Hampton Court Part 1

Hampton Court.

by Walter Jerrold.

"Close by those meads for ever crown'd with flowers Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers There stands a structure of majestic frame, Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name."--_Pope._

I

For combined beauty and interest--varied beauty and historical interest--there is no place "within easy reach of London", certainly no place within the suburban radius, that can compare with the stately Tudor palace which stands on the left bank of the Thames, little more than a dozen miles from the metropolis and, though hidden in trees, within eye-reach of Richmond. It is not only one of the "show places", which every traveller from afar is supposed to visit as something of a duty, but it is a place that conveys impressions of beauty and restfulness in a way that few others can. It remains ancient without having lapsed into a state of desuetude that leaves everything to the imagination; it is a living whole far from any of the garishness that belongs to contemporaneity. Whether seen from the outside on the west, where the warm red brick, the varied roofs, the cl.u.s.tered decorative chimneys suggestive of the Tudor time make a rich and harmonious whole; or from the south east, where the many-windowed long straight lines of the Orange additions show the red brick diversified with white stone, it is a n.o.ble and impressive pile. Within, too, are priceless treasures, themselves alone the objective of countless pilgrimages. And recognizing the attractions of the buildings and their contents is to take no account of the lovely grounds, and of the crowding a.s.sociations of a place that, since its establishment four hundred years ago, has again and again been the centre at which history was made.

Throughout our records for many centuries the valley of the Thames has been favoured when our monarchs have sought to establish a new home.

Greenwich and London--the Tower, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace--Richmond and Hampton Court, Windsor, Reading and Oxford, are some of the places that have at one time or another been the chosen centre of royal life; and Hampton Court Palace is the newest of those situated close on the river's bank, though nearly two hundred years have elapsed since it was a regular royal residence. It was, indeed, for something less than the same length of time that it was in use as a home of the sovereign, but within that period it saw two revolutions, and the change of national conditions from the comparative mediaevalism of the days of the eighth Henry to the comparative modernity of the beginning of the Hanoverian era. It is not, perhaps, overfanciful to see something of the lavish richness, the opulent homeliness, of the earlier period typified in the varied buildings, courts, and gateways of the Tudor portion of the Palace, and the more formal grandeur of the later time in the symmetrical stateliness of the later part.

Hampton Court Palace was the centre of many of the bluff King Henry's hunting parties--and the scene of some of his marital excitements, and here, too, his long-hoped-for son was born; it was the scene of Elizabethan pageantry, and of the attempt on the part of the Virgin Queen's successor to force other men's religion into his own particular groove; at Hampton Court Charles the First was seen at his best in the domestic circle and--after the interregnum--where his son was seen at his worst in anti-domestic intrigues. Here Cromwell sought rest from cares greater than those of a king, and here he was stricken with mortal illness; here William and Mary dwelt, and here the former met with the seemingly trivial accident which cost him his life. That the "story" of Hampton Court is, indeed, a full, splendid, and varied one is shown in the three fine volumes in which it is set forth by Mr. Ernest Law, a work to which no writer on the history of the Palace can help feeling indebted. Those who would learn the intimacies and details of the history of the place have Mr. Law's history, and those who seek a "guide" are well provided for in the official publications. Here, I am concerned with the history of the place only in its broader and more salient points, and with the minor details necessary in a guidebook not at all; I seek rather to give something of an impression of the past and present of the Palace, something that shall at once indicate the a.s.sociations of the place, indicate its story, and hint at what there is to see, and that shall serve as souvenir and remembrancer of that which has been seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT GATEHOUSE, WEST ENTRANCE]

II

It was just before he became a cardinal that Thomas Wolsey, on 11 January, 1515, took a ninety-nine years' lease of the manor of Hampton Court from the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, and at once set about building the magnificent pile which remains his most enduring monument. There appears to have been here an earlier manor house or mansion, for there is a record of Henry the Seventh visiting it a few years before the lease was granted; but probably Wolsey did away entirely with the older building and planned the whole place anew. Rapidly rising in royal favour the Cardinal designed a lordly pleasure house on the banks of the Thames, where he could worthily entertain his pleasure-loving sovereign, and where he could hold state in a manner that should prove impressive in the eyes of amba.s.sadors and other important visitors from foreign Courts.

It is said that Wolsey's health was such that it was necessary for him to have a residence away from London, yet his position made it essential that he should still be within easy reach of the capital; therefore he "employed the most eminent physicians in England and even called in the aid of doctors from Padua, to select the most healthy spot within twenty miles of London", and the result was the selection of Hampton and the erection of the princely Palace which has seen its royal neighbours of Hanworth and Richmond pa.s.s from palaces to mere fragments, and Nonsuch disappear entirely.

Having acquired his new manor Wolsey lost no time in getting his designs carried into execution, and the magnificent edifice, built about five courts or quadrangles, grew so rapidly that in 1516 he was already able to entertain Henry the Eighth here. The whole Palace was of red brick, and surmounted by many castellated turrets topped by ornamental lead cupolas. The western portion of the buildings probably gives us a very fair idea of the whole as it was planned, though all the turrets from this aspect are wanting their cupolas, though the gatehouse is less lofty than it was originally and though some more westerly buildings have disappeared.

As the Cardinal waxed in importance his stately palace grew until its magnificence set tongues wagging, and it was said that the Churchman's residence outshone in splendour the castles of the King. John Skelton, in his satire _Why come ye not to Court?_ probably only gave fuller expression to things which many people were saying, when the powerful favourite was approaching the period of his declination:

"Why come ye not to court?

To whyche Court?

To Kynge's courte, Or to Hampton Court?-- Nay, to the Kynge's court: The Kynge's Courte Shulde have the excellence; But Hampton Court Hath the preemynence.

And Yorke's Place With my lord's grace, To whose magnifycence Is all the conflewence, Sutys and supplycacons Emba.s.sades of all nacyons."

York Place was Cardinal Wolsey's scarcely less magnificent residence at Westminster.

Whether inspired by jealousy owing to the things said of the state upheld by Wolsey, or whether his repeated visits simply inspired the monarch with envy of his Chancellor's new palace cannot be said, but when Hampton Court had been building for ten years King Henry, we are told, asked the Chancellor why he had erected so magnificent a place.

"To show how n.o.ble a palace a subject may offer to his Sovereign," was the reply of the Cardinal--a truly courtly and an unquestionably costly compliment. The King accepted the n.o.ble gift, but Wolsey continued from time to time to occupy his own whilom palace at Hampton and was besides given permission to make use of the royal palace at Richmond. This was in 1525, and already it may be the shadow of coming events was over both the powerful Churchman and the fickle King, though Wolsey was still three or four years from that final downfall which was soon followed by his death.

Though the ownership of Hampton Court had pa.s.sed from the subject to the sovereign, the former continued on occasion to do the honours of the place to distinguished visitors. In 1527, for example, there came a n.o.ble "amba.s.set" from France, and arrangements were made for the due entertainment here of the French n.o.bles and their retinue. A full account of it is given in George Cavendish's _Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey_, the earliest of our biographies and a.s.suredly one of the most delightful. There is not s.p.a.ce here to transcribe Cavendish's full account of the splendid entertainment accorded to "this great amba.s.set ... who were in number above fourscore and the most n.o.blest and worthiest gentlemen in all the court of France"; but the biographer, who was gentleman-usher to the Cardinal, and thus well situated for giving an authoritative record of things, was also an admirable narrator, and from his description we may get a good idea of Tudor prodigality and splendour. Not only were there the fourscore French n.o.bles, but there were also their trains and the many home visitors who must have been invited to accompany them; so that two hundred and eighty beds had to be arranged. We are told how the best cooks were brought together, and wrought day and night in the preparing of "divers subtleties and many crafty devices", how the purveyors "brought and sent in such plenty of costly provisions as ye would wonder at the same", and further:

"The yeomen and grooms of the wardrobes were busied in hanging of the chambers with costly hangings, and furnishing the same with beds of silk, and other furniture apt for the same in every degree. Then my Lord Cardinal sent me, being gentleman usher, with two other of my fellows, to Hampton Court to foresee all things touching our rooms, to be n.o.blily garnished accordingly.

Our pains were not small or light, but travailing daily from chamber to chamber. Then the carpenters, the joiners, the masons, the painters, and all other artificers necessary to glorify the house and feast were set to work. There was carriage and re-carriage of plate, stuff and other rich implements; so that there was nothing lacking or to be imagined or devised for the purpose. There were also fourteen score beds provided and furnished with all manner of furniture to them belonging, too long particularly here to rehea.r.s.e. But to all wise men it sufficeth to imagine, that knoweth what belongeth to the furniture of such triumphant feast or banquet."

Cavendish goes on to tell of the sumptuousness and wonder of the entertainment which the Cardinal gave to his guests before speeding them on their way to Windsor on the following day. Of the furnishing of the chambers for the "fourteen score beds" prepared for the guests, he gives details which suggest an extraordinary display of gold and silver; but the whole account should be read in the biography of Wolsey, where it gives us a peculiarly full and detailed description of the splendour of banqueting in Tudor days. And it must be added, that though "the Frenchmen, as it seemed, were rapt into paradise", yet this feast at Hampton Court was but as "silver is compared to gold" when contrasted with that which the King gave at Greenwich a little later to speed his parting guests on their homeward journey. In the full account which Cavendish gives of the feasting at Hampton Court and in his description of the furnishings of York House, Westminster, when Wolsey left it on his last unhappy journey, we have glimpses of the richness and magnificence to which the great men of the sixteenth century had attained in the heyday of Henry the Eighth.

King Henry was at Hampton Court, engaged in practising archery in the park when George Cavendish arrived with the news of Wolsey's death, and the bluff King paid his old and too loyal servant the tribute of saying that he would rather have given 20,000 than he had died. The King did not, however, let any sentiment about the builder of Hampton Court trouble him long or interfere with his plans.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF WOLSEY'S KITCHEN]

When the monarch came into full possession of Hampton Court he soon converted the lease into freehold by arrangements with the Knights Hospitaller, and at once set about having it made yet more magnificent than before. Among his improvements was the erection of the Great Hall--one of the finest buildings of the kind belonging to the Tudor period that remain to us; he rebuilt, or at any rate considerably altered, the Chapel, and made many other changes in the Palace. His additions and alterations may sometimes be recognized by the working of his monogram and those of his wives into the decoration, as in the roof of Anne Boleyn's Gateway, where that unhappy lady's initial is to be seen. For though this roof is a modern restoration, it is a restoration believed to be in accordance with the original design. Such evidence is not therefore always conclusive, for sometimes the monograms are not contemporary records--as in the windows of the Great Hall where the stained gla.s.s, full of such personal allusions, is all modern, having been put in between sixty and seventy years ago. Those responsible for the replacing, after a long interval, of the gla.s.s that had been destroyed when all concerning royalty was out of favour, worked in monograms and devices in a way that misleads many visitors, some of whom seeing "H" and "J"

in the gla.s.s, too rashly a.s.sume that it dates from the time when Jane Seymour was the much married monarch's queen.

When Anne Boleyn's ambition was gratified and she was made Henry's second queen--vice Katherine of Arragon, divorced--Hampton Court became for a time a scene of royal revelling. It was not so for long, however, for already the King's pa.s.sion was cooling. It was at Hampton Court that King Henry's hopes of a son and heir were disappointed for the third time, when, early in 1536, Anne there gave birth to a still-born child. In the following May the unhappy Queen's brief triumph was brought to a tragic close by the sword of the executioner on Tower Hill, and on the very next day King Henry was formally betrothed to Jane Seymour. In October of the following year Queen Jane gave birth in this Palace, presumably in that part of the buildings demolished more than a century and a half later, to a son who afterwards became King Edward the Sixth. The arrival of a male heir was no doubt a matter of great gratification to King Henry, and served to lessen any sorrow that his easily salved affections might otherwise have felt from the fact that the Queen only survived the child's birth but a brief while. When he was but three days old the infant prince was christened here in great state. The Princess Mary held her tiny brother, twenty years her junior, during the ceremony at the solid silver font, while the child Princess Elizabeth, herself carried, bore the chrysm. Nine days after the christening of her son Queen Jane died.

The birth of Prince Edward in the Palace seems to have increased King Henry's liking for his Thames-side pleasaunce, and in 1540 he caused the Honour of Hampton Court to be created by Act of Parliament--the Honour including a number of manors on both sides of the Thames. But the King further showed his liking for the place--and his scant regard for his subjects--by making it the centre of a Chase, having a large extent of the land on either side of the river afforested and enclosed with palings so that, though growing corpulent and unwieldy, he might yet be able to indulge in his favourite pastime of hunting.

At the end of July, 1540, King Henry quietly married Katherine Howard, and in August she was openly shown at Hampton Court as his fifth queen. Little more than a year later and the Palace saw the beginning of the slow drama which ended with her execution on Tower Hill in February, 1543; for it was while Henry was at Ma.s.s in the chapel here that Cranmer put into his hands the beginning of the evidence which was to prove a fatal net for the entangling of Queen Katherine. The story runs that the Queen sought to have a personal explanation with King Henry, but he would not see her after once the charges were made, and when she tried to get to him in the chapel she was borne shrieking away by the attendants along what is now known as the Haunted Gallery.

There her wraith has since been seen and heard!

The bluff King seems to have been little troubled by his various pasts, nor to have been worried at all by earlier a.s.sociations, for in the summer of 1543 he was married here at Hampton Court, to the last of his queens, Katherine Parr, in the presence of the daughters of Katherine of Arragon and Anne Boleyn, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Thus the Palace has a.s.sociations with all of the six queens of King Henry, the one of whom Hampton Court has least memory being Anne of Cleves, the Queen who appears never to have had even the briefest place in the roving affections of the King, and who enjoyed little of the Court splendour beyond the magnificence of her reception at Greenwich. Anne was at Hampton while awaiting the decree of divorce which followed close upon the ceremony of her marriage; and it was the neighbouring Palace of Richmond that became the home of this Queen, who was promptly removed from the position of the King's wife to that of his "sister".

Edward the Sixth during his short reign appears to have been but little a.s.sociated with the place of his birth, though he was here when the Protector Somerset was nearing his fall, and hence were sent out frantic appeals to the people to come armed to the defence of their youthful sovereign. Here King Edward splendidly entertained Mary of Guise, Queen-Dowager of Scotland, on her journey through England. The most notable a.s.sociation of Hampton Court with the boy-king's reign is, however, that it was then that the aggrieved people of the surrounding afforested area dared to give voice to their feelings and pet.i.tion against that oppression before which they had had to bow under Henry. The pet.i.tion was successful, and the district was dechased, the palings and deer being removed.

King Edward's dour sister-successor Queen Mary and her sombre spouse Philip of Spain were scarcely the people to make the place bright on their occasional visits, and when they were here shortly after their marriage it was said "the hall door within the Court was continually shut, so that no man might enter unless his errand were first known: which seemed strange to Englishmen, that had not been used thereto".

The most gorgeous a.s.sociation of the depressing couple with Hampton Court was the Christmas feast of 1554, when the Great Hall was illuminated "with a thousand lamps curiously disposed".

When Elizabeth came to the throne the Palace became again the centre of much Court splendour. It is a curious fact that although magnificence and pomp are generally more a.s.sociated with Roman Catholic than with Protestant Courts, the Tudors were exceptions to the rule. Under Queen Elizabeth, Hampton Court saw again something of the brilliancy and pageantry in which her father had delighted. Here Her Majesty held high revel at Christmas on more than one occasion--"if ye would know what we do here," wrote one in attendance to a friend, in 1592, "we play at tables, dance--and keep Christmas".

Elizabeth had been brought to Hampton Court shortly after the marriage of her sister with Philip, in the hope that she might be turned to their way of religion, but though she was for a time a sort of semi-prisoner in the Palace it became one of her favoured places of residence after her accession. Here she toyed with the idea of matrimony and entertained wooers or their amba.s.sadors, and here she held high state and gorgeous pageantry of which many records have been kept. Elizabeth appears, indeed, to have had something of her father's love for the place and to have added to it or embellished it from time to time. On the south side of the Palace, Wren's reconstruction stops short at beautiful bayed windows doubly decorated with the monogram E. R. and the date 1568.

A foreign Duke visiting Hampton Court during Elizabeth's reign described it as the most splendid, most magnificent royal palace of any to be found in England or any other kingdom, and the details which he gives seems to bear this out. More especially was he struck by what a later verse writer described as "that most pompous room called Paradise", a room which, according to the ducal description, "captivates the eyes of all who enter by the dazzling of pearls of all kinds", and "in particular there is one apartment belonging to the Queen, in which she is accustomed to sit in state, costly beyond everything; the tapestries are garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones--one table-cover alone is valued at above fifty thousand crowns--not to mention the royal throne, which is studded with very large diamonds, rubies, sapphires and the like that glitter among other precious stones and pearls as the sun among the stars".

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNE BOLEYN'S GATEWAY, CLOCK COURT]

III

If under the Tudors--more especially the pleasure-loving Henry and the display-loving Elizabeth--Hampton Court was the scene of much splendid pageantry, under the Stuart monarchs it was the scene of more varied happenings, even as it was the home of yet more varied rulers. The Stuart regime began, however, quite in the spirit of the Palace traditions, for here, during the first Christmas after James had ascended the English throne, there were grand festivities including the presentation of some of those masques then coming into vogue.

Indeed, Daniel's _Vision of the Twelve G.o.ddesses_, presented in the Great Hall here by the Queen and her Ladies of Honour on 8 January, 1604, has been described as the first true masque in the literary sense. Many contemporary letters throw light on this Christmas celebration, when, if one letter writer is to be believed, as many as thirty masques and interludes were presented, when all the Court, the foreign amba.s.sadors and their attendants thronged to Hampton Court.

The twelve hundred rooms of the Palace did not suffice, many people had to put up in the outbuildings, while tents were erected in the park for a number of the servants--the fact that three or four people died daily in these tents from the plague (then ravaging London) does not appear to have been allowed to interfere with the festivities.

There was tilting and running at the ring in the park and other diversions, but the masquings seem to have formed the most important part of the celebration, and of these, of course, the chief was that "Vision" in which the Queen took part in the Great Hall. King James sat in state on the dais by the great oriel window, spectators were presumably ranged in tiers along either side of the hall, and from a "heaven" above the Minstrels' Gallery the G.o.ddesses descended to their dancing on the floor of the hall. The "scenes" at either end of the hall were designed by no less notable a craftsman than Inigo Jones.[1]

That same month of January, 1604, which saw here such magnificent masquings saw also in Hampton Court a gathering of a very different kind--a gathering which, although it proved abortive so far as its particular purpose was concerned, yet had one remarkable consequence.

Says Carlyle in his survey of the beginnings of the seventeenth-century prefatory to the Cromwell letters:

"In January, 1603-4, was held at Hampton Court a kind of Theological Convention of intense interest all over England ... now very dimly known, if at all known, as the 'Hampton Court Conference'. It was a meeting for the settlement of some dissentient humours in religion....

Four world-famous Doctors from Oxford and Cambridge represented the pious straitened cla.s.s, now beginning to be generally conspicuous under the nickname _Puritans_.

The Archbishop, the Bishop of London, also world-famous men, with a considerable reserve of other bishops, deans, and dignitaries, appeared for the Church by itself Church."

The one great consequence of the Conference was the undertaking of the Authorized Translation of the Bible; for the rest, the King eloquently "scouted to the wind" the Puritans, and threatened that if they did not conform he would hurry them out of the country. Thus early in the years of the Stuart rule may be said to have begun at Hampton Court that struggle between conformity and nonconformity which was to have momentous results later on in the same century.

When Charles the First succeeded his father as King, Hampton Court continued a favourite royal residence. This monarch appears to have had something of the same dread of the plague as inspired Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, and when it broke out in London he hurriedly removed the Court to this Palace and issued a proclamation prohibiting all communication with the capital during the continuance of the visitation. He and his queen seem to have particularly favoured this one of their palaces, and not only made frequent stays here but continually added to the works of art and furnishings of the rooms.