LAMBETH PALACE 



retain much charm, must have been exceedingly fair to look 

 upon in the reign of the Virgin Queen, being ideally situated 

 bounded on one side by the then pellucid Thames, which ran 

 between high and irregular banks on the other by the blue, illimit- 

 able distances of Surrey. Unfortunately our information con- 

 cerning them is meagre, and we have but slender data to go upon : 

 the Computus Bellevorwn, so regularly kept, seem to have dealt 

 only with the domestic expenditure of the household, and with 

 the outlay, for additions and repairs, to the buildings. The refer- 

 ence, however, to a " Rabbed garden " by which must have been 

 meant a rabbit warren suggests that only a portion of the attached 

 land was cultivated, the rest being allowed to remain picturesquely 

 wild. Among the long list of the Primate's servants there is no 

 mention of gardeners, probably because the outdoor service was 

 not included at all : but the flowers of Chaucer, Shakespeare, 

 and Spenser, did not spring up unbidden ; and gardeners there 

 certainly were to plant and water, before the age of the Tradescents, 

 who, though gardeners to royalty, were resident at Lambeth, 

 where their influence would be exerted and felt. 



Ducarel tells us that Cranmer erected in the gardens a curious 

 " Solar " (or summer house) of exquisite workmanship ; and that 

 Archbishop Parker, who did repair and " re-edify " all the houses 

 of the See of Canterbury, " in the year of our Lord 1569, greatly 

 repaired and beautified this Palace. The Great Hall he covered 

 with shingles : he made entirely the long bridge " (i.e., the horse 

 ferry pier) "that reached into the Thames: the famous 'Solar,' 

 or summer-house in the garden built by Archbishop Cranmer 

 and now almost decayed, he restored to its ancient form and 

 beauty. He also repaired two aqueducts for the conveyance of 

 water, one in the garden, and another for the common use of the 

 household in the inner cloister." 



It is probable that the summer-house was destroyed when the 

 regicides, Scott and Hardy, demolished so much that was venerable 

 and of historic interest ; for no trace of it remains. 



Nor is there any longer any vestige of a park, or of the chase, or 

 wilderness ; but the grounds, at the end of the seventeenth century, 

 had already attracted attention ; and Gibson, in his account of 

 the Gardens near London in 1691, at the beginning of the reign 

 of William III., remarks that " The Archbishop of Canterbury's 



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