CHAPTER XXXIV
CROYDON
Croydon Palace.—A Neglected Relic.—Queen Elizabeth's Waiters.—John Whitgift.—Hospital, chapel, and school.—A Record of Cricket.—Macaulay's tyrant.—Izaak Walton differs.—Queen Elizabeth's Little Black Husband.—Croydon colliers.—John Ruskin.—By the Parish Pump.—John Gilpin.
Croydon is best reached by rail. It cannot be called a convenient centre, for one returns to centres, and Croydon has little that would recall a traveller. But it is an easy point of departure either for the country east, by Addington and the Kentish border, or south through Sanderstead to Coulsdon and Chaldon, or west by Beddington and the Carshalton trout ponds to Epsom. You may walk in any direction, except perhaps north, where you will walk into North Croydon. But in Croydon itself there are still two or three things worth seeing.
One is the Archbishop's Palace. An Archbishop's Palace is the very last building which would naturally associate itself with the Croydon tram lines and Croydon up-to-dateness, and it is the last building with which Croydon appears to wish to associate itself. The Palace stands apart from the bustle of the place, unhonoured, unhappy and ignored. Since the last Archbishop left it in the reign of George II it has served its turn as business premises for a bleacher and a calico-printer; it has been a wash-house, and is now a girls' school. One thing it has never been—of sufficient interest to Croydon to be rescued from sacrilege and neglect, and to take the place which is its due among historic national possessions. Perhaps one should be thankful that the palace of Cranmer, Whitgift and Laud is to-day in no rougher hands than the gentle Sisterhood of a children's day-school.
If Croydon Palace were rightly restored, how fine a relic it might be! The great banqueting-hall, with its noble roof of Spanish chestnut, which has even survived the steam and chemistry of a bleacher's vats; the long, panelled gallery where tradition has set Queen Elizabeth dancing; the guard chamber, perhaps built by Archbishop Arundell, who burnt the Lollards; the chapel with its oak stalls, its poppy-head carvings, and the gallery added by the archbishop who stood by Charles the First on the scaffold; if the oak were cleaned and the paint taken from the panels, and if under the mellow brick walls there were set out lawns and flowers; then Croydon might justly boast of its tram lines, its admirable sanitation, and its new Town Hall. It would possess something else.
When Queen Elizabeth lay at Croydon Palace, it was not an easy matter to find room for her train of courtiers. She came in July, 1573, to visit Archbishop Parker, and wished to come again in the following May, with a larger train than before. The steward, entrusted with the task of finding more room where there had never been enough, was in despair, and made out his list of lodgings for the archbishop, or, perhaps, the Queen's chamberlain, to see. The Lord Treasurer was to be "wher he was"; the Lord Admiral "at ye nether end of the great chamber"; the "maydes of honnor wher they wer"; the "La Stafforde wher she was"; the "gentylmen husshers ther olde" lodging; and so on with a very long list. But the letter ends in a hopeless puzzle:—
"For the Quen's Wayghters, I cannot as yet fynde anye convenyent romes to place them in, but I will doo the best yt I can to place them elsewher, but yf yt please you Sr yt I doo remove them. The Gromes of the Privye Chamber nor Mr. Drewrye have no other waye to ther chambers but to pas thorowe that waye agayne that my Lady of Oxford should come. I cannot then tell wher to place Mr. Hatton; and for La Carewe here is no place with a chymeney for her, but that she must ley abrode by Mrs. Aparry and the rest of ye Prvy Chambers. For Mrs. Shelton here is no romes with chymeneys; I shall stage one chamber without for her. Here is as mutche as I have any wayes able to doo in this house."
Of the great archbishops few, strangely enough, have left memorials behind them at Croydon. Whitgift, Grindal, and Sheldon have their monuments in the church; of the others, Juxon added some carving to the Palace Chapel. Whitgift was the great Croydon archbishop, and did for Croydon what Abbot did for Guildford. He founded a hospital, and endowed a school.
