‘Sir, you
Must no more call it York Place--that is past.
For since the Cardinal fell, that title’s lost.
’Tis now the King’s, and called Whitehall.’”
It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with
Anne Boleyn; Dr. Lingard says in a “garret”; Stowe says in the royal
“closet.” It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and
sudden;--a fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was
not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly
afterwards made a bishop.
Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his
chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery.
“He was “_somewhat_ gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie,” says
time-serving Holinshed.
He _laboured_ under the burden of an extreme fit and unwieldy
body,” says noble Herbert of Cherbury.
It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace of the
Archbishop of York first became the “King’s Palace at Westminster,” and
expanded into that mass of houses which stretched to St. James’s Park.
He built a gate-house which stood across what is now the open street,
and a gallery connecting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard;
and on the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys
for bowling; for although he put women to death, he was fond of manly
sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts, and gave an annuity and
rooms in the palace to the celebrated Holbein, who is said to have
designed the gate, as well as decorated the interior.
The reader is to bear in mind that the street in front of the
modern Banqueting-House was always open, as it is now, from Charing
Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south end of the
Banqueting-House, at which point the gate looked up it towards the
Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-House on the site of the present
Horse-Guards, was the Tilt-yard. The whole mass of houses and gardens
on the river side comprised the royal residence. Down this open street,
then, just as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry
coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly; Sir Thomas
More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with quiet-faced Erasmus;
Holbein, looking about him with an artist’s eyes; Surrey coming
gallantly in his cloak and feather, as Holbein has painted him; and a
succession of Henry’s wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or
under canopy;--handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon; laughing Anne
Boleyn; quiet Jane Seymour; gross-bodied but sensible Anne of Cleves;
demure Catherine Howard, who played such pranks before marriage; and
disputatious yet buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant to
become the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, also
came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the tilting-yard; but
of them we shall have more to say in the time of Elizabeth.
We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane Grey and Queen
Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward once held the Parliament
there, on account of his sickly condition; and he used to hear Latimer
preach in the Privy Garden (still so called), where a pulpit was
erected for him on purpose. As there are gardens there still to the
houses erected on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we
hear the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising
through the trees.
It was under Elizabeth that Whitehall shone out in all its romantic
splendour. It was no longer the splendour of Wolsey alone, nor of Henry
alone, or with a great name by his side now and then; but of a Queen,
surrounded and worshipped through a long reign by a galaxy of the
brightest minds and most chivalrous persons ever assembled in English
history.
Here she comes, turning the corner from the Strand, under a canopy of
state, leaving the noisier, huzzaing multitude behind the barriers
that mark the precincts of the palace, and bending her eyes hither
and thither, in acknowledgment of the kneeling obeisances of the
courtiers. Beside her are Cecil and Knolles, and Northampton, and
Bacon’s father; or, later in life, Leicester, and Burleigh, and Sir
Philip Sydney, and Greville, and Sir Francis Drake, (and Spenser is
looking on); or, later still, Essex and Raleigh, and Bacon himself,
and Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, with Shakespeare among the
spectators. We shall see her, by and by, at that period, as brought to
life to us in the description of Hentzner the traveller. At present
(as we have her at this moment in our eye) she is younger, of a large
and tall, but well-made figure, with fine eyes, and finer hands, which
she is fond of displaying. We are too apt to think of Elizabeth as
thin and elderly, and patched up; but for a good period of her life
she was plump and personable, warranting the history of the robust
romps of the Lord Admiral, Seymour; and till her latter days (and even
then, as far as her powers went), we are always to fancy her at once
spirited and stately of carriage, impulsive (except on occasions of
ordinary ceremony), and ready to manifest her emotions in look and
voice, whether as woman or Queen; in a word, a sort of Henry the Eighth
corrected by a female nature and a better understanding--or perhaps
an Anne Boleyn, enlarged, and made less feminine by the father’s
grossness. The Protestants have represented her as too staid, and
the Catholics as too violent and sensual. According to the latter,
Whitehall was a mere sink of iniquity. It was not likely to be so,
for many reasons; but neither, on the other hand, do we take it to
have been anything like the pattern of self-denial which some fond
writers have supposed. Where there is power, and leisure, and luxury,
though of the most legitimate kind, and refinement, though of the most
intellectual, self-denial on the side of enjoyment is not apt to be
the reigning philosophy; nor would it reasonably be looked for in any
court, at all living in wealth and splendour.
Imagine the sensations of Elizabeth, when she first set down in the
palace at Whitehall, after escaping the perils of imputed illegitimacy,
of confinement for party’s sake and for religion’s, and all the other
terrors of her father’s reign and of Mary’s, danger of death itself not
excepted. She was a young Queen of twenty-five years of age, healthy,
sprightly, good-looking, with plenty of will, power, and imagination;
and the gallantest spirits of the age were at her feet.
The Court of James the First was a great falling off from that of
Elizabeth, in point of decency. It was Sir Toby keeping house after the
death of Olivia; or a fox-hunting squire succeeding to the estate of
some courtly dame and mingling low life with high.
We have seen court mummeries in the time of Henry the Eighth and
pageants in that of Elizabeth. In the time of James, the masquings
of the one, and the gorgeous shows of the other, combined to produce
the Masque, in its latest and best acceptation; that is, a dramatic
exhibition of some brief fable or allegory, uniting the most fanciful
poetry and scenery, and generally heightened with a contrast of humour,
or an anti-masque. Ben Jonson was their great poetical master in the
court of James and Inigo Jones claimed to be their no less masterly
and important setter-forth in scene and show. The poet and artist had
a quarrel upon this issue, and Inigo’s’ memory suffers from divers
biting libels in the works of his adversary. The noble Banqueting-House
remains to show that the architect might have had some right to dispute
pretensions, even with the author of the _Alchemist_ and the
_Sad Shepherd_; for it is a piece of the very music of his art
(if we may so speak)--the harmony of proportion. Within these walls,
as we now see them, rose, “like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,”
the elegant lines of Ben Jonson, breathing court flowers,--the clouds
and painted columns of Jones--and the fair faces, gorgeous dresses, and
dances, of the beauties that dazzled the young eyesight of the Miltons
and Wallers. Ben’s burly body would then break out, as it were, after
his more refined soul, in some burlesque anti-masque, now and then not
a little coarse; and the sovereign and the poet most probably concluded
the night in the same manner, though not at the same table in filling
their skins with wine.
The Court of Charles I. was decorum and virtue itself in comparison
with that of James. Drunkenness disappeared; there were no scandalous
favourites; Buckingham alone retained his ascendency as the friend and
assistant; and the king manifested his notions of the royal dignity by
a stately reserve. Little remained externally of the old Court but its
splendour; and to this a new lustre was given by a taste for painting
and the patronage of Rubens and Vandyke. Charles was a great collector
of pictures. He was still fonder of poetry than his father, retained
Ben Jonson as his laureate, encouraged Sandys, and May, and Carew, and
was a fond reader of Spenser and Shakespeare. It was, upon the whole a
grave and graceful court, not without an undercurrent of intrigue.
It seems ridiculous to talk of the court of Oliver Cromwell, who had
so many severe matters to attend to in order to keep himself on his
throne; but he had a court, nevertheless; and however jealously it was
watched by the most influential of his adherents, it grew more courtly
as his protectorate advanced.
But how shall we speak of the court of Charles II.? of that unblushing
seminary for the misdirection of young ladies, which, occupying the
ground now inhabited by all which is proper, rendered the mass of
buildings by the water’s side, from Charing Cross to the Parliament,
one vast--what are we to call it?--
“Chi mi darà le voci e le parole
Convenienti a sì nobil soggetto?”
Let Mr. Pepys explain. Let Clarendon explain. Let all the world
explain, who equally reprobate the place and its master, and yet
somehow are so willing to hear it reprobated, that they read endless
accounts of it, old and new, from the not very bashful _exposé_
of the Count de Grammont, down to the blushing deprecations of Mrs.
Jameson.
The Court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted less
than four years, and was as dull as himself. The most remarkable
circumstance attending it was the sight of friars and confessors, and
the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, too, was once seen there;
the _fourth_ court of his visiting. There was a poetess also,
who appears to have been attached by regard as well as office to the
Court of James--Anne Kingswill, better known by her subsequent title of
Countess of Winchelsea. The attachment was most probably one of feeling
only and good nature, for she had no bigotry of any sort. Dryden,
furthermore, was laureate to King James; and in a fit of politic,
perhaps real, regret, turned round upon the late court in his famous
comparison of it with its predecessor.
James fled from England in December, 1688, and the history of Whitehall
terminates with its conflagration ten years afterwards.