GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



the time of his successor Robinson, who had no taste for botany 

 or horticulture, the gardener was allowed to dispose of the greater 

 part of the botanical treasures to some nurseryman at Fulham, to 

 permit which was a terrible act of vandalism. But, if Bishop 

 Robinson failed to realize his responsibilities towards the beautiful 

 moated garden left to his care by his predecessor, he did a good 

 work for the old palace itself. In 1615 he presented a petition 

 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, stating that the Manor House 

 of Fulham had grown very old and ruinous, and was much too 

 large for the revenues of the bishopric, and that a great part of 

 the building was becoming useless. Sir Christopher Wren and 

 Sir John Vanbrugh were called in to examine and make a report. 

 The result was that a number of rooms were condemned as un- 

 necessary, and permission was granted to pull them down. After 

 doing so there were still left fifty or sixty rooms in addition to 

 the chapel, hall, and garden. But whatever the work of demolition 

 may have done actually to improve the property, the restoration 

 cannot have been carried very far, for in 1749 Bishop Sherlock 

 wrote : " I find this a bad old house ; I must repair a great deal, 

 and, I am afraid, rebuild some part." 



A touch of romance gilds the biography of Bishop Terrick, who 

 died in 1771, but not before he had rebuilt the river front of the 

 house. He had a daughter with whom Nicholas Ryder, son of 

 the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, fell in love; but 

 Nicholas, by the terms of his father's will, might not marry any- 

 one who had not a portion of ten thousand pounds, and this the 

 lady did not possess. To get over the difficulty the lover sent 

 the bride that sum of money as a wedding-gift. 



A remarkable feature of the gardens is the moat before mentioned, 

 by which they are surrounded. It is nearly a mile long, and in 

 many places twenty feet wide, at high water. By a moat we now 

 understand a ditch filled with water, but the word, taken from 

 the old French mote or motte, and meaning a lump or clod of earth, 

 did not originally refer to the ditch itself, but to the mound of 

 earth or mud thrown up in excavating it, and is a curious example 

 of a reversal of an original meaning. Before the time of Bishop 

 King he whom James I. designated " King of Preachers " there 

 was no water in the moat except what percolated through the 

 river bank. It must, therefore, have been in a chronic state of 



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