GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



Abbot. Then were there billings and cooings, other than those 

 of the pigeons, in the shady garden of the archiepiscopal residence, 

 and happy hours also; even although in the near distance could 

 already be discerned the first mutterings of coming civil strife. 



Many years later, when the storm of internecine war was ac- 

 tually about to break, we find Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of 

 Clarendon, the historian of the great rebellion, and a devoted 

 servant of the monarchy, coming to Lambeth to warn Archbishop 

 Laud of his unwisdom in forcing a liturgy on the Scots. He 

 found him in the garden pacing up and down an alley afterwards 

 called the " Clarendon Walk," which is supposed to be the leafy 

 path that runs at the side of the wall now separating the gardens 

 of Lambeth, from Lambeth Palace Road and the Embankment. 



The future Chancellor entreated the Primate to be wise in time, 

 pointing out that unless he changed the course of the ship of state, 

 it must inevitably be dashed against the rocks which he discerned 

 ahead. 



The warning was unheeded, and the year 1641, says Evelyn, 

 " saw the Bishop of Canterbury's Palace at Lambeth assaulted 

 by a rude rabble from South wark." A fortnight later, during which 

 the Archbishop, by his own account, had had time to get cannon 

 and fortify the house a midnight attack was made on it, " but 

 God be praised," said he, i;< I had no harm." The end of his 

 troubled reign was near, notwithstanding. Attainted by the 

 Commons in 1644, he was imprisoned, and executed a few 

 months later. 



Then followed a change in the nature of the events I have been 

 recalling. From this time, for sixteen years or more, there was 

 no Archbishop Episcopacy itself was abolished, and we look 

 at Lambeth, and find it the theatre of tragic events very painful 

 to contemplate. The building itself suffered severely, as was but 

 to be expected, seeing that it was the very citadel and heart of 

 episcopacy, and naturally drew upon itself the vindictive wrath, and 

 fanatical zeal, of the most violent and iconoclastic of those spirits 

 in whose eyes the Church of England was an accursed thing. 

 Even before Laud's death, " Lambeth House lying empty and 

 convenient " began to be used by the Commons as a prison for 

 dispossessed clergymen and Royalist prisoners, " the malignants 



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