GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



to the See of London, being held by a service of prayer and masses 

 for the dead. He was the son of Otto, King of the East Saxons, 

 and is said to have heard the preaching of Mellitus in his boyhood. 

 He is credited with having spent large sums on the erection and 

 embellishment of old St. Paul's, and also to him is attributed 

 the building of the Manor House at Fulham. 



In the reign of Alfred the Great, Conqueror of the Danes, that 

 people, so long the terror of northern Europe, and the veritable 

 scourge of the Anglo-Saxons, on the occasion of one of their frequent 

 incursions, sailed up the Thames and wintered at Hammersmith 

 and Fulham, on the spot where the Manor House was ultimately 

 built. It is supposed that, as a defence against attack, they con- 

 structed the moat that surrounds the demesne. 



Fulham Palace is thus literally built upon an island, about 

 thirty-five acres comprising the area of the gardens and park. We 

 shall return to these later, for the historical survey of the place 

 claims some attention, and so do the lives of some of the more 

 celebrated occupants of the See, although, for the reasons before 

 given, some of these are more correctly to be associated with Lam- 

 beth than with Fulham. Many prelates, however, lived and died 

 at the latter place, and several are interred in the burial-ground 

 of the adjoining Parish Church, to which access is given by a 

 bridge over the moat, and a postern, both to be described later. 



Robert de Sigilla, a monk of Reading, said by some to have been 

 Archdeacon of London, was appointed to the metropolitan See in 

 1148* He had been presented to it by Queen Matilda, but civil 

 war was raging between Matilda and Stephen, and Geoffrey de 

 Mandeville, a partisan of the latter, in spite of the protection of 

 the moat, made the unfortunate bishop a prisoner in his own 

 house at Fulham, compelling him to pay a heavy fine in order to 

 regain his liberty. 



Sixteen years later we find the See occupied by one Ralph 

 Baldock, a learned man, writer of the " Annals of Ely," who also 

 filled the office of Lord Chancellor. 



The prelate, however, who has most left his mark upon the 

 Manor House was Richard Fitzjames, who in 1521 rebuilt the 

 great quadrangle. 



Fitzjames was a native of Somersetshire, and educated at 

 Oxford. Attracted by his talents and learning, Henry VII., in 



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