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Title: Whitehall: historical and architectural notes
Author: W. J. Loftie
Release date: December 8, 2024 [eBook #74858]
Language: English
Original publication: LOndon: Seeley and Co. Limited
Credits: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITEHALL: HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL NOTES ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
[Illustration]
WHITEHALL
_HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL NOTES_
_By_
W. J. LOFTIE B.A.; F.S.A.
[Illustration]
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED,
ESSEX STREET, STRAND
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN AND CO.
1895
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_PLATES_
PAGE
Inigo Jones. _From the Engraving by_ Van Voerst,
_after_ Van Dyck Frontispiece_
Apotheosis of James I. _From the Engraving by_
S. Gribelin, _after_ Rubens to face_ 32
Whitehall in 1724. _From the Engraving by_ J. Kip ” 68
Scotland Yard. _From an Engraving by_ E. Rooker,
_after_ Paul Sandby, R.A. ” 72
_ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT_
PAGE
Banqueting Hall, Holbein’s Gate, and Treasury.
_From the Engraving by_ J. Silvestre, 1640 11
Holbein’s Gate. _From the Engraving by_ G. Vertue, 1725 14
Whitehall, from King Street. _From a Drawing by_
T. Sandby, R.A. _Engraved by_ R. Godfrey, 1775 17
Whitehall. _From an Engraving after a Drawing by_
Hollar _in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge_ 19
The King Street Gate. _From the Engraving by_ G. Vertue, 1725 23
Detail of Banqueting House. _From_ Kent’s “Inigo Jones” 28
Detail of Banqueting House. _From_ Kent’s “Inigo Jones” 29
Section of the Banqueting House. _From_ Kent’s “Inigo Jones” 31
Plan of Whitehall. _Engraved by_ G. Vertue,
_from a Survey made in 1680_ 33
First Design by Inigo Jones for the rebuilding of Whitehall.
Waterside Front. _From_ Müller 35
First Design by Inigo Jones for the rebuilding of Whitehall.
Bird’s-eye View. _From_ Müller 37
Part of the First Design by Inigo Jones for the rebuilding
of Whitehall. _From_ Kent’s “Inigo Jones” 40
Part of the Second Design by Inigo Jones for the rebuilding
of Whitehall. _From_ Campbell’s “Vitruvius Britannicus” 40
The Guardroom, Scotland Yard.
_From an Etching by_ J. T. Smith, 1805 46
Lambeth and Whitehall. _From the Engraving by_ W. Hollar 52
Whitehall, from the River. _From_ Ogilvy’s _Map_, 1677 54
The Execution of Charles I. _From a Print of 1649_ 59
Pyramidal Dial in Privy Garden, set up in 1669.
_From an Engraving by_ H. Steel, 1673 67
Funeral of Queen Mary, 1694. _From an Engraving by_ P. Persoy 71
Part of the Old Palace of Whitehall.
_From an Etching by_ J. T. Smith, 1805 73
View in Privy Garden. _From an Engraving by_ J. Malcolm, 1807 74
Privy Garden. _From an Engraving by_ T. Malton, 1795 76
Bird’s-eye View of Whitehall and St. James’s Park.
_From_ Smith’s “Views of Westminster” 77
WHITEHALL
CHAPTER I
_Site of Whitehall in the Twelfth Century—Part
of Westminster—Hubert de Burgh—York House—
Wolsey—Hentzner—Henry VIII.—His Honour of
Westminster—Holbein’s Gate—Anne of Cleves—
Funeral of Henry VIII._
When Abbot Laurence, of Westminster, looked out to the northward or
north-eastward, he could see no land—as far as the wall of London—which
did not belong to him and his house. This was the Abbot who first had
leave to assume the mitre, and in 1163 he obtained from Pope Alexander
II. the canonisation of Edward the Confessor. When worshippers wished
to kneel at the new saint’s shrine they had to reach Westminster as
best they could. Some, especially those who lived at Charing, or
further up the hill, in what was afterwards Hedge Lane, would make
their way to the Thames, the best highway in those days. In some
seasons, perhaps, the water-courses, which had their origin in the
Tyburn, might be dry enough to let them pass, but there were as yet
no regular roads and no bridges. One of these water-courses supplied
the Abbey, and one ran out where Richmond Terrace is now. We have two
documents from which to draw a picture of the ground which was not yet
Whitehall. First, we have the evidence afforded by the geographical
features of the locality; and, secondly, we have the report of a trial
which took place some sixty years ago, when, no doubt, all possible
charters and grants and leases and demises were cited. The trial was
between the people of Westminster and the people who lived in Richmond
Terrace. Westminster claimed that the Terrace was within the boundaries
of St. Margaret. The Terrace claimed that it was extra-parochial, as
being on part of the site of the palace of Whitehall. The counsel for
Westminster was able to show that Whitehall had been private property
before the reign of Henry VIII., and that neither he nor any one else
had made it extra-parochial. The verdict, therefore, was in favour of
the parishioners of St. Margaret.
We may return to this interesting and instructive report, with its
wealth of ancient evidence, and interrogate that much more ancient
document, the face of the country. Strange to say, a great deal of
that country remains as it was in, say, the reign of Henry III. The
green fields and the water-courses are there, though the Abbot in 1250
could no longer look across his own land all the way from Westminster.
The divided Tyburn wandered over the green expanse, untroubled with
bridges. Two or three small brooks formed here a kind of delta. On
the south, one of them ran through Westminster Abbey and divided
Thorney Island from Tot Hill. Another ran through the district we call
Whitehall. The land between was low and marshy, and even at the present
day, when there has been so much levelling up, the statue of Charles I.
is upon ground ten feet higher than Parliament Street. If, standing on
the future site of Whitehall we looked to the westward, we saw nothing
but a vast tract of low green meadow-land. If we looked to the south,
we might have seen the new buildings of Westminster Abbey, unless when
the Danes had been on the warpath. If we looked to the eastward, we
found that the Thames washed up close to our feet.
At this early period, and down to the reign of King Edward I., there
were no houses in sight, except those which clustered about the
Abbey, those which constituted the village of Charing, and in the far
distance the grim walls, the red-tiled roofs, and the church towers
of the City. London was more plainly visible than it is now, and on
account of a curious bend in the course of the Thames, was nearly as
visible from Westminster. By the thirteenth century a great change had
come over all the district. The Thames was better confined within its
proper limits; some measure of embanking had been carried out, and a
great many alterations in City life, in Church arrangements, and in
the King’s policy have been detailed in the histories of London. We
need not go far into them here. Before 1200, all the land between the
Abbot and London belonged to him. By 1222 all was changed, or about
to be changed, and the Abbot owned nothing except the advowson of the
far-off St. Bride’s. St. Bride’s belongs to Westminster even now. The
King laid claim to certain foreshores on the banks of the Thames.
Undoubtedly, they belonged by an ancient grant to the Abbot, but we
must take into consideration that what had been only occasionally dry
land in the eleventh century was permanently dry in the thirteenth;
and the King had conferred, and was conferring, too many benefits on
the Abbot and his monks and their church to permit them to dispute
his royal, if illegal, pleasure. The Bishop of Exeter formed a little
estate of the Outer Temple. From his precincts westward the constant
embanking, and especially the formation of the roadway of the Strand,
left a wide strip now permanently dry. This strip the King erected
into a manor, and bestowed upon his wife’s uncle, Count Peter. Peter
became Count of Savoy in 1263, and the manor has ever since been called
after him. The next of these reclamations was Whitehall. In the lawsuit
already mentioned, a document was produced which threw great light on
the early history of the district. It relates to the sale by Roger de
Ware and Maud, his mother, to Hubert de Burgh, of their land here.
Another document was a similar sale by Odo, the King’s goldsmith, of an
adjoining plot, identified as stretching from the highway to the Thames.
Hubert’s choice of a residence was determined, no doubt, because it
placed him within easy reach of the city on one side, and of the King’s
palace on the other. He probably seldom used the road through the
newly-constructed King Street, or the other road through the Strand—a
road famous for ruts and mud. He went either to Westminster or to
London by water, as did his great neighbours in the Savoy, and the
bishops who had palaces outside the Bar of the Temple. We often wonder
why our ancestors preferred these low-lying places for their houses.
The answer is the difficulty they experienced in locomotion by land.
The “silent highway” of the Thames was such a convenience that all who
could possibly afford it preferred to be within easy reach of water.
Hubert had no easy part to play. From 1227 he had to do daily battle
with the young King, who already, though still a boy, showed signs
of the combined obstinacy and incompetence which characterised him
through life. Hubert saw the impolicy of yielding to the papal claims.
He followed, as Bishop Stubbs remarks, in the footsteps of William
Marshall, taking a middle path between the feudal designs of the great
nobles and the despotic theories of the late King. In both these
particulars he was in opposition to Henry, who was bound to the Pope by
his education, and to the retrograde party by his personal prejudices.
Hubert served the King too well to please the people, and spared the
people too much to satisfy Henry. In 1232 he was dismissed, and his
ungrateful master, not content with his dismissal, trumped up a series
of charges against him, just as Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII., did
with regard to Cardinal Wolsey. Hubert had been made Earl of Kent in
1227, and Constable of the Tower of London just before his disgrace—in
fact, only a few days before—and during the same month was himself
lodged in the Tower as a prisoner. Eventually his lands were restored,
but he was not allowed to leave his castle at Devizes; he survived
till 1243, when he died, as Matthew Paris relates, “full of days.” He
had been five times married, and reckoned among his wives the widow of
King John, and the sister of Alexander III., king of Scotland; but he
left only two children, John, his son, and Margaret, his daughter. The
subsequent history of the land now called Whitehall, so far as Hubert
was interested in it, may be briefly detailed. Hubert had made a vow
to go to the Holy Land and fight the infidel, being himself, as Roger
of Wendover says, _Miles strenuus_; but not being able to fulfil his
vow, he gave his land at Whitehall, which he describes as being in the
parish of St. Margaret’s, into the hands of trustees to be sold in aid
of an expedition to the Holy Land. The trustees promptly sold it to
Walter Grey, archbishop of York, who annexed it to his See. Walter died
in 1255, and was succeeded by Sewall Bovill, who had been Dean of York.
Thirty archbishops in all held this house, beginning with Walter Grey
and ending with Thomas Wolsey. It is curious to remark that no trace
now exists of their occasional residence. It was uniformly called York
House, and we may be sure that Wolsey improved it, and built a hall
and a chapel similar to those at Hampton Court. One or two old views
show us stately and lofty buildings in the half-Gothic, half-Italian
style, which is so familiar at Christ Church at Oxford, and at King’s
College at Cambridge. A large hall was in King Street; that is, outside
Holbein’s Gate. We see it beyond the gate in Silvestre’s view; and
it stands up dark and heavy, with its strong buttresses on the left
hand, in T. Sandby’s view. In the last century, when it had been part
of the Treasury buildings for generations, it was newly fronted in
stone, and the buttresses turned into pilasters. Since then it has been
refronted twice—by Soane in 1824, and by Barry in 1846. Barry greatly
increased the length. It would be interesting, but almost impossible,
to ascertain if any of the masonry of Wolsey’s building still remains
within the new walls.
This is, of course, a digression. No part of the Treasury is in
Whitehall; but the reason for mentioning it is that its inclusion in
the two engravings I have named shows us what, in all probability,
Wolsey’s other buildings were like. Paul Hentzner, writing in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, says that they were “truly royal.” Very
little building of any importance went on under Henry VIII. or his
three immediate successors, so that Hentzner’s allusion must be to
what Wolsey left. It is true, as we shall see, that Henry proposed to
improve and extend it; but we may rest certain that he added nothing
to its magnificence, if we except the gates; as the anonymous author
of _Dodsley_ remarks, he had a greater taste for pleasure than for
elegance of building, and immediately on entering upon possession he
ordered a tennis court, a cockpit, and a series of bowling-greens.
But we are going too fast. In the beginning of 1530 Cardinal Wolsey
was still in possession, and there are various accounts of how he
transferred the palace of his predecessors to the King. Henry was not
very scrupulous in matters of this kind. He was much given to breaking
the tenth commandment, and especially to coveting his neighbour’s
house. He had already helped himself to Hampton Court, and a curious
anecdote will be found in Thorne’s _Environs_. Lord Windsor was much
attached to his place at Stanwell, which had descended to him from
a long line of ancestors. The house, no doubt, was in what agents
nowadays call ornamental repair. He entertained the King royally, and
Henry, with the kind of gratitude peculiar to him, promptly commanded
him to hand it over. He gave in exchange the Manor of Bordesley and
the Abbey, which Henry had taken from the monks. Windsor had just laid
in a stock of provisions for his Christmas festivities, but he refused
to remove them, saying that the King should not find it bare Stanwell
when he came to take possession. The curious part of the story is
that Henry does not seem ever to have visited it again, and we know
that he soon afterwards leased it away. At the time of Wolsey’s fall,
Henry had been for several years almost without a home in London;
his apartments at Westminster were burnt in 1512, and after twenty
years, in 1532, he bought the hospital of St. James’s-in-the-Fields.
Between these dates he would have been without a London palace, except
the Tower or Bridewell, but on the fall of Cardinal Wolsey certain
illegal formalities were complied with, and Henry became possessed
of Whitehall. The gates north and south of the royal precincts were
needful on account of the old right of way between Charing—now become
Charing Cross—and Westminster; and in 1535 Henry built the church of
St. Martin, near to where the royal mews had been from time immemorial,
with a view to prevent the constant passage of funerals from the
northern to the southern part of St. Margaret’s.
In addition, Henry acquired all the land between Charing Cross and
an outlying suburb of Westminster known as Little Cales, or Calais.
More than this, he annexed all the green to the westward, which I have
already mentioned. Abbot Islip had, in fact, nothing left of the great
manor which after the Conquest had belonged to Westminster Abbey. The
City of London had acquired the great ward of Farringdon Without. The
lawyers had the Inner and Middle Temples. The King had inherited from
the wife of John of Gaunt all the manor of the Savoy. And now Henry
VIII. helped himself to the remainder.
[Illustration: _Banqueting Hall, Holbein’s Gate, and Treasury_.
_From the Engraving by_ J. SILVESTRE, 1640.]
It will be interesting to see the document by which the Abbot conveyed
the inheritance of his house to the King. I am tempted to quote it
nearly whole, but recommend the reader who is not interested in such
things to skip on. No more quotations of the kind occur in this little
book, but some readers may find the numerous landmarks enumerated worth
making a note of, as most of them have long been obliterated:—
“To all Christ’s faithful people to whom this present writing
indented shall come: John Aslyp, abbot of the monastery of St. Peter,
Westminster, and the Prior and Convent of the same monastery, Greeting
in the Lord everlasting: Know ye that we, the aforesaid Abbot, Prior,
and Convent, with the unanimous assent, consent, and will of our whole
Chapter, in our full Chapter assembled, have given, granted, and by
this our present charter indented, confirmed to Sir Robert Norwich,
Knight, our Lord the King’s Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir
Richard Lyster, Knight, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Sir William
Pawlett, Knight, Thomas Audeley, serjeant-at-law of the Lord the
King, and Baldwin Malet, solicitor of the Lord the King: a certain
great messuage or tenement commonly called Pety Caley’s, and all
messuages, houses, barns, stables, dove-houses, orchards, gardens,
ponds, fisheries, waters, ditches, lands, meadows, and pastures, with
all and singular their appurtenances in any manner belonging to the
said great messuage or tenement called Pety Calais, or to the same
messuage adjoining, or with the same messuage heretofore to farm,
let, or occupied; situate, lying, and being within the said town of
Westminster, in the county of Middlesex. And also all those messuages,
cottages, tenements, and gardens situate, lying, and being on the east
side of the street, commonly called the Kynge’s Strete, within the said
town of Westminster, in the aforesaid county of Middlesex, extending
from a certain alley or lane, there called Lamb Alley, otherwise called
Lamb Lane, unto the bars situate in the aforesaid Kings Street, near
the manor of the Lord the King there, called York Place. And also all
other messuages, cottages, tenements, gardens, lands, and water, late
in the tenure of John Henburye, situate, lying, and being on the said
east side of the highway aforesaid, leading from a certain croft or
piece of land commonly called Scotlande, to the Chapel of St. Mary
de Rouncedevall, near the cross called Charyng Crosse. And also all
those messuages, cottages, tenements, gardens, lands, and wastes,
lying and being on the west side of the aforesaid street, called the
Kynges Strete, extending from a certain great messuage or brewhouse,
commonly called the Axe, along the aforesaid west, side, unto and
beyond the said cross called Charyng Crosse. And also all other lands,
tenements, and wastes, lying on the south side of the highway leading
from the aforesaid cross called Charyng Crosse, unto the hospital of
St. James in the Field. And also all those other lands and meadows
lying near and between lands lately belonging to the aforesaid hospital
of St. James on the south side of the said hospital, and so from the
aforesaid hospital on the south side of the highway extending towards
the west unto the cross called Cycrosse, and turning from the same
cross extending towards the south by the highway leading towards the
town of Westminster, unto the stone bridge called Eybridge, and from
thence along the aforesaid highway leading towards and to the aforesaid
town of Westminster, unto the south side of the land there called
Rosamundis, and so from thence along the aforesaid south part of the
aforesaid land called Rosamundis, towards the east, directly unto the
land, late parcel of the aforesaid great messuage or tenement called
Pety Calais, and to the same great messuage or tenement belonging,
containing in the whole by estimation, eighty acres of land more or
less, and one close late in the tenure of John Pomfrett, now deceased,
containing by estimation twenty-two acres of land, lying in the parish
of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in the aforesaid county of Middlesex,
except always and so as the aforesaid Abbot, Prior, and Convent, our
successors and assigns, wholly reserved as well as the aqueduct coming
and running to our aforesaid monastery.”
[Illustration: _Holbein’s Gate_.
_From the Engraving by_ G. VERTUE, 1725.]
Had Henry foreseen the course which his policy of confiscation would
lead him into, he might have waited till 1539, when all the monastic
estates became his. However, there is much to interest us is this
strange document. We see that when Henry had annexed Whitehall to
Westminster in such a way as to call the two by the same name—that
is, “our palace of Westminster;” and when he had annexed the whole
expanse of St. James’s Park, to both, and had made of St. James’s a
kind of lodge to Whitehall—when from St. James’s he could look up
the green hills towards Hyde Park, which he had also taken from the
Abbot of Westminster, and beyond that again towards Hampstead Hill—the
intervening country being all open and void—he took special leave from
a subservient Parliament to make the whole into “an honour.” “Forasmuch
as the King’s most royal Majesty is most desirous to have the games
of hare, partridge, pheasant, and heron preserved in and about his
honour at his palace of Westminster, for his own disport and pastime
to St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, to our Lady of the Oak, to Highgate; to
Hornsey Park; to Hampstead Heath; and from thence to his said palace of
Westminster, to be preserved and kept for his own disport, pleasure and
recreation; his highness therefore straightly chargeth and commandeth
all and singular his subjects, of what estate, degree or condition
soever they be, that they, nor any of them, do presume or attempt to
hunt, or to hawk, or in any means to take, or kill, any of the said
games, within the precincts aforesaid, as they tender his favour and
will eschew the imprisonment of their bodies, and further punishment,
at his Majesties will and pleasure.”
Henry spent considerable sums of money in making an orchard, probably
where the so-called Whitehall Gardens are now. Two thousand five
hundred loads of stone were used in this work and in enclosing St.
James’s Park. But the only additions to Wolsey’s building seem to have
been a long gallery which ran northward towards Charing Cross; there
was also a passage, but of what kind we do not know, “through a certain
ground named Scotland.”
There are numerous engravings extant of the northern gateway. It was
in the most florid taste of the day. Perhaps we can best realise its
appearance by a visit to Hampton Court. The great gate there is made of
ornamental brickwork and decorated with terra-cotta statues or busts.
Thomas Sandby’s drawing shows the view from King Street very well.
On our left are the buildings of the Treasury. To the right beyond
the gate is the Banqueting House. Apparently when this view was taken
the gate had become wholly detached from what remained of the palace
after the fire of 1697. Wilkinson’s view (I. 143), from a drawing by
Hollar, taken in the early part of the reign of Charles I., shows a
line of four gables connecting the gate and the Banqueting House, and
we know that a gallery or passage led from the park, through the first
floor of the gate to the palace. By this circuitous route it was that
Charles reached the place of his death. In Hollar’s view the arch of
the gate contains a flat ceiling and a window, which greatly spoils
its appearance. At the park end of the passage there was a staircase.
Adjoining this end of the passage, and very near where Downing Street
stands now, was a tilt-yard, and close to it a small barrack for the
Foot Guards. Beyond it, further to the north, was the yard of the Horse
Guards, very much as it is still. Behind the spot where James I. built
the Banqueting House, to the eastward, was the court, a very irregular
space, divided by a passage passing over an archway. This passage led
to the great hall and the chapel, which last was close to the river’s
bank. The King’s lodgings also looked on the Thames, but between them
and the chapel there was a labyrinth of small chambers and sets of
chambers. To the westward of these small and inconvenient apartments,
some of which were appropriated for the Queen and her maids of honour,
was the great Stone Gallery, which looked on the garden and the bowling
green. How far these arrangements were due to Cardinal Wolsey and how
far to Henry VIII. we cannot say. Undoubtedly, the whole palace was
most inconvenient, even at that day, when men’s ideas of comfort were
so different from ours. There was not, if we except the so-called Great
Hall, a very small building compared with that of Hampton Court, a
single large or handsome chamber in the whole place. Room was, however,
found for a library, and Paul Hentzner mentions it with praise. In it
he saw a book in French written by the Princess, afterwards Queen,
Elizabeth, with her own hand, and inscribed to her father: _Elizabeth
sa très humble fille rend salut et obédience_. “All these books,”
continues Hentzner, “are bound in velvet of different colours, though
chiefly red, with clasps of gold and silver; some have pearls and
precious stones set in their bindings.” There are probably a few
representatives of this library among the books which belonged to Henry
VIII., and have his name or arms, in the British Museum. Hentzner also
notices the furniture of inlaid woods, some stained glass representing
the Passion, and a gallery of portraits and other pictures. He visited
Whitehall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the place must have
been very much as it was left by Henry VIII. He mentions, among other
things, the Queen’s bed, “ingeniously composed of woods of different
colours, with quilts of silk, velvet, gold, silver, and embroidery.”
Among the portraits is one, the description of which puzzles me: “A
picture of King Edward VI., representing at first sight something quite
deformed, till by looking through a small hole in the cover, which is
put over it, you see it in its true proportions.” Can this have been a
device of the same sort as the distorted skull in Holbein’s picture of
“The Ambassadors” in the National Gallery?
[Illustration: _Whitehall, from King Street_.
_From a Drawing by_ T. SANDBY, R.A.
_Engraved by_ R. GODFREY, 1775.]
Henry VIII. continued to date documents of all kinds at “Westminster,”
meaning Whitehall. It is possible that St. James’s was similarly
included in Westminster. In or about 1537 the King’s house there
was greatly improved and beautified, it is said by Cromwell, in
anticipation of Henry’s marriage with Anne of Cleves. The initials
“H. A.” on some of the fireplaces and ceilings were probably put up
in allusion to the same marriage, and have nothing to do with Anne
Boleyn. It was intended that Henry and Anne (of Cleves) should pass
their honeymoon at this remote corner of the park as it was then,
there being no buildings whatever visible from the gate. The result
we all know; and Henry, long before the honeymoon had waned, was back
at “Westminster.” Events travelled rapidly in those days. Anne Boleyn
was beheaded in May, 1536. In the same month Henry was married to Jane
Seymour. She died in October, 1537. In January, 1539, Henry married
Anne of Cleves, and divorced her in July. In April following Cromwell
became Earl of Essex, and was beheaded in July of the same year. No
doubt Whitehall was the principal scene of the long tragedy indicated
by this dry list of dates. At “Westminster” Henry conferred a peerage
on Cromwell’s son, Gregory; and there, too, he issued letters of
naturalisation to the Lady Anne of Cleves, and gave her several manors.
One more tragedy and we have done with Henry VIII. On a day unknown, in
January, 1547, the King lay dying at Whitehall. So weak had he become
that he was obliged to leave it to others to execute his cruel and
relentless orders. He died at Whitehall on the 28th, the last act of
his life having been to send the poet Surrey to the scaffold, and to
prepare a similar fate for Surrey’s father, the Duke of Norfolk. The
Duke being a peer, the process for obtaining an act of attainder was
slower. A commission had been issued by the tyrant to Wriothesley, St.
John, Russell, and Hertford to give the King’s consent to the Bill. But
death stepped in and the Duke’s life was saved.
[Illustration: _Whitehall. From an Engraving after a Drawing by_
HOLLAR _in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge_.]
Sandford gives a very circumstantial account of the funeral ceremonies
at the burial of Henry VIII. It is chiefly interesting because he names
several apartments of Whitehall Palace. At first the body lay in the
King’s private chamber, and there received some embalming treatment,
and was wrapped in lead. The chapel, the cloister, the hall, and the
King’s chamber were all hung with black. On the 2nd of February the
coffin was taken into the chapel. We read of cloth of gold and a pall
of tissue. The altar was covered with velvet, adorned with scutcheons
of the Royal arms. Twelve lords, mourners, sat or knelt within the
rail. Watchers likewise took turns of duty, and, as the people passed
by, a herald cried to them, saying, “You shall of your charity pray for
the soul of the most famous prince, King Henry VIII., our late most
gracious king and master.” The body was not to lie in the sumptuous
but despoiled chapel Henry had raised for his father and mother. On
the 14th of February the wax effigy was ready, and a procession, which
Sandford says was four miles long, started for Windsor. Henry had
desired to be buried beside Jane Seymour. Syon was reached the first
night, and the journey was ended at one o’clock the next day.
There is nothing to connect Edward VI. with Whitehall during his short
reign. But Mary, his successor, was constantly there. She is said to
have preferred St. James’s, and the first separate mention we have of
it in a State paper is in December, 1556. She died there in November,
1558.
Elizabeth made much use of Whitehall, but her buildings and
improvements at Windsor must have proved a powerful attraction. She
went about a good deal, and her State papers are signed in a great
variety of places. She left no mark on Whitehall, although, at the
very end of her reign, instead of Henry the Eighth’s “palace of
Westminster,” we have “Whitehall,” pure and simple, one or twice. We
have seen how York Place became the Palace of Westminster. How it again
changed its name, and became Whitehall, we do not know. The change
seems to have been made by Elizabeth shortly before her death, and
the name may have already been in popular use. After her death, at
Richmond, in March, 1603, her body lay in state at Whitehall, and was
buried in the Chapel of Henry VII.
With the Stuarts we have a new epoch in the history of Whitehall.
CHAPTER II
_Accession of the Stuarts—Wallingford House—Henry,
Prince of Wales—Masks at Court—Inigo Jones—The
Banqueting House—The Great Design of 1619._
The accession of the Stuarts marks a new epoch in the history of
Whitehall. In spite of edicts against building, Charing Cross had
become a populous place, and one of James’s first acts had been to
build new stabling and a barn in the Mews on the site now occupied by
Trafalgar Square. North-east of Whitehall, the Strand had become a
continuous street, which ended with what we remember as Northumberland
House, then called Northampton House, and subsequently Suffolk House.
South of the palace, King Street had also been completed, and in a
house there Edmund Spenser, the poet, died “for lake of bread,” as
Ben Jonson reports. He “refused 20 pieces sent to him by my lord of
Essex, and said he was sorrie he had no time to spend them.” East of
King Street, where now we see Mr. Norman Shaw’s fine police office
and Richmond Terrace, were green fields and gardens sloping to the
Thames. The curious old Gothic gate made an entrance to King Street,
and stood just at right angles to where we see the chief entrance to
the Foreign and India Offices. The Palace garden, with its sun-dial
lawn, was separated from the King Street slopes by the Bowling Green,
where is now the house of the Duke of Buccleuch. On the other side of
the roadway of Whitehall, beyond, that is to the northward of, the
Tilt Yard and Horse Guards, Sir William Knollys, who was Treasurer of
the Household to Queen Elizabeth, built himself a house to be near the
Court. James I. made him a peer, as Lord Knollys, in 1603. In 1616 he
became Viscount Wallingford, and his house long bore this name. Ten
years later he was advanced to the earldom of Banbury, and died in
1632. There were complications as to his marriage, in 1606, with Lady
Elizabeth Howard, and his titles have been claimed unsuccessfully, at
intervals ever since, by his reputed descendants. We shall have more to
say about Wallingford House presently.
[Illustration: _The King Street Gate_.
_From the Engraving by_ G. VERTUE, 1725.]
The new King must have looked on Whitehall as but a poor lodging.
The Queen had Somerset House, between the Strand and the Thames, for
her separate residence, and the Prince of Wales had St. James’s.
To be more accurate, we may quote Mr. Sheppard to the effect that,
though St. James’s was granted to Prince Henry the year after the
King’s accession, he did not go into residence there for six years.
Two years later he died. It is worth while to go into these things,
because, among the four hundred persons and personages who composed the
Prince’s train, was a “surveyor,” or, as we should say, an architect,
named Inigo Jones, reputed to be a great traveller, but more in vogue
at Court as a “devyser of maskes.” He had three shillings a day for
his pay, and the Prince gave him as much as thirty pounds on one
occasion (which, as Cunningham, his biographer, remarks, was equal to
one hundred and twenty pounds of our money), and sixteen pounds on
another. When the Prince died, Jones, who had a promise of the Royal
Surveyorship at the next vacancy, went to Italy, no doubt to study,
having probably saved something during his two years at St. James’s.
There are many notices of masks performed before the King’s Majesty
at Whitehall in the early years of the new dynasty. These plays took
place in the Hall, which, as we have seen, was near the Chapel in the
eastern part of the palace. It must have been small and inconvenient
for such purposes, but Inigo, who on many occasions is mentioned as
having looked after the arrangements, was fertile in resource, and
made the most of the space at his disposal. He was destined to furnish
the palace with an adequate hall, which is now the sole relic of the
old royal residence existing. It is quite worth while to quote (from
Cunningham) Jones’s account of one of these plays. It was written
by Chapman, and was acted by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple and
Lincoln’s Inn at the time of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth
with the Palsgrave, afterwards King of Bohemia. First, a procession
started from the Rolls House in Chancery Lane, and rode on horseback
along the Strand, past Charing Cross, to the Tilt-Yard at Whitehall,
where they made one turn before the King, and then dismounted. The
performance took place in the Hall. It is described as having for
scenery an artificial rock, nearly as high as the roof. The rock was
honeycombed with caves, and there were two winding stairs. The rock
turned a golden colour, and “was run quite through with veins of gold.”
On one side was a silver edifice labelled in Latin, “The Temple of
Honour” (_Honoris Fanum_). There were various allusive devices, and
after Plutus, the God of Riches, had made a speech, the rock split
in pieces with a great crack, and Capriccio stepped out to make his
speech while the broken rock vanished. Next appeared a cloud. Then a
gold mine, in which the twelve masquers were triumphantly seated. Over
the gold mine was an evening sky, and the red sun was seen to set.
There were white cliffs in the background, and from them rose a bank of
clouds, which hid everything. The mask cost Lincoln’s Inn alone more
than a thousand pounds. Of course, scenery of the kind described must
have been extremely costly, the designer having neither the appliances
nor the skilled workmen who carry out such marvellous scenic effects in
our modern theatres.
One more example of Inigo’s powers as a “devyser” may be quoted from
Cunningham. In 1611, in January, the Prince, then nearly at the end of
his short life, presented a mask at Court, that is, at Whitehall. It
was written by Ben Jonson, and called “Oberon, the Fairy Prince.” It
cost 289_l._ 8_s._ 5_d._ for mercery, 298_l._ 15_s._ 6_d._ for silk,
and 143_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._ for tailor’s work; in all, the Prince had to
pay 1092_l._ 6_s._ 10_d._ The interest of these details lies in the
fact that it was by making stage scenery that Inigo Jones was taught
how to extract the greatest amount of effect from the smallest amount
of material or means. It let him into the secret of proportion, and
the marvellous amount of influence proportion alone, without ornament
or expense, can be brought to exercise. Other men at that time also
understood stage scenery, but stage scenery was to them nothing more.
The information so gained fell on fertile soil in the mind of Inigo,
and brought forth eventually those splendid architectural designs for
which he can never be too much praised.
Inigo Jones carried the information and experience thus obtained with
him on this his second visit to Italy. He enquired why such a building
had such an effect. He made careful measurements, and compared and
combined the figures so arrived at until he wrung the secret of the old
Roman builder from the ruins. Cunningham dwells at some length on this
subject. There can be no doubt that, like Wren’s, the genius of Jones
consisted mainly in his extraordinary power of taking pains. Where
one man was content to observe the completeness and harmony of some
palace or church, Jones must find out to what cause that harmony was
due. Thus he went about making measurements. For instance, he always
carried a copy of the great work of Andrea Palladio with him wherever
he went. On the fly-leaves he constantly wrote such notes as this:—“The
length of the great courte at Windsour is 350ᶠᵒ, the breadth is 260;
this I measured by paces the 5 of December, 1690. The great court
at Theobalds is 159ᶠᵒ, the second court is 110ᶠᵒ square, the thirde
courte is 88ᶠᵒ—the 20 of June, 1621.” The book is now at Worcester
College, Oxford. One of his notes is very curious as showing his subtle
analysis of proportion. He had a great admiration for the Temple of
Jupiter at Rome, and set seriously to work to find out the reason for
its satisfactory effect. In the result he came to the conclusion that
its design was based on a series of circles, and that its proportions
were fixed by dividing the largest diameter into six parts, and then
recombining them. In June, 1639, he noted of this temple that it had
just been destroyed by the Pope’s permission for the sake of the marble
built into the walls. The Bishops of London have here ancient precedent
for their treatment of Wren’s City churches, and what Inigo would
have thought of some recent doings may be gathered from the next two
notes:—“This was the noblest thing which was in Rome in my time. So as
all the good of the ancients will be ruined ere long.”
On the 1st of October, 1615, he was put in possession of the office
of Surveyor to the King, which had been promised him before he left
England. His predecessor, Simon Basil, had died in that year, and we
cannot doubt that he immediately commenced the series of designs by
which it was intended to transform the shabby rabbit-warren, that, as
we have seen, the so-called Palace of Whitehall had become. Otherwise,
it is impossible to believe that when, in 1619, the old hall of which I
have so often spoken, was destroyed by fire, he was ready within six
months to begin the building of the Banqueting House. We must remember
that this house, which is so familiar to all Londoners, was part of a
design intended to cover a space of 1152 feet by 874. It was expected
to rival the great palaces of the continental kings. The Vatican may
be said to have been completed in 1588, and the smaller palace of
the Lateran in 1586. At that time the largest of these palaces was
the Escurial in Spain, which had been completed late in the previous
century. The front is more than 680 feet in length. Versailles had not
been begun, and neither had the largest of all, the palace of Mafra, on
the west coast of Portugal, not far from Lisbon.
Mafra is 760 feet in width, east and west. It forms at the present day
a conspicuous, but not beautiful, object from the deck of the passing
steamer, but is seldom visited, as it has nothing except its vast size
to recommend it. But the palace of Whitehall was designed by Inigo
Jones to be both larger than any other, and also so beautiful that
even the little fragment with which we are familiar has challenged the
admiration of every one who has any architectural taste for more than
two hundred and fifty years.
[Illustration: _Detail of Banqueting House_.
_From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”]
When the fire in Whitehall Palace took place, it did not require that
the King should summon Jones to repair the damage. Any work of that
kind was part of his daily round: but two interesting points should be
mentioned here. Inigo made no attempt to restore the burnt building,
nor did he undertake, as a modern architect would have done, to make a
new hall, and persuade his employers that it was exactly as Cardinal
Wolsey had left it. On the contrary, he offered the King plans of
which the Banqueting House was but a small part. Evidently he had
carefully examined the site, and found that there was ample room for
a building on the greatest possible scale. The palace as it then was,
reached from the very bank of the Thames to the roadway of Whitehall;
and, on the western side, looking into the park, there was a kind of
village of buildings attached to the palace more or less slightly.
The whole space available was about 4000 feet from north to south,
and 1300 from east to west. On the side of the park the space was
practically inexhaustible; the King could take as much as he pleased
in that direction. We shall give some description of the whole design
presently. Jones within six months was ready to begin upon his new
Banqueting House, and on the 1st of June, 1619, the first stone was
laid, the architect having submitted a model to the King. The building
was finished at the end of March, 1622, the expenditure having been
14,940_l._ 4_s._ 1_d._ It is remarkable that the account was not
finally settled until long after the death of King James, namely, in
1633. It may be well here to give the technical account of the new
building, probably written by Jones himself. It was described as 110
feet in length, and 55 in width within. The wall of the foundation is
14 feet in thickness. The first storey to the height of 16 feet was of
Oxfordshire stone, rusticated on the outside and bricked on the inside.
The Banqueting Hall was 55 feet in height to the roof, the walls
being 5 feet thick, made of Northamptonshire stone, with two orders
of columns and pilasters, the lower Ionic and the higher Composite,
with their architrave, frieze, cornice, and other ornaments of the
kind; also rails and “balustres” round about the top of the building,
all of Portland stone, with fourteen windows on each side; one great
window at the upper end, and five doors of stone with frontispieces and
cartouches; the inside brought up with brick, finished over with two
orders of columns and pilasters, part of stone and part of brick, with
their architectural frieze and cornice, with a gallery upon the two
sides, and the lower end borne upon great cartouches of timber carved,
with rails and “balustres” of timber, and the floor laid with spruce
deals; a strong timber roof covered with lead, and under it a ceiling
divided into a fret made of great cornices enriched with carving; with
painting, glazing, &c. The master-mason was the famous Nicholas Stone,
who sculptured the water-gate at the foot of Buckingham Street, and
to whom Cunningham attributes the monument of Sir Francis Vere in
Westminster Abbey. If the beautiful wreaths and the capitals of the
pilasters are still as he left them, they show exactly that kind of
reticence which is one of the most charming characteristics of really
high art. Inigo was too good an architect to leave anything like this
to a workman in whom he could not thoroughly confide, but it is evident
that what Gibbons did for Wren, Stone did for Jones.
[Illustration: _Detail of Banqueting House_.
_From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”]
It will have been perceived that the proportions of the interior were
those which all but the modern anomalous architects have found to be
the best. The room is formed of a double cube, the height being equal
to the width, and the length double the height. A gallery was supported
on engaged columns of the Ionic order. An upper order was of Corinthian
pilasters. The roof was flat and divided into nine compartments, with
very handsome mouldings between. The central compartment was oval, and
contained Rubens’s principal picture of the “Apotheosis of James I.”
This beautiful chamber was never designed for a chapel. We shall have
occasion to describe further on what Jones designed for that purpose.
It is reported that Rubens was assisted in these pictures by Jordaens.
He received three thousand pounds for them, and they have been cleaned
and restored several times at considerable expense. The figures are
colossal, the children being more than nine feet high. The Banqueting
House, though never consecrated, was made a Royal Chapel in 1724. Two
years ago it was handed over to the United Service Institution, who
have added to the south side a building which, in my opinion, forms
a serious eyesore. It is curious that with all the wealth of design
left by Inigo Jones, and ready to the hands of the Institution, they
could not find something better than that by which they have disfigured
every view of the Banqueting House. A great French architect named
Azout, who visited England about 1685, is said to have declared that
this “was the most finished of the modern buildings on this side the
Alps.” To a sincere lover of beauty in architecture, this opinion
will commend itself. It is sometimes said that the famous cartoons of
Raphael were brought to England as designs for the tapestry for the
Banqueting House. After the death of King Charles, they were sold,
and were purchased by the Spanish Ambassador, Alonso de Cardanas. This
is likely enough, as also that he sent them into Spain. Some hangings,
said to be the same, but of this there could be no proof, were brought
to London and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, in 1825.
They represented passages in the Acts of the Apostles. What became of
them we do not know. I have only seen them mentioned in Tymms’s account
of Whitehall in the second volume of Britton’s _Edifices_.
[Illustration: _Section of the Banqueting House_.
_From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”]
A curious question arises, which is not very easily answered: Where
would this building have stood in the complete palace? The visitor
entering the great court would have found three other buildings
resembling this one. Two were to be at the northern end on either side,
and two more at the southern end. Connecting them were two buildings
of much greater beauty and of large size, the whole court being no
less than 378 feet wide and 728 feet long. If, as Fergusson and others
have asserted, the Banqueting House was at the north-eastern corner,
it would be on the visitor’s left, while a chapel would have been on
his right. At the centre of the façade on the right was the entrance
to the royal apartments, which were thus arranged to be on the western
side and to look out on the park, to the south of the Treasury. On the
opposite side of the great court access was to be obtained to a noble
hall, suitable for state occasions, and, in fact, the buildings on this
side, which were to look on the river, were of a public character as
distinguished from the private apartments of the King and the royal
family. If, as seems probable, the Banqueting House stood at the
north-east corner, and if we look at the plan of Whitehall which George
Vertue engraved for the Society of Antiquaries, we find that Inigo’s
building is nearly in the middle of the palace. If we measure 728 feet
to the southward, it takes us all that distance towards Westminster,
and overwhelms in building-stone the whole of the Privy Garden and
part of the Bowling Green. All the great ranges of buildings to the
northward—the kitchen court, the wood-yard, the small beer-buttery,
and the two Scotland Yards—would have had to go. We can but conjecture
that Inigo wished to have a grand open space before his Charing Cross
façade—what the French call a “place d’armes.” On the Westminster
side there could not have been much space beyond the Bowling Green.
The park, of course, was open, and so was the river. Much thought
accordingly was spent on these fronts, and perhaps that to the Thames
shows Jones at his very best. No description can do it any kind of
justice; but it may be worth while to mention the principal points. The
centre was of three storeys, the lowest with rusticated pilasters. The
next storey has features common to much of the design, but two flanking
buildings only two storeys high are marked by a studied plainness, flat
pilasters being between the windows. At either end of the front we
find three-storey pavilions—we can hardly call them towers. They, like
the centre, have engaged columns standing well out. The most beautiful
thing on this front is a projecting portico in the centre, three arches
wide and one deep. This beautiful balcony—the most elegant little bit
in the whole design—is of the Corinthian order, two storeys high, the
lower rusticated, and on a balustrade above are the statues with which
Inigo always liked to relieve his sky-line.
[Illustration: _Apotheosis of James I._]
[Illustration: _Plan of Whitehall_.
_Engraved by_ G. VERTUE, _from a Survey made in_ 1680.]
The Westminster side had an archway “for the street of Whitehall” and
the right of way. It is open through the ground storey and an entresol,
and is flanked by two massive towers of four storeys, crowned by small
cupolas.
The Charing Cross front being to the north was kept studiously plain.
It was not until our own day that an architect put lavish decorations
on that side of a building. Wren knew as well as Jones that mass,
not ornament, is appropriate to this aspect, and we used to be able
to admire his taste in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, now
altered. The delicate proportions, the fine central archway, and the
arcade at the western end of the façade, make up a very pleasing
composition, and, viewed across a wide parade-ground, would have
produced a marvellously picturesque effect.
On the King’s side—that is, to the westward of the street—was to be a
circular court, which most architectural critics have highly praised.
It has always been known as the Persian Court. Caryatides, we may
remark, are female figures, Persians male. It consisted of a kind of
circular corridor, two storeys high. Kent gives several views with
sections of this Persian Court. Instead of pillars or pilasters were
Caryatides in the upper range, and Persians in the lower. Those in
the lower range had Tuscan capitals above their heads; those in the
upper had Composite or Corinthian capitals. Here Inigo departed from
his usual rule, and covered the wall with the most elaborate ornament.
The court looks very well in Müller’s bird’s-eye view, but not so well
in Kent’s elevations and sections. The plan shows that the circular
corridor would have formed a most convenient passage connecting the
King’s and Queen’s private apartments with those of their attendants.
Two wide square courts were to north and south.
[Illustration: _First Design by_ INIGO JONES
_for the Rebuilding of Whitehall. Waterside Front. From Müller._]
The other wing, so called, of the palace had also three courts, the
interior architecture of which we may judge of by looking at the back,
or east, side of the Banqueting House, which was built to form part
of the north-eastern court on one side, and to look on the street of
Whitehall on the other. The Chapel was to have corresponded in the
north-western corner. Jones left elaborate plans for this building, and
a section in Kent is one of the most beautiful things in a beautiful
book. It was a double cube, of course, but the roof was vaulted, or, at
least, coved. Elaborate symbolical carving and angelic figures are on
the wall. The chapel has a narrow gallery above, and the order, which
is Ionic, fluted, below, is Corinthian above. Wide-arched openings
are in the view in Kent, but he does not show us what the other, or
chancel, end was to be like. It may be worth noting that, like Wren,
Jones was very free in his use of the orders, and it is not always
possible in the prints to distinguish Corinthian from Composite; but,
of course, where the lower storey was Ionic, the upper would not be
Composite.
As to the merits of this design for a palace, critics have been very
well agreed—except, unfortunately, during the madness of the supposed
Gothic revival. Had Barry been desired to use, or adapt, Jones’s
design, or part of it, for the new Houses of Parliament, what a noble
river-front we might have had! But it is useless to pursue such
thoughts. The opportunity was lost, and, for certainly the past thirty
years, there have been very few people in England who were really able
to judge of the Houses of Parliament apart from their ornamentation.
Inigo Jones’s design would have been the better of any ornament that
could have been bestowed on it, but ornament was not necessary. Marble
columns and gilt capitals would have looked well, but plain stone would
have been enough.
[Illustration: _First Design by_ INIGO JONES
_for the Rebuilding of Whitehall. Bird’s-eye View. From Müller._]
Fergusson well remarks that the greatest error in Jones’s design for
Whitehall was the vastness of its scale. It was as far beyond the
means as beyond the wants of James I. It is not, he continues, in
a long passage from which I only take a few sentences, so much in
dimensions as in beauty of design that this proposal surpassed other
European palaces. Externally, it would have surpassed the Louvre,
Versailles, or any other building of the kind, “by the happy manner in
which the angles are accentuated, by the boldness of the centre masses
in each façade, and by the play of light and shade, and the variety
of sky-line, which is obtained without ever interfering with the
simplicity of the design or the harmony of the whole.”
Sir William Chambers, the last of the Inigo Jones and Wren succession,
speaks especially of the circular court described above. There are few
nobler thoughts, he observes, in the remains of antiquity. The effect
of the building, properly carried out, would have been surprising and
great in the highest degree. The diameter of the court was to be 210
feet, the ground floor being an open arcade or cloister.
Jones wholly misapprehended the depth of the King’s purse when he made
a design of so costly a character. Otherwise, we must conclude that he
made these beautiful drawings for his own pleasure—a kind of vision
which he knew could never be realised. That this is not a correct
statement of the case seems to be proved by what followed. Let us take
the Banqueting House as a unit. It cost, roughly speaking, 20,000_l._,
of which sum 15,000_l._ was for the mere building. Three similar
buildings in the same court would have cost at least 60,000_l._, the
chapel more than the rest. This foots up at once to 80,000_l._ The
Persian Court could not have cost less than 50,000_l._ Add to this
the two magnificent halls, and we have 80,000_l._ more. Yet we have
only accounted for two of the seven courts, and have said nothing of
the four fronts. We feel tempted to think that Inigo, like the person
mentioned by Tennyson, built his soul “a lordly pleasure-house, wherein
at ease for aye to dwell,” and that he neither intended nor expected
that King James should carry it out. That this is not the case we can
judge by the design he made for Charles I. in 1639. It was to be of
only half the dimensions, and was to be studiously plain. Whereas the
Banqueting House was one of the plainest and least costly features of
the 1619 design, it would appear in the new view as one of the most
elaborately ornamented. But he misjudged the purse of the son, as
he had misjudged that of the father. Not a stone was ever laid, and
when, a few years later, the war broke out, it was hopeless to think
that Charles, though sorely in need of a commodious and really royal
residence, could ever build, even after the new and modified design
presented to him by his Surveyor.
[Illustration: _Part of the First Design by_ INIGO JONES
_for the Rebuilding of Whitehall_, 1619.
_From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”]
[Illustration: _Part of the Second Design by_
INIGO JONES _for the Rebuilding of Whitehall_, 1639.
_From_ CAMPBELL’S “_Vitruvius Britannicus_.”]
The chief points of this design may be briefly indicated here, as the
next chapter will be filled with matters of a very different character.
The western front was to be towards the street of Whitehall; that is
to say, the palace was to be less than half the size of that designed
for James I. No archways were needed across the road. In the middle
of this façade was a fine arch, opening between the Banqueting House
toward the north and the Chapel, the corresponding building toward the
south. The wall between was very simple, only containing three rows of
square-headed windows. What would have been a beautiful and picturesque
feature were the domed towers which formed the ends of the front, each
containing a triple Venetian window. The side to the river was to have
a kind of arcade or cloister; but the Persians and the Caryatides have
disappeared, with most of the reception-rooms and public halls. This
design was brought forward again after the fire in 1698; but William
III. was too busy with the Continental war, and probably also too poor
to do anything. It is worth more than a passing glance, and includes
some of Jones’s most matured work. Campbell obtained it in 1717 from
an “ingenious gentleman,” probably an architect, and possibly the
architect whom William proposed to employ in rebuilding the palace. It
will be found in the second volume of the _Vitruvius Britannicus_.
CHAPTER III
_Accession of Charles I.—Unfavourable Omens—“The White
King”—Henrietta Maria—Her French Followers—The
Royal Pictures—Their Partial Sale—The King and Queen
at Dinner—Death of Strafford and Laud—Charles at
Westminster—Place of the Scaffold—Last Scene._
James I. died in 1625, at Theobalds, having removed thither from
Whitehall shortly before. His son Charles I. succeeded him, and for
the first years of his reign lived in the old royal apartments on the
Thames’ bank. The omens observed at the time were all against the
new King. Had his reign been prosperous we should have heard nothing
about them. First of all, it was remarked that the breath was hardly
out of King James’s body when the Knight Marshal, in proclaiming his
successor at the gate of Theobalds, made a bad blunder. He said Charles
was the late King’s rightful and _dubitable_ heir. He meant to have
said “indubitable.” When the news came to Whitehall, Bishop Laud was
in the middle of his sermon, for it was a Sunday, and broke off in
order to let Charles be proclaimed, nor did he afterwards conclude, so
that the new King and the congregation went away without a blessing.
At the coronation, in February, 1626, it was similarly noticed that
no procession through the City from the Tower to Westminster could
take place, because the plague was raging. Several still more ominous
accidents marked the day. The wing broke off the golden dove which
formed part of the regalia. The Bishop of Carlisle, Richard Senhouse,
by an inexcusable blunder, took for the text of his coronation sermon,
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,”
from the Revelation. This was much remarked upon then and afterwards,
and it is very possible that Charles alluded to the sermon in the last
words he ever uttered. But another circumstance was most remarked
upon that dark February day in the gloom of the old Abbey. For some
unexplained reason, Charles was dressed, not in purple, like the kings
before him, but in white satin. Later on this gained for Charles the
name of “The White King,” and at his burial, in February, 1649, at
Windsor, in a snow-storm, as the flakes fell upon the coffin, there
were some present who remembered the omen of twenty-three years before.
Finally, as if to crown all, that day was marked in the memories of
many by a shock of earthquake.
There is little at first to connect Charles with Whitehall, but towards
the end of the coronation year a curious scene took place there. The
King, weary of the young Bishop and his twenty-nine priests who had
come over with Henrietta Maria, decreed that they must return home.
This they were very unwilling to do. With them were also to go an
immense crew of attendants, whose vagaries disturbed both Whitehall and
St. James’s. They exceeded in numbers even the four hundred who had
formed the household of Henry, prince of Wales. Contemporary letters
are full of their arrogance and greed. With the French priests came
a crowd of English Jesuits and the like, whose position, as the law
stood then, was wholly illegal. The story that Henrietta Maria had to
do penance at the instance of her French confessor, by going barefoot
to Tyburn to glorify the memory of the Gunpowder Conspirators, rests
on very slight evidence. One thing is certain: if she went, it was at
the instance of one of the English priests. Even at the present day
few Frenchmen know anything of English history thirty years old. It
was, however, one thing to resolve, another actually to get rid of
these intruders. At first the King wrote to Buckingham, who was then
at Paris, to try to persuade the queen-mother of the necessity of the
step he contemplated, and, moreover, to ask her to “find a means to
make themselves suitors to be gone.” Whether she complied or not, the
Queen’s servants were far too well off to think of moving. Marshal
Bassompierre came over in order to arrange matters, but without avail.
His report of a stormy interview with Charles is a mass of bombast.
The King, coming to Whitehall, and entering the Queen’s apartments
to inform her that he must be obeyed—that he had put the matter
into the hands of that stern soldier, Lord Conway, who had arranged
everything—found “a number of her domestics irreverently dancing and
curvetting in her presence.” He took her by the hand, led her into an
adjoining chamber, and locked himself in with her.
[Illustration: _The Guardroom, Scotland Yard_.
_From an Etching by_ J. T. SMITH, 1805.]
Meanwhile, Conway took the French Bishop and his priests into St.
James’s Park, and informed them briefly of the King’s unquestionable
causes of complaint, and of the arrangements made for their immediate
departure. The Bishop refused to move, saying he regarded himself as an
ambassador. Conway replied that he might regard himself as he pleased,
but that if he did not depart peacefully he would be turned out by
force.
Next, Lord Conway entered Whitehall, where he firmly but politely
informed the French servants of the Queen of his errand. They were to
go first to Somerset House in the Strand, where he proposed to make
separate arrangements for each of them. The women screamed and stormed,
and after Conway had given them reasonable time, he summoned the yeomen
of the guard, who thrust them out forcibly and locked the doors after
them. They went to Somerset House, where Charles himself visited them
the same afternoon.
More than a month later they were still at Somerset House, when Lord
Conway was again called in; but, what with the obstinacy of the Bishop,
and the clamour of the women, it took four days and forty carriages to
transport them to Dover. The whole story is in Ellis’s _Letters_, and
in _D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature_, and is well summarised by
Jesse in his _Court of England under the Stuarts_, to which I may refer
a reader interested in the subject; my own concern having, of course,
been only with that part which related to Whitehall.
That Charles should have been forced into war, and, above all, a civil
war, was a great misfortune to the progress of civilisation, as shown
in the arts and sciences. Painting, music, architecture flourished
at his Court, together with poetry and science. He probably brought
more fine pictures into England than all the kings put together since
his time. Walpole says, “As there was no art which Charles did not
countenance, the chasers and embossers of plate were among the number
of the protected at Court.” Casting in bronze was a favourite art,
and Fanelli, who made the statues of Charles and his Queen at St.
John’s College, Oxford, should be named, as well as Le Sœur, who made
the King’s equestrian statue which is now at Charing Cross, but which
was originally made for Lord Portland and set up at Roehampton. The
King’s cabinet pictures were lodged at Whitehall in a chamber expressly
built for them by Inigo Jones. Undoubtedly the pictures were, of all
his works of art, those which Charles chiefly loved. He contrived to
acquire a magnificent collection, and it is evident from one or two
entries that Jones had a general commission not to let anything slip
which would prove a desirable addition to the royal gallery. Although
his taste lay chiefly in ancient pictures, Charles largely patronised
Van Dyck, and Van Dyck’s principal pupils and contemporaries, such
as Janssen, Walker, and Dobson. Moreover, he bought on occasion
lavishly. The collection of the Duke of Mantua came into the market,
and was bought whole by the agents of King Charles. He hung it on the
walls of the Banqueting House, but intended to have embellished that
building with paintings by Van Dyck, representing ceremonials of the
Order of the Garter. These would naturally have comprised portraits
of most of the great men of the day. There was also a scheme on foot
for establishing a school of art somewhat on the lines of our Royal
Academy, but more distinctly intended for teaching. This, of course,
fell through, like all other schemes of the kind, during the civil war.
Before his death the leaders of the Commonwealth endeavoured to sell
off or otherwise make away with the treasures of art which Charles had
gathered. Their animosity against pictures containing representations
of the second person of the Holy Trinity or of the Virgin Mary induced
them to order their destruction. That very few of these orders were
carried out is plain from the list preserved by Walpole. We are
anticipating the order of events if we pause here to describe the
gradual dispersal of the great royal collection. The sale went on at
intervals from 1648 to 1653, but many pieces remained in England. Some
did not even leave Whitehall, and there are now many in the National
Gallery which once belonged to the unfortunate Charles.
The best account of the sale is that written by Horace Walpole, who
used for his purpose the notes of George Vertue, the engraver. The
prices were fixed, but the highest bidder, if more was offered, was
adjudged the buyer. We cannot do better than take some items from
Walpole’s list. The cartoons of Raphael were bought in by Cromwell for
the insignificant sum of 300_l._ The other cartoons, those representing
the triumphs of Cæsar, by Andrea Mantegna, went for 1000_l._, and were
also reserved for Cromwell. They had formed part of the Mantua Gallery
already referred to. Apparently they had been removed from Whitehall to
Hampton Court, where they have ever since remained. We read of many
Madonnas; one, said to be by Raphael, fetching 800_l._; but another
Raphael, afterwards estimated much more highly, was the celebrated
“St. George and the Dragon,” sometimes called “St. Michael,” now in
the Louvre. A Venus, called “Del Pardo,” by Titian, sold for 600_l._
The “Mercury teaching Cupid, with Venus standing by,” painted by
Correggio, which is now in the National Gallery, went for 800_l._ This
had also formed an item in the great Mantua Collection. The picture had
many adventures. The Duke of Alva took it to Spain and subsequently
it became the property of the famous Prince of the Peace, in whose
collection it remained until 1808, when it fell into the hands of
Murat. It thus found its way back into Italy. Lord Castlereagh bought
it and the “Ecce Homo,” which hangs near it, from the ex-Queen of
Naples at Vienna, and in 1834 it was purchased from Lord Londonderry
for the National Gallery. Rubens’ “Peace and War” was presented to
Charles by the painter in 1630. It now only fetched 100_l._, and went
to the Doria Gallery at Genoa, whence it was sold, brought back to
England, and presented to the National Gallery in 1828 by the first
Duke of Sutherland. After the Restoration, strong efforts were made to
gather the dispersed pictures again. The States of Holland bought the
whole collection of Gerard Reyntz and presented them to Charles II. on
his restoration. The Government went to law with Van Leemput, who had
bought a great portrait of King Charles I., by Van Dyck, for 150_l._
There were various negotiations, in which Van Leemput was offered a
fair compensation. As he refused, the law was put in force, and Van
Leemput got nothing. This must not be confused with the Marlborough
Van Dyck which is now in the National Gallery. It is plain, remarks
Walpole, from a catalogue made for James II., that a large number
of pictures remained at Whitehall unsold, and it is very possible
that Oliver Cromwell intervened, when he had the power, to prevent
their sale. We must always thank his taste for having rescued the two
great sets of Mantegna’s and Raphael’s cartoons. It will be observed
that though the store was by no means exhausted, the sales ceased in
1653, the year of his inauguration as Protector. In 1660 Cromwell’s
widow tried in vain to retain possession of some pictures and other
treasures.
Before we go on to speak of the great tragedy which gave Whitehall
a world-wide celebrity, we may make a note from a passage quoted by
Mr. Law in his catalogue of the pictures at Hampton Court. One of
these pictures represents Charles I. and his Queen dining in public.
The picture is by Van Bassen, who also painted the King and Queen
of Bohemia similarly employed. Mr. Law’s account of the first-named
picture is very interesting, and relates mainly to life at Whitehall.
The King and Queen are being “served by gentlemen-in-waiting with
dishes, more of which are being brought in from the door opposite them
by attendants. In the right corner is a sideboard, and wine cooling
in brass bowls on the floor. Several dogs are running about. At the
end of the hall is a raised and recessed daïs, where spectators are
looking on through some columns. The decoration of the hall is in
the classic taste, and is very fine and elaborate. On the walls hang
several pictures.” Though this doubtless belonged to Charles I., it is
not found catalogued among his pictures; but in the catalogue of James
II. we find No. 937: “A large piece, where King Charles the First and
Queen, and the Prince are at dinner.” It is dated over the door, on the
right, 1637. It is engraved in Jesse’s _Memoirs of the Stuarts_, and is
chiefly valuable for the architecture and decoration, and as exhibiting
the manners of the time, and the prevalent custom in that age of
royalty dining in public. “There were daily at Charles I.’s Court,
86 tables, well furnished each meal; whereof the King’s table had 28
dishes; the Queen’s, 24; 4 other tables, 16 dishes each, and so on. In
all about 500 dishes each meal, with bread, beer, wine and all things
necessary. There was spent yearly in the King’s house, of gross meat,
1500 oxen; 7000 sheep, 1200 calves; 300 porkers, 400 young beefs, 6800
lambs, 300 flitches of bacon; and 26 boars. Also 140 dozen geese, 250
dozen of capons, 470 dozen of hens, 750 dozen of pullets, 1470 dozen of
chickens; for bread, 364,000 bushels of wheat; and for drink, 600 tuns
of wine and 1700 tuns of beer; together with fish and fowl, fruit and
spice, proportionately.” (_Present State of London_, 1681.)
As to Henrietta Maria at dinner, an anecdote is reported by Jesse:
“Notwithstanding her conciliating manners on her first arrival in
England, it soon became evident that the spirit of Henry IV. was not
entirely dormant in the bosom of his daughter. A singular scene, which
took place at Court, shortly after her marriage, is thus described by
an eye-witness. ‘The Queen, howsoever very little of stature, is yet
of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased, but full of spirit and
vigour, and seems of a more than ordinary resolution. With one frown,
diverse of us being at Whitehall to see her, being at dinner, and the
room somewhat over-heated with the fire and company, she drove us all
out of the chamber. I suppose none but a Queen could have cast such a
scowl.’” (See Jesse’s _Court of England under the Stuarts_, ii. 16.)
The whole sad history of the Great Rebellion has been told at full
length in divers places, and only incidentally concerns us here. We
see that Charles was shifty and wanting in straightforwardness. None
of his political opponents could trust even his promises. No one could
deny him both courage and coolness in the hour of danger. We might
dwell on what might have happened if he had saved Strafford; but the
bold policy in which that would have landed him—the policy Strafford
himself described as “thorough”—though it might have rid him of his
enemies, would have cost a tremendous price to the nation. When Charles
promised Strafford to save his life, he had scarcely power to make his
promise true. He gained nothing by Strafford’s death, and only lost one
of the two or three really able advisers he had. It is not possible to
believe that he thought the savage fanatics who clamoured for the great
minister’s blood would pause and ask no more. “Moderation” was a word
that did not exist in their vocabulary, and it is rather melancholy to
see John Milton made the mouthpiece of a series of foul scandals on a
King whose private life seems to have been absolutely pure, as Milton
must have known. But politics were up to boiling point in those days.
It was not enough to defeat an opponent in the House or at the poll;
he must be put to death. So far the traditions of the Tudor times
survived. Having stimulated their appetite by the death of Strafford,
under legal forms and with the unwilling consent of the King, they
proceeded to murder, by the travesty of a judicial process, the
highest they could find in the country. Archbishop Laud was brought
to trial, or rather to condemnation, in March, 1644, and in January,
1645, he was beheaded. There was only left to quench their thirst for
the best blood in the land a few nobles—the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl
of Holland, and others; but there was one victim, the highest of all,
and they had no notion of sparing him, though, by compassing his death,
they ruined their own cause.
[Illustration: _Lambeth and Whitehall_.
_From the Engraving by_ W. HOLLAR.]
We can easily see that a Prime Minister like Strafford had done many
things to make himself hated. We can see that Laud was also hated,
mainly for being an archbishop. Another minister or another archbishop
would be appointed in course of time, and both would be hated, and
that, too, by a great many people who were, on the whole, loyal to
the Crown, if not to the person of Charles. The death of Charles at
Whitehall changed the feelings of this whole class. They may have
groaned, as we hear they did. Some groaned because their King was
killed, even though they may have thought he deserved his fate; but
the great majority saw that all the good the popular party might have
carried out for the people was annihilated at that one blow. Murderers
are seldom moderate and beneficent reformers, though Agathocles did
contrive to succeed in both these _rôles_ in Sicily. But that was a
long time ago and a long way off, and few of the truer patriots of
1649 looked at these violent proceedings without both apprehension and
horror—apprehension lest a murder of such huge dimensions should only
mean anarchy in the Government and oppression of the people—as, in
effect, it did—and horror at the perpetration of such an irrevocable
crime without any reference to the people, either at the hustings or by
a direct vote. But it appeared as if the Parliament, though, with the
help of the army, it could kill the King, could not dissolve itself.
The soldiers, however, without the Parliament, could, and did, force
a dissolution, and in our next chapter we shall see the chief leader
of the rebels residing in the old palace of Whitehall as a sovereign
prince.
The greatest of all these changes was simply this. If we allow, as many
of the so-called Puritans did, that the King had strictly forfeited his
life, imprisonment, like that inflicted on Henry VI. for many years, or
exile, like that which James II. afterwards underwent, would have been
a sufficient penalty. France would not have gone to war to reinstate
a Protestant dynasty, as it did not half a century later go to war
to reinstate a Romanist, and the longer Charles I. lived the more
improbable the return of his son became. But that scaffold at Whitehall
altered the state of affairs. Instead of a King who certainly had not
deserved well of his people, it gave them a young and, so far as they
knew, an innocent and blameless King, whose coming they were forced, by
the violence of the dominant faction, to hope for as for the salvation
of their country.
Very little of the history of the Great Rebellion concerns Whitehall,
at least until Oliver Cromwell assumes possession, and apes royalty
in the old halls; but in Rymer’s _Fœdera_ we may observe that, from
the beginning of the reign of James I., “Whitehall” gradually and
more and more becomes the official designation of the palace. Charles
naturally was not there during a long term of years. He was marching
and counter-marching in the north, and so mismanaging all his affairs
successively that, regarded as a game, the Civil War consisted of a
series of alternate military and diplomatic defeats. The inevitable
consequence was the utter ruin of the royal cause. In January, 1649
(then reckoned 1648), the King, a prisoner, was brought from Windsor
Castle and lodged at St. James’s. On Saturday, the 20th, he walked,
strongly guarded, across the park to Whitehall. He probably entered his
old palace by the stairs near the tilt-yard, and traversed the passage
which led to his former apartments. Here was a “bridge,” or floating
pier on the water’s edge, and he was put into a boat and rowed up to
Westminster, where he was placed in Sir Robert Cotton’s house. The King
was then brought into Westminster Hall and allowed a seat. Bradshaw was
president of the Court, and there were some eighty commissioners. The
King attended the Court four times in all, sometimes going in a Sedan
chair, sometimes, as we have seen, by boat. We need not detail the
proceedings of Bradshaw and his assessors; but there is one thing which
must be noted, namely, the dignity and tact of the King’s behaviour
when brought up to receive sentence. Green, who had but little sympathy
with him, observes, quoting Marvel, “Whatever had been the faults and
follies of his life—
“‘He nothing common did nor mean
Upon that memorable scene.’”
[Illustration: _Whitehall, from the River_.
_From_ OGILVY’S _Map_, 1677.]
This fact—for it is not merely an opinion—seems to answer a question
that is often asked: Did the coolness of Charles on that last day
at Westminster Hall, and again on the scaffold at Whitehall, betray
any feeling, any certainty that he would be respited or rescued? A
moment’s thought dispels the idea. Charles was manly, dignified,
truthful before Bradshaw and before the crowds which had assembled
to see him die, because he recognised that all the finessing, the
double meanings, the secret understandings, and the thousand miserable
subterfuges which he imagined to be “statesmanship,” and with which
he had endeavoured to impose on the Scots and on the authorities of
Carisbrooke and of Hampton Court, had done nothing for him, and if
renewed now would have ensured that the fate which he foresaw had
at last overtaken him would be justified by a large section of his
contemporaries. He rose to the occasion. During those few hours at St.
James’s he saw that all he could do would be to save the throne for his
son, and he succeeded, but it was by a line of conduct wholly different
from that by which he had lost it for himself.
The place of execution was most carefully chosen. Though called “the
open street of Whitehall,” it was far from being really open. On
the south were buildings pierced by the narrow archway of Holbein’s
Gate. On the west were the walled tilt-yard and the barracks and
other buildings, ending with Wallingford House. On the north was the
comparatively open roadway to Charing Cross. On the eastern side were
long rows of gabled buildings already described, with, just south of
an archway into the old courts of the palace, the Banqueting House.
It was sworn at the trials of the Regicides, a few years later, that
Oliver Cromwell superintended the arrangements. The evidence is not
well supported, but, owing to Cromwell’s great military reputation and
to his subsequent elevation to the Protectorate, everything at this
conjuncture was attributed to him. It is not very easy to reconcile
the conflicting details of different stories. It neither adds to nor
detracts from Oliver’s guilt, neither adds to nor detracts from his
fame, whether he was at Westminster or at Whitehall on that fatal day.
The crowd coming into the narrow court from Charing Cross saw an empty
space in front of the hall. The palace and the barracks, and the
innumerable passages and lodgings, were lined with “the sour-visaged
saints” of the various Roundhead regiments—men to whom the death of
Charles would be a latter-day miracle, a sign from Heaven that their
cause was won—that the Millennium, the Fifth Monarchy, was about to
begin. Even when their own turn came such men believed, till they were
actually “dancing on air,” that they would be supernaturally rescued.
The crowd which swarmed into the street saw only a few soldiers round
the black scaffold which, at the height of the first floor, stood
in front of the hall, a little to the northward. The better sort of
spectators were on the roof of Wallingford House, not directly fronting
the scaffold, but near enough to see. Here was stationed the venerable
Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who is reported to have fainted as he saw
the King led forth. Below was a man whose account of the scene would
have been invaluable now. He only alludes to it in a note written in
October, 1660, This was Samuel Pepys; and he remarks, after witnessing
the death of General Harrison, “thus it was my chance to see the King
beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for
the blood of the King at Charing Cross.”
The Banqueting House is clearly described for us in a note, probably
by Inigo Jones, which was printed a few pages back. It answers most of
the questions raised in a long correspondence in the papers a few years
ago. The situation, the problem to be solved, was briefly this. The
scaffold was before the two windows next to Charing Cross. A hole was
broken through the wall to admit of a passage to the platform direct
from the interior. The regicides saw that there would be great danger
in taking the King out by the only door, which was at the back or
east side of the hall. They would have had to conduct him by a narrow
open-air passage northward to the palace gate. After passing through
the gate he would have had to go several yards through the crowd before
he could reach the scaffold, wherever it was placed.
But many asked, in the correspondence just mentioned, Why did they
break through the wall? Why did they not go through the window? Simply
because there was at that time no glazed window on the western front of
the hall. A great window was at the “upper end,” probably that toward
Westminster. There was, also, it is probable, a central window looking
into the palace court on the eastern side. But toward “the street of
Whitehall” there were no open windows, all being built up—as, indeed,
the lowest tier remained until a couple of years ago. It is unlikely,
though some have asserted it, that the upper tier had been opened and
glazed at this time. In any case, these upper windows, if they existed,
which is unlikely, would have been of no use to the contrivers of the
King’s death. They were too high up and inaccessible except through a
narrow balcony within the hall, where one man might have successfully
resisted hundreds. The window “at the upper end” may have given light
enough, as the hall was not built for use in daylight. It remained in
this twilight condition until George I. opened it as a chapel about
1724. Then windows on the first floor became necessary. At first, as on
the eastern side, only the centre window was opened. As late as 1761,
the third and fifth were still built up. It was probably not until
1830, when the hall was “thoroughly restored” by Sir John Soane, that
all the windows on the western side were opened, except those on the
ground floor. The ground floor windows were opened first for the United
Service Institution. It was asserted in the daily papers that they were
re-opened, but, as a fact, they never were opened before.
If we schedule these notes we may safely conclude that the lowest tier
of windows was only glazed in our own day; that those of the middle—the
Ionic storey—were still unglazed in 1649; and that in Silvestre’s view,
taken about fifty years after the great tragedy, there was not a single
glazed window on this, the western, front. All the apparent openings
were filled with masonry.
We now understand why the wall had to be broken through, and perhaps
why the middle window was chosen. The scaffold stretched from the
opening to the north-west corner of the hall, both it and the short
passage leading to it being parallel with, and possibly close against,
the face of the blank wall with its closed and built-up windows.
The reason for this arrangement is obvious. Had the passage and the
scaffold jutted out at right angles they would have reached far into
the surging and probably angry crowd, and the number and daring of the
soldiers must have been quadrupled at least. Again, had the scaffold
stretched toward the southern extremity of the Banqueting House, it
would have been close to the gallery by which Charles had entered
the palace that morning. This gallery, in fact, touched the southern
corner of the hall. The military eye of the officer who made and
carried out the arrangements must have seen dangers of rescue and other
possibilities which it was needful to guard against. Knowing all these
things and others of the kind, we see that some of the contemporary
views—they are chiefly Dutch—which show the northward position of
the scaffold are correct, and not those—chiefly English—which adorn
prayer-books printed after the Restoration, and place the scaffold
before the middle window.
When Charles was brought out, he showed that, as he himself had said
to Lord Digby, if he could not live like a King, he could die like a
gentleman. Juxon, at that time Bishop of London, had the courage to
attend him, as well as Herbert, his long-tried servant. The King’s last
devotions in his old chapel were interrupted by the impertinences of
some of the unauthorised ministers, whose nonconformist consciences
probably justified their interference. There was some unexpected delay
in the preparations. If the carpenters employed were not Roundheads or
Fifth Monarchy fanatics, it is easy to understand that they hesitated
over a task which would make them marked men among their fellows for
years to come.
[Illustration: _The Execution of Charles I. From a Print of_ 1649.]
The King had reached Whitehall at ten. It was now past noon, the
dinner-hour of that day. Some dishes were provided for his use, but
he would not eat. He had received the Holy Communion, and would eat
no more in this world. Meanwhile, he retired to the apartments he had
occupied in happier days, and gave himself up to private meditation and
prayer. As the afternoon wore on, Bishop Juxon persuaded him, lest his
strength should fail him at the last, to eat a piece of bread and drink
a glass of wine. Then he went with the soldiers to where in the western
wall of the Banqueting House the masonry had been pierced to give
access to the scaffold. Jesse, writing just after Soane’s operations in
1830, reports that he had seen traces of the opening in the brickwork.
He does not say clearly where it was, nor does it now greatly matter,
as we know where it must have been. Charles very soon reached the
scaffold and made ready for the end. Meanwhile, Juxon spoke to him of
the future life. It was far off, he said, but the passage short. The
King replied as if grateful for the good Bishop’s dry and dull remarks.
If we contrast them with the “Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!” of
another ecclesiastic, they seem all the more tame. But to the King’s
ear they brought a different echo. He remembered that he had once been
crowned. The applauding congregation had crowded round him in the old
Abbey close by; and the words of Bishop Senhouse, so distasteful then,
so truly prophetic now, came into his mind: “Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” He turned to Juxon and
answered, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.” The
Bishop, who was not at the coronation, probably wondered. Then followed
the gift of his jewel of St. George, with the still unexplained charge:
“Remember!” The block was low, it seemed too low. But after a moment’s
hesitation—to quote the words of Marvell once more—
“He laid his comely head
Down as upon a bed;”
and in a few moments more the White King had set out on his last
journey, “faithful unto death.”
CHAPTER IV
_Legendary Anecdote of Cromwell and the Body of Charles
I.—The Funeral—Cromwell at the Cockpit—Removes to
Whitehall—Great State—Illness and Death—Richard
Cromwell—Pepys on Whitehall—Lodgings in the
Palace—Evelyn—St. George’s Eve—Death of
Charles II.—William and Mary—Royal Apartments
Burnt—Conclusion._
It is very probable that, among the colonels and generals who lodged
themselves, or were lodged, in Whitehall after the death of Charles
I., Oliver Cromwell was one. Five years elapsed before he came into
residence as Lord Protector, but, whether as a military commander or as
a minister of state, there were several capacities in which he could
have claimed chambers in the great straggling congeries of separate
sets of apartments which were comprised in the palace. The amount of
his guilt in the King’s murder it is difficult to assess. He may have
been no more involved than any other member of the Regicide party,
except, of course, Bradshaw. Cromwell’s subsequent prominence made him
the subject of every rumour, every fable. When any one heard a story
against a member of Parliament or an officer of the Roundheads, if no
name was put to it, that of Cromwell was ready to hand. Jesse reports
one which is more than usually improbable:—
After the decapitation of Charles, he is said to have paid a visit to
the corpse, and, putting his finger to the neck, to have made some
remarks on the soundness of the body and the promise which it presented
of longevity. According to another account, on entering the chamber,
he found the coffin closed, and, being unable to raise the lid with
his staff, he took the sword of one Bowtell, a private soldier, who
was standing by, and opened it with the hilt. Bowtell, asking him what
government they should have now, he said the same that then was.
How an officer, even though he may have been on duty, could penetrate
to the chamber of death in such a way must remain a mystery. The body
of Charles was conveyed from the scaffold by the faithful Herbert, with
Juxon’s assistance. It was placed in one of the King’s apartments,
that nearest, we learn, to the back-stairs. Topham, private surgeon
to Fairfax, was employed to sew on the head and to embalm the body.
Permission was asked to bury it in the chapel of Henry VII., but this
the republican authorities refused, though they provided five hundred
pounds for the funeral expenses. A coffin covered with black velvet
had been ready on the scaffold. In this the body was removed to St.
James’s Palace, and placed in a leaden coffin. There it remained
more than a week, and was seen by many visitors. The execution had
taken place on Tuesday, the 30th of January. On Wednesday, the 7th
of February, a little procession was formed, consisting, besides the
hearse, of four mourning coaches, in which were Bishop Juxon, the Duke
of Richmond, Lords Hertford, Southampton and Lindsay, with Mildmay and
Herbert. At Windsor the first halt was at the Deanery, but the coffin
was afterwards removed to the King’s apartments in the Upper Ward.
Meanwhile a search was made in St. George’s Chapel for a suitable
vault, and, that which contained the remains of Henry VIII. and Jane
Seymour having been discovered, the body of King Charles was carried
by the Roundhead soldiers to the chapel, the snow falling thick on the
coffin of the White King.
Many believed that his burial really took place within the precincts of
Whitehall, but an examination of the grave of Henry VIII. in the reign
of George III. revealed the decapitated corpse of Charles I., which,
after a careful examination by Sir Henry Halford, was restored once
more to its resting-place.
Oliver Cromwell appears to have had lodgings within the precincts of
the palace, but at a great distance from the state apartments. A kind
of village clustered round the Tennis Court, a little to the southward
of the tilt-yard and the Horse Guards. A green lawn, and perhaps a
garden, existed here, and here General Monk subsequently had his
lodgings. A narrow passage or lane, known as the “Entrance to the
Cockpit,” led to them. It is as nearly as possible the modern Downing
Street.
It was almost five years after the King’s death before Cromwell was
formally installed Protector. This was in December, 1653, a few days
only before the end of the year, as we should reckon it, because
in those days 1653 went on till the 25th of March, 1654. About one
o’clock “his Highness” left the Cockpit in a coach of state. Before
him went the judges, the members of the Council, the Lord Mayor, and
the aldermen. The procession passed through King Street to Westminster
Hall. There he accepted the articles which had been prepared, and
the procession returned. In the Banqueting House a minister made an
exhortation to the new Lord Protector, the Lord Mayor sitting by, and
so the proceedings concluded.
Cromwell apparently returned for the time being to his lodgings in
the Cockpit, and the state apartments were got ready for him. He went
over to the Banqueting House to receive foreign ambassadors, which he
did seated on something very like a royal throne. The whole palace was
granted to him, and, as we have seen, it was at about this date when
the sale of the royal collection of pictures ceased.
As the spring drew on he thought it was time to move. Jesse supplies us
with the following notes on this event. The contemporary notices of the
removal of the Protector to the stately apartments of Whitehall are not
without interest:—
“April 13, 1654. This day the bed-chamber, and the rest of the lodgings
and rooms appointed for the Lord Protector in Whitehall, were prepared
for his Highness to remove from the Cockpit on the morrow.”—“His
Highness the Lord Protector, with his lady and family, this day (April
14) dined at Whitehall, whither his Highness and family are removed,
and did this night lie there, and do there continue.”—“April 15. His
Highness went this day to Hampton Court, and returned again at night.”
Hampton Court and Windsor Castle had been granted to him as well as
Whitehall. Poor Mrs. Cromwell, who seems to have been of a simple
and unostentatious character, can hardly have relished the change.
She became “Her Highness the Protectress,” and had more servants and
attendants than she can have known what to do with. The exact part of
the palace in which the new state apartments were placed is unknown. It
was probably not where the late King lived, nor, on the other hand, can
it have been far from the Banqueting House and the picture gallery. In
addition to the Lord Protector and the Lady Protectress, room had to
be found for their august family and for sons-in-law and children. It
is not uninteresting to read this contemporary notice from the _Weekly
Intelligencer_:—
“The Privy Lodgings for his Highness the Lord Protector in Whitehall
are now in readiness, as also the lodgings for his Lady Protectress;
and likewise the privy kitchen, and other kitchens, butteries and
offices; and it is conceived the whole family will be settled there
before Easter. The tables for diet prepared are these:—
“A table for his Highness.
“A table for the Protectress.
“A table for Chaplains and Strangers.
“A table for the Steward and Gentlemen.
“A table for the Gentleman.
“A table for coachmen, grooms, and other domestic servants.
“A table for Inferiors, or sub-servants.”
Nothing can be more curious than to observe the change which seems
to have come over the plain Huntingdonshire squire. He arrogated to
himself and received all the deference previously paid to a sovereign.
He allowed nothing to be omitted, and many of his contemporaries,
English as well as foreign, have noticed the magnificence and
stateliness of the ceremonious observances at his court. Jesse has
summarised a few of these notes, and it is well worth while to quote
some of his expressions. A few weeks after his elevation, we find
the Protector entertained by the citizens of London with all the
honours which, for centuries, they had been accustomed to pay to their
sovereigns on their accession. Monsieur De Bordeaux writes to De
Brienne, 23rd of February, 1654:—“On his solemn entry into the City he
was received like a king: the Mayor went before him with the sword in
his hand about him nothing but officers, who do not trouble themselves
much as to fineness of apparel; behind him the members of the Council
in State coaches, furnished by certain lords. The concourse of people
was great; wheresoever Cromwell came a great silence; the greater
part did not even move their hats. At the Guildhall was a great feast
prepared for him, and at the table sat the Mayor, the Councillors, the
Deputies of the Army, as well as Cromwell’s son and son-in-law. Towards
the Foreign Ambassadors, the Protector deports himself as a king, for
the power of kings is not greater than his.”
Again, De Bordeaux writes a few weeks afterwards:—“Some say he will
assume the title and prerogatives of a Roman emperor. In order to
strengthen his party, he deals out promises to all parties. It is
here, however, as everywhere else; no government was or is right in
the people’s eyes, and Cromwell, once their idol, is now the object of
their blame, perhaps their hate.”
There is a record of May Day in the same year, 1654. The writer is much
shocked at the licence that prevailed. There was “much sin committed by
wicked meetings, with fiddlers, drunkenness, ribaldry, and the like.”
Cromwell kept open house at Whitehall on Mondays. In 1657, the Speaker
announced to the House of Commons that the Lord Protector invited the
whole House to dinner in the Banqueting House, and he had similarly
received them the year before.
Cromwell’s last illness seized him at Hampton Court. He was removed
to Whitehall. There, while a tremendous tempest howled round the old
walls, he breathed his last on the afternoon of the 3rd of September,
1658. The concourse of fanatical preachers which disturbed his last
moments seems to have been doubled at his death, and Tillotson, the
future Archbishop, describes Richard Cromwell as seated at one side of
a table with six divines at the other. Cromwell’s funeral took place
from Somerset House, not from Whitehall, so it does not specially
concern us. Suffice it to say here, that no king or queen has ever been
interred at so much cost or so magnificently.
There is little except Tillotson’s note quoted above to connect
Richard Cromwell with Whitehall; but a meeting of discontented
officers which he permitted at Wallingford House, over the way,
precipitated his fall. It has always been asserted, apparently with
truth, that Oliver’s wife had been inclined to Royalism, and that she
pressed her husband to bring in the late King’s son. This did not,
however, prevent her from an endeavour to secure some of the royal
effects at Whitehall, when she, in her turn, received notice to quit.
Early in 1660 they were taken possession of by a Commission.
For the next few years the name of Whitehall is chiefly to be found
in the delightful pages of Pepys, and those of that sanctimonious
prig, Evelyn. Mr. Wheatly, who has made a special study of Pepys,
tells us, in his _London, Past and Present_, that the chief apartments
of Whitehall mentioned in the _Diary_ are as follows:—The Matted
Gallery, the Gallery of Henry VIII., the Boarded Gallery, the Shield
Gallery, the Stone Gallery, and the Vane Room. We may identify some
of these. The Gallery of Henry VIII. was probably that which led over
Holbein’s Gate to the park. The Shield Gallery must be that spoken
of by Manningham, about the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as
being decorated with scutcheons. There was a Guardroom, mentioned by
Lilly, the astrologer. The Adam and Eve Gallery was so called from a
picture attributed to Mabuse, now at Hampton Court. The Stone Gallery
looked on the Sundial Lawn in the Privy Garden. Pepys also mentions
the Banqueting House, where in April, 1661, he “saw the King create my
Lord Chancellor, and several others, Earls, and Mr. Crew, and several
others, Barons: the first being led up by Heralds and five old Earls to
the King, and there the patent is read, and the King puts on his vest,
and sword and coronet, and gives him the patent. And then he kisseth
the King’s hand, and rises and stands covered before the King. And the
same for the Barons, only he is led up but by three of the old Barons,
and are girt with swords before they go to the King.” In the Banqueting
House, also, the King touched “people for the King’s evil” (June
23, 1660). There was a service “At the Healing” in Books of Common
Prayer. It was omitted, I think, about 1709. There was a “balcone” in
the Shield Gallery. In this room Pepys saw the King bid farewell to
Montagu, who was going to sea. “I saw with what kindness the King did
hug my lord at his parting.” We have a topographical note in July,
1660. Pepys walked all the afternoon in Whitehall Court. We know where
the Court was, and now we learn that the Council Chamber looked into
it. “It was strange to see how all the people flocked together bare,
to see the King looking out of the Council window.” There are many
references to the Chapel. It stood near the river, in the eastern part
of the palace, and had two vestries. Inigo Jones designed a beautiful
reredos of coloured marbles for it. This reredos was saved when the
palace was burnt, and was given by Queen Anne to Westminster Abbey.
There is a view in Dart’s _Westminster Abbey_ which shows it—the only
representation of it I have met with. It was destroyed in the early
days of the so-called Gothic revival, and a piece of stucco-work by
Bernasconi took its place. That again was “restored” away in favour
of a very poverty-stricken piece of mosaic, which by some blunder was
made too small for its place, and had to be eked out with a meaningless
border. A small fragment of Inigo’s altar-piece is in the triforium.
[Illustration: _Pyramidal Dial in Privy Garden, set up in 1669_.
_From an Engraving by_ H. STEEL, _1673_.]
Pepys was much pleased (8th July, 1660) to hear the organ in Whitehall
Chapel. The old organs had been destroyed under the Commonwealth all
over the country, but now the diarist writes:—“Here I heard very good
music, the first time that ever I remember to have heard the organs and
singing men in surplices in my life.” There are many other mentions of
the chapel, and, on one occasion, Mr. Hill took him up to the King’s
Closet, a kind of gallery looking into the chapel, the King being
away—“and there we did stay all service-time, which I did think a great
honour.”
He has something to say about the works of art at Whitehall. On one
occasion he admired “a great many fine antique heads of marble that
my lord Northumberland had given the King.” Next he inspected the
pictures. They consisted (1) of those sold by the Commonwealth and
recovered; (2) those retained by Cromwell; and (3) a collection which,
having been bought by a Dutchman from Whitehall, was obtained by the
States of Holland from his widow, and presented to Charles II. on
his restoration. The gallery which, as we shall see, is mentioned by
Evelyn, appears to have been used as a kind of drawing-room in the
evening.
Pepys and his wife were present on one occasion when the Queen dined
at Whitehall. This Queen was Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles
I. He describes her as in her Presence Chamber, and says she was a
very little, plain old woman, and nothing in her presence or her garb
different from any ordinary person. He goes on: “The Princess of Orange
I had often seen before. The Princess Henrietta is very pretty, but
much below my expectation; and her dressing of herself with her hair
frizzed short up to her ears, did make her seem so much the less to
me.” A little further on he tells of being locked by accident into
“Henry the Eighth’s Gallery,” and being unable to get into the Boarded
Gallery. In 1666, he mentions a dining-room, but where it was he does
not tell us. There are many other notices of Whitehall in the _Diary_,
but the foregoing are probably the most important.
[Illustration: _Whitehall in 1724._]
When we look at Vertue’s plan already mentioned, nothing is more
striking than the number of separate residences the palace contained.
The plan purports to have been made in the reign of Charles II., and is
dated 1680. There are, however, apparently, two or three anachronisms.
At least a score of dukes and other nobles had their quarters in the
palace, including Monk, now Duke of Albemarle, who, with his awful
Duchess, has the pleasant house by the Cockpit, occupied by Cromwell
before he became Protector. It is said to have been from this house
that the Princess Anne set off on her famous ride with the Bishop of
London, to meet William of Orange, in 1688. Lady Castlemaine, the
Duke of Monmouth, the Duke of Ormonde, and Captain Cooke, of whom
Pepys sometimes speaks in disparaging terms, and who was master of the
singing boys in the King’s Chapel, or something of the kind—all these
were close to the Cockpit. In the other part of Whitehall—east, that
is, of the “street”—were apartments for the King himself, the Queen,
the Maids of Honour, for Lord Bath, Lord Peterborough, the Duke of
Richmond, a Mrs. Kirk, a Lady Sears, and a vast number of people of
whom history has recorded but little, including “Mr. Chiffinch.” There
are, besides, a number of officials, such as the Cofferer, the Queen’s
Secretary and Waiters, the Treasurer, the Chamberlain, the Doctor,
and the pages of the back-stairs. A few years later an apartment
adjoining the Stone Gallery was granted to Louise Renée de Penancoet de
Keroualle, duchess of Portsmouth, whom Evelyn describes as having “a
childish, simple, and baby face.”
Evelyn, like Pepys, makes occasional mention of Whitehall Chapel and of
the other buildings. We need not quote more than one or two. In April,
1667, he writes:—
“22nd.—Saw the sumptuous supper in the banqueting house at Whitehall,
on the eve of St. George’s Day, where were all the companions of the
Order of the Garter.
“23rd.—In the morning, his Majesty went to chapel with the Knights of
the Garter, all in their habits and robes, ushered by the heralds;
after the first service, they went in procession, the youngest first,
the Sovereign last, with the Prelate of the Order and Dean, who had
about his neck the book of the Statutes of the Order; and then the
Chancellor of the Order (old Sir Henry de Vic), who wore the purse
about his neck; then the Heralds and Garter-King-at-Arms, Clarencieux,
Black Rod. But before the Prelate and Dean of Windsor went the
gentlemen of the chapel and choristers, singing as they marched; behind
them two doctors of music in damask robes; this procession was about
the courts at Whitehall. Then, returning to their stalls and seats in
the chapel, placed under each knight’s coat-armour and titles, the
second service began. Then, the King offered at the altar, an anthem
was sung; then, the rest of the Knights offered, and lastly proceeded
to the banqueting house to a great feast. The King sat on an elevated
throne at the upper end at a table alone; the Knights at a table on
the right hand, reaching all the length of the room; over-against them
a cupboard of rich gilded plate; at the lower end, the music; on the
balusters above, wind music, trumpets, and kettle-drums. The King was
served by the lords and pensioners who brought up the dishes. About the
middle of the dinner, the Knights drank the King’s health, then the
King theirs, when the trumpets and music played and sounded, the guns
going off at the Tower. At the Banquet, came in the Queen, and stood by
the King’s left hand, but did not sit. Then was the banqueting-stuff
flung about the room profusely. In truth, the crowd was so great,
that though I stayed all the supper the day before, I now stayed no
longer than this sport began, for fear of disorder. The cheer was
extraordinary, each Knight having forty dishes to his mess, piled up
five or six high; the room hung with the richest tapestry.”
Then comes the end in a well-known and oft-quoted passage. It was in
the winter of 1685. Why Evelyn visited Whitehall that particular Sunday
we do not know. His description of the scene at Whitehall the last
Sunday but one of the life of Charles II. is not new to any one, but
must come in here: “I can never forget,” he says, “the inexpressible
luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were
total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day
se’nnight I was witness of, the King sitting and toying with his
concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, etc.; a French boy
singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of
the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a
large table, a bank of at least 2000 in gold before them; upon which
two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment. Six
days after was all in the dust.”
[Illustration: _Funeral of Queen Mary, 1694_.
_From an Engraving by_ P. PERSOY.]
James II. seems to have preferred St. James’s to Whitehall as a
residence during his brief and stormy reign. All his children were
born there, and there is an account of his Queen, Mary of Modena,
hastening from Whitehall just before the birth of the prince who became
subsequently the Old Pretender.
William and Mary were hardly settled at Whitehall when they began
to look about for a house which would suit the King’s health. At
Whitehall he was constantly ill. The low, foggy, damp situation was
not calculated for a man who suffered daily from asthma and often from
ague or low fever. One day he looked at Holland House, and we read in
the Kensington parochial accounts of the church bells being rung as
he went through the suburban village. Holland House was perhaps too
far away; but William next visited what was really the old manor house
of Neyte, in Westminster, which was then called Nottingham House. It
was purchased for him, and renamed Kensington Palace, and henceforth
neither Whitehall nor St. James’s saw much of him or of Queen Mary,
except on state occasions. We gather from Evelyn that Charles II. had
given suites of apartments to the Duchess of Portsmouth, whom the
people called Madam Carwell, and others. The Duchess of Cleveland had a
house near St. James’s, and afterwards lived in Arlington Street. Nell
Gwynne lived in Pall Mall: so that of all those “curses of the nation,”
as Evelyn calls them, only this Frenchwoman remained. If we look at
Vertue’s map, though we shall not see any mention of the lodgings
of the Duchess, we do see an entry which, as it turns out, is more
important. It points out the room of the King’s laundress.
She was a Dutchwoman at this time, and made a charcoal fire to dry a
shirt belonging to a Colonel Stanley. The situation of the room, if it
was the same as that of the laundress of King Charles, is precisely
that in which a fire, once set going, might spread in all directions,
as it was surrounded with small chambers, probably with wooden
partitions, and then again by chapels, libraries, galleries, halls, and
other inflammable buildings. The unhappy Dutchwoman set her room on
fire and perished in the flames. “The tapestry, bedding, the wainscotes
were soon in a blaze,” says Macaulay. “Before midnight, the King’s
apartments, the Queen’s apartments, the wardrobe, the treasury, the
office of the Privy Council, the office of the Secretary of State, had
been destroyed.” Evelyn mentions a second chapel as having been fitted
up for James II.: both perished. The guardroom also, and the glorious
gallery of which Evelyn speaks. The Banqueting House was saved, but
some pictures by Holbein in the Matted Gallery were burnt out, and
there was said to be considerable loss of life. We shall see presently
why so many valuable pieces of furniture and pictures were saved. Some
of them found their way across the park to St. James’s. Others went as
far out as Kensington, and are now to be found partly at Windsor and
partly at Hampton Court.
[Illustration: _Scotland Yard._]
[Illustration: _Part of the Old Palace of Whitehall_.
_From an Etching by_ J. T. SMITH, _1805_.]
[Illustration: _View in Privy Garden_.
_From an Engraving by_ J. MALCOLM, _1807_.]
The fire occurred on the night of the 4th January, 1698, and the King
returning from one of his expeditions to Holland, found his palace,
as he came up the river, in ruins. William himself acknowledges in a
letter to a foreign friend that the accident, as he calls it, affected
him less than it might another, because Whitehall was a place in which
he could not live. Several fires had occurred within a short time at
Whitehall, the most destructive being that by which in April, 1691, the
Duchess of Portsmouth was burnt out, after having had her house three
times rebuilt, a subject on which Evelyn enlarges in his usual pious
manner. The Duchess went to live in Kensington, and survived until far
on in the reign of George II. All these fires did damage, but that of
the 4th January, 1698, seems to have been almost or altogether confined
to the royal apartments. Macaulay’s account of the fire is enormously
exaggerated. The whole palace, on both sides of the “street of
Whitehall” was mainly intact still—a vast region stretching up beyond
Scotland Yard, and almost to Charing Cross. Abundant remains of the
Tudor period were still to be seen twenty years ago by those who sought
for them. I remember a pointed window in a basement as lately as 1877.
The fact is, this part of the palace was never destroyed by fire, but
perished gradually, being pulled down piecemeal, to make way for other
buildings, or falling into decay.
The first fire destroyed the Stone Gallery and the rooms between it
and the river. This Stone Gallery, as already mentioned, ran along the
east side of the Privy Garden. It was not rebuilt, and the Duchess of
Portsmouth lost her house. After the second fire the ground was leased
out, and Pembroke House was built on it. I think it is now part of the
Board of Trade. The rest of the row is now called Whitehall Gardens,
a place in which many eminent people have lived, including Sir Robert
Peel, one of the Queen’s Premiers. Beyond, further south, was the
Bowling Green. Here Montagu House now stands. We may feel sure, when we
see how little was burnt, that William and Mary, if they had liked the
place, might easily have reinstated the royal lodgings.
There is a curious print in Smith’s _Sixty-two Additional Plates_,
which seems to have puzzled some people. It represents Whitehall in a
bird’s-eye view in outline, and must have been drawn after the second
fire, as Pembroke House has been built. The original drawing was in
Crowle’s collection. Smith stumbles over it when he says, “The dotted
lines show the parts that were not penned in ‘by the artist.’” He
does not perceive that they mark places which had been burnt and had
not been rebuilt. For us this print is interesting, as showing what a
comparatively small part of the whole perished in the fire of 1698, and
it shows us also what is the true answer to a question often asked: Why
were not the pictures consumed? We can see now that they may have been
taken down, all but the Holbeins, which were painted on the walls and
ceiling of a chamber, and leisurely stored, probably in the Banqueting
House, to be removed to St. James’s and Kensington as convenient.
In the same way there was time to remove anything of value from the
chapel, including Inigo’s great marble reredos. Indeed, it may be
doubted if the chapel was burnt.
[Illustration: _Privy Garden_.
_From an Engraving by_ T. MALTON, _1795_.]
At the beginning of the last century there remained the two gates. The
queer old Gothic King Street Gate was taken down in 1723. In 1759,
Holbein’s Gate was also removed, including, of course, the stairs and
gallery by which Charles I. entered the palace on that fatal 30th
January. The terra-cotta heads of the Cæsars eventually went to Hampton
Court. They are said to have been made by an Italian named Maiano. The
brick and stone-work were removed by the Duke of Cumberland to make a
triumphal arch at Windsor. They form now a green mound near the Long
Walk. Toby Rustat’s leaden statue of James II. still stands behind
the hall, and is popularly supposed to point to the spot on which
James’s father was beheaded. We have seen that this tragedy took place
at the other side of the hall. There was an immediate talk of a new
palace on this site, but it never came to anything. The second plan of
Inigo Jones, that of 1639, is sometimes said to have been consulted
by the authorities. Colen Campbell obtained it for his _Vitruvius
Britannicus_, as he says, “from that ingenious gentleman, William
Emmet, of Bromley, in the county of Kent, Esq., from whose original
drawings the following five plates are published, whereby he has made
a most valuable present to the sons of Art.” Was Mr. Emmet, that
ingenious gentleman, who seems otherwise unknown to fame, the architect
consulted by William’s Government?
[Illustration: _Bird’s-eye View of Whitehall and St. James’s Park_.
_From_ SMITH’S _“Views of Westminster.”_]
INDEX
PAGE
Allowance, daily, 50
Anne of Cleves, 18
” Princess, 69
Banqueting House, the, 15, 16, 27, 28, 30, 32,
36, 38, 43, 48, 55, 56,
57, 58, 63, 65, 66, 69,
70, 75
Bishop Senhouse’s sermon, 60
Burgh, Hubert de, 7, 8
Cales, Little, 10
Campbell’s _Vitruvius_, 43
Castlemaine, Countess of, 69
Chambers’s remarks, 38
Chapel, the design for, 36
Chapman’s mask, 24
Charing, 5, 6
Charles I., his accession, 44
” his burial, 62
” his coronation, 44
” the ill omens, 44, 45
Charles II. at dinner, 70
” death of, 71
Chiffinch, 69
Conway, Lord, 46, 47
Cost, probable, of palace, 38
Cromwell at the Cockpit, 63
” at Whitehall, 48, 61
” his death, 65
” Thomas, 18
Edward I., 6
” VI., 18, 20
” the Confessor, 5
Elizabeth, Queen, 9, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 66
Evelyn, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74
Fergusson’s criticisms, 36
Fire of 1681, 74
” 1698, 73, 74
Gallery of Henry VIII., 66
” The Matted, 66
” ” Shield, 66
” ” Stone, 66, 69
Gate, Holbein’s, 9, 55, 66, 75
” King Street, 75
Grey, Walter, 8
Henrietta Maria, her anger, 51
” her French train, 47
Henry VIII., 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 20
Henry, prince of Wales, 24, 45
Hentzner, Paul, 9, 16
James II., his statue, 76
Jones, Inigo, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 36,
38, 43, 47, 56, 67, 68, 76
” ” design of 1639, 38, 76
” ” reredos, 67
King Street, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 22
Laud, Archbishop, 51, 52
Laurence, Abbot, of Westminster 5, 6, 7
Monk, duke of Albemarle, 69
Northumberland House, 22
Odo the Goldsmith, 7
Palaces, dimensions of, 27, 28
Pepys, 56, 66, 68, 69
Persian Court, 34, 38
Pictures at Whitehall, 47
” sale of, 48
Portsmouth, Duchess of, 72, 74
Richmond Terrace, 5, 6, 22
Rubens, Sir Peter Paul, 30
St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, 7
St. James’s Palace, 13, 20, 24, 62
St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 6, 8, 10, 13
Savoy, 7, 10
Scaffold for the King’s death, 56, 57
Spenser, Edmund, 22
Stone, Nicholas, 29, 30
Strafford, Earl of, 51, 52
Thames, 5, 6, 7, 22, 24, 27, 32
Tyburn, 5, 6, 45
Wallingford House, 23, 55, 56, 66
Ware, Roger, 7
Whitehall Chapel, 68, 69
” Court, 67
” Gardens, 15
” first so-called, 8
” street of, 36, 43, 56, 74
” White King,” the, 45, 60, 62
William and Mary, 71
Windows of Banqueting House, 57
Windsor, Lord, 9, 10
Wolsey, Thomas, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 27
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