glass case contains: The Four 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 fifteenth 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. Paul's; an illuminated copy of the Apocalypse, of the thirteenth century; the Mazarine Testament, fifteenth century; and the rosary of Cardinal Pole.
A staircase lined with portraits of the Walpole family, leads from the Library to the Guard Room, now the Dining-Hall. It is surrounded by an interesting series of portraits of the archbishops from the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Through the paneled room, called Cranmer's Parlor, we enter the Chapel, which stands upon a Crypt supposed to belong to the manor-house built by Archbishop Herbert Fitzwalter, about 1190. Its pillars have been buried nearly up to their capitals, to prevent the rising of the river tides within its wall. The chapel itself, tho greatly modernized, is older than any other part of the palace, having been built by Archbishop Boniface, 1244–70. Its lancet windows were found by Laud—"shameful to look at, all diversely patched like a poor beggar's coat," and he filled them with stained glass, which he proved that he collected from ancient existing fragments, tho his insertion of "Popish images and pictures made by their like in a mass book" was one 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. …
Here Archbishop Parker erected his tomb in his lifetime "by the spot where he used to pray," and here he was buried, but his tomb was broken up, with every insult that could be shown, by Scot, one of the Puritan possessors of Lambeth, while the other, Hardyng, not to be 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 honorably reinterred in front of the altar, with the epitaph, "Corpus Matthaei Archiepiscopi tandem hic quiescit." His tomb, in the ante-chapel, was re-erected by Archbishop Sancroft, but the brass inscription which encircled it is gone.
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 seven steps. The beautiful western door of the chapel opens into the curious Post Room, 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 northeast corner, by which the Lollards were brought in, was walled up, about 1874.
Hence we ascend the Lollard's2 Tower, built by Chicheley—the lower story of which is now given up by the Archbishop for the use of Bishops who have no fixt 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 Lollard's Prison (13 feet long, 12 broad, 8 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 "Nosce te ipsum," are attributed to Cranmer. The most legible inscription is "IHS cyppe me out of all al compane. Amen." Other boards bear the notches cut by prisoners to mark the lapse of time. The eight rings remain to which the prisoners were secured: one feels that his companions must have envied the one by the window. Above some of the rings the boards are burned 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 Lollard's Tower in the foreground.
The gardens of Lambeth are vast and delightful. Their terrace is called "Clarendon's Walk" from a conference which there took place between Laud and the Earl of Clarendon. The "summer-house of exquisite workmanship," built by Cranmer, has disappeared. A picturesque view may be obtained of Cranmer's Tower, with the Chapel and the Lollard's Tower behind it.
1 From "Walks in London."
2 The name Lollard was used as a term of reproach for the followers of Wyclif. Formerly derived from Peter Lollard, a Waldensian pastor of the thirteenth century, more recently from the Middle Dutch "lollen," to hum.
DICKENS'S LIMEHOUSE HOLE1
BY John R.G. Hassard
I took a steamboat one day at Westminster Bridge, and after a voyage of 40 minutes or so landed near Limehouse Hole, and followed the river streets both east and west. It was easy enough to trace the course of Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn, as they walked under the guidance of Riderhood through the stormy night from their rooms in The Temple, four miles away, past the Tower and the London Docks, and down by the slippery water's edge to Limehouse Hole, when they went to cause Gaffer Hexam's arrest, and found him drowned, tied to his own boat. The strictly commercial aspect of the Docks—the London Docks above and the West India Docks below—shades off by slight degrees into the black misery of the hole. The warehouses are succeeded by boat-builders' sheds; by private wharves, where ships, all hidden, as to their hulls, behind walls and close fences, thrust unexpected bowsprits over the narrow roadway; by lime-yards; by the shops of marine store-dealers and purveyors to all the wants and follies of seamen; and then by a variety of strange establishments which it would be hard to classify.
Close by a yard piled up with crates and barrels of second-hand bottles, was a large brick warehouse devoted to the purchase and sale of broken glass. A wagon loaded with that commodity stood before the door, and men with scoop-shovels were transferring the glass into barrels. An enclosure of one or two acres, in an out-of-the-way street, might have been the original of the dust-yard that contained Boffin's Bower, except that Boffin's Bower was several miles distant, on the northern outskirt of London. A string of carts, full of miscellaneous street and house rubbish, all called here by the general name of "dust," were waiting their turn to discharge. There was a mountain of this refuse at the end of the yard; and a party of laborers, more or less impeded by two very active black hogs, were sifting and sorting it. Other mounds, formed from the sittings of the first, were visible at the sides. There were huge accumulations of broken crockery and of scraps of tin and other metal, and of bones. There was a quantity of stable-manure and old straw, and a heap, as large as a two-story cottage, of old hoops stript from casks and packing-cases. I never understood, until I looked into this yard, how there could have been so much value in the dust-mounds at Boffin's Bower.
Gradually the streets became narrower, wetter, dirtier, and poorer. Hideous little alleys led down to the water's edge where the high tide splashed over the stone steps. I turned into several of them, and I always found two or three muddy men lounging at the bottom; often a foul and furtive boat crept across the field of view. The character of the shops became more and more difficult to define. Here a window displayed a heap of sailor's thimbles and pack-thread; there another set forth an array of trumpery glass vases or a basket of stale fruit, pretexts, perhaps, for the disguise of a "leaving shop," or unlicensed pawnbroker's establishment, out of which I expected to see Miss Pleasant Riderhood come forth, twisting up her back hair as she came. At a place where the houses ceased, and an open space left free a prospect of the black and bad-smelling river, there was an old factory, disused and ruined, like the ancient mill in which Gaffer Hexam made his home, and Lizzie told the fortunes of her brother in the hollow by the fire.
I
