W. J. Loftie

“ There is little at first to connect Charles with Whitehall, but towards the end of the coronation year a curious scene took place there. The King, weary of the young Bishop and his twenty-nine priests who had come over with Henrietta Maria, decreed that they must return home. This they were very unwilling to do. With them were also to go an immense crew of attendants, whose vagaries disturbed both Whitehall and St. James’s. They exceeded in numbers even the four hundred who had formed the household of Henry, prince of Wales. Contemporary letters are full of their arrogance and greed. ”

“ The Charing Cross front being to the north was kept studiously plain. It was not until our own day that an architect put lavish decorations on that side of a building. Wren knew as well as Jones that mass, not ornament, is appropriate to this aspect, and we used to be able to admire his taste in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, now altered. The delicate proportions, the fine central archway, and the arcade at the western end of the façade, make up a very pleasing composition, and, viewed across a wide parade-ground, would have produced a marvellously picturesque effect. ”

“ The land between was low and marshy, and even at the present day, when there has been so much levelling up, the statue of Charles I. is upon ground ten feet higher than Parliament Street. If, standing on the future site of Whitehall we looked to the westward, we saw nothing but a vast tract of low green meadow-land. If we looked to the south, we might have seen the new buildings of Westminster Abbey, unless when the Danes had been on the warpath. If we looked to the eastward, we found that the Thames washed up close to our feet. ”

“ Very little of the history of the Great Rebellion concerns Whitehall, at least until Oliver Cromwell assumes possession, and apes royalty in the old halls; but in Rymer’s Fœdera we may observe that, from the beginning of the reign of James I., “Whitehall” gradually and more and more becomes the official designation of the palace. Charles naturally was not there during a long term of years. He was marching and counter-marching in the north, and so mismanaging all his affairs successively that, regarded as a game, the Civil War consisted of a series of alternate military and diplomatic defeats. ”

“ The concourse of fanatical preachers which disturbed his last moments seems to have been doubled at his death, and Tillotson, the future Archbishop, describes Richard Cromwell as seated at one side of a table with six divines at the other. Cromwell’s funeral took place from Somerset House, not from Whitehall, so it does not specially concern us. Suffice it to say here, that no king or queen has ever been interred at so much cost or so magnificently. ”

“ We can but conjecture that Inigo wished to have a grand open space before his Charing Cross façade—what the French call a “place d’armes.” On the Westminster side there could not have been much space beyond the Bowling Green. The park, of course, was open, and so was the river. Much thought accordingly was spent on these fronts, and perhaps that to the Thames shows Jones at his very best. No description can do it any kind of justice; but it may be worth while to mention the principal points. The centre was of three storeys, the lowest with rusticated pilasters. ”

“ Casting in bronze was a favourite art, and Fanelli, who made the statues of Charles and his Queen at St. John’s College, Oxford, should be named, as well as Le Sœur, who made the King’s equestrian statue which is now at Charing Cross, but which was originally made for Lord Portland and set up at Roehampton. The King’s cabinet pictures were lodged at Whitehall in a chamber expressly built for them by Inigo Jones. Undoubtedly the pictures were, of all his works of art, those which Charles chiefly loved. ”

“ Elizabeth made much use of Whitehall, but her buildings and improvements at Windsor must have proved a powerful attraction. She went about a good deal, and her State papers are signed in a great variety of places. She left no mark on Whitehall, although, at the very [Pg 21] end of her reign, instead of Henry the Eighth’s “palace of Westminster,” we have “Whitehall,” pure and simple, one or twice. We have seen how York Place became the Palace of Westminster. How it again changed its name, and became Whitehall, we do not know. ”

“ The unhappy Dutchwoman set her room on fire and perished in the flames. “The tapestry, bedding, the wainscotes were soon in a blaze,” says Macaulay. “Before midnight, the King’s apartments, the Queen’s apartments, the wardrobe, the treasury, the office of the Privy Council, the office of the Secretary of State, had been destroyed.” ”

“ How an officer, even though he may have been on duty, could penetrate to the chamber of death in such a way must remain a mystery. The body of Charles was conveyed from the scaffold by the faithful Herbert, with Juxon’s assistance. It was placed in one of the King’s apartments, that nearest, we learn, to the back-stairs. Topham, private surgeon to Fairfax, was employed to sew on the head and to embalm the body. Permission was asked to bury it in the chapel of Henry VII., but this the republican authorities refused, though they provided five hundred pounds for the funeral expenses. ”

“ It is very probable that, among the colonels and generals who lodged themselves, or were lodged, in Whitehall after the death of Charles I., Oliver Cromwell was one. Five years elapsed before he came into residence as Lord Protector, but, whether as a military commander or as a minister of state, there were several capacities in which he could have claimed chambers in the great straggling congeries of separate sets of apartments which were comprised in the palace. The amount of his guilt in the King’s murder it is difficult to assess. ”

“ This fact—for it is not merely an opinion—seems to answer a question that is often asked: Did the coolness of Charles on that last day at Westminster Hall, and again on the scaffold at Whitehall, betray any feeling, any certainty that he would be respited or rescued? A moment’s [Pg 56] thought dispels the idea. ”

“ As to Henrietta Maria at dinner, an anecdote is reported by Jesse: “Notwithstanding her conciliating manners on her first arrival in [Pg 52] England, it soon became evident that the spirit of Henry IV. was not entirely dormant in the bosom of his daughter. A singular scene, which took place at Court, shortly after her marriage, is thus described by an eye-witness. ‘The Queen, howsoever very little of stature, is yet of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased, but full of spirit and vigour, and seems of a more than ordinary resolution. ”

“ Hubert served the King too well to please the people, and spared the people too much to satisfy Henry. In 1232 he was dismissed, and his ungrateful master, not content with his dismissal, trumped up a series of charges against him, just as Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII., did with regard to Cardinal Wolsey. Hubert had been made Earl of Kent in 1227, and Constable of the Tower of London just before his disgrace—in fact, only a few days before—and during the same month was himself lodged in the Tower as a prisoner. ”

“ Hampton Court and Windsor Castle had been granted to him as well as Whitehall. Poor Mrs. Cromwell, who seems to have been of a simple and [Pg 65] unostentatious character, can hardly have relished the change. She became “Her Highness the Protectress,” and had more servants and attendants than she can have known what to do with. The exact part of the palace in which the new state apartments were placed is unknown. It was probably not where the late King lived, nor, on the other hand, can it have been far from the Banqueting House and the picture gallery. ”

“ The figures are colossal, the children being more than nine feet high. The Banqueting House, though never consecrated, was made a Royal Chapel in 1724. Two years ago it was handed over to the United Service Institution, who have added to the south side a building which, in my opinion, forms a serious eyesore. It is curious that with all the wealth of design left by Inigo Jones, and ready to the hands of the Institution, they could not find something better than that by which they have disfigured every view of the Banqueting House. ”

“ Several fires had occurred within a short time at Whitehall, the most destructive being that by which in April, 1691, the Duchess of Portsmouth was burnt out, after having had her house three times rebuilt, a subject on which Evelyn enlarges in his usual pious manner. The Duchess went to live in Kensington, and survived until far on in the reign of George II. All these fires did damage, but that of the 4th January, 1698, seems to have been almost or altogether confined to the royal apartments. Macaulay’s account of the fire is enormously exaggerated. ”

“ Next, Lord Conway entered Whitehall, where he firmly but politely informed the French servants of the Queen of his errand. They were to go first to Somerset House in the Strand, where he proposed to make separate arrangements for each of them. The women screamed and stormed, and after Conway had given them reasonable time, he summoned the yeomen of the guard, who thrust them out forcibly and locked the doors after them. They went to Somerset House, where Charles himself visited them the same afternoon. ”

“ James’s to Whitehall as a residence during his brief and stormy reign. All his children were born there, and there is an account of his Queen, Mary of Modena, hastening from Whitehall just before the birth of the prince who became subsequently the Old Pretender. [Pg 72]
William and Mary were hardly settled at Whitehall when they began to look about for a house which would suit the King’s health. At Whitehall he was constantly ill. The low, foggy, damp situation was not calculated for a man who suffered daily from asthma and often from ague or low fever. ”

“ No part of the Treasury is in Whitehall; but the reason for mentioning it is that its inclusion in the two engravings I have named shows us what, in all probability, Wolsey’s other buildings were like. Paul Hentzner, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, says that they were “truly royal.” Very little building of any importance went on under Henry VIII. or his three immediate successors, so that Hentzner’s allusion must be to what Wolsey left. It is true, as we shall see, that Henry proposed to improve and extend it ”

“ If, as seems probable, the Banqueting House stood at the north-east corner, and if we look at the plan of Whitehall which George Vertue engraved for the Society of Antiquaries, we find that Inigo’s building is nearly in the middle of the palace. If we measure 728 feet to the southward, it takes us all that distance towards Westminster, and overwhelms in building-stone the whole of the Privy Garden and part of the Bowling Green. ”

“ The Banqueting House is clearly described for us in a note, probably by Inigo Jones, which was printed a few pages back. It answers most of the questions raised in a long correspondence in the papers a few years ago. The situation, the problem to be solved, was briefly this. The scaffold was before the two windows next to Charing Cross. A hole was broken through the wall to admit of a passage to the platform direct from the interior. The regicides saw that there would be great danger in taking the King out by the only door, which was at the back or east side of the hall. ”

“ A great French architect named Azout, who visited England about 1685, is said to have declared that this “was the most finished of the modern buildings on this side the Alps.” To a sincere lover of beauty in architecture, this opinion will commend itself. It is sometimes said that the famous cartoons of Raphael were brought to England as designs for the tapestry for the Banqueting House. [Pg 31] After the death of King Charles, they were sold, and were purchased by the Spanish Ambassador, Alonso de Cardanas. ”

“ CHAPTER III Accession of Charles I.—Unfavourable Omens—“The White King”—Henrietta Maria—Her French Followers—The Royal Pictures—Their Partial Sale—The King and Queen at Dinner—Death of Strafford and Laud—Charles at Westminster—Place of the Scaffold—Last Scene.
James I. died in 1625, at Theobalds, having removed thither from Whitehall shortly before. His son Charles I. succeeded him, and for the first years of his reign lived in the old royal apartments on the Thames’ bank. The omens observed at the time were all against the new King. ”

“ Why Evelyn visited Whitehall that particular Sunday we do not know. His description of the scene at Whitehall the last Sunday but one of the life of Charles II. is not new to any one, but must come in here: “I can never forget,” he says, “the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day [Pg 71] se’nnight I was witness of, the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, etc. ”

“ In the Banqueting House, also, the King touched “people for the King’s evil” (June 23, 1660) . There was a service “At the Healing” in Books of Common Prayer. It was omitted, I think, about 1709. There was a “balcone” in the Shield Gallery. In this room Pepys saw the King bid farewell to [Pg 68] Montagu, who was going to sea. “I saw with what kindness the King did hug my lord at his parting.” We have a topographical note in July, 1660. Pepys walked all the afternoon in Whitehall Court. We know where the Court was, and now we learn that the Council Chamber looked into it. ”