LAMBETH PALACE 



Parker, and others, that the crumbs which fell from the rich man's 

 table sufficed to feed an army of mendicants ; and not seven only, 

 but seventy times seven, scriptural basketsful of the fragments 

 that remained, must have been taken up in the course of a year. 

 The surplus was distributed daily at the gates, and thus arose 

 the famous " Lambeth Dole." 



It was at Lambeth, under the roof of the Archbishop, that 

 Katherine of Arragon, on arriving in England for her first marriage 

 with Arthur, Prince of Wales, was for some days lodged. Here, 

 thirty-two years later, Archbishop Cranmer confirmed the union 

 of Henry VIII. with poor Katherine's rival and successor, Anne 

 Boleyn. Still more important was that meeting over which he 

 soon after presided, on a day late in April, 1534. England had 

 reached one of the many crises in her history. The Spanish party 

 at Rome had triumphed ; the marriage of Henry VIII. with 

 Katherine of Arragon had been pronounced valid, and if the 

 King refused to acquiesce in this decision, he was to be declared 

 " excommunicate," and to forfeit the allegiance of his subjects, 

 and the Emperor was to invade England and Henry to be 

 deposed. 



He did not acquiesce, for now it was that, in the words of Froude, 

 14 the Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign 

 ... he met defiance by defiance. The Act of Parliament, altering 

 the succession to the children of Anne Boleyn, was immediately 

 passed ; Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a 

 declaration that the Pope had no more power in England than 

 any other bishop. The ordnance stores were examined, the repairs 

 of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were strengthened 

 along the coast. ... A commission appointed under the Statute 

 of Succession opened its sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance. 

 - . . The peers swore, the bishops, abbots, priests, heads of 

 colleges, swore with scarcely an exception ; the nation seemed to 

 unite in unanimous declaration of freedom. . . . The Commis- 

 sioners sat at the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth, and at the 

 end of April, Sir Thomas More received a summons to appear before 

 them. He was at his house at Chelsea, where for the last two years 

 he had lived in deep retirement, making ready for evil times. Those 

 times at length were come. On the morning on which he was to 

 present himself, he confessed and received the Sacrament in 



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