Greenwich Palace

“ Greenwich still retains a sea-faring aspect; on a bright [pg 31] day the river, full of laden barges and busy little tugs, still sparkles, while "the noblest of European hospitals" remains as "a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue."
CHAPTER VII WHITEHALL PALACE
Of all the many palaces of the English monarchs, none is more associated in men's minds with the splendour and pageantry of Court life than the palace of Whitehall. ”

“ Greenwich Hospital presents the most beautiful architectural group of modern England. Take the most gifted architect of the world, bandage his eyes, put him on the terrace on which we stand, and then show him this splendid building, and he will at once tell you that this is and must be a royal palace. How could he ever suspect that all this splendour of columns and cupolas is destined to shelter a couple of thousand of poor, decrepid sailors! ”

“ If you wish to know what state was kept by Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich, you will find an account of it in Hentzner, that excellent traveller who remarked so much, and put all down on paper.
'We arrived at the Royal Palace of Greenwich, reported to have been originally built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and to have received very magnificent additions from Henry VII. It was here Elizabeth, the present Queen,{106} was born, and here she generally resides; particularly in Summer, for the Delightfulness of its Situation. ”

“ To the end Queen Elizabeth retained her affection for Greenwich, and some of the last walks she took were in her beloved park there, in which is preserved a mighty hollow oak-tree, capable of holding no less than twenty people, that is still known as Queen Elizabeth's and is protected by a railing from injury. Her successor James I., however, cared little for the palace or its grounds, and bestowed them both in 1605 upon his wife, Anne of Denmark, who became much attached to her new possession. ”

“ Her affection for Greenwich was shared by her son, Charles I., and his wife, Henrietta Maria, who were often in residence there before their troubles began, and had the House of Delight, which now forms the central portion of the Royal Naval School, completed by Inigo Jones. They opened negotiations, too, with some of the chief artists of the day, including Rubens, who was often their guest at Placentia, for the painting of the walls of the new palace, but the terms asked were prohibitive, and all too soon more pressing matters took up all the king's time and thoughts. ”

“ They are the ancient foresters of the chase, and many of them have stood through the wintry storms of past centuries, and were gnarled and knotted, and stricken with age, long before Evelyn planned and planted those noble avenues of chestnuts and elms. Below, between the plain at the foot of the hill and the river, stood the old Palace of Greenwich, in which Henry VIII. held his revels, and where Edward VI., the boy-king, died. That ancient palace was no doubt rich in the spoils of many a plundered abbey and ruined monastery,—in{289} ”

“ Throughout our records for many centuries the valley of the Thames has been favoured when our monarchs have sought to establish a new home. Greenwich and London—the Tower, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace—Richmond and Hampton Court, Windsor, Reading and Oxford, are some of the places that have at one time or another been the chosen centre of royal life ”

“ The palace here was afterwards much enlarged by the succeeding Kings, who when the court was kept at Greenwich often retired hither; and here were made the statutes of Eltham by which the King’s house is still governed. There are however no traces of the palace left. The town has the honour of giving the title of Earl to the 273Prince of Wales; and there are here the houses of several rich citizens, and two charity schools. ”

“ Travelers, in ascending the Thames by the steamboat from Rotterdam, on their return from an excursion to the Rhine, have often their attention strongly attracted by what appears to be a splendid palace on the banks of the river at Greenwich. The edifice is not a palace, however, but a hospital, or, rather, a retreat where the worn out, maimed, and crippled veterans of the English navy spend the remnant of their days in comfort and peace, on pensions allowed them by the government in whose service they have spent their strength or lost their limbs. ”

“ Though no vestige of the palace now remains, it is reasonable to conjecture, from the analogy of contemporary palaces which still exist, that Kennington Palace was a fortified building, with a strongly embattled wall and deep moat. Deserted by Henry VIII., who found Eltham and Greenwich more to his taste, the building materials were all sold and the palace razed to the ground. Some kind of Tudor manor-house was built upon the site, for a survey taken about the middle of the seventeenth century describes a building of some fair size. ”

“ It was on September 7, in that same year, that Elizabeth was born in the palace of Greenwich, in a room that was known as the 'Chamber of the Virgins,' from the stories told on the tapestries that covered the walls. The king was greatly disappointed that the baby did not prove to be a boy, but as that could not be helped he determined to make the christening as splendid as possible. ”

“ The records of the Tower are not entirely of the sombre colour of imprisonments and executions. In the month of November 1487, we read of the pageant that took place at the coronation of Henry’s Queen, Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV.; their marriage united the rival factions of the White and Red Roses. A few days before her coronation at Westminster, Elizabeth had been brought to the Tower from the palace at Greenwich by water, in barges “freshely furnyshed with baners and stremers of silk, richly besene”; one barge was “a great red dragon, spowting Flamys of Fyer into the Temmys.” ”

“ On October 18th, John Hemings was paid £30 for three plays acted before his Majesty and the King of Denmark, two of them at Greenwich and one at Hampton Court.
ST. JAMES’S PALACE
The ground on which St. James’s Palace stood was originally a hospital for lepers, and was in existence years before the Conquest. When it surrendered to Henry VIII, the maiden lepers (being a hospital for women) were pensioned. ”

“ The Court was a movable institution, constituted by the actual presence of the sovereign. Abundant choice both of 'standing houses' or 'houses of abode' and of country [8] manors was available. [7] The most important palaces, under Elizabeth, were five in number, Whitehall, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, and Windsor. All of these stood upon the river, and all except Windsor and in part Greenwich dated structurally from the reign of Henry VII or that of Henry VIII. The ancient palace of Westminster, with its royal chapel of St. ”

“ In midsummer the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, and their grand Household moved from Kensington to Buckingham Palace, then new, and an elegant and luxurious royal residence internally, but externally neither beautiful nor imposing. But with the exception of Windsor Castle, none of the English Royal Palaces can be pointed to as models of architectural beauty, or even sumptuous appointments. The palaces of some of our Railway Kings more than rival them in some respects, while those of many of the English nobility are richer in art-treasures and grander in appearance. ”

“ Whether it is true, as I hear, that the air of London is hurtful to her, giving her severe headaches, or that the scenes of her childhood and early queenhood, and of her marriage, are too much for her, and heart- ache is the matter, I know not; but it is undeniable that the Queen prefers any one of her other homes to Buckingham Palace. She only comes to it when absolute compelled by the duties of State. ”

“ Stepney, Hampstead, Westend, and Peckham fairs have been crushed by the police, that ‘stern, rugged nurse’ of national morality; and although Greenwich fair continues, it is any thing but what it used to be. Greenwich, however, will always have a charm: the fine park remains—trees, glades, turf, and the view from the observatory, one of the noblest in the world—before you the towers of these palaces built for a monarch’s residence, now ennobled into a refuge from life’s storms for the gallant defenders of their country, after their long and toilsome pilgrimage—then the noble river ”

“ The show is certainly a great one, greater in extent, in variety, and in the excellence of a large share of its contents, than the world has hitherto seen. The Crystal Palace, which covers and protects all, is better than any one thing it contains, it is really a fairy wonder, and is a work of inestimable value as a suggestion for future architecture. It is not merely better adapted to its purpose than any other edifice ever yet built could be, but it combines remarkable cheapness with vast and varied utility. ”

“ The residence of the Queen, when in London, is generally supposed to be Buckingham Palace, a long gloomy looking building in St. James Park, not a stones' throw from the Marble Arch in Hyde Park or Westminster Abbey. The same big flashy looking soldiers in red coats, and hideous grenadier bearskins are to be seen marching up and down opposite this palace gate just as they do about St. James Palace, or at the Horse Guards in Parliament street. ”

“ After a long, weary ascent of very dirty and dark staircases, we reached the cupola, and great London and its environs lay beneath us! Oh, what a wide and wonderful view was that! It was almost overwhelming—and so bewildered me at first, that I could not clearly make out any thing. But soon that dizziness of astonishment passed away, and I began to recognize, one after another, places and buildings that had grown familiar to me. There was Hyde Park, looking at that distance like a plantation of young trees; there was Buckingham Palace, the new palace of Westminster, and the grand old Abbey. ”

“ Henry was delighted with his new residence, and proceeded to add new buildings, and to enclose nearly all St. James's Park up to the site of Buckingham Palace. Covering a vast extent of ground, the palace rambled from Scotland Yard along the riverside, to where Downing Street now stands, and spread across the roadway by means of a long gallery. Never so beautiful as Westminster, the Whitehall of the Tudors was a mass of brick buildings, erected without any particular scheme just as occasion required, resulting, as Besant declares, in a building "without dignity and without nobility." ”

“ Occupying as it does a unique position on the Thames, which is here often crowded with British and foreign shipping, owning in the group of buildings collectively known as the Hospital one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century domestic architecture, and in its park one of the most beautiful open spaces near the capital, whilst its Observatory gives to it the distinction of a leader in astronomical research, Greenwich has long ranked as one of the most important and popular suburbs of London. ”

“ There could never have been much accommodation in the White Tower (so called on account of the white-washing it received in the reign of Henry III.) as a suitable residence for the sovereign, so that as the centuries passed and more comfort was expected by all classes, Kings and Queens would naturally expect to be better cared for. A palace was therefore built in the inner ward, and the Lanthorn Tower formed a part of this palace, containing as it did the King’s bed-chamber and his private closet. ”

“ Thus suddenly ended the brief career of Henry VIII's dream palace, that is but poorly represented by its successor, a building erected in the early nineteenth century after the designs of the then popular architect, Sir Jeffrey Wyattville. Part of the once beautiful park is now occupied by the suburb of Worcester, but the grounds immediately surrounding the new residence, through which there is a public footpath to Cheam and Ewell, still retain much of their original charm, and some of the older trees may possibly have been amongst those beneath which Queen Elizabeth delighted to walk. ”

“ Romance, and all the thoughts and feelings of tender, natural affection, which appear to have been smothered in the preceding century and a half of powder and gold-lace, seem to awaken and revive once more with the child born in this Palace eighty years ago, in the little girl playing about in these rooms and in these gardens, in the youthful Queen, who stepped forth from her simple chamber here to take possession of the greatest throne in the world! ”

“ In the midst of the excitement and anxiety of that time, a gentle, loving, world-wearied soul passed out of our little mortal day at Gotha, and a fresh, bright young soul came into it in London. The dear old grandmother of the Prince died, in her palace of Friedrichsthal, and his daughter, Louise Caroline Alberta, now Marchioness of Lorne, was born in Buckingham Palace. ”

“ Before recapitulating the events of the Queen’s early life here, we must give a brief outline of the history of the Palace since it became a royal residence.
The original building, of which it is probable that a good deal still stands, was erected mainly by Sir Heneage Finch, Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham, who acquired the estate, including some hundred and fifty acres of meadow and park—now Kensington Gardens—from his brother Sir John Finch. ”