at Whitehall the Guard Chamber and the Great Chamber were distinct.[1] Out of the Great Chamber opens the Presence Chamber, and out of this again the Privy Chamber, which gives admittance to the private apartments of the sovereign. These included one or more Parlours or Withdrawing Chambers, as well as the Bed Chamber.[2] From the opposite end of the Great Chamber runs a gallery, which passes round two sides of a court and leads to the royal Closet, overlooking and forming part of the Chapel. Into this gallery also opens the Council Chamber. The Presence Chamber and the Privy Chamber were the essential elements of the scheme, and had to be contrived, no matter how humbly the Court was lodged.[3] The Presence Chamber seems to have been open to any one who was entitled to appear at Court at all. Access to the Privy Chamber, on the other hand, where Elizabeth dined and supped and sat with her ladies, was jealously reserved for privy councillors and other favoured persons.[4] At Whitehall there were also a Privy Gallery and a Privy Garden, which counted as parts of the Privy Chamber.[5] Occasionally ambassadors or distinguished foreign visitors might have audience there, or even in a Withdrawing Chamber.[6] But ordinarily presentations were made in the Presence Chamber, and here the crowd of courtiers waited on Sundays for the ceremony of the Queen's going to chapel. Paul Hentzner has described the scene as he saw it at Greenwich in 1598.[7]
- ↑ At the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 (Rimbault, 163) James went 'from his Privie Chamber, throughe the presence and garde chamber, and throughe a new bankettinge house erected of purpose for to solemnenize this feast in, and so doune a paire of stayers at the upper end therof hard by the Courte gate, wente alonge uppon a stately scaffold to the great chamber stayers, and throughe the greate chamber and lobby to the clossett, doune the staiers to the Chappell'; cf. Pegge, i. 68. Traces of the Great Chamber at Whitehall possibly still exist, over the building known as Cardinal Wolsey's cellar (L. T. R. vii. 40).
- ↑ Davison to Leicester (1586, Hardwicke Papers, i. 302): 'I found her majesty alone, retired into her withdrawing chamber'; Lord Talbot to Anon. (1587, Rutland MSS. i. 213): 'She had my wife called in to the withdrawing chamber, where no one but the Queen, my Lord, and Secretary Walsingham were'; Sussex to Burghley (1573, 2 Ellis, iii. 27): 'The Queen sate in the grete Closette or Parler [at Greenwich]'; R. Cecil to Essex (1596, Devereux, i. 347), reporting that Sir A. Shirley was 'used with great favour, both in the privy and drawing chambers'. The 'Withdrawing Chamber' of Law's Hampton Court plan appears to be the Privy Chamber. They were certainly distinct at Richmond in 1600, for Vereiken was taken through the Privy Chamber for an audience in the Withdrawing Chamber (Sydney Papers, ii. 170).
- ↑ Cf. ch. iv.
- ↑ H. O. 154 (1526); Procl. 962 (1603).
- ↑ Pegge, i. 68.
- ↑ V. P. vii. 91 (1559, Montmorency); ix. 531 (1603, Scaramelli).
- ↑ Cf. App. F. Von Wedel (2 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. ix. 250) describes the ceremony at Hampton Court in 1584.
