Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert Railton

Preface

A word, with all apologies for its egoism, as to how this book came to be. It is the record of travel over familiar ground. It tells again what has, perhaps often, been better told before. It originates in what schoolmasters used to call a ' holiday task.' College Dons, unlike the popular idea of them, are busy folk, who are constantly at work, teaching or preparing to teach, examining or writing, and each of these things as part of their professional obligation. But even Dons must have a holiday sometimes, and much more so must undergraduates. Years ago, when I lived in the suburbs, I spent many days out of Oxford vacations in the gardens and galleries of Hampton Court. Week by week I was there, and was never tired of the delightful prospect and its memories. This year I have found the fascina tion still as strong as it was a decade ago ; and I have had the delight of wandering about with Mr. Railton, and of trying, under his guidance, to see the familiar scenes with something of his artistic inspiration. Curious nooks, quaint byways, courts in which a stranger's footfall rarely sounds, here a solitary turret,

PREFACE.

VI there a garden that Henry VIII. may have planned just as it now lies, have appealed with a new force as I saw how they had been, or could be, the subjects of the artist's most delicate draughtsmanship. With the kind help of the Chaplain of the Palace, I have penetrated to many a place which I had never seen before. Each hour the impression has deepened, and at last I have sat down to put together a few memorials of some happy vacation days. This book has no ambitious claim. It attempts only to say, in a series of sketches not always closely connected with each other, something about what the writer has enjoyed and what he has learnt. To wander about the gardens, to study the architecture and the pictures, with the records of the great men of past ages who planned and built and lived there, is the first and best way to know Hampton Court and its history.

The stately Palace has had its historian. It is not too much to say that our pleasure in and our knowledge of Hampton Court is increased tenfold by the work of Mr. Ernest Law. At every step he has been before us. There is not a source of information which he has not studied, there is no memory which he has not appreciated and preserved. The recognition which Her Majesty the Queen has bestowed upon his labours of love, the most graceful and appropriate that could be found, is the fit expression of the gratitude which Her Majesty's subjects feel to him who has done so much to enhance the pleasure with which the public receives

PREFACE.

VII the privileges which the sovereign has so generously bestowed. Not only has Mr. Law studied the Palace and its history with the minute care of a scholar and anti quary: he has also continued most successfully the work of Mr. Jesse and Sir Henrv Cole in popularising the knowledge which can alone enable visitors to rightly enjoy the beauties which they witness. Those who wish to study the records of the Palace will find at every turn that Mr. Law has been before them. I have searched the State Papers for references to the events that happened at Hampton Court from the days of Wolsey onward, but hardly ever have I come across information which Mr. Law has not discovered and utilised. It is the same with the classical literature of England, and with the books in which foreign travellers have set down their impres sions.

All I can do, then, is to express most cordially my gratitude to Mr. Law for his catalogue and his guide-book, and for the three noble volumes in which he has told the history of the Palace from its earliest days to the present time, and to say that, though much that is in my book is also in his, and I have learnt, as has every one who has been in Hampton Court, from him, yet I hope it will appear that the aim and style of my book does not bring it into any comparison or competition with his. That is the first and foremost of my obligations. Next to it I must place the kind and generous help of the Rev. A. G. Ingram, Chaplain in Ordinary to Her

PREFACE.

VIII Majesty, whose courtesy and patience on the day I troubled him I acknowledge with most sincere thanks. Nor am I ungrateful to those whose kindness has per mitted me to visit their apartments, and to see much of great interest which is not open to the public at large : especially my thanks are due to Lady Cecil Gordon for the courtesy with which she showed me her rooms and explained their interest. In Mr. William Brown, the most efficient caretaker of the picture gallery, I was pleased to discover a fellow countryman, doubly anxious from old associations to assist me. Among Oxford friends I have to thank Miss Florence Freeman for most valuable help, and Mr. Gordon McNeil Rushforth, to whose taste and wide knowledge of art I am greatly indebted. To chronicle my obligations to other books besides those of Mr. Ernest Law would be a tedious task.

I have tried to mention most of them as they occur, but I cannot forbear to particularise Mr. Claude Phillips's charming account of "The Picture Gallery of Charles I." {Portfolio, January 1896), and the wholly admirable " Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court " (Kyrle Pamphlets, No. 2), by 'Mary Logan.' W. H. HUTTON. The Great House, Burford, Oxon., August 1896.

Introduction

" I am never merry when I hear sweet music." So, when the " spirits are attentive," is it with the sight of a beautiful old house. The memories of those who have lived in and loved it crowd in upon the mind. Their passions and their sorrows seem to speak now like the " music of the spheres," in a solemn cadence that only the thoughtful and abstracted heart can hear. They are become part of Nature : all that strange symphony of colour and sound and feeling that breathes in upon us as we walk the courts where they lingered, or trace their names cut with a diamond on the old window-panes, or pray where they too have laid down their sins, — all that subtle impression that steals over us and saddens is made of their struggles and their tears. There, we say, men have worked out their lives in duty and loyalty and faith : or there they have made shipwreck, driven by fierce demons of desire, for fame, for pleasure, or for wealth.

And now they sleep so still, and thousands pass by and heed them not : and yet they are part of it all, this great Palace, this home of English history, this chronicle in little of what men have done and suffered for their country and their age. Here Wolsey planned to restore the greatness of England. Here Elizabeth

INTRODUCTION.

X plotted and schemed, and yet learnt somehow to say, " I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. ... I know I have the bodv but of a weak and feeble woman ; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too " — some of the finest words man kind ever uttered. Here Charles showed the beauty of his nature through its outer husk of unworthy duplicity. Here Milton meditated and Cromwell agonised : and here, since the days of these heroes, many noble souls have passed, in quietness and simpli city, to their reward. It were as ill to romp and be facetious here as in some old abbey, or in any ancient place where history has been made. It is ours rather to linger over its memories and to cherish them, and to dream again of the great days that are gone by.

And so as we ponder, and as the noble names come up before us, and merge insensibly into the present, where still the echoes of renown are heard in the lodgings of the kindred of our English worthies, the scene assumes an unity which brings the old time together with the new. ' It seems as if in one were cast The present and the imaged past, Spanning, as with a bridge sublime. That fearful lapse of human time, That gulf unfathomably spread Between the living and the dead." And thus it is one picture we are to look upon, the old Palace with its history and its memories and its art. It presents one story, and that the world will not willingly let die. x CONTENTS

Chapter I The Buildings And Their Makers Page

I. Hampton Court: its associations: its twofold interest. — 2. The characteristics of the early sixteenth-century architecture as represented in Wolsey's building. — 3. The size and extent : the view from the roofs. — 4. The outer Green Court : the Base Court : the Clock Court : the " Consessionary." — 5. Wren's work in the Clock Court : the side-courts. — 6. The great Hall : the great Watching Chamber: the Horn-room. — 7. Wren and his style: the Fountain Court : the east front : the south front : the King's staircase and its decoration : the interior of the rooms. — 8. The architect : Wolsey probably his own architect : Wren's plans : the extent of his designs : Defoe thereon : the work incomplete but characteristic. — 9. Different judgments on the alterations made by Wren : Horace Walpole : " The Beauties of England and Wales : " Wren's characteristic merits ......... I-27

Chapter II Hampton Court In History

1. The creation of Wolsey's house : its magnificence under Elizabeth. — 2. A long popular dwelling-place of English rulers : two names most prominent among its makers : Wolsey and CONTENTS XII 1 A_r William III.: Wolsey's greatness: as Statesman and Churchman : his achievements and his failure : the closeness of his connection with Hampton Court : the business transacted there : the King's constant visits and familiarity : Cavendish on his sudden appearances, and on the masque of foreign men : the festivities at the King's coming : Shakespeare's use of this in Henry VIII. : the gift of the Palace to the King : lodgings for King and Queen, and for Anne Bullen : treaties and ambassages : the reception of the French Envoys in 1527: Cavendish's description thereof: the Frenchmen fain to be led to their beds : Wolsey's fall. — 3.

Henry in possession : his new building : he hears of Wolsey's death from Cavendish : Henry and Anne Bullen at Hampton Court : Anne gives way to Jane : birth of Edward Prince of Wales : his baptism and his mother's death : Anne of Cleves : Catherine Howard : Catherine Parr. — 4. Edward VI. : honeymoon of Philip and Mary: Mary's needlework and that of her mother : the poet of the needle. — 5. Scandals about Queen Elizabeth : her personal appearance : a Pomeranian's account of her state : her many guests : Paul Hentzner : his account of the Palace in 1 598 : revels, and the boyling of brawnes : the Queen's last visit. — 6. James I. : masques and revels : visitors from Denmark and Germany : Queen Anne : Charles I. and his pictures : his counsellors : his last visit before the troubles : his sojourn after Naseby : Sir Thomas Herbert's account : Cromwell watching King and Parliament : Charles's escape : Cromwell's occupation of the Palace. — 7.

The Restoration : Charles II. 's life at Hampton Court : his marriage : his Court. — 8. The Beauties of the Court : characteristics of Lely's work: the history of the ladies. — 9. Charles and Verrio: James II. — -10. William III.: was he a hero? The greatness of his surroundings : his diplomacy : the succession : his private character : his grant of lands to his favourites : the de Witts : Glencoe : his unpopularity : his unconstitutional action.— 1 1. His work at Hampton Court : CONTENTS XIII Queen Mary and Kneller : the Beauties : other portraits : William's fondness for Hampton Court: Anne's sad memories there. — 12. George I.: his plays: Defoe's account of the Palace ......... 28-1 14

Chapter III The Parks And Gardens

1 . The Medieval garden : the Tudor garden : its remains at Hampton Court : the Mount garden : the parks. — 2. Elizabeth and her garden : the symmetrical taste : the decorations : Bacon's idea of gardens. — 3. The Rebellion a break in English horticulture : Cromwell : Charles II. : the imitation of Versailles : Le Notre : Evelyn's description of the gardens: Queen Mary's bower. — 4. William III.'s changes : his personal interest : the Royal gardeners : the wilderness : the Maze : Latin poem thereon : Queen Mary's collection of plants : the oranges : the gates : suspension of the works on the Queen's death : the new plans : the great Parterre : the Lion gates. — 5. The gardens under George I. : the Frog Walk : the passion for Nature : Thomson's description of a garden : the changes under the Landscape gardeners. — 6. The fish and fowl : the great vine : the characteristics of the gardens .... 1 15-138

Chapter IV Hampton Court And The Church

1. Wolsey's chapel and his train of Churchmen : Cavendish's description.- — 2. Henry's alterations : the Royal pew : present condition of the chapel : Wren's work : historical associations: baptism of Edward VI.: funeral of Jane Seymour : the preachers : James I. : the destruction at the CONTENTS XIV PAGE Rebellion : William and Mary : the King keeps his hat on : the early Hanoverian neglect : the Queen's private chapel. — 3. The religion of the Palace : the Hampton Court Conference : the introductory discussion : James's knowledge of theology : the assembly on Monday : the " Turkey gowns " : the Catechism : the translation of the Bible: the part played by James himself: his judgment on the Conference : the later history of religion in the Palace ........ 139-154

Chapter V The Art Collections

1. The interest of the art collections: the china: the glass mostly destroyed. — 2. The tapestries : embroidered hangings : beds : Wolsey's collection of tapestry : the great Watching Chamber: an unidentified subject: the triumph of Fate or Death : characteristics of the work : the Seven Cardinal Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins : Flemish work : the Horn room : Bernhard van Orlay : the history of Abraham : its value : the different subjects : the richness of treatment. — 3. Tapestries under Queen Elizabeth : in the Commonwealth : at the Restoration : under George I. : needlework : famous beds : carved chairs. — 4. The pictures : general classification : the panel pictures in the Consessionary. — 5. The Tudor pictures : Elizabeth's porter : scenes from the reign of Henry VIII. : portraits of the King : other persons of the age : the Holbeins : Sir Antonio More : Mary Queen of Scots : the four portraits of Elizabeth. — 6.

The collection of Charles I. : James I.'s pictures as illustrations of the history of his time : Vandyke, a prince of Court painters : Rubens : minor artists : the great works in Charles I.'s gallery. — 7. The Triumph of Julius Cæsar, by Mantegna : the history of the purchase : the condition and the position of the pictures : CONTENTS XV PAGE characteristics of Mantegna's work, illustrative of the Re naissance : the dignity of ancient Rome : an account of each scene of the Triumph : other works of Mantegna with the same idea. — 8. Other Mantuan acquisitions in Charles's gallery : fifteenth-century painters : Jerome Bosch : sixteenth century : Giulio Romano : Milanese school : Vene tians : the Shepherd oi Giorgione : " The Concert: " Lorenzo Lotto : minor masters : Tintoretto : Dosso Dossi : Cor reggio : Albrecht Diirer : Mabuse. — 9.

The Georgian age : portraits of Madame de Pompadour and Benedict XIV. : the House of Hanover : Gainsborough's portraits of Hurd, Fischer, Colonel St. Leger, Hoppner's Lord Moira : the West gallery : West's merits and defects : the Death of Wolfe : the collection as a whole . . 155- 155-204

Chapter VI Literature And Gossip In The Last Century

1. Hampton Court in literature : Thomson's rhapsody. — 2. The " Rape of the Lock " : Pope's fondness for the Thames : his country inspiration limited to its banks : the origin of the poem : its three foundations : the " Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits " : Marmontel's Sylphs and Pope's " The Expedition to Hampton Court " : the game of ombre : the severed lock : Pope's letters : the life of a Maid of Honour. — 3. Lord Hervey's life : Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepel : Queen Caroline : George II. and his family : Prince Frederick: the hasty drive to St. James's : Queen Caroline's death : later visits of George II. : changes since his time: the Royal fondness for Hanover : English character of Hampton Court ....... 205-227 b CONTENTS XVI PAGE ■237 244

Chapter VII Memories And Legends Of Toda

Y Residents of later days : the families to whom the Crown has given apartments : the Wellesleys : Lady Mornington, the " mother of the Gracchi " : the caretaker of the Palace : its condition to-day : its romantic interests : Charles I. : Catherine Howard : the White Lady : Mrs. Penn : ghost stories : the artistic pictures on the verge of the twentieth century : a picture of the future by William Morris 228- INDEX 2 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS By HERBERT RAILTON I. View from River ...... Frontispiece Page 2. Illustrated Title-page ....... ii 3. Vieiv from Roofs, looking West ..... 2 4. West Front and Trophy Gates ..... 4 5. Oriel Window, West Gateway ..... 7 6. Anne Boleyn's Gateway ...... 8 7. Wolsey's Oratory or Confessionary . . . . .10 8. The Serving Hatch in Great Meat Kitchen . . .12 9. The Great Oriel to Hall . . . . . .14 10.

Fountain Court . . . . . . . .16 1 1 . Wren's Monogram, Fountain Court . . . . .17 12. The South Front from Privy Gardens .... 20 1 3 . Wolsey's Conduits at Kingston and Coombe . .32 14. Wolsey's Great Meat Kitchen ..... 36 I 5. The Clock Court ........ 42 16. The Master Cook' s Chamber in Great Kitchen . . .45 17. Exterior of Wolsey' s Private Rooms .... 48 18. Banqueting Hall of Henry VI II. . . . . 50 19. Henry VIIL' s Cellars under Hall ..... 52 20. Prince Edward's Lodgings . . . . . -57 2 1 . The Haunted Gallery . . . . . . 62 22. Group of Chimneys in Carpenter' s Court .... 64 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVIII Page 23. Fish Court 80 24. Bedroom of William III. ... . . 84 25. A Peep of Fountain Court from Roof .... 96 26. The Orange House . . . . . . . 104 27. Water Gallery . . . . . . . . 106 28.

Entrance Gate to Garden . . . . . .112 29. Oriel Window in South Front. . . . . .116 30. The Great Canal . . . . . . . .122 J I. South Front and Cradle Walk . . . . .124 32. The Garden Front . . . . . . .128 33. The Dolphin Fountain . . . .132 34. The Frog Walk . . . . . . . .134 35. The Old Pond Garden I 38 36. Chapel Court . . . . . . . .144 37. Group of Chimneys in Clock Court ..... 160 38. Tudor Gable, South Front . . . . . .176 39. Chimneys in Court .... 192 40. The Master Carpenter' s Court . . . .208 4 1 . River Front . . . . . . . .212 42. The East Front ........ 224 43. Princess Frederica's Lodgings .....

Chapter I The Buildings And Their Makers

i. Hampton Court : its associations : its twofold interest. — 2. The characteristics of the early sixteenth-century architecture as represented in Wolsey's building. — 3. The size and extent : the view from the roofs. — 4. The outer Green Court : the Base Court : the Clock Court : the " Confessionary." — 5. Wren's work in the Clock Court : the side-courts. — 6. The Great Hall : the great Watching Chamber : the Horn-room. — 7. Wren and his style : the Fountain Court : the east front : the south front : the King's staircase and its decorations : the interior of the rooms. — 8. The architect: Wolsey probably his own architect: Wren's plans : the extent of his designs : Defoe thereon : the work incomplete but characteristic. — 9. Different judgments on the alterations made by Wren : Horace Walpole : " The Beauties of England and Wales : " Wren's characteristic merits.

I There are few of the buildings which the generosity of English sovereigns has thrown open to the people that appeal to us with the same attraction as Hampton Court. For two reasons, at least, it has an interest A which is unique. No English palace that still remains has borne, at least until quite our own day, so homely an air. Whitehall, Oatlands, Nonsuch are gone. Buckingham Palace, Saint James's, and Kensington have the inevitable defects of all royal dwellings in a great metropolis. Windsor Castle is a rival ; but in his torical association it is certainly inferior. Earlier sovereigns lived at Windsor, later monarchs since George III. have made it a home ; but it has not been, like Hampton Court, for more than two centuries the almost continuous residence of the rulers of England. There Wolsey rested and gave feasts ; Henry spent honeymoons ; Mary sat wearily waiting for the babe that never came ; Elizabeth hunted and intrigued ; James talked theology ; Charles collected pictures, and slipped secretly through his guards' hands ; Cromwell listened to the organ as Milton played it ; Charles II. made love, and William III. made gardens ; and so the English rulers went on living at their ease in the most comfortable of their houses, till the day when the boy who was to be George III. had his ears boxed by his grandfather, and vowed he would never live in the place where he had received such an indignity.

Hampton Court possesses in a striking degree the interest of a continuous connection with English history and an association with the domestic lives of English sovereigns. With these two thoughts in mind it is that we pass through its courts and examine its architectural features. Each bit of build- WOLSEY'S BUILDING 3 ing, it is scarcely too much to say, has an interest of its own. Historically, or because of the men who designed it, or from important events which are associated with it, each part has its special worth. The history of the building, as we now see it, is in itself a great part of the history of English architecture, as it is a memorial of a great part of the history of the nation and its crown. II The Palace of Hampton Court was begun at a time when English domestic architecture was at its best.

The new era which had replaced the " over-mighty subject " by the mighty monarch was out of harmony with the castles of elaborate defence and corresponding inconvenience which feudalism and medieval life had made necessary. The fortress gave place to the house. The beginning of the sixteenth century was a time of comfort, of luxury, and of enterprise ; and all these were represented in the last triumphs of Gothic architecture — the great houses that were built before Eng lish architects, as well as English men of fashion, became Italianate. Hampton Court, as Wolsey began and Henry finished it, is one of the last, as it is the greatest of the examples of that national style which was de veloped when the Tudor rule had settled down on the land after the tumults of the French wars and the HAMPTON COURT 4 civil strife of the fifteenth century.

As the fifteenth century advanced castle-building ceased. Towns were still walled, but private dwellings in England— for in Scotland and Ireland, as well as on the Borders, the need for defensive buildings was still apparent — gradually dispensed with the visible tokens of the age of insecurity. Battlements became an ornament rather than a protection. Moats were no longer dug, though here Wolsey kept up the fashion of the former age, and before the great gate of his house had a deep and wide ditch with a drawbridge of the ancient sort. The details of the houses followed the principle which had begun to rule their general appearance. Windows were made much larger all through the century, till with the sixteenth century we have the great windows which are so characteristic of the building of the Car dinal and the King.

The great dining-hall declined, though in houses of much state it survived, as at Hampton Court, in much of its old splendour. The custom of the great men dining in common with their households was dying out, as More's " Utopia," in its plea for a common hall and common hospitality, so clearly shows. On the other hand, the comforts of the individual were far more carefully attended to. The first court of Wolsey's great building consists entirely of guest-chambers. The lavish decoration within attempted to counterbalance the economy of architectural detail without. Windows, in which the tracery no longer excites admiration by its beauty and grace, were filled with rich glass and overhung -5** "a ■* I? ll. & TROPHY GATES 5 by heavy curtains of magnificent stuffs. Tapestries covered the walls ; and of these at Hampton Court splendid specimens survive.

Ill Of the external grandeur of the building which Wolsey designed, perhaps the best impression can be obtained from the roofs, or from the north-west of what was once the tilt-yard. The extent of the buildings is amazing, and the dignity and magnificence of the design is no less impressive. The palace, says Mr. Law, " covers eight acres, and has a thousand rooms." 1 Such a general view as is obtained from the roof gives an impression which is certainly not lost when the details are observed, and when the Palace is inspected at leisure. IV We pass through the "trophy gates" — poor speci mens of the early Hanoverian age at its least interesting epoch — into the outer Green Court, by the unattractive barracks at the left (which may have been stables in their earliest history), to the great Gate-house.

On each side project the beautiful buildings, with their fine windows, picturesque turrets, and the dull red of 1 " History of Hampton Court Palace in Tudor Times," p. 49. the bricks intermingled with lines of black, in which now live the chaplain and others on the north, and on the south Her Royal Highness Princess Frederica of Hanover.1 The little gardens, the creepers here and there, set off the old buildings well. But the dignity of the building, as Wolsey designed it, is gone. The great gate itself has no longer its five storeys and its pinnacles with their lead cupolas, but has dwindled, under a restoration of George III.'s, to three storeys and towers that rise but slightly over the adjacent building. But from the first the tall chimneys strike the eye. They, too, it is plain, in most cases are restorations, but restorations according to the exact pattern of the originals.

Each of them has its pattern, and the different coloured bricks, where they are preserved, add a peculiar distinction to the lofty clusters, which become an ornament where a less skilful arrangement would have dis figured the court. Through the great gate, with its groined ceiling, we pass into the first or Base Court. This at once strikes the visitor as being very low on the north and south in proportion to the high Gate-house and Clock-tower. This effect would not have been so noticeable had the cupolas with which the smaller turrets were decorated 1 Part of this was at one time the residence of the " Lady housekeeper," an official of great pomp, while the rooms at the south-west are said to have been those long dwelt in by Mistress Pen, foster mother to King Edward VI., whose ghost, they say, still haunts the precincts.

TUDOR ARCHITECTURE 7 remained in situ. It is increased also by the tall span of the roof of the great hall, with its greater Perpendicular window, seen to the left as the court is entered from the gateway. There is no better specimen in England than this court of what is loosely called the early Tudor style of domestic architecture. It is the exact reverse of formal or tame in colour and design. It is sombre in tone yet warm — the introduction of darker coloured bricks at intervals adding in a very marked way originality and variety. The design discards uniformity. On three sides (broken, however, by the Gate-house), the windows are ranged at regular intervals and are of the same size, and there are only two storeys. But on the third side, the east, the line is broken not only by the Clock-tower, but by a variety in the arrangement of the windows, and the building is of three storeys.