[Illustration: _Frontispiece_
THE TOWER OF LONDON.
The Bloody Tower and the Wakefield Tower, in which the Crown Jewels
are kept.]
PEEPS AT
ROYAL PALACES
OF
GREAT BRITAIN
BY
BEATRICE HOME
CONTAINING 8 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR AND 21 LINE DRAWINGS
IN THE TEXT
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1913
PREFACE
If a palace be a royal residence, as the dictionary defines it, then
nearly all the famous castles of England would come under that title,
for the Norman and Plantagenet Kings were constantly moving from one
stronghold to another during the unsettled period of the Middle Ages.
Until the fifteenth century, both the English and Scottish Kings
resided in impregnable castles or fortified houses, but their sojourn
was never long in one place. After the Wars of the Roses had crushed
the power of the great nobles, it was no longer necessary for the
monarch to dwell within a fortress, and it was then that the gracious
and commodious palaces of Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Greenwich,
arose in England. The Scottish Kings, having at the same time
reached a greater control over their headstrong nobles, also began
transforming their castles into palaces, and to erect Holyrood and
Falkland to gratify their desire for more luxurious residences.
Within the compass of this small book, it would have been impossible
to detail every castle in which a monarch ever resided, so that it has
been thought better to confine attention to those palaces which were
owned, and most constantly used by the Kings and Queens of England and
Scotland.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WESTMINSTER PALACE 5
II. WINDSOR CASTLE 11
III. THE TOWER OF LONDON 19
IV. KENNINGTON PALACE 22
V. ELTHAM PALACE 24
VI. GREENWICH PALACE 27
VII. WHITEHALL PALACE 31
VIII. HAMPTON COURT PALACE 39
IX. ST. JAMES'S PALACE 48
X. KENSINGTON PALACE 53
XI. KEW PALACE 59
XII. BUCKINGHAM PALACE 63
XIII. VANISHED PALACES 67
XIV. EDINBURGH CASTLE 72
XV. DUNFERMLINE CASTLE 76
XVI. STIRLING CASTLE 78
XVII. HOLYROOD PALACE 82
XVIII. LINLITHGOW PALACE 87
XIX. FALKLAND PALACE 91
XX. BALMORAL CASTLE 94
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
THE TOWER OF LONDON _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
WINDSOR CASTLE 17
HAMPTON COURT PALACE 24
EDINBURGH CASTLE 73
STIRLING CASTLE 80
LINLITHGOW PALACE 91
BALMORAL CASTLE 94
ST. JAMES'S PALACE _On the cover_
ROYAL PALACES OF GREAT BRITAIN
CHAPTER I
WESTMINSTER PALACE
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. Though the
early Kings were seldom long in one place, they regarded Westminster
as their principal palace, and often kept their Christmas festivals
there, a time of general feasting at the royal expense.
Cnut is supposed to be the first King to settle at Westminster,
whither he had gone, after his conversion to Christianity, to be near
his friend Abbot Wolfstan, and we are told that the incident of his
rebuke to his courtiers concerning the tide occurred on the shores of
the River Thames. At that time Westminster was surrounded by water,
being built on the island of Thorney, an islet that rose out of the
low-lying marshy ground overspread by the wide and unembanked river.
It is customary to attribute the ruin of the many beautiful and
stately buildings of past ages, to the agency of civil wars, the
fanatical zeal of Protestant reformers, or the carelessness of the
Cromwellian soldiers; but far more deadly foes than the cannon-balls
of enemies or the mistaken energies of religious zealots, were
the destructive fires that time and again destroyed the splendid
structures that adorned the vanished centuries. 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. Though
much was destroyed, a considerable part of the King's house remained,
together with the beautiful chapel of St. Stephen and the great hall
of the palace; but yet another fire attacked this remnant in 1834.
From this last conflagration only Westminster Hall, the crypt of the
chapel, and an old tower (now hidden away among the narrow byways of
the abbey precincts) survived.
The Palace of Westminster, described by Camden as "large and
magnificent, a building not to be equalled in that age," was of great
extent, stretching from the abbey to the river. It consisted of a mass
of rambling buildings erected with little regard to any fixed
plan, but resulting in a picturesque medley of gabled roofs, carved
stonework, delicate window tracery, noble halls, and exquisite
chapels. Medieval palaces required to be large, for all the King's
work was done upon his own premises. Bakers, brewers, chandlers,
armourers, blacksmiths, carpenters, furriers, masons, gardeners,
barbers, stablemen, embroiderers, weavers--all lived and worked within
the palace walls, and received wages and lodging. As Sir Walter Besant
tells us, in his fascinating history of Westminster, the palace was
"a crowded city, complete in itself, though it produced nothing
and carried on no trade; there were workshops and forges and the
hammerings of armourers and blacksmiths, but there were no stalls,
no chepe, no clamour of those who shouted their goods and invited the
passengers to 'Buy, buy, buy.'" Within this city, crowded within a
confined space, dwelt about fifteen thousand people all occupied
with the King's business, from the judges, bishops, and high State
officials, down to humble laundry-women.
A strongly-fortified wall ran all round the palace, for medieval Kings
needed their royal residences to be places of defence as well as of
regal splendour. There were gates leading to the Abbey, to Whitehall,
and to the river, where the King's barges lay to take him down to
the Tower of London in the city, or up the river towards Windsor.
Immediately beyond the busy throng of the palace and the monastic
buildings of the Abbey, lay green fields and pleasant rural scenes.
Between the palace and the noisy city, a mile away, stood palatial
houses of the great nobles and bishops, facing the broad and sparkling
Thames.
Of all the beautiful buildings that once formed the extensive palace
only the great hall remains, now known as Westminster Hall. William
Rufus built it in 1097, declaring that, large though it might appear,
it was "but a bedchamber" in comparison to what he intended to make.
But practically nothing is left of the work of Rufus, for we learn
that three hundred years later, in 1397, Richard II. ordered the
"walls, windows, and roof to be taken down and new made." The
following year Richard, the most magnificent of the English Kings,
kept his royal Christmas in the newly finished hall. Dressed in cloth
of gold, adorned with pearls and precious stones, Richard entertained
ten thousand people, necessitating the purchase of twenty-eight oxen,
three hundred sheep, and numberless fowls every day for the feeding of
his guests. He little thought that a few months hence the Parliament
meeting in that very hall would depose him.
This famous hall has witnessed some of the most spectacular, splendid,
and tragic events in the history of the nation, from the Coronation
banquets held within its walls, a-glitter with gorgeous raiment
and all the pageantry of the past, to the sombre procedure of State
trials. Perhaps the best remembered scene is that of the trial of
Charles I., who had been brought hurriedly from Windsor, and was
lodged during his trial in part of the old palace, then used as
the residence of Sir Ralph Cotton. Standing, a monarch tried by his
subjects, Charles Stuart remains for all time a dignified figure, not
deigning to plead before such a self-constituted Court.
For many centuries justice was administered from the hall, judges
sitting in different parts determining Chancery cases or those of
Common Pleas.
The most-to-be-regretted loss caused by the fire of 1834 is that of
the chapel royal of the palace, the chapel of St. Stephen. From
an account of its architectural detail, which has fortunately been
preserved, one gathers that it was a most beautiful and exquisite
piece of work, as rich and stately as any in the country. King Stephen
is supposed to have founded it, but Edward I. rebuilt it, only to have
his building burnt down a few years later. His grandson, Edward III.,
restored it in such splendour that, as Camden says, "he seems rather
to have been the founder than only the repairer." He made it a
collegiate church, endowing it with so much wealth after his victories
in France that it almost rivalled its wealthy neighbour, the Abbey of
Westminster. Indeed, this royal munificence brought about considerable
quarrelling with the Abbey, whose inmates grudged the Masses being
said at St. Stephen's, when they might have been said in the Abbey and
so enriched their coffers. In this new chapel Richard II. married his
first wife, Anne of Bohemia.
[Illustration: Westminster Hall.
From an engraving by Hollar.]
At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the King granted to the Commons
of England, who had hitherto met in the Chapter House of Westminster
Abbey, the use of St. Stephen's Chapel, and there they have met ever
since, except once during the reign of Charles I. For the reception of
the members the beautiful chapel was ruthlessly altered, but enough of
the original work remained to make the fire of 1834 a disaster to all
lovers of graceful architecture. The present House of Commons is built
upon the site of the old collegiate buildings, and only the crypt of
the church remains to remind us of the royal chapel of our Plantagenet
Kings.
All the other historic rooms have vanished. Nothing is left of the
Painted Chamber, where Edward the Confessor died, the long room whose
painted walls depicted the story of the Confessor's life upon one
side, while the other was devoted to the Wars of the Maccabees. These
paintings were unknown until 1800, when the tapestry that covered them
was removed, and thus revealed the meaning of the room's designation.
Gone, too, is the old House of Lords, used by the peers until the
Commonwealth, where the famous tapestry representing the defeat of
the Spanish Armada was hung. In the vaults underneath, originally the
Confessor's kitchen, Guy Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators stored the
barrels of gunpowder with which to blow up the Parliament. After the
Restoration the Lords removed to the White Hall of the palace,
taking the Armada tapestry with them, which, together with so much of
fascination and historic interest, perished in the all-embracing fire
of 1834.