Studio of Nicaise de Keyser.. Charles V. liberating Christian Slaves at Tunis. No. CCCXCVII.-JUNE, 1883.-VOL. LXVII. LAMBETH PALACE, OR "YE ARCHBISHOP'S INNE."* RIVER of many springs in its bright the Cotswold Hills, of many turnings as it gathers depth and speed upon its pleasant way through lush green fields, with farmhouses and sheep and browsing kine, and slopes where castles, paláces, and towers of churches rise between the curving opens of the woods; a river of many bridges too, quaint spans of plank where its bed is laid with rushes, ruddy of brick where the mills and weirs wax busy, and sombrely grand of well- massed stone where the towns have thickened to its verges: such is the river Thames, until at last, wider and swifter and muddier much, yet fair with sky hues still, and very hard worked with every sort of craft that plies for trade or floats for pleasure, it comes rushing in to London town, staying its force a little as it nears the walls of beautiful old Lambeth Palace, thence swirling demurely across to the steps of the towers of Parliament, as if it cherished recollections of the days when church and state, when mace and mitre, wrought their decrees in the jealous intimacy of much conflicting lust of power; then hur rying on beneath the arches of Westminster Bridge to join its crowded water life to the crowded shore life of certainly the largest, perhaps the loveliest, surely the saddest, city in the world. In describing the palace of Lambeth it is natural to speak, and even to speak first, of this fine river, still flowing so near it, which used to wash its very walls, and rock the archbishop's barge in its old moorings at the palace stairs, which has borne so many scholars and prelates bond and free, so many kings and queens and lordly retinues, to and from its portals. And it is from the river, from the decks of the little steamers speeding by, that its irregular outlines mass in most harmonious effect to the eye. The history of this stately pile, for upward of seven centuries the home and the official seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury, is not only the story of the English Church in its amities and enmities with the Church of Rome; of the archiepiscopates of more than fifty primates during England's most contentious period of civil, political, and religious evolution; and in its motley structure a record of the art and architectural changes of the ages that have produced it; but it is a romance of court and cloister as strange in its tragic verities, in the crimes and virtues of its actors, the splendor and the shadow of its scenes, as the most improbable of modern tales. Its Saxon name, originally spelled Lamhethe or Lamehithe, signified "dirty station," which it must have been before the present Thames Embankment was built. One spelling, Lambhyd, "or lambs' harbor," had apparently no other foundation than that of an æsthetic impulse shrinking from the former meaning. In very early times Lambeth was a royal manor-the Saxon kings lived there, and it was part of the estate of the Countess Goda, sister of Edward the Confessor. It changed hands during the Saxon-Danish wars, but later came to its own again. There is no certain account of what Goda's palace was like, but discussion and deeds of conveyance show that it stood on the present site of Lambeth. As a home for the archbishops, Lam Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. VOL. LXVII.-No. 397.-1 |