years nailed up in deal boxes. They were now brought forth from obscurity to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. The expense of the works at Hampton was a subject of bitter complaint to many Tories, who had very gently blamed the boundless profusion with which Charles the Second had built and rebuilt, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess of Portsmouth.[1] The expense, however, was not the chief cause of the discontent which William's change of residence excited. There was no longer a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of the noble and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to which fops came to show their new peruques, men of gallantry to exchange glances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungers to hear the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now, in the busiest season of the year, when London was full, when Parliament was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grassgrown pavement before that door which had once been too narrow for the opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services which the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent; and it was thought that he might have requited those services better than by treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to hint this, but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. "Do you wish," said William peevishly, "to see me dead?"[2]
In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too
- ↑ As to the works at Hampton Court, see Evelyn's Diary, July 16, 1689; the Tour through Great Britain, 1724; the British Apelles; Horace Walpole on Modern Gardening; Burnet, ii. 2, 3.
When Evelyn was at Hampton Court, in 1662, the cartoons were not to be seen. The Triumphs of Andrea Mantegna were then supposed to be the finest pictures in the palace.
- ↑ Burnet, ii. 2.; Reresby's Memoirs. Ronquillo wrote repeatedly to the same effect. For example, "Bien quisiera que el Rey fuese mas comunicable, y se acomodase un poco mas al humor sociable de los Ingleses, y que estubiera en Londres: pero es cierto que sus achaques no se lo permiten." July 8/18, 1689. Avaux, about the same time, wrote thus to Croissy from Ireland: "Le Prince d'Orange est toujours à Hampton Court, et jamais à la ville: et le peuple est fort mal satisfait de cette manière bizarre et retirée."
