manors was available.[1] The most important palaces, under Elizabeth, were five in number, Whitehall, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, and Windsor. All of these stood upon the river, and all except Windsor and in part Greenwich dated structurally from the reign of Henry VII or that of Henry VIII. The ancient palace of Westminster, with its royal chapel of St. Stephen and its great hall built by William Rufus and rebuilt by Richard II, served for coronations and for the housing of Parliament and the courts of justice. But it was no longer used as a royal residence, and the name of one of its principal chambers, the 'white hall', had been transferred to the neighbouring structure of York Place, originally begun by Wolsey, and surrendered to Henry VIII, a fruitless sacrifice, at the moment of the great Cardinal's downfall in 1530.[2] This was the metropolitan palace. It was an extensive and irregular pile, covering many acres. Through its centre ran the highway from London to Westminster, piercing two arched gateways, of which the northern one was the work of Holbein. The hall and chapel, with the royal lodgings, galleries, and privy garden, stood on the east, and were connected with the river by a flight of privy stairs. On the west, reached by galleries over the gateways, were many additional lodgings, grouped round a cockpit, a tennis-court, and a tilt-yard. At the back of these lay St. James's Park.[3] Richmond and Hampton Court, a few miles up the river, and Greenwich, a few miles down, were all accessible by river as well as by road, and the royal barge lay ready in its bargehouse opposite Whitehall, off Paris Garden on the Surrey side. Both for Court and city the Thames was a frequented water-way. Richmond had been
- ↑ Scaramelli wrote to the Signory in July 1603 (V. P. x. 71) that James had eight palaces on the Thames, of which Hampton Court was the biggest. Each had its own furniture, which was never taken to furnish another. I suppose the eight must be Whitehall, St. James's, Somerset House, the Tower, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton Court, and Windsor. Letters of 1602, when Elizabeth was at Oatlands, contemplate her return to 'Richmond or some other of her houses of abode' and to 'a standing house' (Hatfield MSS. xii. 385, 448). I suppose that these were the permanently furnished houses.
- ↑ Cheyney, i. 143, says that the Exchequer court near Westminster Hall, the gallery of which was built or repaired in 1570, 'served the queen and court not infrequently as a ball-room'; but this is only an old tradition, for which Smith, Westminster, 54, could find no confirmation in 1807, and for which the records of Court entertainments certainly furnish none.
- ↑ The accounts of Smith and Sheppard (cf. Bibl. Note) may be supplemented from W. R. Lethaby in Archaeologia, lx. 131; London Topographical Record, i. 38; ii. 23; vi. 23, 35; vii. passim. Von Wedel (2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. ix. 234) describes the palace in 1584.
