RIVERSIDE SURVEY FROM MORTLAKE TO RICHMOND
[Sidenote: Mortlake]
Few villages near London have undergone such vicissitudes of fortune as
Mortlake, of which Wimbledon, Putney, and Barnes were once
dependencies, but which is now a somewhat uninteresting suburb,
redeemed from the commonplace by its situation on the river alone, and
but for the one day in the year, when the University boat-race is run,
and it is crowded with those interested in the contest, deserted by all
but its residents. A great brewery and numerous malt-kilns replace the
palace that was long a private residence of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and of the famous tapestry manufactory, founded in 1619 by
Sir Thomas Crane, in which, under the direction of the Italian Verrio,
work equal to that done in France was produced, not a trace remains.
Gone, too, is the mansion by the water where lived the famous
astrologer Dr. Dee, who was there often visited by Queen Elizabeth, but
who in spite of the great reputation he long enjoyed, died in absolute
poverty in 1608; and it is impossible to identify the sites of the
houses that are known to {219} have been occupied by Sir Philip
Francis, the bitter enemy of Warren Hastings, Henry Addington, the
first Lord Sidmouth, prime minister when the Peace of Amiens was
signed, Sir John Barnard, whom Sir Robert Walpole called the one
incorruptible member of Parliament, all of whom, as well as Dr. Dee,
are buried in Mortlake church, and commemorated by monuments or tablets
in it. The pottery works, too, which to a certain extent made up for
the loss of the tapestry manufactory when the latter was removed to
Windsor, though they flourished for nearly a century, were abandoned
about 1800, and it is only the expert collector who now remembers that
the quaint Toby Philpot jugs were first made in them, and that a
peculiar kind of white stoneware was produced in a rival factory hard
by.
[Illustration: THE SHIP INN, MORTLAKE]
The church of Mortlake was founded as early as 1348, when the parish
was first cut off from that of Wimbledon, but it has been so often
restored that, but for the lower portion of the tower, it retains
scarcely anything of its original structure. Above its western
entrance is the unusual inscription, 'Vivat Rex Henricus VIII.,' and on
an oaken screen in the chancel is an interesting painting representing
the Entombment, by the Dutch artist Van der Gutch, who lived for some
little time at Mortlake during the last decade of the eighteenth
century. In the Roman Catholic cemetery that adjoins the Protestant
churchyard rest the remains of the famous Oriental scholar and
traveller, Sir Richard Burton, and his devoted wife, in an ornate tomb,
representing an Arab tent, that was erected before her death at the
expense of {220} Lady Burton, who, in spite of her husband's well-known
heterodox opinions, was determined that the world should believe him to
have died in what she considered the only true faith.
Pleasantly situated at a bend of the river between Mortlake and Kew,
opposite to Chiswick and Isleworth, which present a very picturesque
appearance from the towing-path on the Surrey side, and owning a green
some twelve acres in extent, the ancient village of Kew still retains,
in spite of the great number of modern houses in its parish, something
of the rural charm that distinguished it before the beautiful gardens
with which its name is now chiefly associated were laid out.
[Sidenote: Kew]
The original meaning of the word Kew, that used to be very variously
spelt, Kayhoo, Kayburgh, and Kayo being some of the forms, has not been
determined, but the settlement is supposed to date from very ancient
times, bronze spear-heads and fragments of British pottery having been
recently found in the bed of the river, near some piles that had
probably served as the foundations of huts, a little above the old
bridge that was replaced in 1903 by that known as King Edward VII.'s,
it having been opened by him in 1904. The first actual reference to
Kew, however, occurs in a thirteenth-century roll of the royal manor of
Richmond, in which it was then included, although, strictly speaking,
it remained a hamlet of Kingston until 1769, when it became a separate
parish.
There appears to have been a small chapel of ease at Kew, the site of
which is unknown, as early as {221} 1532, and in it may sometimes have
worshipped the Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII. and widow of Louis
XII. of France, with her second husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of
Norfolk, who owned a mansion near by, as did also Charles Somerset,
Earl of Worcester, ancestor of the inventor of the steam engine.
Later, Kew was the home for a short time of Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, who had been sentenced to death, as well as his father, for
his share in the conspiracy to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, yet
for all that rose into high favour with Queen Elizabeth, to whom he
paid assiduous court, though he was already married to the unfortunate
Amy Robsart. Whether the maiden queen was ever his guest at Kew it is
impossible to say, but after his death she paid several visits to Sir
John Pickering, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, who owned a mansion near
the green, now pulled down, and spent large sums on her entertainment
in 1594 and 1595. The house that belonged to Robert Dudley was sold by
him to Sir Hugh Portman, a merchant of Holland, for which reason it was
long called the Dutch House, and is still standing just inside the
chief gates of Kew Gardens. It is now known as the Palace, a very
misleading name, that more rightly belonged to a much larger building
that was opposite to it, and was called Kew House. The latter belonged
in the early seventeenth century to a Mr. Bennett, and passed, as part
of the marriage portion of his daughter, to her husband Sir Henry,
later Lord Capel, who was the first founder of the famous gardens, that
were referred to by Rowland {222} Whyte in a letter to Sir Robert
Sydney, dated August 27, 1678, 'as containing the choicest fruit of any
plantation in England.' Lord Capel became, many years later,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and never returned to his Kew home, but his
widow resided in it until her death in 1721, when she was buried in Kew
church. The property then passed to Lady Elizabeth, grand-niece of
Lord Capel, who had married Mr. Molyneux, private secretary to the then
Prince of Wales. Molyneux was devoted to astronomical science, and
whilst he was living at Kew he and the more celebrated James Bradley
made a very important discovery in connection with the aberration of
the fixed stars with the aid of a large zenith-sector, the spot in Kew
Gardens where it used to stand being marked by a sundial, the gift, in
1830, of William IV.
In 1728 Lady Elizabeth Molyneux was left a widow, and in 1730 the
Prince of Wales obtained from her a long lease of Kew House, which he
did not live to profit by. On his untimely death, however, the
Princess of Wales remained in it, and continued the work on the grounds
begun by Lord Capel, entrusting the superintendence of the alterations
to Sir William Chambers, then considered the leading architect of the
day, who designed the lofty pagoda, the great orangery, and the various
semi-classical buildings in the gardens, whilst Sir William Aston, a
noted horticulturist, was chosen as advisory botanist. Before the
Princess of Wales died in 1772 the appearance of the Kew estate was
completely transformed, and when her son, George III., {223} took
possession of it, his wife Queen Charlotte continued constantly to add
to the rare plants in its hothouses. So enamoured did the king become
of Kew House that, a few years later, he bought the property from the
then representative of the Capel family, retiring to it whenever
possible to amuse himself with gardening and farming. He added several
acres in Mortlake parish and part of the Old Deer Park of Richmond to
the already extensive grounds, a considerable portion of which he
converted into grazing land for a fine flock of merino sheep, in which
he took a great pride. The house, a picturesque half-timbered
building, soon became too small for its owner's ambitious schemes, and
shortly before his first attack of insanity he had it pulled down to
make way for a huge mansion, which, had it been completed, would have
been more like a mediæval stronghold than a residential palace. It was
scarcely begun, however, before the king's strange malady increased
upon him, and after his death his son George IV., who hated Kew, which
was associated with many sad memories for him, decided not to have it
completed. In 1827 all that was left of it was cleared away, and its
very site is now practically forgotten.
Meanwhile the Dutch House had become even more closely associated with
the royal family than its opposite neighbour. It was occupied for some
time by Queen Caroline, consort of George II., and in 1781 was bought
by George III. for Queen Charlotte, who brought up her large family in
it, for which reason it became known, first, as the Royal {224}
Nursery, and later as the Princes' House. It was in it that the
unfortunate king was shut up when he lost his reason, whilst his wife
and children resided in Kew House, and when the latter was pulled down
the Dutch House became the chief suburban residence of the royal
family. In its drawing-room, fitted up for the occasion as a chapel,
were married, on July 11, 1818, the royal brothers, the Dukes of
Clarence and Kent, the latter the future father of Queen Victoria, who
was born in 1819 in Kensington Palace. In it, too, on November 1818,
Queen Charlotte died, and from that time the house was comparatively
neglected. It is still the property of the Crown, is kept in good
repair, and remains a noteworthy example of sixteenth-century domestic
architecture, but it is never likely to be again used as a royal
residence. On the other hand the gardens connected with it have become
even more beautiful than they were in the time of the Georges. They
were given to the nation by Queen Victoria in 1841, and since then,
under the able direction of the distinguished botanists Sir William
Hooker, his son Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir W. Thisselton Dyer, and their
successors, they have become not only an endless source of delight to
thousands of sightseers, but also a centre of scientific research. In
the museums are preserved examples of a vast number of vegetable
products, so that they form, with the infinite variety of growing
plants in the grounds and houses, an all but perfect epitome of botany.
Moreover, until quite recently, the Observatory, situated on the land
filched for a time by George III. from the Richmond {225} Deer Park,
was for many years noted for the good astronomical work done in it, but
unfortunately, though the building is still standing, the savants, who
for so long studied the heavenly bodies from it, have been driven away
by the electric trams running between Brentford and Twickenham, that
caused such an oscillation of the delicate instruments in use that the
accuracy of the observations taken was destroyed. Kew now knows the
astronomers no more; they have taken refuge in a remote district in
Dumfriesshire, where as yet no tramways disturb their peace, their
departure marking the beginning of a new era for the neighbourhood in
which they worked so long, and where commercial enterprise has won a
complete, though somewhat inglorious, victory over science.
The parish church of Kew, that is still a royal chapel, rises from the
green, on land presented by Queen Anne to the people, and dedicated in
compliment to her to her namesake, the mother of the Virgin. It was
completed in 1714, and is a fairly good example of early
eighteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture, for though it has been
considerably enlarged, the original style has been preserved. The
great gallery at the western end was added by George III. for the use
of his large family, and a supplementary chancel, with the mortuary
chapel in which rest the remains of the Duke of Cambridge, youngest son
of that monarch, was completed in 1833. According to popular tradition
George III. was married in Kew Church to the beautiful Quakeress Hannah
Lightfoot, whom he had wooed {226} and won long before he saw his
future consort, who, it is said, insisted on going through the ceremony
of wedlock again in the same building, after the story of her husband's
relations with her predecessor came to her ears. However that may be,
the old place of worship is full of memories of the royal family; in it
the blind King George of Hanover, who was born in a house now used as
one of the Herbariums of the Botanic Gardens, was baptized, and there,
many years later, the Duchess of Teck, who resided for a long time in
Cambridge Cottage, still standing on the green, was married to the
father of the present Princess of Wales. A stained-glass window
commemorates the duchess, and amongst the hatchments on the walls are
two unpretending tablets, one in honour of the portrait painter Johann
Zoffany, the other of the more famous Thomas Gainsborough, both of whom
are buried in the churchyard, the latter, in accordance with his own
instructions, near his old friend Joshua Kirby, who was one of his
first patrons.
[Sidenote: Sheen]
Full of interest as is the history of Kew, it is surpassed in
fascination by that of the neighbouring royal borough of Richmond, so
varied have been the vicissitudes through which it has passed, and so
many are the great names associated with it. Originally known as
Syenes, and later as Sheen, Richmond was at the time of the Conquest
included in the manor of Kingston, when it was but one of many
riverside hamlets tenanted chiefly by fishermen. The Anglo-Saxon form
of the word Sheen signifies gleaming or beautiful, and certain lovers
of {227} Richmond have assumed that it was from the first distinguished
above its fellows by its charm, but this is scarcely borne out by
evidence, for the name was in use when the sites of the future
monasteries, palace, and town were still mere waste lands, often under
water, and differing but little if at all from the adjoining districts
up and down stream.
It seems certain that there was a manor-house at Sheen as early as the
beginning of the twelfth century, and in it Henry I. resided for a
short time, probably welcoming there his widowed daughter, Matilda, who
on the death of her husband, Henry V. of Germany in 1126, returned to
England to be accepted at the following meeting of the Witan as
heiress-apparent of her father's kingdom. The Sheen estate was given
later by Henry I. to a butler in his service named Michael Belet, but
it was not long before it reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever
since belonged. Edward I. was several times at Sheen, receiving the
Scottish commissioners there in 1300, but the house he occupied was
practically rebuilt and converted into a palace by Edward III., who
often held his court in it, showing princely hospitality to many
distinguished guests before the news of the death of his beloved son,
the Black Prince, broke his heart. In it, deserted it is said by all
his courtiers, and attended only by a single priest, the once powerful
monarch died in 1377, his unworthy mistress, Alice Ferrers, having,
when she saw the end was near, absconded with all the valuables she
could carry away, including several valuable rings which she had torn
off the fingers of her dying lover.
{228}
When the news of Edward's death reached London, his four surviving sons
hastened down to the palace at Sheen to pay to their dead father the
honours they had withheld from him during the closing years of his
life; but whether the body was taken to Westminster for interment by
road or by river history does not say. Soon after the funeral Richard
II., then a boy of ten years old, received the formal announcement of
his succession to the throne from a deputation of leading London
citizens, who were received by him and his brother in the great hall,
when the young king became so excited that he could not restrain his
emotion, but kissed his guests all round on both cheeks. The next day
he left his early home mounted on a white horse and robed in white,
attended by all his great nobles, who also wore white in honour of the
occasion, to make his public entry into his capital. A few years later
he brought home to Sheen his beloved bride, Anne of Bohemia, and until
her early death he was often there with her, holding regal state and
entertaining hundreds of guests every day.
Considerable additions were made to the royal residence at Sheen by
Richard's orders, and the superintendence of the works was entrusted to
the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been held in high esteem by Edward
III., that monarch having granted him a pension in 1367, calling him in
the deed of gift 'our beloved yeoman.' Chaucer became deeply attached
to Sheen, but his connection with it was not a long one, for he
presently fell into disgrace with his employer, who took away all his
official {229} appointments, and though later he was to some extent
restored to favour, the king's love for his riverside home had by that
time been turned to hatred. In 1394 Queen Anne died at Sheen, and so
great was the grief of her husband, who, for all that, soon married
again, that he ordered the palace to be razed to the ground immediately
after the funeral, a grand and imposing ceremony in which all the chief
nobles of England took part. Fortunately the royal commands were not
fully carried out, for much of the interesting old building was left
standing, and although it was neglected throughout the remainder of the
reign of Richard II., it was sufficiently habitable in that of Henry
IV. to be used as a residence by his son, the Prince of Wales. Indeed
Henry V. was from the first very fond of Sheen, and soon after his
succession to the throne he restored and added to the palace,
converting it into what his biographer, Thomas Elmham, called 'a
delightful mansion of curious and costly workmanship befitting the
character and condition of a king.' Henry VI., who was but nine months
old when his father died, may possibly have been at Sheen as a child,
but the first well-authenticated visit paid by him to the palace was in
1441, when he issued a warrant from it to the sheriffs of the counties
through which his aunt, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, whose husband
had been Protector of England during his minority, was expected to
pass, giving instructions for her reception. In 1445, the year of
Henry's marriage to Margaret of Anjou, Sheen Palace was the scene of
many a costly festivity, and ten years later it was to {230} it that
the unfortunate monarch was taken when his constitutional weakness had
developed into positive insanity. Thence, after his recovery, he went
forth to the fatal battle of St. Albans, at which he was defeated and
taken prisoner by the Yorkists, and there he returned in 1456, when his
mind was again unhinged, whilst his wife, with her beloved son,
withdrew to Chester. Once more restored to mental health, Henry made a
gallant effort to regain the reins of power, but he never again was
king in anything but name, his palace at Sheen knew him no more, but
before his tragic death in the Tower in 1471 it was twice tenanted by
his hated rival Edward IV. The latter was there for a short time in
the first year of his reign, and in 1465 he held a brilliant court in
the palace, hoping by his lavish hospitality to reconcile the nobles to
his secret marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, the discovery of which so
alienated the kingmaker, the mighty Earl of Warwick, that he reverted
to the Lancastrian side. At Sheen the queen's relations were very much
in evidence, and it is said to have been there that her ladies paid her
brother, Anthony Woodville, the compliment of presenting him with a
golden garter embroidered with forget-me-nots. In 1467 the king gave
the Sheen Palace to his wife, and she often resided in it during her
husband's lifetime, possibly also occasionally in the brief reign of
Richard III., and she probably hoped, after the murder of her sons, to
be allowed to spend her remaining years there, especially as the new
king was her son-in-law, but in this she was disappointed. Henry VII.
liked the riverside home {231} too much himself, and he lost no time in
confiscating it, ordering the widowed queen to retire to a convent at
Bermondsey, where she died not long afterwards. [Sidenote: Richmond]
Now began a new era of glory for Sheen, the name of which the king
changed to Richmond, he having been Earl of Richmond in Yorkshire
before he was called to the English throne. What had hitherto been
really more like a fortress than a palace was greatly enlarged, the
moat which had surrounded it was filled in to make room for the various
extensions, and the new buildings were lavishly decorated. When the
insurrection headed by Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford carpenter,
who claimed to be the heir of the murdered Duke of Clarence, broke out
in Ireland in 1487, Henry called a council of war together at Richmond,
and the following year the Princess Anne of York, fifth daughter of
Edward IV., was the guest of the king in the palace. In 1492, after
the termination of the war with France, a grand tournament was held
partly in the grounds of the royal residence and partly on the green
between it and the river, 'in the which space,' says the chronicler
John Stow, writing about a century later, 'a combat was holden and
doone betwixt Sir James Parker, knight, and Hugh Vaughan, gentleman
usher, upon controversie for the arms that garter gave to the sayde
Henry Vaughan ... and Sir James was killed incontinently at the first
course, in consequence,' in the writer's opinion, 'of his having worn a
false helmet,' an incident proving how real were the dangers attending
the warlike pageants in which the Tudor sovereigns so greatly delighted.
{232}
In 1497 or 1498 a serious fire broke out in Richmond Palace, and the
greater part of the older portion of the building was destroyed, but
the king at once set a whole army of workmen to repair the mischief,
and in 1501 he was back again in his favourite residence. There, in
the early autumn of that year, took place the betrothal of his eldest
son, Prince Arthur, with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,
Katharine of Aragon, and there, too, in January 1502, was signed the
contract of marriage between the Princess Margaret of England and James
IV. of Scotland that eventually resulted in the union of the two
countries. Prince Arthur died five months after the wedding, and the
king with unexpected generosity gave up the Richmond Palace to his
widowed daughter-in-law, who, on June 25, 1503, was affianced to his
second son, Henry, heir-apparent of the English throne, who was then
only eleven years old. Henry VII. appears to have taken possession of
the palace again very soon, for in 1503 he received in it Philip I. of
Spain, who had been shipwrecked off the coast of England, holding great
festivities in his honour. In 1506 another fire occurred, breaking out
this time in the king's own bedroom, and he narrowly escaped a serious
accident, for a gallery through which he had passed with the young
Prince Henry collapsed just as he was leaving it. In this case,
fortunately, the damage done was slight, and Henry spent much of the
remainder of his life at Richmond, where he died in 1509, leaving
behind him, it is said, a vast accumulation of treasure hidden away in
secret chambers and cellars. After solemn {233} services had been held
in the private chapel of the palace, the body was taken by road with
great pomp to be laid to rest in the beautiful but still unfinished
chapel in Westminster Abbey, on which the king had spent fabulous sums
during his lifetime, and for the completion of which he left £1000 in
his will that he made at Richmond three weeks before his death.
Henry VIII. seems to have been at first as much attached to the
Richmond Palace as his father had been. He spent the first Christmas
after his accession there, and it was in it, on New Year's Day 1511,
that his wife, Katharine of Aragon, gave birth to a son, whose advent
was celebrated throughout the kingdom with extraordinary rejoicings.
The infant on whom so much depended lived, however, but for six weeks,
and his father is said to have looked upon his untimely death as a
judgment on himself for having married his brother's widow. After the
tragic event the king paid but a few short visits to Richmond, lending
the palace there between whiles to distinguished guests, amongst whom
was the Emperor Charles V. of Germany, who had come to England, in
1533, for his betrothal to the Princess Mary, then only four years old.
That same year Henry leased the Richmond estate to Massey Villiard and
Thomas Brampton for a term of thirty years at an annual rental of £25,
8s., but he evidently considered it still his own private property, for
he made use of the palace whenever it suited his convenience. In 1526,
for instance, when he had compelled Wolsey to give up to him the newly
{234} completed mansion at Hampton Court, he told the chagrined donor
that he could live in his house at Richmond instead, a privilege of
which the cardinal availed himself but seldom, so great was his
unpopularity in the neighbourhood, the common people, especially those
who had been in the service of Henry VII., bitterly resenting that what
they irreverently called 'a bocher's dogge should be in the royall
manor of Richmond.' For all that, however, Wolsey received Henry VIII.
as his guest in it in 1528, when the feast of the patron-saint of
England was celebrated with great solemnity in the chapel, all the
companions of the Order of the Garter having been present. After his
final disgrace the broken-hearted minister paid a last visit to
Richmond, taking up his abode on his arrival as usual at the palace,
but he soon received a peremptory message from his angry master telling
him to withdraw to the Lodge in the Old Deer Park, the history of which
is related below.
In 1535 Anne Boleyn, whose doom was already practically sealed, was for
a short time at Richmond Palace, and, according to some authorities, it
was in a house near by, then owned by Sir George and Lady Carew, that
her successor in the king's affection, Jane Seymour, awaited, on the
fatal 19th of May 1536, the arrival of her royal lover, to whom she had
been married the day before.
[Illustration: THE OLD PALACE, RICHMOND]
It was at Richmond that Anne of Cleves resided whilst the negotiations
were proceeding for her divorce from the fickle king, and when they
were concluded Henry, in his relief at getting rid of the {235} 'Dutch
cow,' as he irreverently called her, gave her the estate for her life.
She became much attached to the palace, and the story goes that the
once hated wife several times entertained the king in it with such
charming hospitality that he nearly fell in love with her. There was
even at one time a rumour that she had become the mother of a son whose
father was her divorced husband, and it was not until some of the
scandalmongers had been publicly tried and severely punished that
gossiping tongues ceased to wag on the subject. That Anne did cherish
a hope, when Catherine Howard's influence was waning, of regaining her
position as queen appears certain, but she had the sense soon to
recognise that she had no chance of success, and she lived quietly on
in her luxurious home until the death of Henry, when she had to resign
it to Edward VI. The latter preferred Richmond Palace to any of his
other residences, and spent as much of his time there as his physicians
would allow; but they considered Hampton Court healthier, and insisted
on his removal there when his health began to fail. It was at Richmond
that took place, in the young king's presence, in the summer of
1550--some say in his private chapel, others in that of the
neighbouring Carthusian monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem, of which an
account is given below--the marriage of Lord Lisle to Lady Anne Seymour
and that of Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, to the ill-fated
Amy Robsart, who was to pay so dearly for standing in the way of her
husband's courtship of Queen Elizabeth. That same year Edward VI.
received {236} in the great hall of the palace the French ambassador,
Marshal St. André, who had come from France to invest him with the
order of St. Michael, on which occasion the courtly manners and
generosity of the king completely won the hearts of all his guests.
Queen Mary was at the palace in 1553, and there received the news of
the rebellion headed by Wyatt, which caused her to hasten to London,
where her prompt action saved the situation. She returned to Richmond
in triumph, and summoned her council to meet her there to discuss the
arrangements for her marriage with Philip II. of Spain, on which she
was determined in spite of the opposition of her subjects. Her
happiest days were spent in the old palace on the green before she
realised how vain were her hopes of winning her husband's affections
and becoming the mother of an heir to the throne; but after her
husband's return to Spain she took a dislike to Richmond. When the
Princess Elizabeth was suspected of a plot against her sister's life
she was sent from her prison in the Tower to Richmond Palace under the
care of the stern Sir Henry Bedingfield, and she was so much pleased
with her new place of confinement that she begged to be allowed to
remain there. It was whilst she was at Richmond that she was offered a
free pardon if she would renounce her claim to the throne and marry the
Duke of Suffolk, but she firmly refused, and was therefore removed to
Woodstock, where she was kept in close confinement, only escaping
condemnation to death by pretending that she had been {237} converted
to Roman Catholicism. Later, when Mary's fears of her sister's
disloyalty were allayed, and her beloved Philip was once more with her,
a grand entertainment was given at Richmond, at which Elizabeth was
present, and in the summer of 1558 the queen paid her last visit to the
palace, contracting there, it was said, the chill which caused her
death, though, as a matter of fact, she had long been in a critical
condition of health.
With the accession of Elizabeth a fresh era of prosperity began for
Richmond, which was one of the new queen's favourite places of
residence, and to which she often went by water, her magnificent state
barge escorted by a whole fleet of richly decorated boats bearing her
retinue. In Richmond Palace Elizabeth received many of the suitors for
her hand, including the young Eric IV., King of Sweden, whom she
admitted to some little intimacy, even introducing him to her favourite
astrologer, Dr. Dee of Mortlake, though she never had the slightest
intention of accepting him; and there, too, she carried on a
simultaneous flirtation with the Earls of Leicester and Essex, to the
latter of whom she seems to have been really deeply attached. Even
after both had passed away she kept up the old traditions, making a
gallant attempt to hide the fact that her heart was broken, for she
wrote love-letters, some of them from Richmond, to the young Lord
Mountjoy; and on one occasion is said to have rewarded a commoner, Mr.
William Sydney, with a kiss as a reward for his sprightly dancing of a
_coranto_ in her presence in the great hall of the {238} palace. To
the last Elizabeth loved her Richmond home; and it was in its chapel
that she listened, not long before her death, to a sermon from Dr.
Rudd, Bishop of St. David's, on the realistic description of old age in
the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes, remaining, it is related, apparently
unmoved even when the preacher, with extraordinary want of tact,
referred to her own wrinkles as an example of the ravages of time. The
discourse over, however, the queen rose, opened a window with her own
hands as if to mark her displeasure, and turning to the doctor told him
he could in future keep his disparaging observations to himself,
adding, 'I see that some wise men are as big fools as the rest.'
According to some authorities it was at Richmond that the aged
sovereign received the news that her beloved Earl of Essex had been
executed, a tragedy she had hoped to have prevented, though she had
signed his death-warrant, by her promise that she would pardon him at
the last moment, however great his crime, if he sent back to her a ring
she had given him. Unfortunately there is no reliable historical proof
of the truth of the touching story that he did entrust the ring to be
given to the queen to the Countess of Nottingham, who kept it back,
only confessing the truth on her death-bed to Elizabeth, who shook her
violently, declaring that God might forgive her, though she never
would; but there is no doubt that the tragic end of the earl hastened
her own death. She knew full well that she was doomed soon to follow
her favourite to the grave, and often made covert allusions to her
conviction, as when she {239} said to Lord Howard, 'I am tied with a
chain of iron round my neck, all is changed with me now.' The last few
months of her life were spent at Richmond, and she passed peacefully
away, after declaring she had no wish to live longer, on March 24,
1603, according to tradition, for which there seems, however, to be no
convincing evidence, in a small room still in existence above one of
the entrance-gates of the palace. Her body was taken down the river to
Whitehall in the very barge she had so often used in life, and never
again was Richmond the scene of a great historic pageant. James I.
cared little for his property there, and gave it to his eldest son,
Henry, of whom, as is well known, he was extremely jealous, preferring
that he should not reside at court.
Prince Henry lived much at Richmond, receiving there, in 1606, the
French and Spanish ambassadors, who were both eager to secure for their
respective sovereigns an alliance with him, and during the last few
years of his life he began to form the famous collection of pictures
which is still, after going through many vicissitudes, one of the most
valued possessions of the English royal family. He was resident at the
palace during the whole of the summer before his untimely death, which
took place at St. James's Palace in 1612, and was, according to his
doctors, the result of over-indulgence in bathing in the Thames. He
was deeply mourned by the people of Richmond, with whom he was
extremely popular, on account of his genial unassuming manners. He
left his pictures to his brother Charles, to whom {240} the Richmond
estate was transferred by their father in 1617. The new owner was
often at the palace before his accession to the throne, constantly
adding to the art treasures in it, and his beloved Steenie was often
his guest there. It was from it that the two inseparable friends
started in 1623 on their wild expedition to Spain, Charles intending to
woo the Infanta incognito before committing himself to an engagement.
Two months after Charles became king he was welcoming a very different
bride, Henrietta Maria of France, on whom he bestowed the Richmond
Palace as part of her marriage portion; and although they both
preferred Whitehall and Buckingham Palace, the young couple were
several times in residence there before their troubles began. The
Richmond home was also turned to account as a place of education for
their children, the princesses Elizabeth, Mary, and Anne were there for
some years under the care of the Countess of Roxburgh, and there Anne
died in 1640, from what her doctor called a 'suffocating cataar.' A
year later her brother Charles was sent to Richmond with his tutor,
Bishop Duppa, by the Parliament that was already at daggers drawn with
his father, and there he enjoyed a time of comparative security and
happiness before he became involved in the doom that overtook his
parents, and started on his weary wanderings as the disinherited heir
of a murdered father. During the four years' Civil War Richmond Palace
was practically deserted, and in 1647 the pictures in it were taken
down, those likely to spread papal doctrines being burned, and the
others dispersed. In 1649 a {241} survey of the property was made by
order of Cromwell, when its value was assessed at £10,782, 10s. 2d.,
and shortly afterwards it was sold to aid in raising money to pay the
arrears due to the soldiers of the Parliamentary army. The greater
part of the historic building was pulled down, and in 1650 what was
left of it was bought by Sir Gregory Norton, who had been one of the
king's judges, and had signed the warrant for his execution. According
to some authorities Sir Gregory resided in the dismantled mansion until
his death, which took place in 1652, whilst others assert that he was
turned out of it at the Restoration, when he narrowly escaped sharing
the fate of the other regicides. However that may be, the palace,
hallowed by so many memories, was certainly occupied for a short time
by the widowed queen Henrietta Maria, who actually received in it, as
her guest, the notorious Lady Castlemaine, one of Charles II.'s many
mistresses, who had left him in a fit of temper at a moment's notice.
The story goes that the king joined her at Richmond the next morning,
in the hope of patching up a reconciliation, when he probably had a
stormy interview with his mother, who must indeed have mourned over his
many iniquities, and wondered that all his troubles should have taught
him so little.
The Queen Dowager left Richmond for France, never to return, in 1665,
giving over the palace to Sir Edward Villiers, who two years later
either lent or rented it to a relative of his, Lady Frances Villiers,
who had charge of the three young children of the Duke of York, the
future James II., two of whom, {242} the Dukes of Kendal and Cambridge,
died in 1667. On the accession of James II., Richmond Palace was given
back to the Crown, but the new king never lived in it, though he sent
his infant son, who was to have such a melancholy career as the
Pretender, to be cared for there. The child, who was so delicate that
he had not been expected to live, throve in his new surroundings, and
was taken back to Windsor in time to share his parents' flight on the
landing of the Prince of Orange. After the new revolution the royal
demesne at Richmond was long deserted, William III. and his consort
having paid only flying visits to it. The Princess Anne, daughter of
James II. by his first wife, who had been very happy there with her
little brothers before their untimely death, begged hard to be allowed
to live in it, but permission was refused, and it was not until the
accession of George II. that it was again used as a royal residence.
The palace was given by him to his wife, Queen Caroline, who built for
the accommodation of the ladies of her court the four substantial
mansions on the west side of the green that are still known as Maids of
Honour Row. In 1770 Richmond Palace was for a few months the home of
Queen Charlotte, who, as already stated in connection with Kew, had a
great love for the whole neighbourhood. Since then, unfortunately,
further portions of the grand old mansion, that at one time with its
dependencies occupied ten and a half acres of ground, have been pulled
down, and all that is now left are the entrance gateway--on which,
carved in stone, is the coat of arms of Henry VII.--of what is still
{243} known as the Wardrobe Court, and a portion of the buildings that
once surrounded the latter, which are leased by the Crown to different
tenants, and still bear witness with their ornate internal decoration,
their quaint nooks and corners, and their secret passages, to the good
old days gone by, when they were but a small part of a stately palace,
capable of accommodating hundreds of distinguished guests, that was the
scene of many a courtly pageant and many an exciting intrigue.
{244}