Westminster is the City of Kings’ Houses. It contains, or has contained, five of them. Of these we have already considered one—the earliest and the most interesting. Of the four others, Buckingham Palace belongs to the present; it is, in a way, part of ourselves, since it is the House of the Sovereign. Therefore we need not dwell upon it. There remain the Houses of Whitehall, of St. James’s, and of Kensington. Of these three the two latter Palaces have apparently failed to impress the popular imagination with any sense of royal splendor or mystery. This sense belongs both to Westminster and to Whitehall; but not to St. James’s or to Kensington. It is hard to say why this is so. As regards St. James’s, the buildings are certainly not externally majestic; nor does one who walks within its courts become immediately conscious of ancient associations and the atmosphere of Court Functions. Yet nearly all the Court Functions were held there for a hundred and fifty years. Again, there are personal associations, if one looks for them, clinging to St. James’s, as there were at Whitehall; but either we do not look for them, or they do not awaken any enthusiasm. Pilgrims do not journey to the Palace to visit its haunted chambers, as they do to Holyrood or to Windsor. Queen Mary, for instance, died in the Palace—Froude has told us in what mournful manner and in which room. Does anyone ever ask or care for the room in which the most unhappy of all English Queens or Princesses breathed her last? King Charles spent his last night in this Palace. The Royal martyr has still admirers, but they do not flock to St. James’s to weep over the unspeakable sadness of that night. The elder Pretender was born here, but we have almost forgotten his life, to say nothing of his birth, in spite of the romantic warming-pan. There are stories of love and intrigue, of jealousy, of ambition and disappointment, connected with St. James’s; yet, with all this wealth of material, it is not a place of romance: at Whitehall, when we think of that vanished House, the face, the eyes, the voice of Louise de Querouaille light up the courts; the Count de Grammont fills the rooms for us with lovely ladies and gallant courtiers; outside, from her windows looking into the Park, fair Nelly greets the King with mirthful eyes and saucy tongue as he crosses from Whitehall. Well, Miss Brett was perhaps quite as beautiful as Nelly or Louise, but we do not in the least desire to read about her. The book of the French courtier treats entirely of the world, the flesh, and the devil—we read it with rapture; the Chronicles of St. James’s might be written so as to treat of exactly the same subjects—yet we turn from them. Why? Because it is impossible to throw over the Georges the luminous halo of romance. George the First, the Second, and the son of the Second, were perhaps as immoral as Charles and James; yet between them all they could not produce a single romance. The first romantic episode in the history of the house of Hanover is that simple little legend of Hannah Lightfoot. Perhaps another reason why St. James’s has never become to the imagination a successor to Whitehall and Westminster is that from the year 1714 to the year 1837 the old kind of loyalty to the sovereign no longer existed. Compare the personal loyalty displayed to Henry V., to Henry VIII., to Elizabeth, with that felt for William III., who saved the country from Catholic rule, and for George I., who carried on the Protestant succession. The country accepted these kings, not because they had any personal love for them, but because they enabled the nation to have what it wanted. The new kings did not try to become personally popular; but they were ready to lead the people in war for religious freedom, and they represented a principle. But as for personal loyalty of the ancient kind, that no longer existed.

For exactly a similar reason Kensington has never been a palace in which the world is interested. William III. chose the house for his residence; he died here. An excellent king, a most useful king, but hardly possessed of the nation’s love. George II. died here; the Duke of Sussex died here; yet there is no curiosity or enthusiasm about the place.

With Whitehall the case is quite different. It was the Palace of Henry VIII., of Elizabeth, of the Tudors and the Stuarts; the Palace of sovereigns who ruled as well as reigned, who were English and not Germans, who lived in the open light and air for all to behold; if they did not hide their vices, they openly displayed their virtues: there is more interest attaching to the Whitehall of Charles II. alone than there is to the St. James’s of all those who came after him. Since, then, we can here consider one palace only out of the remaining four, let us turn to the Palace of Whitehall.

We have seen that, of all the buildings which once clustered round the Painted Chamber and formed the

King’s House of Westminster, there now remain nothing more than a single hall much changed, a crypt much restored, a cloister, and a tower. But this is autumnal opulence compared with the Palace of Whitehall. Of that broad, rambling place, as taken over and enlarged by Henry VIII., there now remains nothing at all—not a single chamber, not a tower, not a gateway, not a fragment; everything is gone: even the disposition of its courts and lanes, generally the last thing to be lost, can no longer be traced. And of the Stuart Whitehall which succeeded there remains but one chamber, the Banqueting Hall of Inigo Jones. Perhaps no royal palace of recent times, in any country, has been so lost and forgotten as that of the Tudor Whitehall. Even the Ivory House of Ahab, or the Golden House of Nero, has not been more completely swept away. I wonder how many living men—even of the few who have seriously studied the Westminster of the past—could draw from memory a plan of Whitehall Palace, or describe in general terms its courts and buildings. Yet it was a very great house; certainly not venerable or picturesque, such as that which stood beside the Abbey: there were no sculptured fronts, no tall gables, no tourelles, no gray walls, no narrow windows, no carved cloisters; there was hardly any suggestion of a fortress; it was a modern house from the first, the house of an ecclesiastic, built, like all the older houses, in a succession of courts. One who wishes to understand Whitehall must visit Hampton, and walk about the courts of St. James’s.

The first mention of the House is in the year 1221, when it was bequeathed by Hubert de Burgh, Henry III.’s Justiciary, to the Dominicans of his foundation. The original home of the Black Friars in London was in Holborn, exactly north of Lincoln’s Inn; whence, fifty years later, they removed to the corner where the Fleet runs into the Thames, just outside the ancient City wall. Here their name still survives. The monks kept Hubert’s house till 1276, when they sold it to the Archbishop of York. For two hundred and fifty years it was the town house of the Archbishop. Wolsey, the last Archbishop who held it, greatly enlarged and beautified the house. Concerning the magnificence with which he lived here—such magnificence as surpassed that of the King his master, such splendor as no king of England, not even Richard the Second, had ever shown at his court—we are informed by his biographer, Cavendish. Wolsey’s following of eight hundred men, including ten peers of the realm and fifteen knights who were not too proud to enter the service of the Cardinal, was greater even than that of Warwick, the King-maker of the preceding century.

When one reads of the entertainments, the banquetings, the mumming, the music, the gold and silver plate, the cloth of gold, the blaze of color everywhere,—in the hangings, in the coats of arms, in the costumes, in the trappings of the horses,—we must remember that this magnificence was not in those days regarded as ostentation. So to speak of it betrays nineteenth-century prejudice. It is only in this present century that the rich man has been expected to live, to travel, to dress, to entertain, very much like the men who are not so rich. Dives now drives in a carriage little better than that of the physician who attends him. He gives dinners little better than those of the lawyer who conducts his affairs. If he lives in a great house, it is in the country, unseen. To parade and flaunt and exhibit your wealth is, as we now understand

things, bad form. In the time of Cardinal Wolsey it was not bad form: it was the right and proper use of wealth to entertain royally; it was the part of a rich man to dress splendidly, to have a troop of gentlemen and valets in his service, to exhibit tables covered with gold and silver plate, to hang the walls with beautiful and costly arras. All this was right and proper. In this way the successful man showed his success to the world; he invited the world to judge how successful he was—how rich, how powerful. A great deal of Wolsey’s authority and power depended upon this outward and visible show. Perhaps he overdid the splendor and created jealousies. Yet kings delighted in seeing the splendor of their subjects. Had the divorce business gone on smoothly, the King might have continued to rejoice in possessing a subject so great and powerful. We have ceased so long from open splendor that we find it difficult to understand it. Imagination refuses to restore the glory of York House, when its walls were hung with tapestry of many colors; when, here and there, in place of tapestry, the walls were hung with cloth of gold, cloth of silver, and cloth of tissue. Where, let me ask, can we find now a single piece of this fine cloth of gold? There were long tables spread with rich stuffs—satin, silk, velvet, damask: where can we find a table now spread with these lovely things? There were sideboards set with the most splendid gold and silver plate: where now can we see gold and silver plate—save at a Lord Mayor’s Dinner? A following of eight hundred people rode with the Cardinal: what noble in the land has such a following now? Alas! the richest and greatest lord that we can produce has nothing but a couple of varlets behind his carriage, and two or three more in his hall, with never a knight or squire or armiger among them. As for the Cardinal himself, when he went abroad he was all scarlet and red and gold and silver gilt. His saddle was of crimson velvet, his shoes were set with gleaming diamonds, his stirrups were silver gilt; before him rode two monks carrying silver crosses. Every day he entertained a multitude with a noble feast and fine wines, with the singing of men and children, and with the music of all kinds of instruments. And afterward there were masques and mummeries, and dances with noble dames and gentle damsels.

What have we to show in comparison with this magnificence? Nothing. The richest man, the most noble and the most powerful, is no more splendid than a simple gentleman. The King-maker, if he existed in the present day, would walk to his club in Pall Mall; and you would not distinguish him from the briefless barrister taking his dinner—the same dinner, mind—at the next table. The decay of magnificence accompanies the decay of rank, the decay of individual authority, and the decay of territorial power.

Wolsey fell. Great and powerful must have been that dread sovereign, that Occidental Star, that King who could overthrow by a single word so mighty a Lord as the Cardinal. And the king took over for his own use the town house of the Archbishops of York.

At this time the old Palace of Westminster was in a melancholy condition. A fire in 1512 destroyed a great part of it, including the principal offices and many of the chambers. The central part—the King’s House—however, escaped, and here the King remained. Rooms for visitors were found at Baynard’s Castle, Bridewell, and St. James’s (which was built by Henry on the site of St. James’s Hospital). Norden, who wrote in the year 1592, says that the old Palace at that time lay in ruins, but that the vaults, cellars, and walls still remaining showed how extensive had been the buildings in former times.

In converting York House into a Palace Henry added a tennis court, a cockpit, a bowling alley, and a tilt yard. He built a gateway after Holbein’s designs across the main street; and besides these, according to the Act of Parliament which annexed Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster, he “most sumptuously and curiously builded and edified many beautiful, costly, and pleasant lodgings.” He laid out the Park, and he began a collection of pictures, which Charles I. afterward enlarged. James I. designed to erect a new and very costly Palace on the spot. He intrusted the work to Inigo Jones, but the design never got beyond the Banqueting Hall. Had the Palace been completed it would have shown a front of 1152 feet in length from north to south, and 874 feet from east to west.

The plan of the Palace, as it was in the reign of Charles II., exists. It is here reproduced from the Crace collection in the British Museum. It will be seen that the place was much less in area and contained fewer buildings than the Westminster Palace. The chief reason for these diminished proportions was the separation for the first time in English history of the High Courts of Justice from the King’s Court, and the change from the army,—King Cnut’s huscarles,—which the kings had always led about with them, to a small bodyguard. The place is rambling, as we should expect from the manner in which it grew.

On the south side the Palace began with the Bowling Green; next to this was the Privy Garden, a large

piece of ground laid out formally. The front of the Palace consisted of the Banqueting Hall, the present Whitehall, the Gate and Gate Tower, neither stately nor in any way remarkable, and a row of low gabled houses almost mean in appearance. The Gate opened upon a series of three courts or quadrangles. The first and most important, called “The Court,” had on its west side the Banqueting House; on the south there was a row of offices or chambers; on the north a low covered way connected the Banqueting Hall with the other chambers; on the east side was the Great Hall or Presence Chamber, the Chapel, and the private rooms of the King and Queen. This part of the Palace contained what was left of the old York House. The second court, that into which the principal gate opened, was called the “Courtyard.” By this court was the way to the Audience and Council Chambers, the Chapel, the offices of the Palace, and the Water Gate. The Art Collections and Library were placed in the “Stone Gallery,” which ran along the east side of the Privy Garden. A third court was called Scotland Yard; in this court was the Guard House. The old custom of having everything made in the Palace that could be made, and everything stored under responsible officers, was continued at Whitehall as it had been at Westminster. Thus we find cellars, pastry house, pantry, cyder house, spicery, bakehouse, charcoal house, scalding house, chandlery, poulterers’ house, master glazier’s, confectionery—and the rest, each office with its responsible officer, and each officer with his own quarters in the Palace. One long building on the right hand of the picture was the “Small Beer Buttery.” The length shows its importance; its situation among the offices indicates for whom it was erected. Remember that the common sort of Englishman has never at any time used water as a beverage unless there was nothing else to be had; that as yet he had no tea; that his habitual beverage was small beer; and that in all great houses small beer was to be had for the asking in the intervals of work.

Beyond the Banqueting Hall and the Gate House there is a broad street, now Parliament Street, then a portion of the Palace. On the other side, where in King Henry’s reign were the Tilt Yard and the Cockpit, are the old Horse Guards and Wallingford House, afterward the Admiralty. Beyond these buildings is St. James’s Park, with fine broad roads, which remain to the present day; on the left is Rosamond’s Pond in its setting of trees, to which reference is constantly made in the literature of the seventeenth century.

At the south end of the open space stood the beautiful gate erected by Holbein. It was removed in 1759.

The appearance of the Palace from the river has been preserved in several views, in none of which do the details all agree. The one produced here is taken from Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata,” and shows the Palace in the time of James II. The general aspect of

the Palace is that of a great collection of chambers and offices built as they were required, for convenience and comfort, rather than for beauty or picturesqueness. There are no towers, cloisters, gables, or carved work. It is essentially—like St. James’s, like Hampton—a palace of brick.

The greater part of Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire in 1691 and 1697. After the deposition of James II. it ceased to be a royal residence. Then the site of the Palace was gradually built over by private persons. The Banqueting Hall was for a long time a Chapel Royal; it has now become the house for the collections of the United Service Institute. One could wish that some of the Palace had been preserved: from the marriage of Anne Boleyn to the deposition of James II. is a period which contains a great many events of interest and importance, all of which are associated with this Palace. The destruction of the ancient Faith, the dissolution of the Religious Houses, the re-birth of Classical learning, the vast development of trade, the widening of the world, the beginning of the Empire outre mer, the humbling of Spain, the successful resistance of the nation against the king, the growth of a most glorious literature, the revival of the national spirit—all these things belong to Whitehall Palace. Other memories it had, not so pleasing: the self-will of Henry, the misery of his elder daughter, the execution of Charles I., the licentious Court of Charles II.—one wishes that the place had been spared.

We have copied the plan of the Palace. It is, however, impossible to fill in the plan with the innumerable offices, private rooms, galleries, and chambers mentioned by one writer and another. We must be content to know that it was a vast nest of chambers and offices; there were hundreds of them; the courts were crowded with people; there was a common thoroughfare through the middle of the Palace from Charing Cross to Westminster; so many funerals, for instance, were conducted along this road to St. Margaret’s, that Henry VIII. constructed a new burial ground at St. Martin’s. The Palace was accessible to all; the Guard stood at the gate, but everybody was admitted as to a town; the King moved freely about the Courts, in the Mall, in the Park, sometimes unattended. The people drove their pack horses or their wagons up and down the road, and hardly noticed the swarthy-faced man who stood under the shade of a tree watching the players along the Mall. This easy and fearless familiarity vanished with the Stuarts.

Between this palace and that of Westminster there were certain important points of difference. One, the absence of the law courts, has already been noticed. At Whitehall there was a Guard House; it stood, as has been said, in Scotland Yard; no doubt the Gate was guarded; in 1641 the old “Horse Guards” was built for the Gentlemen Pensioners who formed the Guard; but there was no wall round the Palace, there was no suggestion of a fortress, there was no suggestion of a camp. Next, the Palace of Westminster was always, as had been intended by Edward the Confessor, connected with the Abbey. It had, to be sure, its own chapel—that of St. Stephen’s; but it was connected by historical associations of every kind with the Abbey. The ringing of the Abbey bells, the rolling of the organ, the chanting of the monks could be heard by day and by night above the music and the minstrelsy, the blare of trumpet and the clash of arms. At Whitehall there was a chapel, but the Abbey was out of hearing. When Henry removed his Palace from Thorney Island to York House, it was a warning or a sign that he would shortly remove himself from the domination of the Church.

As for the Court in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, we have full details. The Yeomen of the Guard, who were the bodyguard, wore red cloth roses on back and breast. When the Court moved from

Whitehall to Greenwich or to Theobalds, a vast quantity of baggage went with it. Three hundred carts were required to carry all that was wanted. What did these carts contain? Not furniture, certainly. Table-linen, gold and silver plate, wine, and stores of all kinds, tapestry, dresses, and bedding, kitchen vessels. As for furniture, there were as yet no tables such as we now use, but boards on trestles, which were put up for every meal; there were chairs and stools; there was tapestry on the walls; there were beds; there were cabinets and sideboards; except in the Presence Chamber or the Banqueting Hall there were no carpets. All who write of England at this time speak with admiration of the chambers strewn with sweet herbs, the crushing of which by their feet brought out their fragrance; the nosegays of flowers placed in the bedrooms, and the parlors trimmed with vine leaves, green boughs, and fresh herbs. It is a pleasant picture.

Of treasures such as exist at the present day in Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and other royal residences, there were few. Hentzner, a traveler, in the year 1598, found a library in Whitehall well stored with Greek, Latin, Italian, and French books; he says nothing of English books. They were all bound in red velvet, with clasps of gold and silver; some had pearls and precious stones in the bindings. He also found some pictures, including portraits of “Henry, Richard, and Edward.” There were a few other curious things: a cabinet of silver, daintily worked, in which the Queen kept letter-paper; a jewel-box set with pearls; toys and curiosities in clockwork. A few years later, in 1613, the pictures in Whitehall are enumerated. There were then portraits of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots. There were also portraits of French and Spanish kings and queens, and of the great ladies of Court. It is curious to remark that no portrait then existed in Whitehall either of Mary or of Philip. The list includes the portraits in the other palaces. There is not one of Mary.

Let us assist at a royal banquet. It is an entertainment offered to Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke de Frias, Constable of Castile, on Sunday, August 10, 1604, in which the King opened his mind without reserve as to peace with Spain. The Audience Chamber was furnished with a buffet of several stages, filled with gold and silver plate. People were freely admitted to look on, but a railing was put up on either side of the room to keep them from crowding or pressing. The table was fifteen feet long and three feet broad. The dishes were brought in by the King’s gentlemen and servants, accompanied by the Lord Chamberlain. The Earls of Pembroke and Southampton were gentlemen-ushers. The King and Queen, with Prince Henry, entered after the arrival of the Constable and his suite. After washing of hands,—the Lord Treasurer handing the bowl to the King and the Lord High Admiral to the Queen,—grace was said, and they took their seats. The King and Queen occupied thrones at the head of the table under a canopy of state on chairs of brocade, with cushions. On the Queen’s side sat the Constable on a tabouret of brocade, and on the King’s side sat the Prince. The other guests were four gentlemen forming part of the Ambassador’s suite. There was also at the table, says a historian, a large company of the principal noblemen in the realm. He enumerates twenty-one, and says there were others. How they were all placed at a table fifteen feet long and three feet broad, he does not explain. Perhaps there was a second table. A band of instruments discoursed music during the banquet. The speeches and toasts went on during the course of the dinner. First the King rose, and, taking off his crown, he drank to the health of their Spanish Majesties. Next the Constable drank to the Health of the Queen “out of the lid of a cup of agate of extraordinary beauty.” He then passed the cup to the King, asking him to drink out of it; and then to the Prince. He then directed that the cup should remain on his Majesty’s buffet. At this point the people present shouted out: “Peace! peace! peace! God save the King! God save the King!”

OLD SCOTLAND YARD.