Juxon, who found the Palace a 'heap of ruins,' spent his three years of occupancy and 15,000l. of his own money in restoring the place for the honour and splendour of the Church. As for what has been done since that time, especially by Archbishop Howley, it all belongs to the detailed history of the Palace. It is sufficient here to note that the Palace is a worthy House to-day, as it was five hundred years ago, for the residence of the Primate. He belongs still, as his Roman Catholic predecessors, to a Church whose members love some splendour in their ecclesiastical Princes, just as they love splendour in their churches and stateliness in their ritual. They do not desire to make a Bishop rich: they do desire that a Bishop should not be hampered by narrow circumstances: they desire that he should be able to take the lead in all good works. In ancient times, the Bishop rode or sat in splendid state: he sat every day at a table loaded with costly and luxurious food: outwardly he was clothed with silken robes. But he touched nothing that was set before him: he lived hardly and abstemiously: and he wore next his skin a hair shirt: and for greater self-denial he suffered his hair shirt to be full of vermin. That was the ideal Bishop of mediæval times. Our own is much the same: a simple life: a splendid house: modest wants: a large income: for himself no luxuries: and an open hand. Such a house: such an income: we have always given to an Archbishop, whether of the old or of the Reformed Faith.
The Chapel has at least one memory which will always cling to it. Within its dark and gloomy crypt Anne Boleyn, brought from the Tower, stood to hear her sentence. She was to be burned to death as an adulteress. I am not qualified by study of the case or by education in the weighing of evidence to pronounce an opinion as to her innocence. I believe that those who have examined into the case are of opinion that Anne Boleyn fell a victim to the King's jealousy: to his change of mind towards her: and to her own foolish frivolity. However, in the crypt she was persuaded into making some sort of avowal of a previous betrothal, in return for which she was spared the agonies of the stake. I have sometimes thought that the King must have thought her guilty, otherwise he would have divorced her on a charge of adultery, and suffered her to live. If he did not believe her guilty, how could he, being, above all things, a man of human passions, have sentenced the woman whom he had once loved to so horrible a death?
Let us note, however, that our ancestors did not regard death by burning with quite the same horror as is now common. There is a story of Rogers—or Bradford—the martyr. Some one once begged his intercession to save a woman from burning. 'It is a gentle mode of death,' he replied. 'Then,' said the other, 'I hope that you yourself will some day have your hands full of this gentle death.' Punishment was meant to be painful: the least painful form of death was that accorded to the noble—to be beheaded. If a man died by the executioner, it was expected that he should suffer. Death, in all forms, meant suffering. In disease and in old age men suffered torture as bad as any inflicted by the executioner.
I am not excusing Henry. I am only pleading that he must have believed in Anne's guilt or he could not possibly have allowed such a sentence; and that cruel as it seems to us, it did not seem so cruel at that time. There is, however, no more sorrowful story in the whole long History of England, which is, alas! so full of sorrow and of tragedy, than that of Anne Boleyn.
Lambeth Palace, the only palace in the whole of South London, is a monument of English History from the twelfth century downwards. Kennington appears at intervals; Eltham is a holiday house; Greenwich practically begins with the Tudors. Lambeth, like Westminster or St. Paul's, belongs to the long history of the English people. It is a place little known: of the millions now, in the circle of the Greater London, how many, I should like to ask, have ever seen the interior? Of the vast population of Lambeth, Battersea, and Kennington, of which it is the centre, how many, I wonder, know anything at all about its history or its buildings?
Of those who daily go up and down the river, who come and go across the Bridge, and suffer their careless and unobservant eyes to rest for a moment on the grey walls and Tower of the Palace, how many are there who know, or inquire, or care for the wealth of history that clings to every stone?
CHAPTER V
PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS
The part which Processions of all kinds played in the mediæval life is so great that one must inquire how Southwark fared in this respect. Where Bishops, Abbots, and great Lords lived there were Processions whenever one arrived or one departed. If the Bishop of Winchester went to the King's House at Winchester, it was with a great Procession of followers, chaplains, priests, secretaries, and gentlemen. If the Earl of Suffolk arrived at his town house, it was with a gallant company of gentlemen wearing his livery. If the King kept his Christmas at Eltham, he would be preceded by an endless train of carts groaning and grumbling along the road, filled with household gear and followed by the troops of scullions, cooks, grooms and lavenders whose duty was in the kitchens, stables, laundries, and pantries. He himself rode with a royal regiment, sometimes 4,000 strong, of archers for his bodyguard, besides the nobles, Bishops and Abbots who were with him for the Christmas festivities. The town itself had its Processions: the annual march of the Fraternity to church: the departure and the arrival of the pilgrims; the Ecclesiastical Functions of Church and Monastic House. As for the royal pageants and the Lord Mayor's Ridings, it must be confessed that Southwark got but the beginning: that part of the pageant which began at London Bridge: and that the place itself was quite passed by and unconsidered.
Since, however, Southwark did witness that part, I have drawn up a short series of notes on the sights of which the Borough took a share.