GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
Chelsea Church; ‘and whereas,’ says his great-grandson, ‘ at 
other times, before he departed from his wife and children, they 
used to bring him to his boat, and he there leaving them, bade 
them farewell; at this time he suffered none of them to follow him 
forth of his gate, but pulled the wicket after him, and with a heavy 
heart he took boat with his son Roper.’ He was leaving his house 
for the last time, and he knew it. He sat silent for some minutes, 
and then with a sudden start said, ‘I thank our Lord the field is 
won.’ ”’? Lambeth Palace was crowded with people who had come 
on the same errand as himself. More was called in early, and 
found Cromwell present, with the four Commissioners and also 
the Abbot of Westminster. The oath was read to him. “ He 
desired to see the Statute of Succession himself, and, after reading 
it, said he would swear to the part of it that secured the succes- 
sion to the children of Queen Anne, but he refused to ‘ peril his 
soul ’ by subscription to the remainder of the statute. He was asked 
to reconsider his answer.” To do so he was sent into the garden, 
and in his absence others were called in; among these, Fisher, 
Bishop of Rochester, who replied in the same terms. Returning 
from the garden, More made his choice. It is a matter of history 
what that choice was. 
Here, so far as Lambeth is concerned, ends a momentous 
chapter in the history of Tudor England, for the well-known 
melancholy sequel belongs of right to that of the Tower, to which 
prison More and Fisher were committed. Thus Henry VIII. had 
his Catholic martyrs, as his daughter Mary had her Protestant 
ones. 
Meanwhile the Succession was seemingly securely settled on the 
children of Anne Boleyn, whose star was now in the ascendant. 
But wait! Two short years only, and another chapter is opened, 
another and very different page is turned. Again the stage is 
Lambeth; again the instrument of Henry’s will is Cranmer ; 
again the season is Spring—-the lovely English Spring ; everything 
is green and bursting into beauty in the large gardens behind the 
Palacc, the same in which More had been sent to walk to reconsider 
his refusal. But this time the scenc is laid neither in the Great Hall 
nor the Guard-room, but in the gloomy crypt beneath the beautiful 
chapel of the Palace. 
Conveyed hither by water from her prison in the Tower, pale, 
Ad 
