In Milton's time the buildings of Lambeth were less extensive than they are to-day. Its beautiful, lofty gateway known as "Morton's," which was built in 1490, is of red brick with stone trimmings, and has an arched doorway under a large window in the middle portion. It is perhaps the largest and best specimen of the early Tudor work that now remains in England. It is flanked by two massive square towers five stories high. At this gate, from earliest times until recently, a dole of money, bread, and provisions was weekly given to thirty poor parishioners of Lambeth. In earlier times the hospitality that was offered was excessive and encouraged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing loaves which amounted to the sum of £500 a year. At present the doles amount to about £200 a year and are given only to well-known persons. In addition to these doles, huge baskets of fragments from the three tables in the long dining-halls sufficed, as Strype tells us, "to fill the bellies of a great number of hungry people that waited at the gate." Some conception of the size of Cranmer's establishment may be gathered from the authentic list of his household: "Steward, treasurer, comptroller, gamators, clerk of the kitchen, caterer, clerk of the spicery, bakers, pantlers, yeomen of the horse, ushers, butlers of wine and ale, larderers, squilleries, ushers of the hall, porter, ushers of the chamber, daily waiters in the great chamber, gentlemen ushers, yeomen of the chamber, carver, sewer, cupbearer, grooms of the chamber, marshal groom ushers, almoner, cooks, chandler, butchers, master of the horse, yeomen of the wardrobe, and harbingers." Over such a rich and splendid household did the Establishment place the man above all others who was to be to England its highest embodiment of the spirit of the young Carpenter of Nazareth. To-day the Archbishop of Canterbury is given two residences, and a salary of £15,000, that he may keep up these establishments; that of the average curate is about £100.
The great hall, which to-day contains the library, is on the site of that of Boniface, who built the first in the thirteenth century. Archbishop Juxon, who attended Charles I. upon the scaffold, rebuilt the present edifice after the original model, which had been destroyed during the Commonwealth. One of the great treasures of this library is Caxton's "Chronicles of Great Britain," which was printed in 1480 at Westminster. The Mazarin Bible, the Life of Laud, with the autograph of Charles I., and many books and manuscripts of great rarity and value are also preserved here. The library is open to the public under proper regulations on five days in the week. Among the names of eminent men who have served as librarians over this small but precious library, none interests us more than that of John Richard Green, the historian of the English people.