CHAPTER VII WHITEHALL PALACE

Of all the many palaces of the English monarchs, none is more associated in men's minds with the splendour and pageantry of Court life than the palace of Whitehall. In comparison with other palaces, such as Windsor, its life-story was very brief, just over a century and a half, but it was spent in the hey-day of royalty, when the Kings were freed from the power of the great barons, and were not yet controlled by the constitution. It is full of memories of the masterful Tudors, and the pleasure-loving Stuarts, a period stored with great and stirring happenings, just when the New World was being discovered, the New Learning flooding over Europe, and the Reformation stirring the hearts of men. Yet of all its vast size, only a tiny fragment is left—the banqueting hall of the magnificent palace designed by Inigo Jones—and not a brick or stone remains of the palace where Wolsey reigned in his episcopal glory, and Henry VIII. held his gorgeous Court.

The first house on the site of the palace belonged to Hubert de Burgh, the patriotic ruler of England during the minority of Henry III., but remembered most generally as the unwilling gaoler of young Prince [pg 32] Arthur. He bequeathed his property to the Black Friars, in whose church in Holborn he was buried. Not long afterwards the Dominicans sold the house to Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, who left it as a London residence to his successors in the see of York. It will be remembered that after one of the serious fires that attacked the palace of Westminster, Edward I. took shelter in the Archbishop's palace at York Place, as it was then known, and continued to occupy it during the remainder of his reign.

In his capacity as Archbishop of York, Cardinal Wolsey came into possession of York Place, which he almost entirely rebuilt. During his days of greatness Wolsey lived in the utmost magnificence in his palace, rivalling the King's Court at Westminster. Surrounded by many hundreds of courtiers, among whom were some of the noblest in the land, who did not disdain to serve "the butcher's son," Wolsey kept high state, feasting off gold and silver plate, to the accompaniment of singing and music, wearing scarlet and gold, and riding on a crimson velvet saddle, with his feet in stirrups of silver gilt. As an excuse for the undoubted ostentation of the great cardinal, Sir Walter Besant maintains that in his time "it was the right and proper use of wealth to entertain royally; it was part of a rich man to dress splendidly, to have a troop of gentlemen and valets in his service, to exhibit tables covered with gold and silver plate, to hang the walls with beautiful and costly arras. All this was right and proper." But Wolsey experienced, as so many great men have done, that

"They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,

And when they fall, they dash themselves to pieces."

After the disgrace of his great chancellor, Henry VIII. [pg 33] seized York Place, quite regardless of the fact that, as it was not the private possession of the cardinal, he had no right to do so. But it was just what the King wanted, his own palace at Westminster having been destroyed by fire a few years before. It was then that the name of Whitehall came into use, as Shakespeare reminds us in the play of Henry VIII.:

"You must no more call it York Place; that's past:

For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost;

'Tis now the King's, and called Whitehall."

Though Whitehall for us to-day signifies but one palace, in the days of the Tudors nearly every palace had its "white hall," usually the great banqueting hall, so that the new name bestowed by Henry was not peculiarly distinctive. Henry was delighted with his new residence, and proceeded to add new buildings, and to enclose nearly all St. James's Park up to the site of Buckingham Palace. Covering a vast extent of ground, the palace rambled from Scotland Yard along the riverside, to where Downing Street now stands, and spread across the roadway by means of a long gallery. Never so beautiful as Westminster, the Whitehall of the Tudors was a mass of brick buildings, erected without any particular scheme just as occasion required, resulting, as Besant declares, in a building "without dignity and without nobility." A roadway had always existed from Charing Cross to Westminster, and not even the autocratic Henry dared divert it for the sake of his palace, so that he caused two gateways to be erected to mark the precincts of the royal domain. Both were put up about the same time, the one nearer Westminster being called the King's Gate, and the other the Holbein Gate, being designed by the famous artist, Hans Holbein. [pg 34] Across this latter gateway ran the gallery connecting the main part of the palace with the Tiltyard (now the Horse Guards Parade) and the Cockpit (where the Admiralty now stands), the tennis court, and the bowling alley, where Henry VIII. indulged his love of games; for, as Leigh Hunt cynically tells us, "though he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports." Both gateways were removed during the first half of the eighteenth century, when the road was widened.

Henry VIII. died in the palace where he had secretly married Anne Boleyn, and where he had enjoyed so many of the good things of life. It is said that he had grown so unwieldy that he had to be lifted by means of machinery. Cranmer came to see him on his deathbed, but when he arrived the King was already speechless, though still conscious. The Archbishop, after "speaking comfortably to him, desired him to give some token that he put his trust in God through Jesus Christ, therewith the King wrung hard the Archbishop's hand," and so left the earthly scene of his cruelties, his amusements, and his worldly success.

Whitehall Palace at the End of the
Seventeenth Century.

When James I. succeeded to the throne of the Tudors, he found the palace of Whitehall needing a considerable amount of repairs. The old banqueting hall that had sufficed for the needs of Elizabeth was despised by the [pg 35] new monarch, who regarded it as an "old rotten slight-builded Banqueting House." Inigo Jones, the great architect, was called upon to supply plans for an entirely new palace. His plans, the originals of which still exist, were extremely ambitious, for if they had been carried out, London would have possessed a palace rivalling Versailles, and covering an area of twenty four acres. According to his scheme, the palace was to present four imposing frontages, having square towers at the corners, and was to contain one vast central court, as well as six smaller courts. Only the stately banqueting hall of this colossal scheme was ever erected, that which remains to-day, the solitary fragment of the once extensive palace. The hall was finished in 1622, and when, three years later, Charles I. came to the throne, he was too much overwhelmed with the difficulty of obtaining sufficient money to supply his immediate needs, to entertain any ideas of carrying out the proposed palace. He contented himself with adorning the existing banqueting hall, commissioning the artist Rubens, who was in London in the capacity of Ambassador from Flanders, to paint the ceiling. For the magnificent work which we see to-day, covering the entire ceiling, representing the apotheosis of James I. the artist received ￡3,000 and a knighthood from King Charles.

It was outside the banqueting hall which he had so enriched, that King Charles was beheaded on January 30, 1649. Early on the cold wintry morning, escorted by a body of soldiers, Charles walked from St. James's Palace, where he had spent his last night, across the park to Whitehall. Owing to the cold he had put on two shirts, in order to prevent any shivering, which [pg 36] might, the King thought, have been put down to fear. Wearing a black cloak, and a striped red silk waistcoat, he walked rapidly, telling Bishop Juxon, who accompanied him, that he was soon going to obtain a heavenly crown. On the way he pointed out a tree in Spring Gardens, planted by his elder brother, Henry. Arrived at Whitehall, he crossed over the gallery above the Holbein Gate, and went to his own room in the palace, awaiting the order for his appearance on the scaffold, spending the time in prayer.

In spite of the great controversy on the subject of the position of the scaffold, and the manner of the King's approach to it, there seems to be every probability that the scaffold, which was erected in the open street, stood in front of the large windows of the banqueting hall. It is thought that King Charles, after walking through the hall, crowded for him with memories of his father and of his own stately and decorous court, entered into a small adjoining room, the wall having been cut through for the purpose. And it was from the window of this small room that Charles stepped upon the scaffold. At that time the windows of the banqueting hall, facing Whitehall, were not glazed.

A great crowd had assembled to witness, as Sir Thomas Herbert, the King's devoted friend, records, "the saddest sight that England ever saw." With calm dignity Charles performed the last actions of his life, asking his executioners whether his hair would hinder them, taking off his cloak, handing the "George" worn by the Knights of the Garter to Bishop Juxon, who remained by the side of his fallen monarch to the end, and then, after making a short speech declaring his innocence, kneeling down and laying his head upon the [pg 37] block. When Bishop Juxon reminded him that he had but one stage more, which would carry him from earth to heaven, the King replied: "I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown."

Directly the painful scene was over every sign of it was removed at once; soldiers dispersed the crowd, and the scaffold was immediately taken down. The King's body was embalmed, after which it was shown to the public, that there should be no doubt of his death. A week later his faithful friends carried him to his last resting-place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. And so was cut short the life of Charles Stuart, who, had his youth been spent under wiser guidance than that of his father, might have been one of England's noblest rulers.

The Execution of Charles I., outside
Whitehall Palace.

From the painting by Ernest Crofts, R.A.

Cromwell, conscious of his own integrity and free from superstitious fears, did not hesitate to occupy the palace outside which his late monarch had been executed. Though he refused the crown offered to him in 1657, his residence in Whitehall began to assume more and more the aspect of a court, he himself gradually acquiring a dignified and stately manner, as we are assured by the contemporary royalist writer, Sir Philip Warwick. "And yet I lived to see this very gentleman," he [pg 38] writes, "when for six weeks together I was a prisoner in his sergeant's hands, and daily waited at Whitehall, appear of a great and majestic deportment and comely presence." After six years of almost autocratic power as Protector of England, during which period he had shown his capacity as a statesman, Cromwell breathed his last in the palace of his royal predecessors, relinquishing his hold upon life, in spite of his strong religious faith, with obvious reluctance. Worn out with anxieties and domestic grief, especially over the death of his much-beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, the great Protector died at the age of fifty-nine, on September 3, 1658, a day which he had always accounted as peculiarly fortunate, having been the occasion of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. A tremendous storm, one of the most violent ever known, was raging over England when Oliver Cromwell's spirit passed into the great Unknown.

On his arrival in London after his restoration, Charles II. proceeded to Whitehall, where he confirmed all the great charters of English liberty, such as Magna Carta, and the Petition of Right. Two years later, Charles brought his unhappy young bride by river in state to Whitehall, after their honeymoon at Hampton Court. Samuel Pepys watched the pageant from the top of the banqueting hall, which he describes as "a most pleasant place as any I could have got." The whole river was covered with boats and barges, "so that we could see no water for them," some boats representing the mimic court of a King and Queen, until the actual royal pair appeared, who were greeted with guns on their arrival at Whitehall Bridge.

Whitehall, so intimately connected with the Tudors, [pg 39] fell with the Stuarts. A fire, which raged furiously all one night, destroyed for ever, in 1698, the old rambling palace known to Wolsey and his royal master, leaving no fragment to remind us of its existence. Only the graceful banqueting hall escaped the general conflagration. Plans were drawn up by Sir Christopher Wren for a new palace, but William III., who, suffering from habitual asthma, found the smoke of Whitehall almost intolerable, was not likely to be anxious to restore a palace in which he could not live. As he wrote to one of his friends, "the loss is less to me than it would be to another person, for I cannot live there." But though he made little effort to rebuild the palace, being already busy at altering Hampton Court, there is no truth in the statement of his enemies, that William had partly inspired the fire.

George I. altered the banqueting-hall into a Chapel Royal, for which purpose it continued to be used until 1890, when Queen Victoria gave permission for the building to be used for the United Service Museum.