LAMBETH PALACE 



and delinquents having to bear their own charges," which were 

 often extortionate. 



" Near an hundred ministers," says Bishop Kennet in his " Regis- 

 ter and Chronicle," " were brought out of the West and clapp'd 

 up in Lambeth House where almost all of them were destroyed by 

 a pestilential fever," a gross exaggeration ; though it is true that 

 after Naseby, the Lambeth prisons were greatly overcrowded, 

 resulting in a serious epidemic, and rather heavy mortality. 



This dismal retrospect is relieved but by one picturesque episode 

 -The devoted wife of Dr. Guy Carleton, who had been ejected from 

 his Berkshire living and was suffering many hardships during 

 his Lambeth incarceration, planned his escape. She managed to 

 have a boat in readiness beneath the Water Tower, and a rope 

 conveyed to him, by which to descend ; but the rope was too 

 short, and underestimating the distance, Carleton risked a drop 

 by which he severely injured both legs : he managed, however, 

 to crawl to the boat, and was rowed away to a place of safety. 

 The heroic wife, by selling her belongings, and by hard manual 

 labour, contrived to support him till he could escape to France, 

 and he lived to become after the Restoration, Bishop, first of 

 Bristol, and afterwards of Chichester. 



As we follow the fortunes of Lambeth House, we find them at 

 their lowest ebb in 1648, when a considerable part of the building 

 was purchased by Colonel Scott and Matthew Hardy, two leading 

 parliamentarians, for the sum of some 70. They divided the 

 spoils, Scott taking the Great Hall, demolishing it, and selling the 

 material Hardy the chapel which he robbed and desecrated, 

 destroying the tomb, and removing the remains of Archbishop 

 Parker, which had rested there since 1575. After the Restoration 

 they were reinterred, and the Great Hall rebuilt, as before related, 

 by Archbishop Juxon. 



After this, for a time, there seems to have been comparative 

 tranquillity at the Palace, and only incidentally is it mentioned 

 in contemporary diaries and chronicles. 



But in 1688 one more picture presents itself. It was a night 

 in December, and Mary of Modena, Queen Consort of England, 

 with her infant son the Prince of Wales, two attendants, <md 

 Lauzun, and Saint Victor, who had arranged the flight, stole down 

 the back stairs at Whitehall, and crossed the river in an open 



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