The present Banqueting-House of Whitehall was begun by Inigo Jones, and
completed in 1622, forming only the central portion of one wing in his
immense design for a new palace, which, if completed, would have been the
finest in the world. The masonry is by a master-mason, Nicholas Stone,
several of whose works we have seen in other parts of London. "Little did
James think that he was raising a pile from which his son was to step from
the throne to a scaffold." The plan of Inigo Jones would have covered 24
acres, and one may best judge of its intended size by comparison with
other buildings. Hampton Court covers 8 acres; St. James's Palace, 4
acres; Buckingham Palace, 2-1/2 acres. It would have been as large as
Versailles, and larger than the Louvre. Inigo Jones received only 8s. 4d.
a day while he was employed at Whitehall, and £46 per annum for
house-rent. The huge palace always remained unfinished.
Whitehall attained its greatest splendor in the reign of Charles I. The
mask of Comus was one of the plays acted here before the king; but Charles
was so afraid of the pictures in the Banqueting-House being injured by the
number of wax lights which were used, that he built for the purpose a
boarded room called the "King's Masking-House," afterward destroyed by the
Parliament. The gallery toward Privy Garden was used for the king's
collection of pictures, afterward either sold or burned. The
Banqueting-House was the scene of hospitalities almost boundless.
The different accounts of Charles I.'s execution introduce us to several
names of the rooms in the old palace. We are able to follow him through
the whole of the last scenes of the 30th of January, 1648. When he
arrived, having walked from St. James's, "the King went up the stairs
leading to the Long Gallery" of Henry VIII, and so to the west side of the
palace. In the "Horn Chamber" he was given up to the officers who held the
warrant for his execution. Then he passed on to the "Cabinet Chamber,"
looking upon Privy Garden. Here, the scaffold not being ready, he prayed
and conversed with Bishop Juxon, ate some bread, and drank some claret.
Several of the Puritan clergy knocked at the door and offered to pray with
him, but he said that they had prayed against him too often for him to
wish to pray with them in his last moments. Meanwhile, in a small distant
room, Cromwell was signing the order to the executioner, and workmen were
employed in breaking a passage through the west wall of the Banqueting
House, that the warrant for the execution might be carried out which
ordained it to be held "in the open street before Whitehall."....
Almost from the time of Charles's execution Cromwell occupied rooms in the
Cockpit, where the Treasury is now, but soon after he was installed "Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth" (December 16, 1653), he took up his abode
in the royal apartments, with his "Lady Protectress" and his family.
Cromwell's puritanical tastes did not make him averse to the luxury he
found there, and, when Evelyn visited Whitehall after a long interval in
1656, he found it "very glorious and well furnished." But the Protectress
could not give up her habits of nimble housewifery, and "employed a
surveyor to make her some little labyrinths and trap-stairs, by which she
might, at all times, unseen, pass to and fro, and come unawares upon her
servants, and keep them vigilant in their places and honest in the
discharge thereof." With Cromwell in Whitehall lived Milton, as his Latin
Secretary. Here the Protector's daughters, Mrs. Rich and Mrs. Claypole,
were married, and here Oliver Cromwell died (September 3, 1658) while a
great storm was raging which tore up the finest elms in the Park, and
hurled them to the ground, beneath the northern windows of the palace.
In the words of Hume, Cromwell upon his deathbed "assumed more the
character of a mediator, interceding for his people, than that of a
criminal, whose atrocious violation of social duty had, from every
tribunal, human and divine, merited the severest vengeance." Having
inquired of Godwin, the divine who attended him, whether a person who had
once been in a state of grace could afterward be damned, and being assured
it was impossible, he said, "Then I am safe, for I am sure that I was once
in a state of grace." Richard Cromwell continued to reside in Whitehall
till his resignation of the Protectorate.
On his birthday, the 29th of May, 1660, Charles II returned to Whitehall.
The vast labyrinthine chambers of the palace were soon filled to
overflowing by his crowded court. The queen's rooms were facing the river
to the east of the Water Gate. Prince Rupert had rooms in the Stone
Gallery, which ran along the south side of Privy Gardens, beyond the main
buildings of the palace, and beneath him were the apartments of the king's
mistresses, Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, afterward Duchess of
Cleveland, and Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. The rooms of
the latter, who first came to England with Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans,
to entice Charles II into an alliance with Louis XIV., and whose
"childish, simple, baby-face" is described by Evelyn, were three times
rebuilt to please her, having "ten times the richness and glory" of the
queen's. Nell Gwynne did not live in the palace, tho she was one of Queen
Catherine's Maids of Honor!
Charles died in Whitehall on February 6, 1684. With his successor the
character of the palace changed. James II, who continued to make it his
principal residence, established a Roman Catholic chapel there.
It was from Whitehall that Queen Mary Beatrice made her escape on the
night of December 9, 1688. The adventure was confided to the Count de
Lauzun and his friend M. de St. Victor, a gentleman of Avignon. The queen
on that terrible evening entreated vainly to be allowed to remain and
share the perils of her husband; he assured her that it was absolutely
necessary that she should precede him, and that he would follow her in
twenty-four hours. The king and queen went to bed as usual to avoid
suspicion, but rose soon after, when the queen put on a disguise provided
by St. Victor. The royal pair then descended to the rooms of Madame de
Labadie, where they found Lauzun, with the infant Prince James and his two
nurses. The king, turning-to Lauzun, said, "I confide my queen and my son
to your care: all must be hazarded to convey them with the utmost speed to
France." Lauzun then gave his hand to the queen to lead her away, and,
followed by the two nurses with the child, they crossed the Great Gallery,
and descended by a back staircase and a postern gate to Privy Gardens. At
the garden gate a coach was waiting, the queen entered with Lauzun, the
nurses, and her child, who slept the whole time, St. Victor mounted by the
coachman, and they drove to the "Horse Ferry" at Westminster, where a boat
was waiting in which they crossed to Lambeth.
On the 11th the Dutch troops had entered London, and James, having
commanded the gallant Lord Craven, who was prepared to defend the palace
to the utmost, to draw off the guard which he commanded, escaped himself
in a boat from the water-entrance of the palace at three o'clock in the
morning. At Feversham his flight was arrested, and he returned amid
bonfires, bell-ringing, and every symptom of joy from the fickle populace.
Once more he slept in Whitehall, but in the middle of the night was
aroused by order of his son-in-law, and hurried forcibly down the river to
Rochester, whence, on December 23, he escaped to France. On the 25th of
November the Princess Anne had declared against her unfortunate father, by
absconding at night by a back staircase from her lodgings in the Cockpit,
as the northwestern angle of the palace was called, which looked on St.
James's Park. Compton, Bishop of London, was waiting for her with a
hackney coach, and she fled to his house in Aldersgate Street. Mary II
arrived in the middle of February, and "came into Whitehall, jolly as to a
wedding, seeming quite transported with joy."
But the glories of Whitehall were now over. William III., occupied with
his buildings at Hampton Court and Kensington, never cared to live there,
and Mary doubtless stayed there as little as possible, feeling opprest by
the recollections of her youth spent there with an indulgent father whom
she had cruelly wronged, and a stepmother whom she had once loved with
sisterly as well as filial affection, and from whom she had parted with
passionate grief on her marriage, only nine years before. The Stone
Gallery and the late apartments of the royal mistresses in Whitehall were
burned down in 1691, and the whole edifice was almost totally destroyed by
fire through the negligence of a Dutch maidservant in 1697.
The principal remaining fragment of the palace is the Banqueting-House of
Inigo Jones, from which Charles I. passed to execution. Built in the dawn
of the style of Wren, it is one of the most grandiose examples of that
style, and is perfect alike in symmetry and proportion. That it has no
entrance apparent at first sight is due to the fact that it was only
intended as a portion of a larger building. In the same way we must
remember that the appearance of two stories externally, while the whole is
one room, is due to the Banqueting-House being only one of four intended
blocks, of which one was to be a chapel surrounded by galleries, and the
other two divided into two tiers of apartments. The Banqueting-House was
turned into a ehapel by George I., but has never been consecrated, and the
aspect of a hall is retained by the ugly false red curtains which surround
the interior of the building. It is called the Chapel Royal of Whitehall,
is served by the chaplains of the sovereign, and is one of the dreariest
places of worship in London. The ceiling is still decorated with canvas
pictures by Rubens (1635) representing the apotheosis of James I. The
painter received £3,000 for these works. The walls were to have been
painted by Vandyke with the History of the Order of the Garter. "What,"
says Walpole, "had the Banqueting-House been if completed?" Over the
entrance is a bronze bust of James I. attributed to Le Soeur.