The story of the library is a more certain one. From the days of Bancroft to those of Laud it had remained secure in the rooms over the great cloister where Parker's collection had probably stood before it passed to Cambridge. There in Parker's day Foxe had busied himself in work for the later editions of his 'Acts and Monuments;' even in the present library one book at least bears his autograph and the marginal marks of his use. There the great scholars of the seventeenth century, with Selden among them, had carried on their labours. The time was now come when Selden was to save the library from destruction. At the sale of Lambeth the Parliament ordered the books and manuscripts to be sold with the house. Selden dexterously interposed. The will of its founder, Bancroft, he pleaded, directed that in case room should not be found for it at Lambeth his gift should go to Cambridge; and the Parliament, convinced by its greatest scholar, suffered the books to be sent to the University.
When the Restoration brought the Stuart home again, it flung Scott into the Tower and set Juxon in the ruined, desecrated walls. Of the deeper thoughts that such a scene might have suggested few probably found their way into the simple, limited mind of the new primate. The whole pathos of Juxon's position lay in fact in his perfect absorption in the past. The books were reclaimed from their Cambridge Adullam. The chapel was rescued from desecration, and the fine woodwork of screen and stalls replaced as Laud had left them. The demolition of the hall left him a more serious labour, and the way in which he entered on it brought strikingly out Juxon's temper. He knew that he had but a few years to live, and he set himself but one work to do before he died, the replacing everything in the state in which the storm of the rebellion had found it. He resolved therefore not only to rebuild the hall but to rebuild it precisely as it had stood before it was destroyed. It was in vain that he was besieged by the remonstrances of "classical" architects, that he was sneered at even by Pepys as "old-fashioned"; times had changed and fashions had changed, but Juxon would recognize no change at all. He died ere the building was finished, but even in death his inflexible will provided that his plans should be adhered to. The result has been a singularly happy one. It was not merely that the Archbishop has left us one of the noblest examples of that strange yet successful revival of Gothic feeling of which the staircase of Christ Church Hall, erected at much about the same time, furnishes so exquisite a specimen. It is that in his tenacity to the past he has preserved the historic interest of his hall. Beneath the picturesque woodwork of the roof, in the quiet light that breaks through the quaint mullions of its windows, the student may still recall without a jar the figures which make Lambeth memorable, figures such as those of Warham and Erasmus, of Grocyn and Colet and More. Unhappily there was a darker side to this conservatism. The Archbishops had returned like the Bourbons, forgetting nothing and having learned hardly anything. If any man could have learned the lesson of history it was Juxon's successor, the hard sceptical Sheldon, and one of the jottings in Pepys' Diary shows us what sort of lesson he had learned. Pepys had gone down the river at noon to dine with the Archbishop in company with Sir Christopher Wren, "the first time," as he notes, "that I ever was there, and I have long longed for it." Only a few days before he had had a terrible disappointment, for "Mr. Wren and I took boat, thinking to dine with my Lord of Canterbury, but when we came to Lambeth the gate was shut, which is strictly done at twelve o'clock, and nobody comes in afterwards, so we lost our labour." On this occasion Pepys was more fortunate. He found "a noble house and well furnished with good pictures and furniture, and noble attendance in good order, and a great deal of company, though an ordinary day, and exceeding good cheer, nowhere better or so much that ever I think I saw." Sheldon with his usual courtesy gave his visitors kindly welcome, and Pepys was preparing to withdraw at the close of dinner when he heard news which induced him to remain. The almost incredible scene that followed must be told in his own words:--"Most of the company gone, and I going, I heard by a gentleman of a sermon that was to be there; and so I stayed to hear it, thinking it to be serious, till by-and-by the gentleman told me it was a mockery by one Cornet Bolton, a very gentlemanlike man, that behind a chair did pray and preach like a Presbyter Scot, with all the possible imitation in grimaces and voice.