Palace of Westminster

“ Her majesty was first to be conducted from her palace in Westminster to the royal apartments in the Tower; and a splendid water procession was appointed for the purpose. At this period, when the streets were narrow and ill-paved, the roads bad, and the luxury of close carriages unknown, the Thames was the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The old palace of Westminster, as well as those of Richmond and Greenwich, the favorite summer residences of the Tudor princes, stood on its banks, and the court passed from one to the other in barges. ”

“ Scarcely anything remains to-day to remind us of the vast size and the magnificence of the Palace of Westminster, the royal residence of the English Kings from the time of Edward the Confessor until the reign of Henry VIII. For five centuries the monarchs of England kept their Court on the island of Thorney, within the sound of the bells of the great minster raised by the piety of the saintly Edward. ”

“ It is probable that few will question its grandeur and comprehensiveness. It would have made Westminster a palatial quarter of the town, grouping together the buildings, which the public service of a great country requires, in an unity, justified by their actual unity of purpose, and all but necessary to their full architectural effect. The great quadrangle of nine acres, with its sides formed by the Abbey, the Government Palace, the New Palace of Westminster, and the public buildings removed in order to clear the area, must have been its most striking feature. ”

“ King’s House of Westminster, there now remain nothing more than a single hall much changed, a crypt much restored, a cloister, and a tower. But this is autumnal opulence compared with the Palace of Whitehall. Of that broad, rambling place, as taken over and enlarged by Henry VIII., there now remains nothing at all—not a single chamber, not a tower, not a gateway, not a fragment; everything is gone: even the disposition of its courts and lanes, generally the last thing to be lost, can no longer be traced. ”

“ I wonder how many living men—even of the few who have seriously studied the Westminster of the past—could draw from memory a plan of Whitehall Palace, or describe in general terms its courts and buildings. Yet it was a very great house; certainly not venerable or picturesque, such as that which stood beside the Abbey: there were no sculptured fronts, no tall gables, no tourelles, no gray walls, no narrow windows, no carved cloisters ”

“ We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, the many-millioned lord of a good part of London. It is a palace, high-roofed, marble-columned, vast, magnificent, everything but homelike, and perhaps homelike to persons born and bred in such edifices. A painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like this not too grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. ”

“ The night has closed, a full English moon floats silently in the heavens, white snowy powder hangs over our heads like a film of lace—the clock-tower at Westminster Palace booms out the hour of midnight over the dark surface of the Thames, and we escape from the bustle of that vile dancing hall with gladness. ”

“ Britons like better to make speeches than to hear them, and they will never be slaves to bad oratory. The moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to read a manuscript respecting the Indian Government, as many as forty Commons arose and noisily walked out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed the moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to the open air.
Books have been written to describe the Palace of Westminster; but it is observable that this structure, however much its magnificence deserves commemorative applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of association. ”

“ Here the eye is attracted by a confused mass of roofs, some flat, turreted and embattled, some pointed, with fantastical gables and stacks of tall chimneys—others with cupolas and tall clock-towers—others with crocketed pinnacles, and almost all with large gilt vanes. A large palace is a city in miniature; and so is it with Whitehall. It has two other courts besides the one we are surveying; equally crowded round with buildings, equally wanting in uniformity, but equally picturesque. On the east it extends to Scotland Yard, and on the west to the open space in front of Westminster Hall. ”

“ 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." ”

“ To-day, when we stand on Westminster Bridge or Lambeth Bridge, and survey the huge building which provides London with one of its greatest landmarks, we are looking at a new Palace: from the River not a stone of the old structure is visible. A magnificent Palace it is too! Its towers, one at each end, rise high into the air, one of them 320 feet high, the other 20 feet more; and its buildings cover a matter of 8 acres. ”

“ Look at the actual history of the Royal Palace of Westminster, where the High Court of Parliament now is accustomed to assemble. It was on this very spot that Edward the Confessor lived and died, glorying in the close proximity of the noble abbey that seemed to give sanctity to his own abode. Here the last Saxon King entertained Duke William of Normandy, destined to be his own successor on the throne. ”

“ It looks so new and modern, with its Houses of Parliament, and its iron railings, that one forgets how ancient a place it is. What stood on the site of Westminster Hall before William Rufus built it we know not, but certainly some buildings belonging to the Old Palace of Cnut and Edward the Confessor. ”

“ In the extraordinary progress of decorative art during the last twenty years the work in the New Palace of Westminster may justly claim a large share of influence. Infinite pains were bestowed on every detail; in some cases it seemed, that the dignity of the building as a whole, rather than the absolute need or object of the particular part under consideration, was allowed to determine the care and elaboration to be bestowed upon it. ”

“ Not far from the bridge, in old Palace Yard, stands Westminster Hall.
p. 5354. Westminster Hall
Is thought to be the largest room in Europe unsupported by pillars, being two hundred and seventy feet in length, and seventy-four in breadth. The roof is of curious workmanship in oak, and reminds the beholders of a grove of trees, whose top branches extend toward each other till they unite. A great feast was held in this vast apartment, and other rooms of the palace, in the days of King Richard the Second, who is said to have entertained ten thousand guests, with his usual hospitality. ”

“ And now is London left behind us; there is no more trade along the banks of the river save a little at Westminster. These stairs upon the bank, and these carved and painted barges belong to the Palaces of the Bishops, Abbots, and great Lords. We pass Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, Burleigh House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Durham House, York House, all with gardens, terraces, and spacious courts. And so we come to the King’s Stairs, Westminster. Here is the King’s Palace, a crowded, busy, noisy place, and beyond is the Abbey of St. Peter, rich and famous. A noble church it is ”

“ 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. ”

“ Westminster, though immune from other foes, suffered terribly from fires, which have robbed us of the greatest part of one of the most picturesque of palaces. Just after Edward I. had finished repairing his royal dwelling a huge fire broke out, so tremendous that the palace was rendered uninhabitable, obliging the King to accept the hospitality of York Place, the London house of the Archbishops of York. Edward II. rebuilt the palace, which remained the main royal residence until a disastrous fire in 1512 drove the monarchs away for ever. ”

“ Yet how changed! Instead of a forest of reeds and bushes, here was a stately Palace and a still more stately Abbey. Busy men and women lived, where formerly only birds and water-rats made their homes. The island had, in fact, become a little town, divided from the greater city by massive walls.
“We are facing the Palace now,” said Godmother presently. “Do you see anything about it that looks familiar?”
“Why, surely that’s Westminster Hall?” Betty exclaimed after a moment, pointing to a long steep-roofed building in the midst of towers and pinnacles that were strange to her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His heart was changed: the stately services of the minster, the rolling of the organ, the chanting of the monks, the splendor of the altar, the story of the Gospel, the legends and the acts of the Saints, the pilgrimage to Rome,—these things pleased him more than the clash of steel on shield, the war cry, and the glorious madness of the fight. The beginner of the old Palace was the great King Cnut the Dane.
We write under the shadow of the Abbey: the bells peal out over our heads; the organ swells and dies; within the walls are the coffins and the bones of dead kings and princes and nobles. ”

“ I am trying to tell you of scenes in history which are linked with the Abbey or Palace of Westminster, so I must not dwell on the days that followed. Harold, the fearless soldier, lay dead beneath the standard he had so gallantly defended, and around him lay the flower of his race, faithful to the end. The men who remained were leaderless and hopeless; they could no more offer resistance to the ruthless Norman soldiers, and at last they gave way.
William did not immediately march on London. Tidings came that the citizens of London were eager to fight again. ”

“ Let us, however, consider what were the actual requirements of a Royal Palace under the Plantagenets. It will be seen very soon that this group of buildings could have formed only a very small portion of the whole Palace. It will also be found that the Palace grows in the mind as we consider it. At first the Court was itinerant. Edward the Confessor was constantly traveling into different parts of his realm: he kept every Christmas, except his last, at Gloucester; his Easter he kept at Winchester; he resided a good deal at Westminster ”

“ The group of buildings—the Abbey, Westminster Hall, the Houses of Parliament, the bridge beyond, the Westminster School—might be set off with prodigious effect were there one of real artistic instincts to undertake the task. Nothing, for instance, can be meaner or more ineffective than Palace Square with its statues. ”

“ In this respect the Palace followed the practice of every castle and great house in the country; even in a college the first court is a survival of the Outer Bailly. Leave, also, an open space east of the wall from the Jewel House to the outer wall for the gardens and herbaries—perhaps, like the Abbey, the Palace had gardens in the reclaimed meadows outside. Then fill in the area between the King’s House and the river with other halls, houses, offices, galleries, wardrobes, and cloisters. ”

“ Stable-boys and grooms are up already, carrying buckets of water; dogs are leaping and barking; when the sun lifts his head above the low Surrey hills and falls upon the wall and towers of the Palace, the narrow lanes are full of men slowly addressing themselves to the work of the day. Clear and bright against the sky stand the buildings; huddled together they are, certainly—it is not yet a time for architectural grouping, except in the design of an abbey, which is generally placed where there is room enough and to spare. Where there is the King there is an army ”

“ Besides, a Palace is like a walled city: it grows, but it cannot spread; it fills up. This hall needs another beside it; that chamber must have a gallery; this chapel must have cloisters; here let us put up a clock tower; if there are council chambers, there must also be guest chambers; the Court becomes more splendid, the Palace precinct becomes more crowded.
The place is more like a camp than a Palace. The grooms lead out the horses—there are thousands of horses in the place ”

“ Tall of stature, beautiful in form and face, he excelled in all things, whether in the battle-field or at the council, and to his many gifts was added a noble and upright character, strong when the need for strength arose, but ever inclined to show mercy and compassion. This was the man on whose shoulders Edward virtually laid all the responsibilities of his realm, while he spent most of his time in his palace at Westminster, so that he might be on the spot to superintend the progress of the building, which went on apace, and to consult with Abbot Edwy as to the form it should take. ”