VAUXHALL BRIDGE, FROM NINE ELMS PIER.
Many parts of Lambeth still preserve a grave, quiet, thoughtful aspect, as of a locality which has had many experiences of life, and can talk to itself of ancient and shadowy days. Elias Ashmole, the founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, who is associated with the neighbourhood, and the Tradescants, father and son, whose collection of curiosities was at South Lambeth, have, so to speak, thrown a hue of antiquarianism over the whole place; while the venerable palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury gives an ecclesiastical character to the river-side. In the church very little ancient work remains, but its foundation dates back several centuries, and it has some noticeable tombs and monuments, together with the celebrated window displaying the figure of a pedlar, with his pack, his staff, and his dog. The legend connected with this pictorial representation is to the effect that some well-to-do chapman endowed the parish with an acre and nineteen poles of land (now known as “Pedlar’s Acre”), on condition that his portrait, and that of his dog, should be perpetually preserved in painted glass in one of the windows of the church. Nothing, however, is known with any certainty of this ancient benefactor, and it has been suggested that the picture is nothing more than the rebus of some person whose name was Chapman, and who thus symbolically revealed himself, after a fashion very common with our ancestors. The most striking incident connected with the church belongs to the revolutionary times of 1688. We can hardly pass its walls without the mind’s eye conjuring up the shivering figure of Mary of Modena, the second wife of James II., who, on a cold, rainy December night, took shelter beneath the porch, with her infant son in her arms, while she waited for a coach to convey her to Gravesend, where she was to embark for France. The infant—then only a few months old—was the future Chevalier St. George, better known to English readers as the Old Pretender. Thus the opening of his life was romantic, his early manhood was romantic, and the long remainder of his days was an ignoble commonplace.
The appearance of Lambeth Palace, whether from the river or the shore, is extremely picturesque, and London has hardly a more charming corner than that formed by the Archbishop’s residence and the adjacent church. The gate-house of the Palace stands broad and square, looking up the stream, its brickwork sober with the rich red-brown of age. The grey stone-tints of the church afford a delicate contrast; and between the two are the grass and flowers of the graveyard. Behind the Palace rise the trees of the archiepiscopal gardens; and the margin of the river—formerly rugged and neglected enough—is now dignified by the Albert Embankment. The effect of the latter, as well as of the spacious buildings of St. Thomas’s Hospital a little further on, is perhaps a little too modern for its surroundings; but, in the presence of Lambeth Palace, the Past is sure to overcome the Present. A large portion of English history lurks behind those ancient walls; the shades of kings and prelates haunt its chambers, its corridors, and its gardens; and the sighs of miserable prisoners might be heard within the Lollards’ Tower, if the memory of bygone sufferings could find audible expression. It is believed by antiquarians that the Archbishops of Canterbury had a house on this spot in the latter part of the eleventh century; but it was not until about a century later that Archbishop Baldwin exchanged some other lands for this particular manor, which had previously belonged to the see of Rochester. The Palace dates from that period, but of course very little of the original structure now exists. If any twelfth-century work remains, it is in the chapel; the rest belongs to subsequent ages, and exhibits the influence of various styles. The Lollards’ Tower was erected in the early part of the fifteenth century by Archbishop Chicheley, for the confinement (as most writers suppose) of a set of heretics who were among the forerunners of Protestantism. The dark and contracted cell at the top of the winding staircase inside the tower, with iron rings yet clinging to the walls, and the names of victims still visible in the blackened oak, is a grim memorial of the Middle Ages, not to be paralleled in London, except within the enclosure of the Tower. It is a sermon in stone and timber, preaching toleration with mute yet eloquent lips. Some modern authorities, however, deny that Lollards were ever imprisoned there; and the structure is now (officially) called the Water Tower; but the top room has obviously been used as a dungeon.
Undoubtedly, the most conspicuous figure in connection with Lambeth Palace is that of Laud. We can hardly think of the building without thinking of him. He was translated to the Province of Canterbury in September, 1633; his execution was in January, 1645; but the last four years of his life were passed in prison, so that his occupation of the archiepiscopal residence extended over little more than seven years. Into those years, however, were crowded the events and the struggles of a lifetime. The Romanising tendencies of Laud gave offence to the growing Puritanism of the middle classes, and at length he was almost a captive in his own palace, besieged by angry crowds, who would doubtless have paid little respect either to his office or his person could they have laid hands on him. He records in his Diary, under date May 11th, 1640, that a furious rabble, incited by a paper posted up at the Old Exchange two days before, attacked his house by night, and prolonged their violence for at least two hours. After that, he “fortified” the place as well as he could; but the popular resentment increased, and, in 1642 and the following year, Lambeth Palace was roughly handled by parties of soldiery. During the Commonwealth, the building was used as a prison, and the Great Hall was nearly destroyed. The latter was restored by Juxon, and is supposed to represent the original with tolerable fidelity. But it is of Laud we think, and not of Juxon, as we move from room to room; for Laud represents an era in the English Church.
Looking across the Thames, from Lambeth Palace, we get the best view of the Houses of Parliament, which gain rather than lose by the absorption of detail into the general mass. We have now passed the dull and shabby part of the river, and are surrounded by grand and august memories. The stream itself is a highway of empire; the shores are peopled with stately, with noble, or with interesting shapes. The suburbs are behind us; the ancient city of Westminster rises with its towers and steeples on the left bank. Along this channel have passed the Briton in his coracle, the Roman in his war-ship, the Anglo-Saxon and the Dane in their galleys, the Norman, the Plantagenet, the Tudor, and the Stuart, in their resplendent barges. Youth, beauty, and gallantry, genius and learning, the courtier and the soldier, the prelate and the poet, the merchant and the ’prentice, have taken their pleasure on these waters through a succession of ages which form no mean portion of the world’s history. Patriots and traitors have gone this way to their death in the sullen Tower. Kings and princesses have proceeded by this silver path, amidst the flaunting of streamers and the music of clarions, to bridal pomp or festal banquet. The pride of mayors, of aldermen, of sheriffs, has glassed itself in these waves. Here, in the days of Henry II., the adventurous young men of London played at water-quintain, to the infinite delight of the spectators; here, somewhere between Westminster and London Bridge, King Richard II. met the poet Gower, and commanded him to write a book for his special reading—whence arose the “Confessio Amantis;” and here Taylor, the Water Poet, once saw the Muses sitting in a rank, who gave him a draught of Helicon, which had the unfortunate effect (not unknown in other instances) of emptying his purse.
LAMBETH PALACE AND CHURCH.
Westminster is to the full as historical as London itself, from which, be it remembered, it is even now entirely separate, as a city with rights of its own. It might even be described as more truly the capital than London; for the Parliament, the Government Offices, and the Law Courts are situated within its bounds, and the chief palace of the Kings and Queens of England, from Edward the Confessor to Elizabeth, was at Westminster. It is curious to reflect how very unsubstantial is the claim of London, in the strictest sense of the term, to be considered the national metropolis. Of Roman Britain, York was the capital—the Eboracum of Hadrian, of Septimius Severus, and of Constantine. Winchester, as the principal city of Wessex, which subdued the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy, became the seat of government for all England in the early days of the united monarchy. Then Westminster succeeded, and it is hard to say where London comes in. The very name of this city of royalty and statecraft has a grandeur about it with which its appearance corresponds. Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, and the Houses of Parliament are three structures not easily to be surpassed for majesty of association and picturesque dignity of aspect. It was a wise decision by which the Gothic style was selected for the new buildings rendered necessary by the disastrous fire of 1834. Anything else would have broken the continuity of the national life, and been altogether at issue with surrounding objects. Sir Charles Barry has provided London with one of its most distinctive features, and his two great towers must henceforth be landmarks of the surrounding country, even more than the dome of St. Paul’s, though that, too, will always remain one of the great memorial characteristics of the vast metropolis.