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 mediævalism 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 associations 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.

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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 ambassadors 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 pass 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:

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 noble 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 noble 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 passed 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 noble “ambasset” from France, and arrangements were made for the due entertainment here of the French nobles 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 assuredly one of the most delightful. There is not space here to transcribe Cavendish’s full account of the splendid entertainment accorded to “this great ambasset ... who were in number above fourscore and the most noblest and worthiest gentlemen in all the court of France”; but the