aud 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:--

"For the Quen's Wayghters, I cannot as yet fynde anye convenyent
romes to place them in, but I will doo the best y^t I can to place
them elsewher, but yf y^t please you S^r y^t I doo remove them. The
Gromes of the Privye Chamber nor Mr. Drewrye have no other waye to
ther chambers but to pas thorowe that waye agayne that my Lady of
Oxford should come. I cannot then tell wher to place Mr. Hatton; and
for La Carewe here is no place with a chymeney for her, but that she
must ley abrode by Mrs. Aparry and the rest of y^e Prvy Chambers.
For Mrs. Shelton here is no romes with chymeneys; I shall stage one
chamber without for her. Here is as mutche as I have any wayes able
to doo in this house."

Of the great archbishops few, strangely enough, have left memorials
behind them at Croydon. Whitgift