LAMBETH PALACE.--ST. SAVIOUR'S--LONDON BRIDGE
In Milton's day, London Bridge, over the narrowest part of the Thames, was
the only bridge that spanned the silent highway between the Tower and
Lambeth. The venerable pile of buildings which then, as now, was the chief
point of interest on the southern bank, was usually reached by one of the
many barges that plied up and down and across from shore to shore. In
Milton's boyhood its gray towers had already marked for three centuries
the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. It has now been the home
of more than fifty primates. The student of English history will find no
building, with the exception of the Tower and the Abbey, which brings him
so closely into connection with the whole history of England as does
Lambeth Palace. It lies low upon the site of an ancient marsh overflowed
by the Thames at this, its greatest width, this side of London Bridge. As
late as Milton's boyhood the shore between Lambeth Church and Blackfriars
was a haunt of wild fowl and a royal hunting-ground. A grove stood then
on the site of the long line of St. Thomas's Hospital. Lambeth Bridge, so
called, was at that time simply a landing-place. As every schoolboy
remembers, it was here that on a December night in 1688, Mary of Modena,
the fair queen of James II., alighted on her flight from Whitehall,
disguised as a washerwoman; under the shelter of the tower of Lambeth she
cowered, awaiting the coach that was to rescue her, while in an agony of
fear she embraced the parcel of linen which held concealed the infant who
was to be known in history as the "Pretender."
The visitor to Lambeth will find it worth his while to pause a few minutes
before presenting his letter of permission to enter the palace, and spend
the brief time in Lambeth Church, if only to see the quaint old window of
the peddler and his dog, a memorial of the peddler who centuries since
gave an almost worthless acre of land to Lambeth, from which it has since
drawn large revenues. There is a peal of eight bells in the old gray
tower--the music of the bells was one that our forefathers loved
apparently more than other folk. "The English are vastly fond of great
noises that fill the air," wrote Hentzner shortly before Milton's birth,
"such as firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells. It is
common that a number of them who have got a glass in their heads do get up
into some belfry, and ring bells for hours together, for the sake of
exercise. Hence this country has been called 'the ringing island.'"
In Milton's time the buildings of Lambeth were less extensive than they
are to-day. Its beautiful, lofty gateway known as "Morton's," which was
built in 1490, is of red brick with stone trimmings, and has an arched
doorway under a large window in the middle portion. It is perhaps the
largest and best specimen of the early Tudor work that now remains in
England. It is flanked by two massive square towers five stories high. At
this gate, from earliest times until recently, a dole of money, bread, and
provisions was weekly given to thirty poor parishioners of Lambeth. In
earlier times the hospitality that was offered was excessive and
encouraged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing loaves which
amounted to the sum of L500 a year. At present the doles amount to about
L200 a year and are given only to well-known persons. In addition to these
doles, huge baskets of fragments from the three tables in the long
dining-halls sufficed, as Strype tells us, "to fill the bellies of a great
number of hungry people that waited at the gate." Some conception of the
size of Cranmer's establishment may be gathered from the authentic list
of his household: "Steward, treasurer, comptroller, gamators, clerk of the
kitchen, caterer, clerk of the spicery, bakers, pantlers, yeomen of the
horse, ushers, butlers of wine and ale, larderers, squilleries, ushers of
the hall, porter, ushers of the chamber, daily waiters in the great
chamber, gentlemen ushers, yeomen of the chamber, carver, sewer,
cupbearer, grooms of the chamber, marshal groom ushers, almoner, cooks,
chandler, butchers, master of the horse, yeomen of the wardrobe, and
harbingers." Over such a rich and splendid household did the Establishment
place the man above all others who was to be to England its highest
embodiment of the spirit of the young Carpenter of Nazareth. To-day the
Archbishop of Canterbury is given two residences, and a salary of L15,000,
that he may keep up these establishments; that of the average curate is
about L100.
[Illustration: IN LAMBETH PALACE
_From an old print._]
The great hall, which to-day contains the library, is on the site of that
of Boniface, who built the first in the thirteenth century. Archbishop
Juxon, who attended Charles I. upon the scaffold, rebuilt the present
edifice after the original model, which had been destroyed during the
Commonwealth. One of the great treasures of this library is Caxton's
"Chronicles of Great Britain," which was printed in 1480 at
Westminster. The Mazarin Bible, the Life of Laud, with the autograph of
Charles I., and many books and manuscripts of great rarity and value are
also preserved here. The library is open to the public under proper
regulations on five days in the week. Among the names of eminent men who
have served as librarians over this small but precious library, none
interests us more than that of John Richard Green, the historian of the
English people.
The chapel, built in the last half of the thirteenth century, is the
oldest part that remains. An opening into Cranmer's ancient "parloir" is
now the organ-loft. From the chancel one has a glimpse of the original
beautiful ceiling. The wall pillars of Purbeck marble in the atrium are
said to be one thousand years old. In this chapel two of the first
American bishops were consecrated. The oak screen was erected by
Archbishop Laud. This chapel contained the windows that were destroyed in
the Civil Wars, which served as such a theme of controversy in Laud's
trial. He testified as follows: "The first thing the Commons have in their
evidence against me, is the setting up and repairing Popish images and
pictures in the glass windows of my chapel at Lambeth, and amongst others
the picture of Christ hanging on the cross between two thieves in the
east window; of God the Father in the form of a little old man with a
glory, striking Miriam with a leprosy; of the Holy Ghost descending in the
form of a dove; and of Christ's Nativity, Last Supper, Resurrection,
Ascension, and others.... To which I answer first, That I did not get
these images up, but found them there before; Secondly, that I did only
repair the windows which were so broken, and the chapel, which lay so
nastily before that I was ashamed to behold, and could not resort to it
but with some disdain, which caused me to repair it to my great cost;
Thirdly, that I made up the history of these old broken pictures, not by
any pattern in the mass book, but only by help of the fragments and
remainders of them which I compared with the story." It is related that at
a dinner of the domestics during Laud's primacy, the king's jester
pronounced the grace, "Give great praise to God, but little Laud to the
devil," for which jest he paid by long imprisonment.
In the so-called "Lollards' Tower" at the west end of the chapel, the only
part of the existing palace that is built of stone, is a niche in which
was placed the image of St. Thomas a Becket, to which Dean Stanley tells
us "the watermen of the Thames doffed their caps as they rode in their
countless barges."
The small room at the top of the tower is wainscoted with oak over an inch
thick, upon which prisoners chained to its iron rings have carved words in
early English and Latin. Through the oubliette in the floor dead prisoners
were doubtless dropped into the Thames, which in former days washed the
very walls of Lambeth, and swept under this tower. Whether any Lollards
were ever lodged here is very doubtful, although it is true that Wyclif,
the arch-Lollard, was at one time examined for his opinions, by the
bishops at Lambeth. The real Lollards' Tower seems to have been an adjunct
of old St. Paul's Cathedral. More probably the prisoners here were
Episcopalians of Milton's own time.
In the dark crypt, the wretched queen, Anne Boleyn, heard from the lips of
Cranmer the annulment of her marriage with Henry, and was forced to affirm
the disinheritance of her offspring. From thence she went to the Tower and
her doom. In this same palace, where she lay a prisoner in 1533, her
predecessor, Katharine of Aragon, was a guest on her arrival in England in
1501. Milton must doubtless sometime have visited this princely residence,
and have mused upon the martyred Cranmer and Latimer and Sir Thomas More,
and the long list of kings and queens and men, who, as masters, guests,
or prisoners, have slept within these walls. Of all the noted men who were
connected with Lambeth in his day, none, of course, so stirred his spirit
as did Archbishop Laud, who lived here, and exercised his power in the
Star Chamber, during the years when Parliament was silenced. From 1633
until his committal to the Tower on the charge of treason in 1641 after
the assembling of the Long Parliament, he was master here. It was while
here at Lambeth that he supervised the compilation of the Service Book;
when this was enforced in 1637 upon the Scottish churches, it was so
repugnant to them that the riot begun in Edinburgh, by Jenny Geddes
flinging her stool in St. Giles's Cathedral at the bishop's head,
initiated a national revolt, which led to the signing of the famous
Scottish National Covenant. Milton at this time, at the age of thirty, was
living at Horton. Little by little the resolute archbishop came to be
looked upon by men of Milton's way of thinking as one whose system
demanded submission to absolutism in the state. The student of Milton's
prose writings is familiar with the troublous history of Laud's time, and
the ludicrously trivial matters that then estranged earnest men. But,
while the ceremonies permitted in the church two generations later were
practically those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the result,
says Gardiner, "was only finally attained by a total abandonment of all
Laud's methods. What had been impossible to effect in a church to the
worship of which every person in the land was obliged to conform, became
possible in a church which any one who pleased was at liberty to abandon."
After Laud's execution the see of Canterbury was vacant nearly seventeen
years. Among the many portraits of the archbishops which hang at Lambeth,
the portrait of Laud by Van Dyck is one of the most admirable. We read
that his successor, Sheldon, in 1665, in the time of the Great Plague,
"continued in his palace at Lambeth whilst the contagion lasted,
preserving by his charities multitudes who were sinking under disease and
want, and by his pastoral exertions procured benevolences to a vast
amount." Admission to Lambeth must be obtained by written request, but is
by no means difficult, yet no important spot in London is so rarely
visited by the general public. The enthusiasm and intelligence of the
resident guide, who has several times in the last ten years conducted the
writer through its historic precincts, makes an hour at Lambeth a
memorable lesson in English history. His huge gray cat, whose name,
"Massachusetts," in other years brought a smile to the lips of every
American who chanced to learn it, no longer purrs a welcome to the dim
corridors and towers of the old palace, but has gone the way of all his
short-lived contemporaries. Let us hope that his master may for many years
to come live to tell the long, romantic tale of these old walls to all of
England's kin beyond the sea who journey hither to study with reverent
eyes the history of the land from which they came.
Among places of minor interest in Southwark, which doubtless Milton well
knew, was the "Tabard Inn," the starting-point of Chaucer's Canterbury
Pilgrims. This stood on High Street, and was not demolished until 1875. In
Milton's time it was inscribed: "This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey
Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to
Canterbury anno 1380." It had then a more modern facade than Chaucer saw.
The Globe Theatre of Shakespearian fame was then on the site of the
present brewery of Barclay, Perkins, & Co. The visitor to the region just
south of London Bridge who would see a bit of quaint domestic architecture
that recalls the past, would do well to seek out, amid the noisy, hideous
streets, a tiny green oasis, bordered by what is known as the Red Cross
Hall and cottages. Thanks to Miss Octavia Hill and her friends, the little
Gothic hall, with its frescoes of civic heroes, designed by Walter Crane,
and its little row of picturesque gabled houses, stand here as a rest and
solace to weary eyes and hearts that hunger amid ugliness for beauty. Just
such houses Milton saw at every turn in the beautiful old London that he
knew.
No church in Southwark and only two or three in London are of so great
interest to the antiquarian as St. Saviour's or St. Mary Overy's, whose
curious name is explained in every guide-book. It has a record of more
than a thousand years. Chaucer, Cruden, the author of the "Concordance,"
Doctor Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Baxter, and Bunyan were closely
connected with this church and parish. In one of its chapels, in the
generation preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops
of Winchester and London, and others acting for the see of Rome, tried and
condemned to death by the flames seven ministers of Christ. Their only
crime was opposition to the "usurpations of the Papal Schism." Among these
were the rector of the church in which a half century later Milton was
baptised, Bishop Hooper, who was burned at Gloucester, and John Rogers,
the famous martyr of Smithfield. Another heretic, more fortunate than
these seven, had just previously been condemned to the stake and pardoned
for the sake of his musical talents. In this stately edifice, which has
recently been admirably restored, lies the dust of many dear to lovers of
poetry. Chaucer's fellow poet, friend, and teacher, John Gower, lies under
a lofty Gothic canopy; his sculptured head rests on three large volumes,
which represent his works. Milton's contemporaries, Massinger and
Fletcher, lie buried in the same grave. The latter died of the plague when
Milton was at Cambridge. His well-known poem on "Melancholy," beginning:
"Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!"
was probably familiar to the young poet at Horton, when he penned his "Il
Penseroso," although Fletcher's poem was not published until after that.
Both Massinger and Fletcher are commemorated by modern windows. The
latter's colleague, Francis Beaumont, whose writings are so indissolubly
connected with his, is honoured with a window in which the friendship of
the two is typified by the figures of David and Jonathan.
The year before Milton's birth, the author of "Hamlet" and "Lear"
doubtless stood within the choir of this church beside the grave of his
young brother Edmond, an actor, who died at the age of twenty-seven, when
his great elder brother's genius had nearly touched its zenith of
creative power. The parish boasts that some of the most magnificent
masterpieces of the world's literature were written within its borders by
this, its most distinguished parishioner, and England's greatest son. In
his youth Milton may well have attended the funeral of the great Bishop
Andrewes, whose recumbent effigy is on one of the tombs that scholars will
seek out. This man, who knew fifteen languages, was president of the
little company of ten who gave the world a large part of the King James
version of the Hebrew Scriptures, whose perfection of literary form has
never been equalled. In the Lady-Chapel may still be seen inscribed upon
the windows the virulent words which would not have as greatly offended
Milton's taste as that of the present parishioners: "Your sacrament of the
Mass is no sacrament at all, neither is Christ present in it;" "From the
Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us."
The London Bridge of Milton's day was one of England's marvels. Standing
on the site of two or three predecessors, it stood 60 feet above high
water and stretched 926 feet in length. It contained a drawbridge, and
nineteen pointed arches, with massive piers. Much of its picturesqueness
must have resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its arches.
The skilful chaplain who built it doubtless planned his spans according to
the varying depth and strength of current of the tide, and would have
scorned the modern mechanical habit of disregarding conditions in order to
attain exact uniformity; thus his arches varied in breadth from ten to
thirty-two feet. Over the tenth and longest was built a little Gothic
chapel dedicated to the then new saint, Thomas of Canterbury. In Milton's
lifetime, rows of houses were added to the chapel and stretched across
toward the Southwark side.
Between the chapel and the southern end of the bridge was a drawbridge,
and at the north end of this was a remarkable edifice of wood in Milton's
boyhood. This was called "Nonsuch House." It was said to have been built
in Holland and brought over in pieces and put together by wooden pegs. It
stretched across the bridge upon an archway, and was a curious, fantastic
structure, carved elaborately on three sides. The towers on its four
corners bore high aloft above the neighbouring buildings low domes and
gilded vanes. It stood upon the site of the old tower whereon the heads of
criminals had been exposed; when it was taken down, the heads were removed
to the tower over the gate upon the Southwark side. This had four circular
turrets, and was a notable and imposing entrance to the bridge. At the
north end of the bridge was an ingenious engine for raising water for the
supply of the city. It was originally worked only by the tide flowing
through the first arch; but for this work several of the water courses
were later converted into waterfalls or rapids, and thereby greatly
inconvenienced navigation. An extension of this simple, early mechanism
lasted as late as 1822.
This bridge, which was to last six hundred and thirty years, was as long
in building as King Solomon's Temple, and, at the time, probably surpassed
in strength and size any bridge in the whole world.
London Bridge is famous the world over in the nurseries of every
English-speaking child. Milton himself, as the fair-haired little darling
in the scrivener's house on Bread Street, probably danced and sang the
ancient ditty, as thousands had done before him:
"London bridge is broken down,
Dance over, my Lady Lee;
London bridge is broken down,
With a gay ladee.
"How shall we build it up again?
Dance over, my Lady Lee;
How shall we build it up again?
With a gay ladee.
"Build it up with stone so strong,
Dance over, my Lady Lee;
Huzza, 'twill last for ages long,
With a gay ladee."
For centuries before Milton was born, Billingsgate, a little to the east
of London Bridge, had been one of the city's water-gates, and long before
his time its neighbourhood was filled with stalls for the sale of fish, a
far more necessary commodity in days when no fresh meat was to be bought
in winter. When Stow was preparing his "Survey," Billingsgate was "a large
water-gate, port, or harbour for ships and boats commonly arriving there
with fish, both fresh and salt, shellfish, salt, oranges, onions, and
other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grains of divers sorts."