Archbishop Chicheley, 1434-45; on
the right is the Hall. A second gateway leads to the inner court,
containing the modern (Tudor) palace, built by Archbishop Howley
(1828-48), who spent the whole of his private fortune upon it rather than
let Blore the architect be ruined by exceeding his contract to the amount
of L30,000. On the left, between the buttresses of the hall, are the
descendants of some famous fig trees planted by Cardinal Pole.

The Hall was built by Archbishop Juxon in the reign of Charles II., on the
site of the hall built by Archbishop Boniface (1244), which was pulled
down by Scot and Hardyng, the regicides, who purchased the palace when it
was sold under the Commonwealth. Juxon's arms and the date 1663 are over
the door leading to the palace. The stained window opposite contains the
arms of many of the archbishops, and a portrait of Archbishop Chicheley.
Archbishop Bancroft, whose arms appear at the east end, turned the hall
into a Library, and the collection of books which it contains has been
enlarged by his successors, especially by Archbishop Seeker, whose arms
appear at the west end, and who bequeathed his library to Lambeth. Upon
the death of Laud, the books were saved from dispersion through being
claimed by the University of Cambridge, under the will of Bancroft, which
provided that they should go to the University if alienated from the see;
they were restored by Cambridge to Archbishop Sheldon. The library
contains a number of valuable MSS., the greatest treasure being a copy of
Lord Rivers's translation of the "Diets and Sayings of the Philosophers,"
with an illumination of the Earl presenting Caxton on his knees to Edward
IV. Beside the King stand Elizabeth Woodville and her eldest son, and
this, the only known portrait of Edward V., is engraved by Vertue in his
Kings of England.

A glass case contains: The Four Gospels in Irish, a volume which belonged
to King Athelstan, and was given by him to the city of Canterbury; a copy
of the Koran written by Sultan Allaruddeen Siljuky in the fifteenth
century, taken in the Library of Tippoo Saib at Seringapatam; the Lumley
Chronicle of St. Alban's Abbey; Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, with
illuminations from Holbein's Dance of Death destroyed in Old St. Paul's;
an illuminated copy of the Apocalypse, of the thirteenth century; the
Mazarine Testament, fifteenth century; and the rosary of Cardinal Pole.

A staircase lined with portraits of the Walpole