# Hampton Court/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
HAMPTON COURT IN HISTORY
the succession: his private character: his grant of lands to his favourites: the de Witts: Glencoe: his unpopularity: his unconstitutional action.—11. His work at Hampton Court: Queen Mary and Kneller: the Beauties: other portraits: William's fondness for Hampton Court: Anne's sad memories there.—12. George I.: his plays: Defoe's account of the Palace.
I
The history of Hampton Court begins with Thomas Wolsey. The manor appears in Domesday. It changed hands in medieval times not less often than other estates. From the possession of the Prior and Knights of S. John of Jerusalem it passed by lease in 1514 to Wolsey, who chose the site for a country-seat after consultation with many learned leeches, who testified with one voice—which posterity has re-echoed—to the salubrity of the spot. After his surrender of the lease to the King, the estate became Henry's absolute property by an exchange with the Hospitallers in 1531. From that time it has been the possession of the English sovereign—even the Commonwealth recognising it as the home of the chief official of the state. By the Act 31 Henry VIII. cap. 5, the King's manor of Hampton Court was made an honour, "and ​a new chase thereto belonging." Of these matters let lawyers speak; for us, its architecture and history are the sources of its unfading interest.
"There are situated in this county," says Sir Thomas Smith in his treatise "De Republica Anglorum," speaking of Middlesex, "five royal houses, that is to say, Enfield, Hanworth, Whitehall, S. James's, and Hampton Court, which (last) hath the appearance rather of a city than of a prince's palace, being in its magnificence and its splendid buildings second to none in all Europe, built by Wolsey, added to and perfected by Henry VIII."
Such was its splendour, as the chief of all royal palaces, under Elizabeth—the great house of a great queen. How it gained this proud position can be traced in the history of England, as well as in the less abiding memorials of its own architecture.
Something have we seen of the buildings: we turn now to the history of the Palace, and the men who made and lived in it.
II
"A place where Nature's choicest gifts adorn,
Where Thames' kind streams in gentle currents turn,
The name of Hampton hath for ages borne.
Here such a palace shows great Henry's care,
As Sol ne'er views from his extended sphere,
In all his tedious stage."
Hampton Court was for a long time the usual ​dwelling-place of English rulers. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much of the national history was made there. Councils met, sovereigns cogitated, ministers worked, ambassadors intrigued within the walls. The Palace became a little town, with its foreign inmates as well as its native residents. Hour by hour messengers rode swiftly to and from London, and stately barges bore personages of dignity up the highway of the Thames to the royal court. But amid all the great names that are associated with the famous buildings as we see them now, two stand out conspicuous over the rest—Wolsey and William III. Other sovereigns and other ministers lived there, but to these it was the centre of their lives. Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., Cromwell, Charles II., Anne, the Georges—these had other dwellings that they loved as well. They made their fame in other places, or left no permanent impression here to become a part of the enduring memories of the most homely of English palaces. Episodes of the lives of other ministers and other sovereigns come to our minds as we walk through the rooms and gardens, but only of Wolsey and of William of Orange can we say that they were creators of Hampton Court, and that the place they created formed a great part of their lives.
As we go through the historical memories of the Palace, then, two names will especially rise up before us. On them we shall linger, and try to master something of their real character and of their place in English history. Other figures, more interesting in ​themselves, we may pass lightly by, but the great Cardinal and the stern, silent man who made the English Revolution may well stand for a separate and more extended judgment.
He would be a bold man who would say that
Wolsey's Conduits at Kingston and Coombe
Wolsey was the greatest man of the sixteenth century, or even the greatest Englishman. It was an age of great kings, great scholars, diplomatists, discoverers. Even in England Henry VIII. and Elizabeth left a broader mark upon the national history than did the ​Cardinal-minister whose lot it was to stand at the parting of the ways. But Wolsey's services to his country can hardly be too highly estimated. He found her weak, almost the derision of Europe. He brought her again into the politics of the world, if not as a dictator, at least as an arbiter to whose decision and whose will foreign nations listened with respect. As a churchman he might have saved England from a movement which, as a great historical teacher once wrote, came "to ruin Art and divide Society." Himself a scholar of the new learning, an Oxford student at the time when men were rediscovering the old world and delighting in the wonders which the old Greek tongue made plain to them, and in later years a patron of learned men, he was yet, though not untouched by vices which even popes yielded to, a man with a conscience, an ideal, and a rule of life. George Cavendish, worthy man, has left an immortal memorial of him; and historians of to-day have united, with the most secret documents of his diplomacy before them, to acknowledge his honesty and his wisdom. "Thus much I dare be bold to say," wrote his gentleman-usher thirty years after, when he had seen many changes, and a godly and thorough reformation to boot, "to say without displeasure to any person, or of affection, that in my judgment I never saw this realm in better order, quietness, and obedience than it was in the time of his authority and rule, nor justice better ministered with indifferency." He alone, among Englishmen of his age, had a coherent scheme, which should assign to his country a definite ​place in European politics, and to her Church a definite place among European Churches, Reformed, Catholic, certainly not Protestant, and as little Ultramontane. And more, he alone had the audacity, the foresight, and the power which might have carried out such a scheme, and have placed the English Church and State where he willed. But against the almost superhuman strength of one man, joined with the complication of Continental changes in a period of fears within and fights without, he could not stand; and with his fall passed the greatness of his master's reign. He had said that men should be careful how they put an idea into Henry's head, for no man could take it out again; and More, a servant no less loyal though less strong, had said that strange things would happen when the lion knew his strength. Both came to feel the truth of their own statements.
The pathos of Wolsey's career is irresistibly connected with Hampton Court. He sought out the place and bought it, and built it, and made all ready that it might be his home. Then his master coveted it, and he gave it up, the most generous of offerings that subject ever made to sovereign. The great house he built remains as the perpetual memorial of his greatness, and of how inextricably his career was bound up with that of his king. We can think of Wolsey at Hampton Court; yet, as we think, our thoughts pass insensibly to Henry VIII.
The Calendars of State Papers for Henry's reign contain many hundreds of references to the house ​which Wolsey built; in its earliest stage, while it was still in building, when it was inhabited by the great man who designed it, and when it was handed over to his imperious sovereign. It is hardly too much to say that more of the business of state was transacted there than in any other place during Henry's reign. There is not a great man of the age, English statesman or foreign ambassador, who was not constantly there; Chapuys and Cranmer were as familiar with its courts and passages as were More and Cromwell.
Of Wolsey's life at Hampton Court there are many accounts from friends and enemies alike. All agree that it was ostentatious and magnificent. He desired to impress on foreigners the greatness of England through the visible example of the opulence of the chief minister. Honest George Cavendish says:—"All ambassadors of foreign potentates were always despatched by his wisdom, to whom they had continual access for their despatch. His house was always resorted to like a king's house, with noblemen and gentlemen, with coming and going in and out, feasting and banquetting these ambassadors divers times, and all other right nobly."
But the best picture of Hampton Court as it was in Wolsey's day is that which the same worthy gentleman gives when ​he describes how the King himself would of a sudden, as well as when expected, visit his great subject. As he came to More's house at Chelsea, and would walk with him in the garden by the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck, so he would come to Wolsey, to whom only, as Roper says, he would use similar familiarity. It may well have been at Hampton Court that the scene occurred which Cavendish so prettily describes, and that Shakespeare (or Fletcher) used so happily.
"And when it pleased the King's Majesty, for his recreation, to repair unto the Cardinal's house, as he did divers times in the year, there wanted no preparations or goodly furniture, with viands of the finest sort that could be gotten for money or friendship. Such pleasures were then devised for the King's consolation or comfort as might be invented or imagined. Banquets were set forth, masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort and costly manner, that it was a heaven to behold. There wanted no dames, nor damsels, meet or apt to dance with the maskers, or to garnish the place for that time, with other goodly disports. Then was there all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excellent fine voices both of men and children.
Wolsey's Great Meat Kitchen
​satin paned, and caps of the same, with visors of good proportion of visnomy; their hairs and beards either of fine gold wire or of silver, or else of good black silk; having sixteen torch-bearers, beside three drums, and other persons attending them, with visors, clothed all in satin, of the same colour. And before his entering into the hall, ye shall understand, that he came by water to the water-gate, without any noise; where were laid divers chambers, and guns charged with shot, and at his landing they were shot off, which made such a rumble in the air, that it was like thunder. It made all the noblemen, gentlemen, ladies, and gentlewomen to muse what it should mean coming so suddenly, they sitting quiet at a solemn banquet; under this sort: First, ye shall perceive that the tables were set in the chamber of presence, banquet-wise covered, and my Lord Cardinal sitting under the cloth of estate, there having all his service alone; and then was there set a lady and a noble-man, or a gentleman or gentlewoman, throughout all the tables in the chamber on the one side, which were made adjoining as it were but one table. All which order and devise was done and devised by the Lord Sandes, then Lord Chamberlain to the King; and by Sir Henry Guilford, Controller of the King's Majesty's house. Then immediately after this great shot of guns, the Cardinal desired the Lord Chamberlain and the said Controller to look what it should mean, as though he knew nothing of the matter. They, ​looking out of the windows into Thames, returned again, and showed him that it seemed they were noblemen and strangers arrived at his bridge, coming as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that quoth the Cardinal, 'I shall desire you, because you can speak French, to take the pains to go into the hall there to receive them, according to their estates, and to conduct them into this chamber, where they shall see us, and all these noble personages being merry at our banquet, desiring them to sit down with us, and to take part of our fare.' Then went they incontinent down into the hall, whereas they received them with twenty new torches, and conveyed them up into the chamber, with such a number of drums and fifes as I have seldom seen together at one place and time. At their arrival into the chamber, two and two together, they went directly before the Cardinal where he sat, and saluted him very reverently; to whom the Lord Chamberlain for them said: 'Sir, forasmuch as they be strangers, and cannot speak English, they have desired me to declare unto you that they, having understanding of this your triumphant banquet, where was assembled such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no less, under the supportation of your Grace, but to repair hither to view as well their incomparable beauty, as for to accompany them at mumchance, and then after to dance with them, and to have of their acquaintance. And, sir, furthermore they require of your Grace licence to accomplish the said cause of their coming.'
​To whom the Cardinal said he was very well content they should so do. Then went the maskers, and first saluted all the dames, and then returned to the most worthiest, and there opened their great cup of gold, filled with crowns, and other pieces of gold, to whom they set certain pieces of the gold to cast at. Thus perusing all the ladies and gentlewomen, to some they lost, and of some they won. And perusing after this manner all the ladies, they returned to the Cardinal with great reverence, pouring down all the gold left in their cup, which was above two hundred crowns. 'At all,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast the dice, and won them, whereat was made great noise and joy. Then quoth the Cardinal to my Lord Chamberlain, 'I pray you,' quoth he, 'that you will show them that meseemeth there should be a noble man amongst them, who is more meet to occupy this seat and place than am I; to whom I would most gladly surrender the same, according to my duty, if I knew him.' Then spake my Lord Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal's words, and they rounding him again in the ear, the Lord Chamberlain said to my Lord Cardinal, 'Sir, they confess,' quoth he, 'that among them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace can appoint out from the rest, he is content to disclose himself, and to take and accept your place, most worthily.' With that the Cardinal, taking a good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, 'Meseemeth the gentleman with the black beard ​should be even he.' And with that he arose out of his chair, and offered the same to the same gentleman in the black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of a goodly personage, that much more resembled the King's person in that mask than any other. The King, hearing and perceiving the Cardinal so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not forbear laughing; but pulled down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashed out such a pleasant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates there assembled, perceiving the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced very much. The Cardinal eftsoons desired his Highness to take the place of estate, to whom the King answered, that he would go first and shift his apparel; and so departed, and went straight into my Lord Cardinal's bedchamber, where was a great fire prepared for him; and there new apparelled him with rich and princely garments. And in the time of the King's absence, the dishes of the banquet were clean taken up, and the table spread again with new and sweet perfumed cloths; every man sitting still until the King's Majesty, with all his maskers, came in among them again, every man new apparelled. Then the King took his seat under the cloth of estate, commanding every person to sit still, as they did before. In came a new banquet before the King's Majesty, and to all the rest throughout the tables, wherein, I suppose, were served two hundred divers dishes of wondrous costly devices and subtilties. Thus ​passed they forth the night with banqueting, dancing, and other triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant regard of the nobility there assembled.
"All this matter I have declared largely, because ye shall understand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and Sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and placed, which was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing upon the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much to have the King's pleasant and princely presence, that nothing was to him more delectable than to cheer his Sovereign Lord, to whom he owed so much obedience and loyalty; as reason required no less, all things well considered."
"This night he makes a supper, and a great one, To many lords and ladies:there will be
The beauty of this kingdom.
This Churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed, A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us.
His deeds fall everywhere."
How pleasantly the dramatist uses the description we well remember, with the "Shepherds' Dance" sounding in our ears as we think of it. He brings Anne Bullen so happily into it—
"By heaven, she is a dainty one "—
though Cavendish tells the tale of the masque as though it happened some while before the King fell before "Venus, the insatiate goddess," that we may ​take leave to follow his example, and think that it was at Hampton Court that the shepherds' pageant assembled.
Be this so or not, certainly Wolsey had not had his house built ten years before Henry coveted it. "Why was it built so fine?" later legend made the King jealously ask; and Wolsey answered that it was to show how noble a house a servant could give his lord. An apocryphal tale, doubtless, though the fact is true enough that before 1526 some foreigners were writing that the great Cardinal had made this great gift, though one was rude enough to say that it was but giving a present at the cost of the recipient—"I'll give you a pig of your own pigstye at your own great cost."
No man dared answer Henry VIII. as the Due de Montmorency is said by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to have answered Henri Quatre, when he cast covetous eyes on the magnificent mansion of Chantilly. "He offered to exchange any of his houses, with much more lands than his estate thereabouts was worth; to which the Duke of Montmorency made this wary answer: 'Sieur, la maison est à vous, mats que je suis le concierge;' which in English sounds thus, 'Sir, the house is yours, but give me leave to keep it for you.'" Yet the French tale describes what actually happened in England, for Wolsey still went on living at the Palace till his fall.
The Clock Court
​Rooms already had been assigned to the King and the Queen. The entrance to Catherine's rooms may still be seen in the east side of the Clock-court. Henry often made a stay of several days; and hardly had Wolsey been disgraced before Anne Bullen, equivocal though her position was, had her own apartments.
Wolsey himself used the Palace as his chief country retreat, and up to the summer of 1529 was constantly there, in hiding from the sweating sickness, or seeing ambassadors on matters of the first importance. In 1526 and 1527 treaties were signed there. In March 1527 long discussions took place there as to the marriage treaty by which the little Princess Mary, only ten years old, was to be given to the middle-aged roué Francis I. Henry was then living in the Palace, with Catherine and Wolsey. When the treaty, seven months later, after that magnificent progress of the Cardinal to Amiens which his usher so lovingly narrates, was finally ratified, the splendid ambassage—"eighty persons or above of the noblest gentlemen in all France," with Du Bellay and Anne de Montmorency among them—was right royally entertained by Wolsey. And here Cavendish makes it certain that the scene was Hampton Court. Henry would have them entertained with a hunt at Richmond, and then to go on to the Cardinal's house; and mighty were the preparations made to receive ​them. No other passage in the literature of the time gives so clear a description of what the Palace was like at this date, or of Wolsey's manner of entertaining in it, and even now much of the course of the festivities can be traced as we walk through the rooms and the cloisters. Cavendish speaks of what was chiefly his own business, and with a relish which time had not made him forget for the magnificence of the "honest poor man's son," whom "in his life I served." When the King's orders were given, he says, "Then was there no more to do but to make preparation of all things for this great assembly at Hampton Court the day appointed. My Lord Cardinal called before him his principal officers—steward, treasurer, controller, and the clerks of his kitchen, to whom he declared his full mind touching the entertainment of the Frenchmen at Hampton Court; whom he commanded neither to spare for any costs, expenses, or travail, to make them such a triumphant banquet, as they may not only wonder at it here, but also make a glorious report thereof in their country, to the great honour of the King and his realm. His pleasure to them known, to accomplish his commandment they sent out all the caterers, purveyors, and divers other persons to my Lord's friends, to prepare. Also they sent for all their expert cooks and cunning persons in the art of cookery, which were within London or elsewhere, that might be gotten, to beautify this noble feast.
"Then the purveyors provided, and my Lord his ​friends sent such provision, as you would wonder to have seen. The cooks wrought both night and day in subtleties and many crafty devices; where lacked
The Master Cook's Chamber in Great Kitchen
neither gold, silver, nor any costly thing meet for the purpose.
"The yeomen and grooms of the wardrobes were busied in hanging of the chambers with costly hangings, and furnished the same with beds of silk, and ​other furniture for the same in every degree. Then my Lord Cardinal sent me, being his gentleman-usher, with two other of my fellows, to foresee all things touching our rooms, to be nobly garnished accordingly. Our pains were not small nor light, but daily travelling up and down from chamber to chamber. Then wrought the joiners, carpenters, masons, painters, and all other artificers necessary to be had to glorify this noble feast. There was carriage and re-carriage of plate, stuff, and other rich implements; so that there was nothing lacking to be imagined or devised for the purpose. There were also provided 280 beds, furnished with all manner of furniture to them belonging, too long particularly here to be rehearsed. But all wise men may and do sufficiently know what belongeth to the furniture thereof, and that is sufficient at this time to be said.
"The day was come to the Frenchmen assigned, and they ready assembled before the hour of their appointment. Wherefore the officers caused them to ride to Hamworth, a place and park of the King's, within three miles, there to hunt and spend the day until night. At which time they returned again to Hampton Court, and every of them was conveyed to their several chambers, having in them great fires and wine for their comfort and relief, remaining there until the supper was ready. The chambers where they supped and banqueted were ordered in this sort. First the great waiting-chamber was hanged with rich arras, as ​all others were, one better than another, and furnished with tall yeomen to serve. There were set tables round about the chamber, banquet-wise, covered. A cupboard was there garnished with white plate, having also in the same chamber, to give the more light, four great plates of silver, set with great lights, and a great fire of wood and coals.
"The next chamber, being the chamber of presence, was hanged with very rich arras, and a sumptuous cloth of estate, furnished with many goodly gentlemen to serve. The tables were ordered in manner as the other chamber was, saving that the high table was removed beneath the cloth of estate, towards the midst of the chamber, covered. Then was there a cupboard, in length as broad as the chamber, with six desks of height, garnished with gilt plate, the nethermost desk was garnished all with gold plate, having with lights one pair of candlesticks of silver and gilt, being curiously wrought, which cost three hundred marks, and, standing upon the same, two lights of wax burning as big as torches to set it forth. This cupboard was barred round about that no man could come nigh it; for there was none of all this plate touched in the banquet, for there was sufficient besides. The plates that hung on the walls to give light were of silver and gilt, having in them great perchers of wax burning, a great fire in the chimney, and all other things necessary for the furniture of so noble a feast.
"Now was all things in a readiness and supper-time at hand. The principal officers caused the trumpets to ​blow to warn to supper. The said officers right discreetly went and conducted these noblemen from their own chambers into the chambers where they should sup. And they being there, caused them to sit down; and that done, their service came up in such abundance, both costly and full of subtleties, and with such a pleasant noise of instruments of music, that the Frenchmen, as it seemed, were wrapt into a heavenly paradise.
Exterior of Wolsey's Private Rooms
​with ladies, some on horses in complete harness, justing with long and sharp spears, with many more devices than I am able to describe. Among all, one noted there was a chess-board made with spiced plate, with men thereof to the same; and for the good proportion, and because Frenchmen be very cunning and expert in that play, my Lord Cardinal gave the same to a gentleman of France, commanding there should be made a goodly case for the preservation thereof in all haste, that he might convey the same safe into his country. Then took my Lord a bowl of gold, filled with hypocras, and putting off his cap, said, 'I drink to the King my Sovereign Lord, and next unto the King your master,' and therewith drank a good draught. And when he had done, he desired the Grand Master to pledge him cup and all, the which was well worth 500 marks; and so caused all the board to pledge these two royal princes.
"Then went the cups so merrily about, that many of the Frenchmen were fain to be led to their beds. Then rose up my Lord, and went into his privy chamber to pull off his boots and to shift him; and then went he to supper in his privy chamber, and making a very short supper, yea, rather a short repast, returned into the chamber of presence among the Frenchmen, using them so lovingly and familiarly that they could not commend him too much.
"And whilst they were in communication and other pastime, all their liveries were served to their chambers. ​Every chamber had a bason and an ewer of silver, a great livery pot of silver, and some gilt; yea, and some chambers had two livery pots of wine and beer, a bowl and a goblet, and a pot of silver to drink in both for their beer and wine; a silver candlestick both white and plain, having in it two sizes; and a staff torch of wax; a fine manchet, and a cheat loaf. Thus was every chamber furnished throughout all the house, and yet the cupboards in the two banqueting chambers not once touched. Thus when it was more than time convenient they were conveyed to their lodgings, where they rested at ease for the night. In the morning, after they had heard mass, they dined with my Lord, and so departed towards Windsor. They being then departed, my Lord returned again to London, because it was in the midst of the term."
This was the most famous entertainment that the great Cardinal ever gave at his Palace, and it was well-nigh the last. For many months he still continued to transact business of state therein and to receive royal visits. There the first steps of the divorce were anxiously debated. There Wolsey meditated in misery over the first signs of the disgrace that was coming upon him.
Great Banqueting Hall of Henry VIII.
​they were Englishmen, could not fail to pity him." So he went piteously, after weary months of sickness and hopes renewed only to be disappointed, at last to his sad end. Anne Bullen's "tablet of gold," which she took from her girdle and sent to him by the hands of Master Doctor Butts, the King's physician, "with very gentle and comfortable words and commendations," would not long deceive the fallen man; for in the lordly house he had built she sat in half-royal stateliness beside the King.
III
Henry entered upon the possession of Hampton Court as soon as he had sent Wolsey into retirement at Esher. He began building at once. His tennis-court may still be seen, though his bowling-alley is not so easily traced. His great hall was soon to rise in the Clock-court. Everywhere he was adding and decorating, and his pleasure in all things ruled the day. His patient wife still had her rooms in the Palace; but daily the mistress stood by the King's side as he shot, or wandered with him on the terrace walks by the river. It was at Hampton Court, at last, that Henry heard the news of his faithful servant's death, and it was from honest Cavendish that he heard it. The day of the burial, when it was all over, at about six in the morning, the loyal servant was sent to tell the King.
​"Then went we and prepared ourselves to horseback, being Saint Andrew's Day the Apostle, and so took our journey to the court, . . . being at Hampton Court, where the King and Council then lay, giving all our attendance upon them for our despatches. And
the next day, being Saint Nicholas' Day, I was sent for, being in Master Kingston's chamber there in the court, to come to the King, whom I found shooting at the rounds in the park, on the backside of the garden. And perceiving him occupied in shooting, thought it not good to trouble him: but leaning to a tree, attending thereunto till he had made an end of his disport. And leaning there, being in a great study, what the matter should be that his Grace should send for me, at the last the King came suddenly behind me, and clapped me upon the shoulder; and when I perceived him, I fell upon my knee. And he, calling me by name, said unto me, 'I will,' quoth he, 'make an end of my game, and then will I talk with you;' and so departed to the mark where he had shot his arrow. And when he came ​there, they were meting of the shot that lay upon the game, which was ended that shot.
"Then delivered the King his bow unto the yeoman of his bows, and went his ways inward, whom I followed; howbeit he called for Sir John Gage, then his vice-chamberlain, with whom he talked, until he came to the postern-gate of his garden, the which being open against his coming, he entered, and then was the gate shut after him, which caused me to go my ways.
"And ere ever I was passed half a pair of butt lengths the gate opened again, and Mr. Norris called me again,commanding me to come unto the King, who stood behind the door in a night-gown of russet velvet furred with sables; before whom I kneeled down, being there with him all alone the space of an hour and more, during which season he examined me of divers weighty matters, concerning my Lord Cardinal, wishing rather than twenty thousand pounds that he had lived. He examined me of the fifteen hundred pounds which Master Kingston moved to my Lord before his death. 'Sir,' said I, ' I think that I can tell your Grace partly where it is and who hath it.' 'Yea, can you?' quoth the King; 'then I pray you tell me, and you shall do me much pleasure, and it shall not be unrewarded.' 'Sir,' said I, 'if it please your Highness, after the departure of David Vincent from my Lord at Scroby, who had the custody thereof, leaving the same with my Lord in divers bags, he delivered the same unto a certain priest, safely to keep to his use.' 'Is this true?' quoth the King. 'Yea, sir,' quoth I, 'without all doubt. ​The priest shall not be able to deny it in my presence, for I was at the delivery thereof: who hath gotten divers other rich ornaments into his hands, the which be not rehearsed or registered in any of my Lord's books of inventory or other writings, whereby any man is able to charge him therewith but only I.' Well, then,' quoth the King, 'let me alone, and keep this gear secret between yourself and me, and let no man know thereof; for if I hear any more of it, then I know by whom it came out. Howbeit,' quoth he, 'three may keep counsel if two be away; and if I knew that my cap were privy of my counsel, I would cast it into the fire and burn it. And for your truth and honesty ye shall be our servant, and be in that same room with us wherein you were with your old master. Therefore go your ways unto Sir John Gage our vice-chamberlain, to whom I have spoken already to give you your oath, and to admit you our servant in the said room; and then go to my Lord Norfolk, and he shall pay you your whole year's wages, which is ten pounds, is it not so?' quoth the King. 'Yes, forsooth,' quoth I, 'and I am behind for three-quarters of a year of the same wages.' 'That is true,' quoth the King, ' therefore ye shall have your whole year's wages, with our reward, delivered you by the Duke of Norfolk:' promising me, furthermore, to be my singular good lord, whensoever occasion should serve. And thus I departed from the King."
The sordid story—Henry's utter absence of real ​sorrow for the most faithful and by far the greatest of his ministers, his greedy eagerness for the dead man's money, and the sad hours spent by the faithful Cavendish between Norfolk, Gage, and the lords of the council, cross-questioned and browbeaten about the paltry sum he had left—is truly characteristic of the meanness of the age that was yet so strong. It is a pathetic ending to Wolsey's connection with Hampton Court. The King is transforming it—it is full of his creations, and new monograms and arms on every wall and archway are teaching men to forget who first designed the great house. It is there, in the house he had coveted and at last enjoyed, that the master learns the death of the man who had made the greatness of his reign. "Thus ended the life of the right triumphal Cardinal of England, on whose soul Jesus have mercy!"
"How Henry spent his time at Hampton Court, in hunting and tilting, in playing games and making love, Mr. Ernest Law has most happily set forth in his "History of Hampton Court Palace." And Anne, too, now queen, sat working with her needle when she did not attend the King in the field. But queens were even less abiding than ministers under Henry VIII. In the summer of 1536 the arms of Queen Anne were altered at Hampton Court into the arms of Queen Jane.
In September 1537 the new Queen came there, and "took to her chamber." By this time it would seem the new buildings were finished, and on the east front, ​looking on the park and gardens, lay the Queen's lodgings, her long gallery, her private rooms, her bed-chamber. On Friday, October 12, 1537, Edward, Prince of Wales, was born. One of the fascinating riddles which still employ the leisure of the residents in the Palace, which perplex antiquaries, and set up all the bitterness of party division between Dryasdusts and Croftangrys, is to find the room in which the little prince first saw the light. Was he born in the Queen's lodgings, far from the noise of the road and by the quiet garden? or was it in the inner court,—the "fountain court," as it is now,—in those rooms, so handsome, and now so greatly changed from what they were in Henry's days, that are high up in the south-west corner, and adjoin the' rooms of Wolsey that looked upon the pond-garden? Or are they those quaint, delightful chambers, with their different levels, their beautiful windows, and the old panels here and there as Wolsey left them, that you mount to by the Clock-tower, and that hear all the clamours of the reverberating hours? Poor Queen Jane must have suffered greatly if it was among these noises that her child was born; and perhaps, too, such a beginning might have accounted for the callousness of the boy-king's unattractive character. The surmise is natural but unfounded. The clock was not set up till 1540.
​The young Prince of Wales was brought up by his good nurse Mrs. Penn—of whom more anon—in the
rooms on the north side of the chapel court, which are still one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of the Palace. Prince Edward's lodgings have furnished Mr. Railton with one of his most charming subjects. His father was not long in seeking a new happiness in a new wife; but Anne of Cleves, good, honest, "Flanders mare," did not long sojourn in Hampton Court. Catherine Howard, on the other hand, was there for some time, and it was there that her iniquities were discovered. It was in the chapel of the Palace that Henry received the charges from Cranmer. It was in the Queen's lodgings that the unhappy woman was questioned by the councillors. It was in the great ​watching-chamber that the public declaration of her guilt was made; and it was at Hampton Court that the King wedded his last wife, Catherine Parr.
We may well hurry over these last years of the brutalised King; their memories, even at Hampton Court, are not fragrant.
IV
Edward VI. had some liking for the place of his birth, though he saw strange scenes there. There was dread of an attack on him, and his uncle held him guarded and the house in a state of siege. But he got rid of his uncle as his father had got rid of his wives, and his reign left no mark on the house. Philip and Mary stayed there for some time after their wedding, and it was there that preparations were made so extensively for the heir of England who never came. There, too, Elizabeth was kept for some time in close ward.
There is one lighter aspect of the time connected with the place. Mary's favourite recreation served to decorate the Palace. Catherine of Aragon, says Lady Marion Alford, had introduced the Spanish taste in embroidery, which was then white or black silk and gold "lace stitches" on fine linen. This "Spanish work," as it was called, continued in fashion under Mary, Catherine's daughter, who was doubly Spanish in her sympathies. She had her needle constantly in her hand, and when Wolsey and Campeggio paid to her their formal visit, she came forth to them with a ​skein of red silk about her neck. Her work, as well as that of her mother, is specially commemorated by Taylor, the poet of the Thames and of the needle. "Certaine Sonnets in the Honourable Memory of Queenes and great Ladies, who have bin famous for the rare invention and practise with the Needle," form the second part of his book "The Needle's Excellency, a new boke wherein are divers admirable workes wrought with the Needle. Newly invented and cut in copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious." (London: 12th edition, 1640.) Two of the sonnets have so special a bearing on the life of the first dwellers in Hampton Court as to be worth quoting entire. They are the second and third of the series.
The second sonnet is to—
Katharine, first married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and afterward to Henry, the 8. King of England.
   I reade that in the seventh King Henrie's Raigne Fair Katharine, Daughter to the Castile King,
   Came into England with a pompous traine Of Spanish Ladies which shee thence did bring.
   She to the eight King Henry married was, And afterwards divorc'd, where vertuously
   (Although a Queene) yet she her days did passe In working with the Needle curiously, ​As in the Towre, and places more beside, Her excellent memorialls may be seene:
   Whereby the Needles prayse is dignifide By her faire Ladies, and her selve a Queene.
   Thus for her paines, here her reward is iust,
   Her workes proclaime her prayse, though she be dust.
The third runs thus:—
Mary, Queene of England, and wife to Philip, King of Spaine.
   Her Daughter Mary here the scepter swaid, And though shee were a Queene of mighty power,
   Her memory will never be decaid; Which by her workes are likewise in the Tower,
   In Windsor Castle, and in Hampton Court, In that most pompous roome call'd Paradise;
   Who e'er pleaseth thither to resort, May see some workes of her's, of wondrous price.
   Her greatness held it no dis-reputation, To take the Needle in her Royall hand:
   Which was a good example to our Nation, To banish idlenesse from out her Land:
   And thus this Queene, in wisdome thought it fit,
   The Needles worke pleased her, and she grac'd it.
The memorials of Mary Tudor's happier hours have perished, and the tyranny and gloom of her reign, with the intrigue and unscrupulousness of Edward's, have left no permanent mark on the buildings. As we wander through the gardens or the courts, we think, after Wolsey and Henry VIII., of Elizabeth.
V
Though Elizabeth is not one of those great English rulers whose lives are associated indissolubly with the Palace, she spent much of her reign there, and it was there, more than anywhere, that the scandals which the State Papers so freely hint at were most notorious. An ingenious writer endeavoured some years ago, before a body of Oxford historical students, to prove that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was really Queen Elizabeth's son. The whole scandal belongs to the history—or the legends—of Hampton Court. And so no less do the merry stories of her talks in the gardens with ambassadors, of her secret interviews with eligible suitors; and above all that charming scene, which Sir Walter Scott so much delighted in, when Andrew Melville, baited with questions by the vain woman, at last admitted that Mary, his queen, was the taller. "She is too high," quoth Elizabeth," for I am myself neither too high nor too low." At Hampton Court much of the tragedy of Mary was unravelled. Elizabeth there was most luxurious, most subtle, most intriguing: the ​atmosphere of luxury, nowhere so rich as there, seemed designed to cover the plots which were always rife. The astute woman, with her mind seemingly full of hunting, the masks and revels, music, or the gallantry of her servants, was never more astute or more relentless than in those schemes which were there elaborated in council or in secret.
The Palace was the resort of all foreign travellers. A description of the Queen's public appearance there on a Sunday in October 1584 is full of interest. It is written by Leopold von Wedel, a Pomeranian noble who visited England in 1584.
"As it was Sunday, we went to the church or chapel which is in the Palace. This chapel is well decorated with a beautiful organ, silver gilt, with large and small silver pipes. Before the Queen marched her lifeguard, all chosen men, strong and tall,
The Haunted Gallery
​hair she wore a large pearl of the size of a hazel-nut. The people standing on both sides fell on their knees, but she showed herself very gracious, and accepted with an humble mien letters of supplication from rich and poor. Her train was carried behind her by a countess, then followed twelve young ladies of noble birth, children of counts or lords, afterwards twenty-four noblemen, called jarseirer in English, with small gilt hunting-spears. There are also one hundred of these, though not all on duty at the same time, for they take it in turns. Both sides of the gallery, as far as the Queen walked through it to the chapel, were lined by the guard bearing arms. As the day was almost gone, there was no sermon, only singing and delivering prayers. Then the Queen returned as she had come, and went to her rooms, and when on her passing the people fell on their knees, she said in English, 'I thank you with all my heart.'"
We can imagine the scene as we stand now in the "Haunted Gallery," through part of which the Queen would pass into the "royal pew" looking down upon the chapel. But it is not only there that Elizabeth has left her memorials. The fine window that looks out on the privy garden at the end of the south front bears the Tudor rose crowned and the inscription "E.R. 1568."
As to the Palace itself, it is clear that she was ​characteristically content not to spend money upon it. She did not add to its external dignity. She was content to decorate it within, with all the luxury she loved—hangings and tapestries, pictures and mirrors. Its reputation was already embellished by fable. Leopold von Wedel says that Hampton Court was not only "very magnificent and beautiful," but was "considered the largest building in England, for from the distance it has the appearance of a town. The Emperor Charles and the Prince of Condé lodged here as guests of the Queen of England, both potentates finding room in it with their entire suites (that they had brought with them to England) for lodgment."
Paul Hentzner, a German lawyer, came to England in 1698 with a young Silesian nobleman whose tutor he was. His description of the Palace, and of the Queen in it, tallies exactly with that of Von Wedel. Everywhere when the Queen passed the people fell on their knees. Her procession to chapel was a state ceremonial. The people cried out "God save Queen Elizabeth," and she answered, "I thank you, my good people." Of Hampton Court itself his description is worth quoting verbatim, both for the impression it gives of the Palace as it was when Elizabeth lived in it, and for contrast with later changes. It is the best account, after Cavendish, of the Palace under the Tudors.
Group of Chimneys in Carpenter's Court
​"Hampton Court, a royal palace, magnificently built with brick by Cardinal Wolsey in ostentation of his wealth, where he enclosed five very ample courts, consisting of noble edifices in very beautiful work. Over the gate in the second area is the Queen's device, a golden rose, with this motto, 'Dieu et mon Droit:' on the inward side of this gate are the effigies of the twelve Roman emperors in plaster. The chief area is paved with square stone; in its centre is a fountain that throws up water, covered with a gilt crown, on the top of which is a statue of Justice, supported by columns of black and white marble. The chapel of this palace is most splendid, in which the Queen's closet is quite transparent, having its windows of crystal. We were led into two chambers, called the presence or chambers of audience, which shone with tapestry of gold and silver and silk of different colours. Under the canopy of state are these words embroidered in pearl, 'Vivat Henricus Octavus' Here is besides a small chapel richly hung with tapestry, where the Queen performs her devotions. In her bed-chamber the bed was covered with very costly coverlids of silk: at no great distance from this room we were shown a bed, the tester of which was worked by Anne Boleyn, and presented by her to her husband, Henry VIII. All the other rooms, being very numerous, are adorned with tapestry of gold, silver, and velvet, in some of which were woven history pieces; in others, Turkish and American dresses, all extremely natural.
"In the hall are these curiosities: ​"A very clear looking-glass, ornamented with columns and little images of alabaster; a portrait of Edward VI., brother to Queen Elizabeth; the true portrait of Lucretia; a picture of the battle of Pavia; the history of Christ's Passion, carved in mother-of-pearl; the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, who was beheaded, and her daughter; the picture of Ferdinand, Prince of Spain, and of Philip, his son; that of Henry VIII. Under it was placed the Bible curiously written upon parchment; an artificial sphere; several musical instruments; in the tapestry are represented negroes riding upon elephants. The bed in which Edward VI. is said to have been born, and where his mother, Jane Seymour, died in child-bed. In one chamber were several exceedingly rich tapestries, which are hung up when the Queen gives audience to foreign ambassadors; there were numbers of cushions ornamented with gold and silver; many counterpanes and coverlids of beds lined with ermine; in short, all the walls of the Palace shone with gold and silver. Here is, besides, a certain cabinet called Paradise, where, besides that everything glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels, so as to dazzle one's eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of glass, except the strings. Afterwards we were led into the gardens, which are most pleasant; here we saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common in England."
​The Palace which impressed Hentzner so much was constantly throughout her reign the home of Elizabeth and her court. Her own memories of semi-imprisonment there, relieved by occasional gaieties, or her two attacks of small-pox in 1562, were not bitter enough to blind her to its attractions. Many a Christmas was celebrated there with masques and revels. The accounts once at least show the significant entry "for making of new hearths in the great kitchen at Hampton Court for boyling of brawnes against Christmas." Greedy as she was of money—almost as greedy as she was of praise—Elizabeth was lavish in her expenditure on decoration and on entertainment, and year after year the most sumptuous preparations were made for Christmas festivities. Gradually even the Queen's spirits tired, and in 1598 occurred her last recorded visit to the Palace, "more privately," as her cousin Lord Hunsdon (Mary Bullen's son) wrote, "than is fitting for the time or beseeming her estate." Even then, though she was sixty-five, she is said to have been seen "dancing the Spanish Panic to a whistle and taboureur, none being with her but my Lady Warwick." Four years later, after weeks when she would attend to no business but hear only "old Canterbury tales," she passed away.
VI
James I. visited Hampton Court very early in his reign. Thither, in July 1603, he summoned those who were liable to be called on to be knighted, and his first Christmas was spent there with great pomp. The series of letters from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, happily to be found in the Record Office, which are as characteristic a record of the seventeenth-century court and political gossip, if not as charming, as Horace Walpole's are of the eighteenth century, give many details of gay doings at the Palace. "Male and female masques" were prepared for Christmas, and the great hall was turned into a theatre. Shakespeare, it seems certain, himself played before the King at this festival; and it is thought that Henry VIII. was acted in that King's own hall. Six interludes or plays were acted by Hemynge's company, four before the King and two before the young Prince Henry. The climax to the whole was the performance of the masque of the twelve goddesses on January 8, in which the Queen herself played Pallas.
This was but a beginning. Hampton Court under James I. for the rest of the reign, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, "delighted in masques and revels sometimes altogether."
If it was dramatic, the Palace was also theological. Elizabeth had been content to go to church in pomp, ​and say little of religion to her court. James I. was a theologian, and he delighted in discussion. Thus the Palace saw the famous Conference, and many another wrangle of divines. And, no less than theology, the King enjoyed hunting, and the paths by the Thames-side resounded with the horn.
The coming of Christian IV., his wife's brother, a tall, coarse-looking, bloated man, as he may be seen in Vansomer's large portrait now in the Palace, was an excuse for more revelry; and so again the visit of the Duke of Lorraine's son in 1606, with hunting, hawking, feasting, and the dancing of the "carrante" and the galliard. Otto of Hessen and Ernest of Saxe-Weimar were two other princely visitors, and they were as royally received.
Reminiscences of these days are preserved at the Palace in the curious picture of Henry, Prince of Wales, a big boy in green hunting-dress with an elaborate collar, and the young Earl of Essex; and in the portraits by Vansomer of the King in black and in his royal robes, and of Anne of Denmark, one "in her hunting habit, with a horse and a black-moor, and some five little dogs." Henry's quaint, prim figure is the most interesting of the three. He was not unlike his brother, and with a touch of his father too.
The Queen died at Hampton Court on March 2, 1619, and little of importance occurred there afterwards, though James still drank and hunted and feasted as of old.
​Charles I., during the earlier years of his reign, often lived there. There occurred the quarrel as to the Queen's French suite, and thence it was that the King finally despatched the "monsers," as he called them. There, as in his other palaces, he amassed his splendid collection of pictures. In 1639 he had over three hundred pictures there, not least the "Triumph" of Mantegna and the cartoons of Raffaelle.
The chief political figures of the reign can be seen by the State Papers to have been often with the King at Hampton. It was there that Laud, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, was made Dean of the Chapel Royal, and there that he made the protest on behalf of an orderly attendance of the King at divine service. "The most religious King not only assented, but also gave me thanks," as he writes in his diary. More than ten years later, it was he who dissuaded Charles from making a great forest between Hampton Court and Richmond, which would have dispossessed many gentle and poor folk. Buckingham, whose portrait, and that of his family, is still in the Palace, Henry Carey, Lord Falkland, whose portrait is also there, and many others, have still some memorial at Hampton Court.
One memorable work did Charles himself: he gave a new and sweet water-supply by the "New" or "Longford" river. Political troubles found the King in his Thames-side Palace. It was there that the Grand Remonstrance was presented, and his leaving the Palace in December 1641 for Whitehall was a ​decisive step in the march of events which brought on the Rebellion.
One last visit together did Charles and his "Mary" pay to Hampton Court. It was when the attempt to seize the Five Members had failed, and the Queen herself was in danger, and Charles fled that he might put her, at least, in safety. Charles left London for the last time till he should enter it a prisoner. A hurried ride to Hampton found nothing prepared. King and Queen and their three eldest children had to sleep together in one room. Worse hardships had they all before life was over. A few months later and the royal standard was set up at Nottingham. When Charles left Hampton Court he did not see it again for six years.
It was on August 24, 1647, that Charles, after all the escapes of the war, and the negotiations and intrigues that followed it, after Newcastle and Holmby House, came to Hampton Court, having his state as King for the last time. Sir Thomas Herbert, his faithful groom of the chamber, in the touching memoirs which he called Carolina Threnodia, has given a short account of these three months, which is well worth giving in its own simplicity.
"About the middle of August the King removed to Hampton Court, a most large and imperial house, built by that pompous prelate Cardinal Wolsey, in ostentation of his great wealth, and enlarged by King ​Henry the Eighth, so as it became a royal Palace: which for beauty and grandeur is exceeded by no structure in Europe; whether it be the Escurial in Spain, which appears so magnificent by having the addition of a fair monastery dedicated to S. Laurence, wherein live a hundred and fifty monks of the Order of S. Jerome, and hath also a college, schools, and outhouses built by King Philip II., who married our Queen Mary.
"Hampton Court was then made ready for the court, and by Mr. Kinersley, yeoman of the wardrobe, prepared with what was needful for the court. And a court it now appeared to be; for there was a revival of what lustre it had formerly, his Majesty then having the nobility about him, his chaplains to perform their duty, the house amply furnished, and his services in the accustomed form and state; every one of his servants permitted to attend in their respective places; nothing then appeared of discrimination; intercourse was free between King and Parliament, and the army seemed to endeavour a right understanding amongst different parties; also some treaties passed upon proposals presented his Majesty from the Parliament, which gave hopes of an accommodation. The Commissioners also continued their attendance about the King, and those gentlemen that waited at Holmby were by his Majesty's appointment kept in their offices and places; the general likewise and other military commanders were much at court, and had frequent conference with ​the King in the park and other where attending him; no offence at any time passed amongst the soldiers of either party; there was an amnesty by consent, pleasing, as was thought, to all parties.
"His Majesty, during these halcyon days, intimated to the Earl of Northumberland that he desired to see his children, who, at that time, were under the government of that nobleman, and then in his house at Sion, which is about seven miles from Hampton Court, in the way to London. The relater, amongst other the King's servants, followed his Majesty to Sion, which is denominated from the Holy Mount so named near Hierusalem. . . . Here the King met the young Duke of Gloucester and Princess Elizabeth, who, so soon as they saw their royal father, upon their knees they begged his blesssing, who heartily gave it, and was overjoyed to see them so well in health and so honourably regarded. The Earl welcomed the King with a very noble treat, and his followers had their tables richly furnished, by his behaviour expressing extraordinary contentment to see the King and his children together, after such various chances and so long a separation. Night drawing on, his Majesty returned to Hampton Court.
"The fairest day is seldom without a cloud; for at this time some active and malevolent persons of the army, disguised under the specious name of Agitators, being two selected out of every regiment to meet and debate the concerns of the army, met frequently at Putney and places thereabouts; who, ​of their own accord, without either authority (as some aver) or countenance of the general, upon fair pretences had frequent consultations; but intermeddling with affairs of State, were not unlike those that like to fish in troubled waters, and being men very popular in the army, had thence their impulse and approbation. What the results of councils amongst them was, who was, or by what spirits agitated? Yet about this time the House was rent and the Speaker went unto the army, which soon after marched through London to the Tower, to which was committed the Lord Mayor and other dissenting citizens; in which confusion the King proposing a treaty, the Agitators, in opposition, published a book intituled "An Agreement of the People which concerned his Majesty's Person and Safety." But thence (as was well known) several things in it designed were rumoured, which fomented parties and created jealousies and fears, and by some artifice insinuated,and a representation by letter gave his Majesty an occasion of going from Hampton Court in the night, and in disguise, with two grooms of his Majesty's bed-chamber, Mr. Asburnham and Mr. Legge, as also Sir John Berkeley, and about the middle of November, an. 1647, passed through a private door into the park, where no sentinel was, and at Thames Ditton crossed the river, to the amazement of the Commissioners, who had not the least fore-knowledge of the King's fears or intentions, and no less to the astonishment of the Lords and others, his Majesty's ​servants, the Commissioners especially, who in their ignorance expressed great trouble of mind, until the Lord Montague opened a letter his Majesty left upon the table, directed to him, giving a hint of what induced him to hasten thence in such a manner, being for self-preservation, yet kindly acknowledging their civility to his person all along, with his good acceptance of their loyalty and service."
So Herbert tells what is really one of the most dramatic episodes of the Rebellion tragedy. When Charles was removed to Hampton Court from Oatlands, the Independents were in a majority in the House, and the power of the army, if "thinly veiled," was practically supreme. The King, however he might seem to have his state, was a prisoner, "and one more stage had been passed on the road which was to end in the enslavement of Parliament." When Charles was at Hampton Court the head-quarters of the army were at Putney, a convenient point from which both King and Parliament might be controlled. Cromwell, it would appear, was hoping to restore firm government through an alliance with Charles. The position was complicated by the attitude of the Scots Commissioners, who won from Parliament the acceptance of the Presbyterian scheme produced at Newcastle. Parliament was in confusion, and Cromwell and Ireton were urging matters to a crisis, ​submitting to Charles the Independent propositions—the "Heads of the Proposals," which the King readily declared were more to his mind than the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years, which the Newcastle propositions involved.
Excited debates in Parliament revealed only the very different views held by many small parties, with the determination of the majority to put before the King the most unpalatable demands—the command of the militia, the abolition of episcopacy, and the sale of the bishops' lands. Cromwell was playing a difficult part, which not even his closest friends could understand. Was he, as was said of him at one time, "led by the nose by a couple of vain and covetous earthworms," or planning the absolute surrender of all power into his own hands through the proved failure of every other body and person to carry on the government, or merely, with an honest and true heart, trying to find the best way out of very pressing difficulties, by a union between the army and the King? He wrote himself of the circumstances in his usual style: "Though it may be for the present a cloud may lie over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity and innocence from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the public good." However this may be, the negotiations came to nothing. Cromwell may ​have been satisfied that there was a possibility of their success: Charles certainly was not. He looked rather for help to a Scottish reaction, which came, but too late.
In different directions schemes sprang up. The Agitators set out one for the recognition of a fundamental law, and the residence of all power "originally and essentially in the whole body of the people of this nation." The "Case of the Army" was utterly rejected by Cromwell, and a long discussion did little to reconcile divisions in the army which seemed to be essential. The "Agreement of the People" proposed a new form of government, which should be based upon religious freedom and amnesty. Cromwell's party rejected it and planned a new constitution. The Scots Commissioners urged Charles to escape while there was yet time, and leave the army to fight out a solution with the constitution-mongers. But Charles, who had all along stood out on one question, the maintenance of the Church in her essential attributes, and to some extent at least in her property, would not break his word. He was on parole, and "till he had freed himself of that, he would rather die than break his faith." But when he refused to renew his promise, the guards were reinforced; officers clamoured for the sacrifice of the King; Cromwell spoke darkly, and kept up long discussions and a hesitating tone, which it is difficult to believe could have had any other object than to let matters develop themselves.
​At last Charles prepared to escape, for his life seemed to be in danger. Royalist writers have no doubt that there were designs to murder him, and behind all the plots, in the imagination of some, lay the subtle intrigues of the man who was to rise to a sole and uncontrolled despotism by the murder of the King.
   "Twining subtle fear with hope,
   He wove a net of such a scope,
   That Charles himself might trace
   To Carisbrook's narrow case,
   That thence the royal actor borne,
   The tragic scaffold might adorn."
This theory may be rejected by modern criticism, but none the less behind all the intrigues of this tragic episode in the history of Hampton Court does the figure of Cromwell stand as the one which should have the arbitration of the King's fate.
These months at Hampton Court, the last Charles ever spent there, have a peculiar and pathetic interest. He was able to have two of his children with him in his loneliness: he was able to live with some of the state and dignity of a king: he was able to take pleasure in his own pictures and his own gardens, and in the faithful service of honest men; and he could say, as he too seldom could have said in times past, that "he would rather die than break his faith."
The rooms Charles occupied at the time were probably those that looked out on the private garden. He lived in public in his state apartments, and it was only the opportunity of a Thursday evening, when it ​was his custom to write for some hours in private for the foreign mail, which gave him the chance to escape unperceived.
For the rest, Hampton Court saw no more of the alarums and excursions of the time till 1648, when a skirmish occurred just outside its bounds, in which "the beautiful Francis Villiers," second son to my Lord Duke of Buckingham, King Charles's and King James's dead friend, met his death. In the months that followed the execution of Charles, orders were given for the valuation of all the property at Hampton Court, surveys were made of the boundaries of the Honour, inventories taken of the contents of the Palace. The collection of pictures, which had been Charles's choicest treasure, was sold. Some of the pictures, notably the cartoons of Raffaelle and the "Triumph" of Mantegna, were preserved. The house itself remained, it would seem, uninhabited, till, when Cromwell was made Protector, it was given for his use. He had already refused it when the House of Commons in September 1653 had instructed Anthony Ashley Cooper—
   "The loudest bagpipe in the squeaking train"—
to offer it him in exchange for New Hall, Essex (the residence in old days of the Colts, from whom came Sir Thomas More's first wife), which he had bought when the Duke of Buckingham's property was sequestrated. Now, as a State residence,he entered gladly upon its possession, and between it and ​Whitehall nearly all the rest of his life was passed. It was in the great hall that he would sit for hours listening to Milton as he played the organ which had been brought from Magdalen College at Oxford. It was in the chapel that his daughter Mary was married to Lord Falconberg. It was in this house that his daughter Elizabeth died. It was there that his own fatal sickness began. After his death it was again nearly being sold. Just before the Restoration it was voted to Monk, and Charles II., when he resumed the crown-lands, made him Ranger and Steward of the Honour.
VII
With Charles's return the Palace became once more one of the most constant resorts of the English monarchy. Charles himself was fond of the place. It was there he spent his honeymoon with Catherine of Braganza. But he had other and much more congenial reasons for being happy there. Whatever his reasons, he made Hampton Court as much a home as any of his predecessors.
Fish Court
He was a keen tennis-player, as was his brother James. Pepys notes the servility with which their playing was applauded, and how well it deserved praise: "but such open flattery is beastly."
However much Charles might be flattered, no one thought it necessary to flatter his poor wife in her strange Portuguese garments, or the wonderful women she brought with her, six ladies, "old, ugly, and proud," said the severe Lord Chancellor Clarendon, "and incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and a liberal education;" but even they were not above suspicion, from the miserable Pepys at any rate, of the gravest scandal. Catherine soon found that she stood second in the King's affections to Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, and the long struggle which ended in the Queen's being compelled to receive the mistress as one of her bedchamber women is one of the saddest stories of the dissolute court. Yet for some while the King and Queen lived happily together, and idly; for even Pepys censured their carelessness. "This I take to be as bad a juncture as ever Iobserved. The King and Queen minding their pleasures at Hampton Court: all people discontented."
The return of the King's mother, Henrietta Maria, ​to the place of sad memories, made no change in the gaiety of their life at Hampton Court; and the months they had spent there were concluded by a "triumphal progress" down the Thames to Whitehall on the 23rd of August 1662. From that time Charles did not live there constantly, but he often paid visits, and the royal apartments were always ready for him in case of a sudden appearance. During the plague the court remained there for a month, during which Pepys in his diary records a visit.
Charles's court here kept up something of the old stateliness, with all the modern frivolity. Many of the officers of the household were persons who had suffered during the war and the proscription, and were full of memories of the old court ceremonial, and of the antique fashions that the young Cavaliers mocked at. Tobie Rustat, famous as a benefactor to the Universities,—not least to S. John's College, Oxford, where the "loyal lectures" he founded for Royal Oak day and the martyrdom of King Charles were continued till the present century—was under-housekeeper of the Palace, as well as yeoman of the robes to the King. Old Cavaliers, men who had fought at Edgehill and at Naseby, still came, though so often in vain, to make obeisance to the sovereign and to wonder at the new Frenchified manners, and the sad laxity of morals which my Lord Chancellor Clarendon, himself the martyred King's adviser twenty years ago, so much deplored.
VIII
At Hampton Court, less than anywhere else, could men forget that it was the Reign of Beauty. Did not Anne Hyde, the said Chancellor's daughter, herself no great beauty but a kindly, pretty-looking lady, who had risen, in spite of her father's perhaps not too serious protests, to be Duchess of York, with a good prospect of sitting on the throne, commission Peter Lely to paint the ladies whose charms were the admiration of the court, and whose stories, too often, were the gossip of every scandal-monger?
Charming pictures indeed they are, graceful, rich, and with an evidently truthful record of the ladies' manners, as well as their habits as they lived. Lely,—"a mighty proud man," Pepys says, "and full of talk,"—is par excellence a court-painter. He had none of the sincerity of Vandyke's best work. He had art, but no pathos; and his art was always artificial, but it was artificial with a freshness and an "air" which Kneller never attained. Rich though he became, even in his own day his merits were not always overrated. A story tells that once a critic said, "How is it that you have so great a reputation when you know, as well as I do, that you are no painter?" "Maybe," the artist answered, "but I am the best you have got." And it is so with the portraits he has left us.
The best memorial of "good King Charles's golden ​days" is to be found to-day at Hampton Court. In what is called "William the Third's State Bedroom"—a room decorated under Wren's own direction, with Verrio's painful ceiling of Endymion in the arms of Morpheus admired by chaste Dian, plumply patronising,
Bedroom of William III.
and with the beautiful carvings of Grinling Gibbons—are the "Beauties."
There is a certain sameness about them all—"the rich curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes." They are all of a type, in tone, arrangement, and accessories; but they, unlike Kneller's Beauties, are undeniably beautiful. M. Chesneau says somewhat sharply that Lely "unscrupulously flattered his models, and soon became the favourite painter among the ​ladies." If he flattered, he knew how to do it, and the result is always pleasing. "He could not have worked at more lovely subjects," says Count Anthony Hamilton; "each portrait is a masterpiece."
All the ladies—there were eleven originally, of whom nine or ten now remain here—are painted in three-quarter length, in "trailing fringes and embroidery through meadows and purling streams." Others, such as Mrs. Knott, a pretty, quiet lady, and Mrs. Lawson, by Wissing, and the most lovely little girl—whom we may not now call the Princess Mary, but who is identified as Miss Jane Kelleway, a charming child-Diana—do not belong to the series. There is also the portrait of Anne Hyde herself, who ordered the painter to immortalise the Beauties—a comely, pleasant lady enough, "her whole body sitting in state in a chair in white satin," as Pepys says; and there is the lovely Lady Bellasys (if she it be) as S. Catherine, devout and rapt, who is not one of the Beauties. The Duchess of Portsmouth—Louise de Querouaille—by Varelst, much spoilt by repainting, is a pretty picture of the "childish,simple baby face."
The "Beauties" themselves were removed from Windsor Castle, during the reign of George III., to Hampton Court, where they fitly remain.
The first is Miss Stewart, the Britannia of the coinage. Bow in hand, dressed in a light yellow satin, with face, arms, and head uncovered (like all the Beauties), she is a charming picture. She long resisted all the ​attractions of the King, and her marriage with the Duke of Richmond was not an unhappy end to her career. Near her is Henrietta Boyle, who married Clarendon's second son, Lawrence, Earl of Rochester, a pretty lady in blue, who plucks a rose. "Une longue habitude avoit tellement attendri ses regards, que ses yeux s'ouvroient qu'à la Chinoise," say the "Mémoires de Grammont"; and so indeed she looks, sleepily self-content. Mrs. Middleton, "indeed a very beautiful lady" in the estimation of Mr. Pepys, young and charming, is a person of a different character, of whom enough, if not too much, is said by Count Hamilton. Miss Frances Brooke, a damsel brought by her uncle to court to captivate the King, is in a light grey, and her unhappy sister, Elizabeth, mistress of James, Duke of York, is in yellow. The Countess of Falmouth—so Mr. Law identifies the portrait which was formerly called the Countess of Ossory—is "sweet and tender" in blue. Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland, afterwards the wife of the great Duke of Montagu, is a lady whose character is higher than that of most of the Beauties, but not so high as that of Anne, Countess of Sunderland, wife of the arch-intriguer who was equally well with James II. and William III. Lady Sunderland was a woman of religion, whom less scrupulous folk sneered at. She kept, it was said (and by good Princess Anne too), "such a clatter with her devotion, that it really turns one's stomach."
But the most famous of the pictures are those of the Duchess of Cleveland and Miss Hamilton. The ​latter is the most beautiful of all the ladies, and is painted with all Lely's art. The picture shows the height of his powers and their limits. A lovely girl, with a fair face and light brown hair, dressed in dark red relieved by some gold brocade, she assumes, like Lady Bellasys, the favourite character of S. Catherine, but an air "grand and gracious," rather than of devotion, is expressed in her portrait. It is a beautiful picture of a beautiful subject, but of higher qualities of character and mind the painter can give no idea.
Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, a woman of abandoned character and malignant influence, whose name is connected with almost every scandal of English society for fifty years, makes a striking picture. She is beautiful, proud, resentful, impressive: the painter, having to choose from many bad qualities, has chosen her pride for the dominant note of his composition; and he has made of her perhaps the most striking of all his portraits. It is original, speaking, personal. We can see as she lived the woman who ruled Charles Stewart when she was young, and raised John Churchill when she was old; and Mr. Pepys calls it "a most blessed picture."
IX
The Beauties preserve for ever the luxury, and fashion, and recklessness of Charles's court. His own portrait is nowhere in the collection: only in a curious ​picture of his "taking leave of the Dutch States," not bought till 1845, is there his figure. It is a pity that he is not here, either in the form of his pretty boyhood, or the hardened, sinister countenance of middle life. But he is not likely to be forgotten at Hampton Court.
Charles left the marks of his influence on the gardens, the tennis-court, and, less happily, on the house. Verrio, whose "sprawling saints" Pope scorns in well-known lines, was first employed by him to decorate the ceilings in the manner which had become fashionable from France. Horace Walpole tells a story of the artist's extravagance, which has been often quoted, but will bear telling again. It illustrates the reckless freedom of the time, and the bonhomie which made the King attractive in spite of his selfishness and his cold-hearted license. "Once at Hampton Court, when Verrio had but lately received an advance of he found the King in such a circle that he could not approach him. He called out, 'Sire, I desire the favour of speaking to your Majesty.' 'Well, Verrio,' said the King, 'what is your request?' 'Money, sire, money; I am so short of cash, that I am not able to pay my workmen; and your Majesty and I have learnt by experience that pedlars and painters cannot give long credit.' The King smiled, and said he had but lately ordered him £1000 'Yes, sir,' replied he, 'but that was soon paid away, and I have no gold left.' 'At that rate,' said the King, 'you would spend more than I do to maintain my family.' 'True,' answered Verrio, 'but ​does your Majesty keep an open table as I do?'" The retort, it would seem, was appropriate, since when Pepys went to the Palace to speak to the Duke of York about Admiralty business and the occupation of Tangier, he was not invited anywhere to dinner, "though a stranger, which did also trouble me."
While Pepys and Grammont, and the writers of diaries and memoirs, leave an impression of reckless profusion and license in the Hampton Court of the Restoration age, John Evelyn preserves in his diary the quieter aspect of the place and of the age. The gardens, the park, and the improvements Charles was making everywhere were noted by him in his careful, sober way, critically yet with appreciation.
James II., it would seem, never lived at Hampton Court. This may have made the Palace so constant a resort of his daughter, who never, it would seem, forgave herself the treachery with which she supplanted him.
X
​The "Deliverer," William of Orange, was for so long, andinsome quarters still is, so popular a hero, that any consideration of his greatness may claim interest. That he was placed in a position which caused him to represent a great epoch of advance in the progress of the English nation—that the important movement with which his name is associated, if not "glorious," was certainly beneficial, no one will deny. Whether circumstances have not given him a place in English histories and a fame among English writers of which he himself was hardly worthy, may be a question at least worthy of discussion. Nor is the discussion irrelevant here. Hampton Court is so thoroughly, as we see it now, the great English memorial of the Dutch king, that we may well pause to consider, as we walk through its rooms, or as we stop before the bombastic allegory of Kneller in the "Presence Chamber," what manner of man he was. What did his greatness consist in? Was he a hero?
It is difficult to disentangle the man from his surroundings. The greatness of the men with whom he was brought into contact, the importance of the crisis in European history in which he mingled, would themselves invest with interest the biography of a prince opposed to Louis XIV. But it would be difficult for the most bigoted Jacobite to have denied that William of Orange had much more than this borrowed greatness. The romantic history of his early life, the difficulties with which he had to contend, the position to which he raised himself, and the actual success ​which he achieved, prove without doubt his personal power. But he does not, however, take rank with the greatest even in his own age. Not only was he inferior on the whole to his great rival, and not to be compared as a general to men like Turenne, but it may well be doubted whether he was equal as a diplomatist to Louvois or Marlborough. Still his achievements were such as any statesman might be proud of.
If he did not initiate, he gave force and cohesion to the European resistance to Louis XIV. He held the reins of the Grand Alliance. He alone of the allied sovereigns could always be depended upon in that cause. His energy never tired, his hatred never softened. No difficulties daunted, and no scruples thwarted him. If, after a careful survey of the resources of France at this time, any is of opinion that under favourable circumstances Louis XIV. would have been able to found an enduring power, to William III. he may justly attribute the failure of the French schemes. When this has been said, much of the real greatness of William has been explained. We recognise to the full his energetic self-devotion to a great cause. His success was due to no merit as a general. No striking instance of bravery has ever been recorded of him. But this is not needed in a general. He was a wretched organiser; his armies were never provided with the equipments which were even then recognised as necessary. He never showed the slightest sign of real strategic ability. The only battle which he ever won was that of the Boyne, where his forces out​numbered those of his opponents by thirteen thousand. Nor did he succeed in attaching his soldiers to him, any more than the people whom he ruled.
As a diplomatist, however, he had eminent qualifications. He was certainly aided in a much greater degree than is usually recognised during his earlier years by his connection with Charles II., and in later life by his unique position as King of England. But his diplomacy was skilful, because he gave constant and minute attention to the combinations of States, and devoted himself in general and in particular to his object with unscrupulous assiduity. A few instances of his talents may well be noticed. His method of fomenting the Scottish disturbances in 1672 was admirable; equally skilful was his rise to the post of Stadtholder (though we may not credit him with all the Machiavelianism that Dumas suggests in the Tulipe Noire). The whole conduct of the English Revolution, which Mr. Lecky so strongly reprobates, would have done credit to Talleyrand. William's perfect acquiescence in James's accession; his cordial sympathy with the King during the earlier years of the reign; his well-balanced demeanour towards Monmouth; his joyful congratulations at the birth of the Prince of Wales (whose existence he so soon repudiated); the disguise of his correspondence with the English leaders of the Revolution; his assurances as to the object of the expedition he was preparing—all lead up to the final triumph, the last steps of which have been thus described (with a ​certain unconscious honesty) by Gilbert Burnet, prince of ecclesiastical toadies.
"During all these debates"—he is speaking of the discussion as to the succession, the claims of Mary as James's eldest daughter and of Anne as having a nearer right than William—"and the great heat with which they were managed, the Prince's own behaviour was very mysterious. He stayed at Saint James's: he went very little abroad: access to him was not very easy. He heard all that was said to him, but seldom made any answers. He did not affect to be affable or popular, nor would he take any pains to gain any one person to his party. He said he came over, being incited to save the nation: he had now brought together a free and true representative of the kingdom: and when things were once settled he should be well satisfied to go back to Holland again. Those who did not know him well, and who imagined that a crown had charms which human nature was not strong enough to resist, looked on all this as an affectation and as a disguised threatening, which imported that he would leave the nation to perish unless this method of settling it was followed. After a reservedness that had continued so close for several weeks that nobody could certainly tell what he desired, he called for the Marquis of Halifax, and the Earls of Shrewsbury and Danby, and some others, to explain himself more distinctly to them.
​"He told them he had been till then silent, because he would not say or do anything that might seem in any sort to take from any person the full freedom of deliberating and voting in matters of such importance: he was resolved neither to court nor threaten any one; and therefore he had declined to give out his own thoughts. Some were for putting the government in the hands of a Regent: he would say nothing against it, if it was thought the best means for settling their affairs: only he thought it necessary to tell them that he would not be the Regent: so, if they continued in that design, they must look out for some other person to be put in that post: he himself saw what the consequences of it were like to prove, so he would not accept of it. Others were for putting the Princess singly on the throne, and that he should reign by her courtesy: he said no man could esteem a woman more than he did the Princess; but he was so made that he could not think of holding anything by apron-strings; nor could he think it reasonable to have any share in the government unless it was put in his person, and that for term of life: if they did think it fit to settle it otherwise, he would not oppose them in it; but he would go back to Holland, and meddle no more in their affairs. He assured them, that whatsoever others might think of a crown, it was no such thing in his eves, but that he could live very well, and be very well pleased without it. In the end he said, that he could not resolve to accept of a dignity, so as to hold it only (during) the life of another: yet he thought ​that the issue of the Princess Anne should be preferred in the succession to any issue that he might have by any other wife than the Princess. All this he delivered to them in so cold and unconcerned a manner, that those who judged of others by the dispositions that they felt in themselves, looked on it all as artifice and contrivance."
The suspicions may have been well or ill grounded, but they were certainly not unnatural when William's past diplomatic successes were remembered. And on this occasion, as before, William obtained exactly what he wanted, and we may admit his ability.
But when some special points of his character are considered, it is difficult to see how any defence can be set up for him. "He had no vice," says Bishop Burnet, "but of one sort, in which he was very cautious and secret." When contemporaries accused William of the vilest and basest crimes, they no doubt did him cruel wrong; but of this saying of Burnet's Lord Stanhope wrote very justly: "It is no light charge that is here implied. It is no light quarter from which the charge proceeds. It comes from a familiar friend and a constant follower—from one who owed to William not only his return from exile but his episcopal rank—from one who had no imaginable motive to deceive us, and who was most unlikely to be himself deceived." Indeed, it is impossible to condemn his predecessors and absolve William III. It is only too evident that throughout his life William was immoral as Charles II. and James II. ​had been immoral. When he first entertained the idea of a marriage with his cousin Mary, he was careful to inquire whether she was one who would seriously resent his infidelities. When he came to England to see his bride, he disgraced himself, as Sir John Reresby records. After his marriage, and when he was well aware of his wife's devoted attachment, he treated her without the least consideration. Hooper and Ken, in turn domestic chaplains at the Hague, found the tone of the court unbearable; and Ken felt bound to remonstrate with the Prince on his own life. The enormous revenue bestowed on Elizabeth Villiers made the King's weakness well known to his English subjects, and what was condoned in his own time has been excused by distinguished apologists in our own day.
A Peep of Fountain Court from Roof
​withheld for years, maintained during the whole of his life an illicit connection with Elizabeth Villiers (who squinted abominably), on whom he settled an estate of, £25,000 a year, making her brother (whose wife he introduced to the confidence of the Queen) a peer; and Lord Macaulay passes it over as an instance of the commerce of superior minds. In James conjugal infidelity is a coarse and degrading vice; in William it is an intellectual indulgence hardly deserving serious reprehension."
Nor can it easily be denied by any one who has read Burnet or Macaulay that Mr. Paget was justified in adding, "In like manner, the inroads upon law attempted by James, under the mask of regard for the rights of conscience, are justly and unsparingly denounced, whilst the ambition which urged William, by the cruel means of domestic unkindness, to fix his grasp prospectively on the crown of England, long before any necessity for such an invasion of the constitution had arisen, is wise foresight, regard for religious freedom, the interests of Protestantism, and the attainment of the great object of his life—the curbing the exorbitant power of France."
Perhaps it cannot be said in blame of William that he did anything, like Charles II.,to make vice popular. Vice certainly with him lost none of its grossness, and he was no more cheerful or kind to others when drunk than when sober. "He loved," wrote Leopold von Ranke, "a pot of beer more than a delicate repast." His love of eating appears to have been carried to ​degrading excess. His want of all sense of fitness appears as clearly in his teaching Swift, then an enthusiastic young scholar whose thoughts and hopes were of religion and of books, how to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion and "eat it economically with the stalks," as in his offering him a captaincy of horse.
Too often has the story of his greedily pouring the whole dish of peas on to his plate when the Princess Anne was still unserved been told. And after all, it may seem petty to dwell on such small matters; nor is it generally considered in the best taste to admire and visit a man's house, as we visit Hampton Court, and then take away his character. But it is high time that William III. should be judged on his merits; and when we have considered his most prominent characteristics, and have remembered that not one single famous saying has been attributed to him—"he spoke seldom, and that with a disgusting dryness," as Burnet says—may we not reasonably ask if he is to be considered a hero? There is such a thing as debasing the moral currency, and it is a fault that historians are very often guilty of; and it may be well that, when we examine a man's works, we should form a true estimate of himself. The character of the Dutch sovereign is admirably illustrated by the details of the negotiations for his marriage. When Lord Ossory first suggested the marriage to him, he gave an undecided answer; a careful reader of the judicious Von Ranke would discover the reason. He had recently been told by his friends in England that they would exclude the Duke ​of York's children from the succession, and make him heir. He waited, then, till he saw such an expectation was not worth waiting for, and that his wisest course was to marry Mary. When the negotiations began in earnest, he showed great care in avoiding any step which might link him to the fortunes of the falling house, and in letting it be known that his marriage was to be no guarantee of support to the English throne. Equally interesting is his attitude towards English parties at the time of the Exclusion Bill. How early he showed his determination to have sole power in England, and with what delicate consideration for his wife he let his determination be known, has already been shown from Burnet. In these instances I think we may observe what may be roughly and somewhat vulgarly called meanness. Having thus hastily observed some traits in the character of William of Orange, we shall pass on to notice some affairs of importance, his connection with which has served in some quarters to discredit his memory.
William's relation to the murder of the De Witts is a question which is still obscure. I will therefore only quote and translate from one of the latest and ablest studies of his life, that of M. le Comte de Lort-Sérignan. "The Prince of Orange had long known the hatred of the people towards the De Witts. He ought to have understood that his duty and his honour—the respect which he owed to himself, to his name, to that of his country—demanded that he should protect from causeless and groundless animosity the two foremost ​citizens of the Republic. He did nothing of the kind."
Again he continues: "The death of John de Witt ought to win him forgiveness for many faults. It is still a problem which history has not solved, What was the part which William had in that catastrophe? The responsibility seems nevertheless to be considerable, if we consider the amnesty granted by the Prince to the assassins, and particularly the liberality with which he pensioned the surgeon, Tichelaar. Such crimes would sully the fairest life, and the death of John de Witt remains an ineffaceable stain on the history of William III."
Take another case. When the peace ot Nimeguen had been signed four days, the Prince, who was strongly adverse to it, attacked Marshal Luxembourg, and a bloody battle took place—the lives lost being thrown away without the slightest gain. The Prince declared in the most solemn manner that he did not hear the news of the peace until the next day. It has, however, been proved that the news of the peace having been absolutely decided upon was known in his camp and by him the day before.
In the matter of Glencoe, probably not many people have been misled by Macaulay's sophistical explanation. It may be well, however, to mention the facts of the case. From the correspondence to which Macaulay himself refers it can be proved that William took the keenest interest in the minute details of the negotiations with the Highlanders. On the 9th of ​January 1692 he heard the news that Glencoe had submitted and taken the oath. On the 16th he signed the order for the extirpation. Of the men being punished as robbers there is not the slightest proof. It is most unlikely that the King, who had followed the matter with so much attention, would affix his signature in two places to the order for their extirpation without reading it over. Nor did William ever express displeasure at the deed; and in his pardon to Stair the "manner of execution" alone is referred to as worthy of condemnation.
May we not then conclude, with Mr. Paget, keenest of historical detectives, that the King "had not the excuse, poor as it may be, that he was urged on by personal wrong and animosity, like Breadalbane, or by chagrin and disappointment at the failure of a particular scheme, like the Master of Stair;" and that there is no room for doubt that his "signature was affixed to the order with full knowledge of the facts, and that his intention was to strike terror into the Highlanders by the 'extirpation'—[and there is no question as to the meaning of the word here, as there is in the case of the Rohillas, where Macaulay takes an exactly opposite view to the one he maintains in the Glencoe affair]—of a clan too weak to offer any effectual resistance, but important enough to serve as a formidable example." Glencoe certainly will not be forgotten by Scotsmen when they judge the character of William III.; and side by side with it they will place his refusal of aid to the colonists of Darien.
​But cases such as these, involving grave moral delinquency, do not finally settle the claims of William III. to be considered a national hero. What was his position as a constitutional king? His title was strictly and evidently parliamentary. Hallam goes so far as to speak of his "elective throne." He came to deliver England from despotic rule, and to represent that form of monarchy which the great Whig statesmen approved. He had very definite obligations and a very clear line of action imposed upon him. How did he play his part? No one can accuse Hallam of prejudice against him. "In no period," he says, "under the Stewarts was public discontent and opposition of Parliament more prominent than in the reign of William the Third; and that high-souled prince—[I thank thee, Hallam, for teaching me that phrase]—enjoyed far less of his subjects' affection than Charles the Second. No period of our history, perhaps, is read with less satisfaction than those thirteen years during which he sat on his elective throne."
That the King was in no small measure responsible for this a few instances will show. William had none of the qualities that win affection. His obvious preference for Holland did not atone for "that amount (to quote Mr. Lecky) of aggravated treachery and duplicity seldom surpassed in history which had made the Revolution possible." Among his first ministers were the very men who were believed to be largely concerned in the misgovernment of the Stewarts. If Danby had been so unprincipled as the votes of ​Parliament had declared, if Halifax had been so deeply concerned in the last and worst part of Charles II.'s misrule as was supposed, if Godolphin had been, as was evident,a party to every measure of James II., William ought not to have made them his trusted servants.
If the King was really interested in securing freedom to Englishmen, he ought not to have displayed such pettish readiness to leave England to itself when Parliament did not grant him all the revenue he wanted. Nor can anything excuse his concern in the Irish grants or in the partition treaties.
In answer to an address in 1690, he promised to make no grant of the Irish forfeitures till the matter had been decided in Parliament. While bills for its settlement were being discussed, it was discovered that he had granted away the whole of the land, although Parliament had expressly reserved two-thirds for the public service. And these lavish grants were made, chiefly to Dutch favourites and an English mistress, at a time when England was in a wretched condition. The historian of the future will be content to accept the forcible statement of Mr. Lecky.
Again, in 1697 the enormous grants of royal rights in Wales to the Duke of Portland caused much comment. Stronger still, perhaps, is the case against William in the matter of the partition treaties. He carried on the whole of the negotiations without consulting any of his English ministers. His Dutch favourite, Portland, induced the Lord Chancellor to ​affix the Great Seal to blank paper, an act which would have caused a frenzy of denunciation from every historian if it had happened under Charles I. or James II., or had been performed by any other than the orthodox Whig Somers. As it is, some people seem disposed to accept Hallam's ludicrous excuse for the King, that he was influenced "by a deep sense of the unworthiness of mankind."
Certainly the refusal of the royal assent to the "Place Bills," and to the bill for securing the independence of the judges as regards the Crown, though they may be explained by a deep sense of the unworthiness of human nature when not seated upon an elective throne, are equally irreconcilable with Revolution theories. Here the man who has been elevated to the throne on the distinct understanding that he is to accommodate himself to that idea of royalty which recognises the legislative supremacy of Parliament, appears as using the power which has been conferred upon him in defiance of the compact under which it was conferred.
The Orange House
​was not virtuous, and he was not a hero. He left us a legacy of ruinous and bloody wars, a half-century of oligarchy under Whig control, and a hatred of foreigners almost as bitter as that bequeathed by the Marian persecution.
XI
William as a king and as a man is not worthy of English admiration. If we are to enjoy the new Hampton Court with an eye on its history, we must regard it as Wren's creation, not his. And William we may leave in the "Banquet House," which he built in 1700, smoking with Keppel and Bentinck, with his mug before him.
What has to be said of the Palace under the Dutch king comes more appropriately in connection with the work of Wren. William liked Hampton Court, and lived there as much as he could.
"He found the air," says Burnet, "agreed so well with him, that he resolved to live the greatest part of the year there." And much as he hated Louis XIV., he must needs, like everybody else, imitate him. So a new Hampton Court was to rise as a rival to Versailles. "A very few days after he was set on the throne," says Burnet again, "he went out to Hampton Court, and from that palace came into town only on council days; so that the face of a court and the rendezvous usual in the public rooms was now quite broken." His love ​for the place, and his delight in retirement with his Dutch favourites and his English ministers, were indeed among the chief reasons of the unpopularity which befell him early and lasted all through his life. He gave himself to seclusion, and the seclusion happily gave us Wren's Hampton Court.
While plans were preparing and the new Fountain
Water Gallery
Court was rising on the site of the old Cloister Green Court, while the King was hunting, as the satiric rhyme said, to make the Queen thin, Mary was sitting with her maids in the Hornbeam Walk or in the "Water Gallery," the house, now destroyed, separate from the rest of the Palace, that looked upon the river. Her china, her plants, her needlework, were her solace in ​her husband's neglect; and china and plants have still their representatives in the Palace.
A new amusement she found in trying to rival Lely's collection of Charles II.'s Beauties. Her court, too, she thought, had its charms, and Kneller should immortalise them. Horace Walpole tells how the old Lady Carlisle told him that poor Marv only made herself unpopular by it. "If the King," said Lady Dorchester, "were to ask for the portraits of all the wits in his court, would not the rest think he called them fools?"
As one looks at the portraits of the ladies of Mary's court, the comparison seems to gain a double bitterness; for if these are the beauties, what must the others have been?
Kneller was delighted to emulate Lely, and he was well rewarded for his efforts. Polite poets complimented him in their verses, and he did not lack more substantial rewards. Lansdowne's couplets are well known—
   "O Kneller! like thy picture were my song,
   Clear like thy paint, and like thy pencil strong,
   The matchless beauties should recorded be,
   Immortalin my verse as in thy gallery."
The "Beauties," as they now appear in William the Third's Presence-Chamber, are reduced to eight. Only the most loyal flatterer could rank the Queen herself among the beauties; but the great Sarah Jennings has also disappeared. Those who remain are Diana, the heiress of the great Earls of Oxford, those De Veres whose ​name brought back to mind the fights of the Middle Ages, and wife of Charles II.'s son, the Duke of St. Albans; the Countesses of Peterborough, Ranelagh, Dorset, and Essex (the last a Bentinck), the Duchess of Grafton, Lady Middleton, and Miss Pitt.
Lady Diana de Vere, Duchess of St. Albans, in her quiet russet gown, with graceful yellow drapery depending from her arms, is a charming figure. As a toast, within a few years of the painting of this picture, Halifax wrote the lines for her—
   The line of Vere, so long renowned in arms, Concludes with lustre in St. Albans' charms; Her conquering eyes have made their race complete;
   They rose in valour and in beauty set."
The Countess of Essex, a Bentinck, is not nearly so attractive. Much prettier is the Countess of Peterborough, the wife of the famous general and beau. She is in blue and crimson; her white, rather dissipated-looking face at once arrests attention. The Countess of Ranelagh in white, Miss Pitt in yellow, and the Duchess of Grafton (who was the daughter of the Arlington of the Cabal), the Countess of Dorset (a Compton) in orange, with a mantle of blue satin and ermine, are less interesting; but Mrs. Middleton (no one is quite sure who she is) is charming as a shepherdess.
If Mary had the Beauties of her court painted to please her husband, he was not behind in employing Kneller to immortalise himself. In the same room in ​which the "Beauties" now hang, there are three great portraits of the King. Kneller paints him, as part of an allegorical triumph of Peace and Plenty, in his worst possible style. William ineffectually apes a Roman general, but his stern, haggard face is impressive if unpleasing. The other pictures—his embarking from Holland in 1688, and his landing at Brixham—are historical compositions, accurate in detail but uninteresting in result.
Much more striking than these, and in the same room, is the swarthy and passionate countenance of Peter the Great. It is one of the most impressive portraits Kneller ever painted. The armour and the drapery are subservient, not, as so often, the main features of the composition. The stupendous originality of the character looks out of the eves. It is the face of a man who can command thousands, and who has no scruple. This picture was painted for the King, who feared and suffered rather than admired the great Czar.
The collection of "Beauties" may serve to emphasise the fact that William and Mary used Hampton Court as a home rather than a house of state. They planted, they builded, they worked; but the history of the reign gives few important political events that occurred in their favourite retreat. Kensington and Whitehall were for business; Hampton Court was for rest.
After Mary's death William was little there, till the burning of Whitehall in January 1698 brought him back again. His last years, varied by distractions of ​war and by his own ill-health, were spent chiefly there. After the new buildings were completed, apartments were given to all the chief officers of state, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and from time to time to foreign ambassadors. It was there that the seals were taken from Somers: it was there that the great breach with France was begun, when William said to Tallard, "Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, le temps est bien change:" it was thence that Marlborough's commission, military and diplomatic, for the great war was dated. But with such exceptions the King did little business save at Kensington. It was probably in the House Park that his horse Sorrel stumbled and threw him, and the shock brought on the illness which ended in his death. That he had not died long before might well be wondered at by all save his physicians, who administered to him such pleasing concoctions as the "juice of thirty hog-lice." Two years before he had plaintively remarked that "he should be very well if they would leave off giving him remedies."
When William died, Hampton Court was the most famous of English palaces. When Anne succeeded, it sank into secondary rank. Anne liked Kensington and Windsor. She had no pleasant memories of her brother-in-law, nor had the place itself happy memories for her. It was there that her boy—her only child who survived his infancy—William Henry, named Duke of Gloucester on the day of his christening, was born. There he was christened with great ceremonial. His foster-mother came from Hampton Wick; and though the ​Queen continued her kindness to the nurse and her family, she could never forget the anxious days when her baby hung between life and death.
XII
With George I. the court returned to Hampton, and made from time to time long sojourns there. At some periods the King, with the atrocious Schulenberg, Duchess of Kendal, and Kilmansegge, Countess of Darlington; at others the Prince of Wales and his clever wife, Caroline of Anspach, held possession. The greatest confusion seems to have reigned during this period. Not only were the King and Prince at daggers-drawn—and George called his daughter-in-law, "cette diablesse la Princesse"—till a reconciliation, hollow enough, was patched up in 1720, when "the officers of the two courts kissed, embraced, and congratulated one another," but the arrangement of the Palace was in hopeless disorder. Anybody who had the impudence to enter might, it would seem, be lodged in the Palace: the officials practically let apartments; and the Crown had to issue a proclamation, to which nobody paid any attention.
George I. amused himself from time to time by having plays acted in the great hall. In 1718, Hamlet and Henry VIII. were acted there, and the King listened with delight to allusions which seemed to fit his own ministers. But the interest ​of the Palace in the eighteenth century is at least as much literary as it is historical, and it may appropriately be treated in another chapter. Of its vicissitudes as the dwelling-place of English sovereigns, Defoe very happily writes:—
"Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemed abandoned of its patron. They have gotten a kind of proverbial saying relating to Hampton Court, viz., that it has been generally chosen by every other prince since it became a house of note. King Charles was the first that delighted in it since Queen Elizabeth's time. As for the reigns before, it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was not made a royal house till King "Charles I., who was not only a prince that delighted in country retirements, but knew how to make choice of them by the beauty of their situation, the goodness of the air, &c. He took great delight here, and, had he lived to enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thing than it was. But we all know what took him off from that felicity, and all others; and this house was at last made one of his prisons by his rebellious subjects.
Entrance Gate to Garden
​royal party, as he had done in that of his sovereign. King Charles II. therefore chose Windsor, and bestowed a vast sum in beautifying the castle there, and which brought it to the perfection we see it in at this day— some few alterations excepted, done in the time of King William.
"King William (for King James is not to be named as to his choice of retired palaces, his delight running quite another way)—I say, King William fixed upon Hampton Court, and it was in his reign that Hampton Court put on new clothes, and, being dressed gay and glorious, made* the figure we now see it in.
"The late Queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kind regards to the prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where her care and his health confined her, and in this case kept for the most part at Kensington, where he died; but her Majesty always discovered her delight to be at Windsor, where she chose the little house, as it was called, opposite to the castle, and took the air in her chaise in the parks and forest as she saw occasion.
"Now Hampton Court, by the like alternative, is come into request again; and we find his present Majesty, who is a good judge, too, of the pleasantness and situation of a place of that kind, has taken Hampton Court into his favour, and has made it much his choice for the summer's retreat of the court, and where they may best enjoy the diversions of the season."
Of the Court under the first two Georges Horace ​Walpole and Lord Hervey may speak. From the accession of George III. it ceased to be a royal residence in more than name. Much of its furniture was removed; apartments were more freely and permanently given to exiles and to retired public servants. A new stage of its history begins, which is continuous to the present day.
* ↑ Ed. Leyden, 1630, p. 36.
* ↑ Printed in Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. i. p. 357. The edition printed by the late Professor Henry Morley (Morley's Universal Library) was a reprint of Singer's one-volume edition of 1827, which, it seems to me, is not so accurate as that of Dr. Wordsworth, based on the Lambeth MSS., 179 and 250.
* ↑ Ed. Lumby, p. 15.
* ↑ Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog., i. 357-361.
* ↑ Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury," ed. Sidney L. Lee, p. 103.
* ↑ See Brewer, "Reign of Henry VIII.," vol. ii.p. 145, sqq.
* ↑ Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. i. pp. 408-413.
* ↑ ? Paste.
* ↑ Anne de Montmorençy.
* ↑ Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography," i. 547-550.
* ↑ Vol. i. pp. 133-143.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 179.
* ↑ See the Countess of Wilton's "Art of Needlework," p. 380, and Lady M. Alford's "Needlework as Art." Cf. Henry VIII., act iii. scene 1.
* ↑ I am indebted to the kindness of Miss Florence Freeman, herself skilled alike with the pen and the needle, for having called my attention to these quaint verses.
* ↑ This is rather different from the reading in Lady M. Alford's book. I think she may have taken the lines from Miss Strickland's "Life of Mary Tudor."
* ↑ One cannot forget Scott's delightful parallel to this (Diary,December 12,1825):—"Hogg came to breakfast this morning, having taken and brought for his companion the Galashiels bard, David Thomson, as to a meeting of 'huzz Tividale poets.' The honest grunter opines with a delightful naïveté that Moore's verses are far owre sweet—answered by Thomson that Moore's ear or notes, I forget which, were finely strung. 'They are far owre finely strung,' replied he of the Forest, 'for mine arejust reeght!'"
* ↑ Printed in Transactions of Royal Historical Society, New Series, vol. ix.;edited by Dr. von Biilow.
* ↑ Dr. von Bülow suggests "Yeomen of the Guard:" they were probably lords-in-waiting.
* ↑ Cf. Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum libri tres, p. 30.
* ↑ Cf. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, N. S. ix. 228.
* ↑ It is hardly necessary to point out that the account of the pictures bristles with inaccuracies.
* ↑ Quoted by Mr. E. Law from Miss Strickland's "Life of Elizabeth."
* ↑ "Memoirs of Sir Thomas Herbert," &c., London, 1702, pp. 33, sqq.
* ↑ Cf. the pathetic account of these days in Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs.
* ↑ Gardiner, "Great Civil War," iii.352.
* ↑ Quoted by Gardiner, "History of the Great Civil War," vol. iii. p. 369.
* ↑ Mr. Law quotes this from the (Appendix to) Fifth Report on Historical MSS. (Duke of Sutherland's MSS.).
* ↑ "The English School of Painting," p.xxxv.
* ↑ "It is not certain whether, as King, he everpassed a single night in the Palace."—E.Law, "History of Hampton Court Palace." vol. ii. p. 255.
* ↑ "History of his Own Time," ed. 1753, vol. iii.p. 297.
* ↑ The Convention Parliament.
* ↑ "Paradoxes and Puzzles."
* ↑ "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. p. 16.
* ↑ "From London to Land's End" (ed. Henry Morley), pp. 25-27.