xception of gluttony and laziness! If he were only a
father confessor now! he has all the qualities to fit him for
one--indeed, he is only _too_ prudent, modest, humble, chaste, and
peaceable!" Still, admirable as these characteristics are, he is not
quite the nag one expected. "I fancy that through some knavery or
blundering on your servant's part, I must have got a different steed
from the one you intended for me. In fact, now I come to remember, I had
bidden my servant not to accept a horse except it were a good one; but
I am infinitely obliged to you all the same." Even Warham's temper must
have been tried as he laughed over such a letter as this; but the
precious work of art which Lambeth contains proves that years only
intensified their friendship. It was, as we have seen, with a letter of
Erasmus in his hands, that on his first visit to England Holbein
presented himself before Warham; and Erasmus responded to his friend's
present of a copy of this portrait by forwarding a copy of his own.

With the Reformation in its nobler and purer aspects Lambeth--as we have
said--had little to do. Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Alasco, gathered there
for a moment round Cranmer, but it was simply as a resting-place on
their way to Cambridge, to Oxford, and to Austin Friars. Only one of the
symbols of the new Protestantism has any connection with it; the
Prayer-Book was drawn up in the peaceful seclusion of Otford. The party
conferences, the rival martyrdoms of the jarring creeds, took place
elsewhere. The memories of Cranmer which linger around Lambeth are
simply memories of degradation, and that the deepest degradation of all,
the degradation of those solemn influences which the Primacy embodies
to the sanction of political infamy. It is fair indeed to remember the
bitterness of Cranmer's suffering. Impassive as he seemed, with a face
that never changed and sleep seldom known to be broken, men saw little
of the inner anguish with which the tool of Henry's injustice bent
before that overmastering will. But seldom as it was that the silent
lips broke into complaint the pitiless pillage of his see wrung
fruitless protests even from Cranmer. The pillage had began on the very
eve of his consecration, and from that moment till the king's death
Henry played the part of sturdy beggar for the archiepiscopal manors.
Concession followed concession, and yet none sufficed to purchase
security. The Archbishop lived in the very shadow of death. At