PREFACE

There is an inevitable tendency in the hurry and rush of large cities to ignore that which made the life of those cities in the days long past. This is always an unimaginative attitude, and it is more especially unimaginative when, as in the case of our own Lambeth, we have such a treasure house of history and story and tradition. We have, as you will read, a direct link with the life of Lambeth of more than seven hundred years ago. We can picture, if we will, Archbishop Baldwin starting for the Holy Land; Anne Boleyn on her sad journey from the Tower of London to Lambeth for trial; Queen Elizabeth on her visits to Whitgift and Parker; the pathos of Laud's farewell to his Lambeth neighbours on his last journey from Lambeth to the Tower; and in later years we can recall the care of Archbishop and Mrs. Tenison for the education of Lambeth children; and Sunday after Sunday we are reminded of this care by the presence of the little girls in Lambeth Church from the school which Mrs. Tenison loved so well.

If the River Thames could speak, it could tell us much of far away days. Mr. Rudyard Kipling brings this strikingly before us in his poem "The River's Tale," wherein the Thames says:-

“And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my herons off Lambeth Pier."

I do most cordially commend this little book to those would learn something of the story of Lambeth.

EDITH M. DAVIDSON.

Lambeth Palace, January, 1923.