Palace of Whitehall

“ The nearness to London, only thirteen miles away, with easy access along the broad river, made it a delightful residence for the monarchs who were able to get to and fro from London, however bad the roads might be. When wearied with the smoke and bustle that surrounded Whitehall, the royal owners rejoiced in escaping to their beautiful palace at Hampton Court, from whose windows they looked over the clean river, across fresh green meadows to the horizon of the blue Surrey hills. ”

“ The palace of Whitehall, anciently called York House, and the home of thirty successive Archbishops of York, was seized by King Henry VIII at the fall of Wolsey and converted into a royal residence. [660] The new proprietor at once made improvements after his own taste, among which were tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, and an amphitheatre for the "royal sport" of cock-fighting. In Stow's description of the palace we read:
On the right hand be diverse fair tennis courts, bowling alleys, and a Cockpit, all built by King Henry the Eight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a broad flight of stairs from the park, by which access was gained to the ancient palace of Whitehall. The king entered the palace that way; he ascended the stairs with a light step, passed through the long gallery, and gained his own bedroom, where he was left with Bishop Juxon, who administered the sacrament to him. Nye and Godwin, two Independent ministers, knocked at the door, and tendered their spiritual assistance. "Say to them frankly," said the king, "that they have so often prayed against me, that they shall not pray with me in mine agony. ”

“ Only the banqueting-hall was finished, and this still remains as the sole survivor of the Palace of Whitehall. Its chief historical interest lies in the fact that, from one of its windows, Charles I stepped out upon the scaffold where he was beheaded.
If we were to follow ancient custom and use the Thames for our highway, as did two hundred peers and peeresses at the late coronation, we should now row down the river and land at Charing Cross Pier, where we should find the remnant of the sumptuous palace built by 'Steenie,' the Duke of Buckingham. ”

“ James’s Park to his palace of Whitehall, before which a scaffold draped with black has been erected. All marvel at the calm dignity which he displays.
The scaffold is hedged round with soldiers, and the headsman stands beside the block. The king, with head erect, steps through an opening in the wall of the banqueting hall on to the scaffold. He addresses himself to the bystanders, and in the last words he utters he shows clearly that he has not abandoned his fatal theory of kingship. ”

“ 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 ”

“ James's is the most important of the royal palaces of London, and more closely connected than any other with the long history of English Royalty. From the days of Henry VIII. to the present time there has always been a close personal connection with the reigning Sovereign of the British Empire.
The Palace of Whitehall presents a long and strange history. Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, Chief Minister of King Henry III., became possessed of the land by purchase from the monks of Westminster for 140 marks of silver and the annual tribute of a wax taper. ”

“ The hall, a fine specimen of Palladian architecture, 111 feet in length and 551⁄2 feet in breadth and height, has ceiling paintings by Rubens representing the apotheosis of James I. and scenes from the career of Charles I. Whitehall was the scene of Wolsey's disgrace, Henry VIII.'s death, the execution of Charles I., who was led to the scaffold from the banqueting hall, and the deaths of Cromwell and Charles II. The hall was converted by George I. into a royal chapel. The street leading from Trafalgar Square to Westminster, in which the palace stood, is known as Whitehall. ”

“ You are so engrossed by the relics of General Wolfe and Nelson and Wellington and other heroes, that you almost forget what you came to see—the Old Banqueting Hall where they are lodged, the beautiful Palladian structure that Inigo Jones built in 1622—all that is now left of the old palace of Whitehall.
The nine ceiling paintings that Rubens did at Charles I.’s request look as fresh as if they had been painted yesterday, having been restored too many times. ”

“ The court of the merry monarch and that of the queen mother being now settled in town, a period of vast brilliancy ensued, during which great festivity and much scandal obtained, by reason of intrigues in which the king and his friends indulged. Whitehall, the scene of so much gaiety and gallantry, was a palace by no means befitting the luxurious Charles. ”

“ In the days when he dwelt here and assisted Cromwell as his Latin secretary, some remnants of the former palace of the Scottish kings, which once had occupied this site, were still to be seen. Hard by at one time lived both the greatest architects of that age of building, Jones and Wren. From Scotland Yard to Cannon Row, Westminster, there extended in Milton’s lifetime the stately old palace of Whitehall, built in the Tudor style of Hampton Court. A writer in the last days of Queen Elizabeth tells us that it was truly royal ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ This old house still stands among the tall, business blocks, strong yet as a fortress, with high tin roof and deep windows and doors. It is now used as a tavern, but even this does not spoil the charm of its unique exterior, which still remains unchanged since the winter of 1775, when Montgomery and his officers held their mess here, and the descendants of the Puritans changed the character of the French château, as Oliver Cromwell and his "Roundheads," a century before, altered that of the English palace of Whitehall. ”

“ Plans were drawn up by Sir Christopher Wren for a new palace, but William III., who, suffering from habitual asthma, found the smoke of Whitehall almost intolerable, was not likely to be anxious to restore a palace in which he could not live. As he wrote to one of his friends, "the loss is less to me than it would be to another person, for I cannot live there." But though he made little effort to rebuild the palace, being already busy at altering Hampton Court, there is no truth in the statement of his enemies, that William had partly inspired the fire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Foreign jewellers, and dealers in the fine arts, found in the King a ready purchaser. He was interested in architecture, and gave a close personal attention to the building and decoration of his various palaces. He was a collector of beautiful armour and weapons, and employed many foreign craftsmen in different decorative arts. In painting he took an equal pleasure, and he was the first of the English kings to form an important collection of pictures, which was hung in a gallery in his palace of Whitehall, of which he himself kept the key. ”

“ The whole scheme for the palace of Whitehall is fully illustrated by Kent. [8] The plan is a vast rectangle measuring 874 by 1151 feet, and comprising seven courts, of which the central one toward the park encloses a circular gallery. ”

“ PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 1 The Palace of Westminster, in which Lords and Commons meet—the largest and most imposing Gothic building in the world—may be regarded, rising so nobly on the left bank of the Thames, as an expression in architecture of the dignity and stability of Parliament, and the honour in which it is held by the Nation. Most visitors to the Palace reach it by Whitehall or Victoria Street. ”

“ A dead child is found in the palace, the offspring of some maid of honour by some courtier, or perhaps by Charles himself. The whole flight of pandars and buffoons pounce upon it, and carry it in triumph to the royal laboratory, where his Majesty, after a brutal jest, dissects it for the amusement of the assembly, and probably of its father among the rest. The favourite Duchess stamps about Whitehall, cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the council-board in making mouths at each other and taking off each other’s gestures for the amusement of the King. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the project was never carried out, and the duke probably forgot all about it, or found something more worth begging for than a lot of old building materials. So exit Whitehall palace: buttery, bakehouse, wood and coal yards, spicery, charcoal-house, king’s privy cellar, council chamber, hearth-money office, and other fripperies in stone. It must have been a grand place, even as the heterogeneous pile that existed in William Dutchman’s time ”

“ King James also employed that distinguished architect Inigo Jones to build the beautiful Banqueting House, which is all that now remains of Whitehall Palace, and is one of the finest architectural fragments in London. The proportions are most elegant, and the style perfect. ”

“ To the westward of these small and inconvenient apartments, some of which were appropriated for the Queen and her maids of honour, was the great Stone Gallery, which looked on the garden and the bowling green. How far these arrangements were due to Cardinal Wolsey and how far to Henry VIII. we cannot say. Undoubtedly, the whole palace was most inconvenient, even at that day, when men’s ideas of comfort were so different from ours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a dangerous thing to build or rebuild great mansions close to the palace of so jealous a King as Henry VIII. It was especially dangerous to do so at Whitehall, because, as has been already shown, the King lived at Westminster in a congeries of old buildings more or less dilapidated and inconvenient. ”

“ ST. JAMES’S PALACE.
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the Palace is that of a great collection of chambers and offices built as they were required, for convenience and comfort, rather than for beauty or picturesqueness. There are no towers, cloisters, gables, or carved work. It is essentially—like St. James’s, like Hampton—a palace of brick.
The greater part of Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire in 1691 and 1697. After the deposition of James II. it ceased to be a royal residence. Then the site of the Palace was gradually built over by private persons. The Banqueting Hall was for a long time a Chapel Royal ”