GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
Abbot. Then were there billings and cooings, other than those 
of the pigeons, in the shady garden of the archiepiscopal residence, 
and happy hours also; even although in the near distance could 
already be discerned the first mutterings of coming civil strife. 
Many years later, when the storm of internecine war was ac- 
tually about to break, we find Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of 
Clarendon, the historian of the great rebellion, and a devoted 
servant of the monarchy, coming to Lambeth to warn Archbishop 
Laud of his unwisdom in forcing a liturgy on the Scots.. He 
found him in the garden pacing up and down an alley afterwards 
called the “ Clarendon Walk,” which is supposed to be the leafy 
path that runs at the side of the wall now separating the gardens 
of Lambeth, from Lambeth Palace Road and the Embankment. 
The future Chancellor entreated the Primate to be wise in time, 
pointing out that unless he changed the course of the ship of state, 
it must inevitably be dashed against the rocks which he discerned 
ahead. 
The warning was unheeded, and the year 1641, says Evelyn, 
““saw the Bishop of Canterbury’s Palace at Lambeth assaulted 
by arude rabble from Southwark.” A fortnight later, during which 
the Archbishop, by his own account, had had time to get cannon 
and fortify the house—a midnight attack was made on it, “ but 
God be praised,” said he, “I had no harm.’ The end of his 
troubled reign was near, notwithstanding. Attainted by the 
Commons in 1644, he was imprisoned, and executed a few 
months later. 
Then followed a change in the nature of the events I have been 
recalling. From this time, for sixteen years or more, there was. 
no Archbishop—Episcopacy itself was abolished, and we look 
at Lambeth, and find it the theatre of tragic events very painful 
to contemplate. The building itself suffered severely, as was but 
to be expected, seeing that it was the very citadel and heart of 
episcopacy, and naturally drew upon itself the vindictive wrath, and 
fanatical zeal, of the most violent and iconoclastic of those spirits. 
in whose eyes the Church of England was an accursed - thing. 
Even before Laud’s death, “‘ Lambeth House lying empty and 
convenient ” began to be used by the Commons as a prison for 
dispossessed clergymen and Royalist prisoners,—‘ the malignants 
52 
