There was a great square in the centre, into which all the apartments of the palace looked, so that it was not until the visitor had passed under the great arch that he could conceive the beauty of the building, or form any idea of the extent of its accommodation. Externally, its character was sombre, having battlements on all sides, enlivened only by the watch towers, plain walls, strong and thick, though in its latter days, in the time of which this history treats, symptoms of decay began to be visible in various parts, where landslips from the springs around had caused considerable inclinations of the buttresses. Still the inside of the area was kept up in all the characteristic state of Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, the last of the possessors of a palace at Ipswich. A small creek at that day ran up the valley in which the palace was built, and approached so near it that a boat could ascend from the Orwell almost up to the moat. That creek does not now exist, but in its place there are magnificent fish-ponds, and the ancient stream is diverted to a use very foreign to its original purpose.* But the palace was not half so grand in its appearance as its stately inmates. * The Cliff Brewery. Goldwell Hall, which then belonged to Bishop Goldwell and was so called in his lifetime, was the marriage portion of one of his sisters, who married Geoffery De Clinton, of Castle Clinton, near Linton, in Cambridgeshire. He was a wealthy noble, as well as proud, and had but one daughter by this marriage, though he had two sons by a former wife. He married Alice Goldwell when he was much advanced in years, and could scarcely expect to see his young offspring arrive at womanhood. In consequence of this, and of the loss of his partner, the Lady Clinton, he left his daughter to the sole guardianship of Goldwell (then Secretary of State) her maternal uncle. He left the income of certain estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, to the Bishop, as long as his child should live and remain single, and then to be given to her as her dower; and in case of the demise of the said Bishop and his niece, then to revert to the heir-at-law of the family of Goldwell. The Bishop's private chapel then stood on the opposite side of the hill on which the mansion was built. Alice De Clinton, the particular care of the Bishop of Norwich, grew up under his superintendence a most magnificent woman to look at; so much so, that she was generally called Alice la Grande. She was very stately in her person, and always wore a haughty expression of countenance. She was quite a drawback upon the hospitality of Goldwell; yet, strange to say, she possessed a great degree of influence over the Bishop. He was liberal beyond what was usual in his day, and was never but once betrayed into an act of persecution, and that was in the case of one single heretic, John Bahram, whose death-warrant he countersigned not many months before his own exit.