbishop Boniface (), which was pulled down by Scot and Hardyng the regicides, who purchased the palace when it was sold under the Commonwealth. Juxon's arms and the date are over the door leading to the palace. The stained window opposite contains the arms of many of the archbishops, and a portrait of Archbishop Chicheley.[n.412.1] Archbishop Bancroft, whose arms appear at the east end, turned the hall into a , and the collection of books which it contains has been enlarged by his successors, especially by Archbishop Seeker, whose arms appear at the west end, and who bequeathed his library to . Upon the death of Laud, the books were saved from dispersion through being claimed by the University of Cambridge, under the will of Bancroft, which provided that they should go to the University if alienated from the see: they were restored by Cambridge to Archbishop Sheldon. The library contains a number of valuable MSS., the greatest treasure being a copy of Lord Rivers's | |
413 | translation of the with an illumination of the Earl presenting Caxton on his knees to Edward IV. Beside the King stand Elizabeth Woodville and her eldest son, and this, the only known portrait of Edward V., is engraved by Vertue in his Kings of England. |
A glass-case contains--the Gospels in Irish, a volume which belonged to King Athelstan, and was given by him to the city of Canterbury; a copy of the Koran written by Sultan Allaruddeen Siljuky in the century, taken in the Library of Tippoo Saib at Seringapatam ; the Lumley Chronicle of St. Alban's Abbey; Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, with illuminations from Holbein's Dance of Death destroyed in Old St. Pauls; an illuminated copy of the Apocalypse, of the century; the Mazarine Testament, century; and the rosary of Cardinal Pole. | |
A staircase, lined with portraits of the Walpole family, leads from the Library to the , now the Dining Hall. It is surrounded by an interesting series of portraits of the archbishops from the beginning of the century.[n.413.1]
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The Small Dining Room contains portraits of-
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417 | |
Patrick, Bishop of Ely, . | |
Pearce, Bishop of Bangor, . | |
Berkeley, the American Bishop. | |
Luther and Caterina Bora? | |
Through the panelled room called we enter- | |
The , which stands upon a supposed to belong to the manor-house built by Archbishop Herbert Fitzwalter, . . Its pillars have been buried nearly up to their capitals, to prevent the rising of the river tides within its walls. The chapel itself, though greatly modernised, is older than any other part of the palace, having been built by Archbishop Boniface, -. Its lancet windows were found by Laud- and he filled them with stained glass, which he proved that he collected from ancient existing fragments, though his insertion of was of the articles in the impeachment against him. The glass collected by Laud was entirely smashed by the Puritans: the present windows were put in by Archbishop Howley. | |
In this chapel most of the archbishops have been consecrated since the time of Boniface. Archbishop Parker's consecration here, , according to the is recorded in Parker's Register at and in the Library of Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, thus falsifying the Romanist calumny of his consecration at the Nag's Head Tavern in , .[n.417.1] | |
418 | |
Here Parker erected his tomb in his lifetime and here he was buried, but his tomb was broken up, with every insult that could be shown, by Scot, of the Puritan possessors of , while the other, Hardyng, not to b.e outdone, exhumed the Archbishop's body, sold its leaden coffin, and buried it in a dunghill. His remains were found by Sir William Dugdale at the Restoration, and honourably reinterred in front of the altar, with the epitaph, His tomb, in the ante-chapel, was reerected by Archbishop Sancroft, but the brass inscription which encircled it is gone. | |
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The screen, erected by Laud, was suffered to survive the Commonwealth. At the west end of the chapel, high on the wall, projects a Gothic confessional, erected by Archbishop Chicheley. It was formerly approached by steps. The beautiful western door of the chapel opens into the curious , which takes its name from the central wooden pillar, supposed to have been used as a whipping-post for the Lollards. The ornamented flat ceiling which we see here is extremely rare. The door at the north-east corner, by which the Lollards were brought in, was walled up c. . | |
Hence we ascend the , built by Chicheley | |
419 | --the lower story of which is now given up by the Archbishop for the use of Bishops who have no fixed residence in London. The winding staircase, of rude slabs of unplaned oak, on which the bark in many cases remains, is of Chicheley's time. In a room at the top is a trap-door, through which as the tide rose prisoners, secretly condemned, could be let down unseen into the river. |
Hard by is the famous ( feet long, broad, high), boarded all over walls, ceiling, and floor. The rough-hewn boards bear many fragments of inscriptions which show that others besides Lollards were immured here. Some of them, especially his motto are attributed to Cranmer. The most legible inscription is Other boards bear the notches cut by prisoners to mark the lapse of time. The | |
420 | rings remain to which the prisoners were secured: feels that his companions must have envied the by the window. Above some of the rings the boards are burnt with the hot-iron used in torture. The door has a wooden lock, and is fastened by the wooden pegs which preceded the use of nails; it is a relic of Archbishop Sudbury's palace facing the river, which was pulled down by Chicheley. From the roof of the chapel there is a noble view up the river, with the quaint tourelle of the Lollards' Tower in the foreground. |
The gardens of are vast and delightful. Their terrace is called from a conference which there took place between Laud and the Earl of | |
421 | Clarendon. The built by Cranmer, has disappeared. A picturesque view may be obtained of Cranmer's Tower, with the Chapel and the Lollards' Tower behind it. |
The worldly glory of the Archbishops has paled of late.
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as Douglas Jerrold observes,
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A quarter of a mile above is , built in the Venetian- Gothic style: the peculiar red bricks having been made at Rowland's Castle in Hampshire and all the ornamental parts of the building having been executed in terra-cotta by Messrs. Doulton themselves. The chimney shaft for carrying off the smoke from the kilns has the effect of a campanile. | |
On the bank of the river above is The name dates from the marriage of Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Albemarle, sister of Archbishop Baldwin, with Foukes de Brent, after which the place was called Foukeshall. It was given by the Black Prince to the Church of Canterbury. In the old manor-house, then called Copped Hall, Arabella Stuart was confined before her removal to the Tower. | |
were long a place of popular resort. They were laid out in , and were at known as the New at Fox Hall, to distinguish them from the Old at . They were finally closed in , and the site is now built over; but they will always be remembered from Sir Roger de Coverley's visit | |
423 | to them in the ,[n.423.1] and from the descriptions in Walpole's Letters and Fielding's and many will have pleasant recollections of [n.423.2] |
Footnotes: [n.404.1] Named from the handsome Philip Astley, builder of nineteen theatres, who died at Paris, 1814. [n.404.2] De Quattuor Novissimis. [n.406.1] Misc. Works, p. 299, ed. 1837. [n.409.1] Wood, Athen. Oxon. [n.412.1] The motto which surrounds it is misplaced, and belongs to Cranmer. [n.413.1] Unfortunately not hung:in their order. [n.417.1] See Timbs's Curiosities of London. [n.423.1] No. 383. [n.423.2] Tom Brown's Amusements |
