war and by his own ill-health, were spent chiefly there. After the new buildings were completed, apartments were given to all the chief officers of state, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and from time to time to foreign ambassadors. It was there that the seals were taken from Somers: it was there that the great breach with France was begun, when William said to Tallard, "Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, le temps est bien change:" it was thence that Marlborough's commission, military and diplomatic, for the great war was dated. But with such exceptions the King did little business save at Kensington. It was probably in the House Park that his horse Sorrel stumbled and threw him, and the shock brought on the illness which ended in his death. That he had not died long before might well be wondered at by all save his physicians, who administered to him such pleasing concoctions as the "juice of thirty hog-lice." Two years before he had plaintively remarked that "he should be very well if they would leave off giving him remedies."
When William died, Hampton Court was the most famous of English palaces. When Anne succeeded, it sank into secondary rank. Anne liked Kensington and Windsor. She had no pleasant memories of her brother-in-law, nor had the place itself happy memories for her. It was there that her boy—her only child who survived his infancy—William Henry, named Duke of Gloucester on the day of his christening, was born. There he was christened with great ceremonial. His foster-mother came from Hampton Wick; and though the
