family, leads from the
Library to the Guard Room, now the Dining-Hall. It is surrounded by an
interesting series of portraits of the archbishops from the beginning of
the sixteenth century.

Through the paneled room, called Cranmer's Parlor, we enter the Chapel,
which stands upon a Crypt supposed to belong to the manor-house built by
Archbishop Herbert Fitzwalter, about 1190. Its pillars have been buried
nearly up to their capitals, to prevent the rising of the river tides
within its wall. The chapel itself, tho greatly modernized, is older than
any other part of the palace, having been built by Archbishop Boniface,
1244-70. Its lancet windows were found by Laud--"shameful to look at, all
diversely patched like a poor beggar's coat," and he filled them with
stained glass, which he proved that he collected from ancient existing
fragments, tho his insertion of "Popish images and pictures made by their
like in a mass book" was one of the articles in the impeachment against
him. The glass collected by Laud was entirely smashed by the Puritans: the
present windows were put in by Archbishop Howley. In this chapel most of
the archbishops have been consecrated since the time of Boniface....

Here Archbishop Parker erected his tomb in his lifetime "by the spot where
he used to pray," and here he was buried, but his tomb was broken up, with
every insult that could be shown, by Scot, one of the Puritan possessors
of Lambeth, while the other, Hardyng, not to be outdone, exhumed the
Archbishop's body, sold its leaden coffin, and buried it in a dunghill.
His remains were found by Sir William Dugdale at the Restoration, and
honorably reinterred in front of the altar, with the epitaph, "Corpus
Matthaei Archiepiscopi tandem hic quiescit." His tomb, in the ante-chapel,
was re-erected by Archbishop Sancroft, but the brass inscription which
encircled it is gone.

The screen, erected by Laud, was suffered to survive the Commonwealth. At
the west end of the chapel, high on the wall, projects a Gothic
confessional, erected by Archbishop Chicheley. It was formerly approached
by seven steps. The beautiful western door of the chapel opens into the
curious Post Room, which takes its name from the central wooden pillar,
supposed to have been used as a whipping-post for the Lollards. The
ornamented flat ceiling which we see here is extremely rare. The door at
the northeast corner, by which the Lollards were brought in, was walled
up, about 1874.