HISTORICAL GARDENS 307 



there some one or other knocking at the gate. Anon 

 Cometh my man and saith, ' Sir, there is one at the 

 gate would speak with you.' " How many of us 

 that have been called in from a pleasant garden to 

 perform some unpleasant task will sympathise with the 

 Bishop ! 



One famous inhabitant of the Garden lived through 

 many and great changes. This was a tortoise, which is 

 said to have been put into the Garden by Archbishop 

 Laud, and lived until 1757, when he perished by the 

 negligence of a gardener. This legend is apparently quite 

 true, so it had been there for over no years. 



A short account of the principal gardens near London, 

 written by Gibson in 1691, describes that of Lambeth 

 Palace. It " has," he says, " little in it but walks, the 

 late Archbishop [Sancroft] not delighting in " gardens, 

 " but they are now making them better ; and they have 

 already made a green-house, one of the finest and/costliest 

 about the town. It is of three rooms, the middle having 

 a stove under it ; . . . but it is placed so near Lambeth 

 Church, that the sun shines most on it in winter after 

 eleven o'clock, a fault owned by the gardener, but not 

 thought of by the contrivers. Most of the greens are 

 oranges and lemons, which have very large ripe fruit on 

 them." The Archbishop who thus took the garden in 

 hand was Tillotson, and it is not surprising to find him 

 adopting that keenness for gardening and the cultivation 

 of " greens " brought into fashion by William III. 



Nearly ten acres of the extensive grounds of Lambeth 

 Palace have now been put under the management of the 

 London County Council, and made open to the public 

 as " Archbishop's Park." For many years this Park 

 had been used for cricket and so on, but the trans- 



