LAMBETH PALACE 



have been rectors of Lambeth for eight hundred years. In the 

 churchyard lie buried several of the Archbishops, but they 

 are interred in greater number at Canterbury. 



In connection with gardens and their historical evolution, it is 

 interesting to relate that in Lambeth Churchyard lie three genera- 

 tions of a family of famous gardeners, mentioned in the intro- 

 ductory chapter. John Tradescent, senior, was gardener to Queen 

 Elizabeth ; his son succeeded him in her service, and on her death 

 became gardener to Cecil, the first Lord Salisbury; thus helping 

 to make the celebrated Hatfield Gardens, and he ended his career 

 as gardener to Charles I. 



His son was that John Tradescent who founded the Ashmolean 

 Museum at Oxford. The Tradescents being prosperous and highly- 

 esteemed residents of Lambeth, it is extremely probable that at a 

 period when their royal mistress frequently visited the Primate- 

 father, or son, or both, may have been called in to give advice con- 

 cerning the Archbishop's garden. Their tombstone in Lambeth 

 Churchyard has an inscription that is worth quoting ; it runs thus : 



" Know, Stranger, ere thou pass, beneath this stone 

 Lye John Tredescent, Grandsire, father, son, 

 The last dy'd in his spring : the other two 

 Liv'd till they had travell'd Art and Nature through, 

 As by their choice collections may appear 

 From what is rare, in Land, in Sea, in Air. 

 Whilst they (a Homer's Illiad in a Nut) 

 A world of wonder in one closet shut; 

 These famous antiquarians that had been 

 Both gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen, 

 Transplanted now themselves, sleep here and when 

 Angels shall with their trumpets waken men, 

 And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise 

 And change the garden for a Paradise." 



Notwithstanding their close connection, matters did not always 

 run smoothly between Lambeth House and the township or parish. 



In the quaint, but rather tedious pages of Ducarel, there is a 

 detailed report of a suit brought in 1776 by the then Archbishop, 

 by which he pleaded exemption from payment of taxes, on the 

 ground that Lambeth Palace was in the diocese of Canterbury 

 and not in that of Winchester, the bishops of which instituted the 

 Rector of Lambeth to the living, that town and parish being 

 within their ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 



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