CHAPTER XVI.

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.

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."