The library of Parker, though no longer within its walls, is memorable in the literary history of Lambeth as the first of a series of such collections made after his time by each successive Archbishop. Many of these indeed have passed away. The manuscripts of Parker form the glory of Corpus College, Cambridge; the Oriental collections of Laud are among the most precious treasures of the Bodleian. In puerile revenge for his fall Sancroft withdrew his books from Lambeth, and bequeathed them to Emmanuel College. The library which the munificence of Tenison bequeathed to his old parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields has been dispersed by a shameless act of Vandalism within our own memories. An old man's caprice deposited the papers of Archbishop Wake at Christ Church. But the treasures thus dispersed are, with the exception of the Parker MSS., far surpassed by the collections that remain. I cannot attempt here to enter with any detail into the nature of the history of the archiepiscopal library. It owes its origin to Archbishop Bancroft, it was largely supplemented by his successor Abbot, and still more largely after a long interval by the book-loving Primates Tenison and Secker. The library of 30,000 volumes still mainly consists of these collections, though it has been augmented by the smaller bequests of Sheldon and Cornwallis and in a far less degree by those of later Archbishops. One has at any rate the repute of having augmented it during his primacy simply by a treatise on gout and a book about butterflies. Of the 1,200 volumes of manuscripts and papers, 500 are due to Bancroft and Abbot, the rest mainly to Tenison, who purchased the Carew Papers, the collections of Wharton, and the Codices that bear his name. If Wake left his papers to Christ Church in dread of the succession of Bishop Gibson the bequest of Gibson's own papers more than made up the loss. The most valuable addition since Gibson's day has been that of the Greek Codices collected in the East at the opening of this century by Dr. Carlyle.
The importance of Parker's primacy however was political and ecclesiastical rather than literary. The first Protestant Archbishop was not the man to stoop to servility like Cranmer, nor was Elizabeth the queen to ask such stooping. But the concordat which the two tacitly arranged, the policy so resolutely clung to in spite of Burleigh and Walsingham, was perhaps a greater curse both to nation and to Church than the meanness of Cranmer. The steady support given by the Crown to the new ecclesiastical organization which Parker moulded into shape was repaid by the conversion of every clergyman into the advocate of irresponsible government. It was as if publicly to ratify this concordat that the Queen came in person to Lambeth in the spring of 1573. On either side the chapel in that day stood a greater and lesser cloister. The last, which lay on the garden side, was swept away by the demolitions of the eighteenth century, the first still fills the space between chapel and hall but has been converted into domestic offices by the "restoration" of our own. Even Mr. Blore might have spared the cloisters from whose gallery on the side towards the Thames Elizabeth looked down on the gay line of nobles and courtiers who leaned from the barred windows beneath and on the crowd of meaner subjects who filled the court, while she listened to Dr. Pearce as he preached from a pulpit set by the well in the midst. At its close the Queen passed to dinner in the Archbishop's chamber of presence, while the noble throng beneath followed Burleigh and Lord Howard to the hall whose oaken roof told freshly of Parker's hand. At four the short visit was over, and Elizabeth again on her way to Greenwich. But, short as it was, it marked the conclusion of a new alliance between Church and State out of which the Ecclesiastical Commission was to spring.