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 y^e 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:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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