GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



bered as the beneficent founder of All Souls' College, Oxford, and 

 of other similar institutions. In character he was certainly more 

 humane than Arundel, for he was instrumental in passing the 

 Act that in some cases substituted the lash, and other lighter 

 punishments, for the horrible penalty of death at the stake. In 

 any case, it is difficult to believe that he could have been guilty of 

 the deliberate cruelty of building a great addition to the Lambeth 

 pile, for the express purpose of therein immuring and torturing 

 the Wycliffites, and the popular belief that he did so leaves an 

 undeserved stain on his memory. The true Lollards Tower, 

 according to Dr. Maitland and to other evidence both direct and 

 indirect, was not at Lambeth at all, but at the " Bishop's prison " 

 attached to London House, the town residence of the Metropolitan 

 Bishop, and was, in fact, a portion of old St. Paul's. 



Foxe, in his " Actes and Monuments," speaks of the " Lollard's 

 Tower " of St. Paul's " Paul's," as the cathedral was colloquially 

 termed and Stowe, writing in 1598, makes mention of two towers 

 at its western extremity, of which the one at the southern corner 

 was known as " The Lowlarde Tower, and hath been used as the 

 Bishop's prison of such as were detested for opinions contrary 

 to the faith of the church." 



One might suppose that such evidence would have been con- 

 sidered conclusive, but it seems it was not so ; for after the 

 Commonwealth, and the Restoration, when the Great Fire of 1666 

 had swept away every vestige of old St. Paul's, of London House, 

 its Lollard Tower, and its prison the tradition of a " Lollard's 

 Tower " still remaining, it was transferred bodily to Lambeth, 

 and the odium attaching to its erection and use, came at last, 

 by a not unnatural sequence of ideas, to be cast upon the man,, 

 who having punished heresy and built a tower, had (so it was 

 erroneously concluded) intended it, and used it, as a prison for 

 Lollards. 



Popular beliefs, like prejudices, are not easily eradicated ; 

 they take much uprooting ; and, therefore, so long as the walls of 

 Lambeth Palace stand, so long will idle passers-by look up at the 

 hoary stones of the supposed Lollard's Tower, and vaguely picture, 

 as having been enacted behind them, scenes of sorrow and violence 

 that never took place. Posterity has fixed this stain upon the 

 memory of the great building Archbishop, and there it will remain, 



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