retained the priory of St. John in Clerkenwell, and placed there some of the minor Household offices, including that of the Revels.[1] Somewhat retired from the press of city life lay St. James in the Fields, built on the site of an old leper hospital by Henry VIII in 1532. It ranked almost as a country house. A park, enclosed in 1537 and adorned with the artificial water known as Rosamund's Pool, separated it from Whitehall, and on the other side of it stretched the enclosures of Hyde and Marylebone Parks.[2] There were many country houses still farther afield. Oatlands, on the Surrey border of Windsor Forest, served for hunting. [3] To this, and to Nonsuch in Surrey, the Queen often made resort.[4] Eltham, in Kent, was another hunting ground, convenient of access from Greenwich. Visits were paid from time to time to Havering Bower in Essex, Enfield in Middlesex, Hatfield, where Elizabeth had lived as a princess, in Hertfordshire, the monastic spoil of Reading Abbey in Berkshire, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, and the ancient capital of Winchester in Hampshire.[5] But for the most part these, and yet other royal castles and manors in more distant counties, slept peacefully under the privileged sway of their constables and keepers.[6] There were some changes at the succession of
- ↑ Clapham and Godfrey, 165; cf. ch. iii.
- ↑ E. Sheppard, Memorials of St. James's Palace (1894). Elizabeth was there in 1561, 1564, 1566, 1571, 1572, 1575, 1576, 1581, 1583, 1584, 1588, and 1593.
- ↑ V. H. Surrey, iii. 478. Elizabeth was there in 1560, 1562, 1564, 1567, 1569, 1570, 1574, 1577, 1580, 1582, 1583, 1584, 1585, 1587, 1589, 1590, 1591, 1593, 1600, and 1602.
- ↑ V. H. Surrey, iii. 266; Gent. Mag. viii. (1837) 139; Clapham and Godfrey, 3. Elizabeth was there in 1559, 1563, 1565, 1567, 1574, 1580-5 (yearly), 1587, 1589, 1591, 1592, 1593, 1594, 1595, 1596, 1598, 1599, 1600. The house was begun by Henry VIII and finished by Lord Lumley, son-in-law of the Earl of Arundel, to whom the property was alienated in 1556. Elizabeth bought the house about 1590-2. 'Nonsuch, which of all other places she likes best,' wrote Rowland White in 1599 (Sydney Papers, ii. 120).
- ↑ For Eltham (visits in 1559, 1560, 1576, 1581, 1596, 1597, 1598, 1599, 1601, 1602), once an important palace, cf. J. C. Buckler, Account of Eltham (1828), Chapman, 1, Clapham and Godfrey, 47; for Havering (visits in 1561, 1568, 1572, 1576, 1578, 1579, 1591, 1597), Nichols, Eliz. iii. 70, Clapham and Godfrey, 145; for Hatfield (visits in 1558, 1566, 1568, 1571, 1572, 1575, 1576), V. H. Herts. iii. 92; for Reading (visits in 1568, 1570, 1572, 1574, 1576, 1592, 1601), J. B. Hurry, Reading Abbey (1901), T. J. Pettigrew in Journal of Brit. Arch. Ass. xvi. 192; for Woodstock (visits in 1566, 1572, 1574, 1575, 1592), E. Marshall, Early Hist. of Woodstock Manor (1873), and ch. xxiii, s.v. Lee. Elizabeth was at Enfield in 1561, 1564, 1568, 1572, 1587, 1591, 1594, 1597, and at Winchester in 1560, 1574, 1591.
- ↑ Schedules of royal houses and other possessions to which places of profit were attached form part of the Fee Lists described in the Bibl. Note to ch. ii. That of 1598 (H. O. 262) includes 37 castles under constables,
