3o6 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



corner of the Lambeth Garden, is also uncertain. It 

 appears to have received the name from a conversation 

 which took place in the Garden between Laud and 

 Hyde, in which the latter seems to have told the 

 Archbishop pretty plainly that " people were universally 

 discontented . . . and many people spoke extreme ill 

 of his grace," on account of his discourteous manners, 

 which culminated on one occasion by his telling a guest 

 " he had no time for compliments," which greatly in- 

 censed him. The only survivals of former years are 

 the delightfully fragrant fig-trees, which flourish between 

 the buttresses on the sunny side of the library — the 

 great hall rebuilt by Archbishop Juxon after the 

 destruction in Cromwell's time. These figs are now 

 fair-sized trees, but they are only cuttings of the older 

 ones destroyed in 1829, when Archbishop Howley 

 commenced his rebuilding. The two parent trees, in 

 1792, measured 28 inches and 21 inches in circum- 

 ference, and were 50 feet high and 40 feet in breadth, 

 and, according to contemporary evidence, bore delicious 

 fruit of the white Marseilles variety. Tradition ascribed 

 their planting to Cardinal Pole during his brief sojourn 

 as Archbishop. 



Latimer seems much to have appreciated the Lambeth 

 Garden, when business called him to the Palace. Sir 

 Thomas More describes, in 1534, how he watched him 

 walking in the Garden from the windows. Latimer 

 himself, in writing to Edward VI., says, " I trouble my 

 Lord of Canterbury, and being at his house now and 

 then, I walk in the Garden looking at my book, as I 

 can do but little good at it. But something I must 

 needs do to satisfy the place. I am no sooner in the 

 Garden and have read awhile, but by-and-by cometh 



