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 Danesy 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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