GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



the Dean of , in close confabulation, passed out by way of 

 the postern door in the Gatehouse. As the gates closed on all 

 who went and came, one caught a glimpse of the prosaic modern 

 world outside of Lambeth Bridge, of some men in khaki, and of 

 a passing Tooting tram ! 



Still, however insistently, and almost grotesquely, the present 

 may sometimes intrude itself upon the old-world calm of the 

 ancient Palace, there is a certain charm and attractiveness in this 

 strange intermingling of the old with the new, of the past with 

 the present. No doubt the old exceeds the new in interest. Yet 

 when the later chapters of its history come to be written, though 

 outwardly Lambeth seems to take but little part in the terribly 

 stirring events of our times, its inner history may prove to have a 

 large significance ; and the influences emanating from it may be found 

 to have had a most important bearing upon the trend of history. 

 At present, however, the past surges up, and its interest verily 

 overwhelms the present. In mental retrospection, we see the 

 ghosts of scores of notable men and women who lived between the 

 eras of Cranmer and Juxon. A few are smiling, many are weeping ; 

 and we place them instantly in their proper environment. As we 

 look, they shape themselves, vanish, and give place to others. 

 We see Thomas Cranmer, the tool of the King, and the instrument 

 of his pleasure in the matter of the divorce of Katherine of Arragon : 

 we see him later, truly attached to the Reformed faith, yet for 

 want of moral courage recanting his opinions ; then, repenting of 

 his recantation, nobly vindicating what he had before repudiated, 

 and dying a martyr's death, the hand that had signed the recanta- 

 tion being forced by his own will to be the member first to suffer. 

 We see the recalcitrant bishops who refused to take the oath of 

 supremacy at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, consigned to the 

 custody of Archbishop Parker, and watch him treating them more 

 as guests than prisoners. We see the Duke of Norfolk and Lord 

 William Howard, his brother, in 1574, joining in a conspiracy in 

 favour of Mary Queen of Scots, the elder punished by death, the 

 younger, who ill requited the Primate's kindness, interned at 

 Lambeth. Next arises a vision of a wet and stormy night in 1600, 

 when the once debonair and powerful Essex, now disgraced and 

 forlorn, together with his friend, the young Earl of Southampton, 

 was on his way to the Tower by water. The river, lashed into 



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