The next day he did quit it, and from his barge on the Thames looked perhaps for the last time on the halls and towers of York Place, and bade

66

Farewell-a long farewell-to all his greatness."

Fiddes, in his Life of Wolsey, says that the Cardinal built a great part of York House; and the statement is strengthened by a passage in Storer's Metrical History of Wolsey (1599), in which are the following lines:—

"Where fruitful Thames salutes the learned shore

Was this grave prelate and the muses plac'd,
And by those waves he builded had before
A royal house with learned muses grac'd,
But by his death imperfect and defac'd."

It has been supposed that among these erections a "White Hall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and obtained its name from the freshness of its appearance, when compared with the ancient buildings of York House;" and hence the origin of the present appellation. On Wolsey's fall, in 1529, we know that the name of York Place was prohibited, though no other appears to have been immediately substituted for it, except by the popular voice. Shakspere refers to this change in his Henry VIII., in a passage interesting not on that account only. One gentleman is giving to two others a description of the coronation of Anne Boleyn, in which occur the following lines:

This coronation took place on the 1st of June, 1533. Henry and Anne had been married at Whitehall on the previous 25th of January in a very secret, un-sovereignlike style. Dr. Lee, one of the court chaplains, was summoned very early in the morning of that day to celebrate mass in a remote garret of the palace, where, to his astonishment, he found the King with two of the grooms of his bedchamber, and Anne Boleyn, with her trainbearer Mrs. Savage, afterwards the Lady Berkeley. Lee, however, although a court chaplain, would not, it is said perform that ceremony till Henry overcame all scruples by saying the Church of Rome had decided in his favour as to the divorce of his previous wife, Katherine. About this time the King made many alterations in the palace, as we learn from an Act of Parliament passed in 1536. This act recited that the old palace of Westminster was then and had been a long time before in utter ruin and decay, and that the King had lately obtained one great mansion-place and house, and that upon the soil and ground thereof he had "most sumptuously and curiously builded and edified many, and distinct, beautiful, costly, and pleasant lodgings, buildings, and mansions," and adjoining thereunto" had made a park, and walled and environed it round with brick and stone, and there devised and ordained many and singular commodious things, pleasures, and other necessaries, apt and convenient to appertain to so noble a prince for his pastime and solace." It was then enacted that all the said ground, mansion, and buildings, together with the said park and the entire space between Charing Cross and the Sanctuary at Westminster, from the Thames on the east side to the park wall westward, should be deemed and called the King's Palace of Westminster. Among these was a gallery which Wolsey had set up at Esher not long before his disgrace. As Pennant observes in a striking passage-" Henry had an uncommon composition; his savage cruelty could not suppress his love of the arts; his love of the arts could not soften his savage cruelty. The prince who could, with the utmost sang froid, burn Catholics and Protestants, take off the heads of the partners of his bed one day, and celebrate new nuptials the next, had notwithstanding a strong taste for refined pleasures." He was a scholar, a lover-performer and composer of music, a writer of ballads, and so good an architect that it has been considered as a matter of regret that a tomb he designed for himself was never completed. He formed a collection of pictures at Whitehall, which afterwards became the nucleus of the splendid collection of Charles I. He made munificent proposals to Raffaelle and Titian, neither of whom however accepted them, though the former painted a "St. George" for him. One eminent artist, however, was prevailed upon to come over to England by the reputation of his taste and generosity; we allude to Hans Holbein, who was introduced to Henry VIII. by Sir Thomas More, at his house at Chelsea, where a number of the painter's works had been previously distributed round the walls. The King immediately took him into his service, gave him an apartment in Whitehall and a pension, besides paying him for his pictures. From Holbein, who was a universal genius, he received the design of a magnificent Gate-house, which he built in front of the palace, opposite the entrance into the Tilt-yard. This edifice was constructed of small square stones and flint boulder, presenting two different colours, glazed, and disposed in a tessellated manner. On each

front were four naturally-coloured and gilt busts, which resisted all the influences of the weather. Three of these busts were traced by the activity of Mr. Smith into the possession of a gentleman of Essex, Peter Luard Wright, Esq., where he had the pleasure of seeing and of having drawings made from them to engrave in his work. They were of terra cotta, larger than life, and, it is said, representations of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Mr. Smith supposes them to be the work of Torregiano. It was removed in 1750, in order to widen the street, when it was begged by William Duke of Cumberland, the son of George II., with the intention of erecting it at the end of the long walk in the Great Park at Windsor, of which he was ranger. But the intention was never fulfilled. A very forcible proof of the estimation in which Henry held this distinguished artist is given in the following anecdote:-A nobleman of high rank one day roused Holbein's anger to so high a degree by intruding upon him whilst he was occupied at his easel, that the latter thrust him down stairs. Alarmed at what might be the consequences of so rash an act, Holbein instantly sought the King's protection by telling the whole story. The nobleman followed to present his complaint, but found that his royal master not only defended the painter, but threatened himself with his severest displeasure if he contrived or adopted any mode of revenge. "You have not now to deal with Holbein," said the King to his irritated but humbled listener, "but with me. Remember, that of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but I cannot make one Holbein." We should make the most of all these genial and excellent traits in Henry's character, not only that it is but justice to do so, but also that the imagination may be a little sweetened after the disgust it must always experience at the mention of his name, on account of the illustrious blood he has shed, the countless hearts he must have broken, and the general baseness of his character as regards all those who should have been nearest and dearest to him. If those he had injured panted for vengeance, his last hours at Whitehall must have satisfied them. So great was his fear of death that several persons had actually been executed for saying he was dying. Consequently, when he was in the condition he so much dreaded, there were none to tell him that the awful fiat had gone forth, and enable him to spend his last hours in the most fitting manner. "The physicians, on the approach of certain symptoms, wished his courtiers-friends he had none-to warn him of his state; but they all hung back in affright, like unarmed men in the presence of a wounded and dying beast of prey." Sir Anthony Denny at length undertook the task, and successfully accomplished it. Henry, finding there was no hope, began to reflect on his course of life, which he much condemned, but still professed himself confident that through Christ all his sins, though they had been more in number and weight, might be pardoned. Cranmer was sent for in great haste, who, on his arrival, found the King speechless. He bent over the bed, exhorting him to hope for God's mercy through Christ, on which Henry grasped his hand as hard as he could, and expired-we may add, just in time to save another of his destined victims, the Duke of Norfolk, who was to have died at an early hour on the same day, the 28th of January, 1547.

* Pictorial History of England, Book vi. p. 451.

In neither of the following reigns, those of Edward VI. and Queen Mary, do we find any record of importance connected with Whitehall, further than that the latter sovereign went from Whitehall by water to her coronation at Westminster, Elizabeth bearing the crown before her. It is said that the Princess could not help whispering to Noailles, the French ambassador, that it was very heavy. "Be patient," replied the ready-witted diplomatist; "it will seem lighter when it is on your own head." From the time of the splendid entertainments of King Henry to that anticipated by Noailles, when Henry's daughter ascended the throne of England, Whitehall must have been but a dull place. Edward's boyhood, and Mary's cheerless bigotry, alike prevented Mirth and all her crew from rioting in the palace-chambers of Whitehall. But Elizabeth reigned, and the court was more than ever the great centre of attraction to the young and light-hearted-to the scholar, wit, statesman, and poet-to all, in short, who could adorn or dignify it by their beauty or their accomplishments, their talents or their character. This is the poetical era of Whitehall. The virgin queen, as writers have delighted to call her, was not long after her succession in asserting her determination to remain unmarried. Her very first parliament sent a deputation with an address to Whitehall, "the principal matter whereof most specially was to move her grace to marriage." Elizabeth received the deputation in the great gallery built by her father, and, having heard the message, answered them at some length, and in a most characteristic style. For instance, having stated her preference for a single life, and the temptations she had had to withdraw her from it, she continued: "The manner of your petition I do like and take in good part, for it is simple, and containeth no limitation of place or person. If it had been otherwise I must have misliked it very much, and thought it in you a very great presumption, being unfit and altogether unmeet to require them that may command." This was pretty well for a young queen to her first parliament, and showed that with the blood she inherited no small portion of the absolute spirit of Harry the Eighth. She concluded her address with the observation-" And for me it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin." If Elizabeth's conduct has not been misrepresented, she exhibited occasionally no very great solicitude as to the strict performance of her determination; though, after all, vanity was perhaps the ruling passion that seduced her into such equivocal situations with her worthless favourite, Leicester. It was something to show that not even time could reduce the number or affect the constancy of her lovers. Thus, in her forty-seventh year, her persevering suitor, the Duke of Anjou, whom she had formerly refused, had nearly obtained her permission for the marriage by playing upon this weakness. He sent over Simier, a nobleman peculiarly qualified, by his appearance, manners, and abilities, to plead for him, and who represented to Elizabeth that the Duke was almost dying of love for her. He also obtained possession of an important secret, the marriage of the Earl of Leicester to the widow of the late Earl of Essex. Still Elizabeth protested she would never agree to marry a man whom she had not seen. In the following summer the Duke of Anjou suddenly appeared at the palace at Greenwich, having travelled thither incognito. The romance of the affair delighted the queen; and the adventurous lover's appear

ance made a favourable impression. But the desire for her marriage had ceased on the part of Burleigh and her other advisers, and, although no opposition was offered, she is said to have shed passionate tears that they did not, as before, unanimously petition her to marry. In a short time she declared again her determination to remain unmarried. But, in the spring of 1581, a splendid embassy arrived in London from Catherine de Medici, the Duke's mother, when it was agreed the marriage should take place within six weeks. The Queen attested her own sense of the importance of the occasion by building a banqueting-house "on the south-west side of Her Majesty's palace at Whitehall, made in manner and form of a long square, three hundred thirty and two feet in measure, about thirty principals made of great masts, being forty foot in length a-piece, standing upright; between every one of these masts, ten feet asunder or more. The walls of this house were closed with canvass, and painted all the outsides of the same most artificially, with a work called rustic, much like stone. This house had two hundred ninety and two lights of glass. The sides within the same house were made with ten heights of degrees for people to stand upon, and in the top of this house was wrought cunningly, upon canvass, works of ivy and holly, with pendants made of wicker rods, garnished with bay, ivy, and all manner of strange flowers garnished with spangles of gold, as also beautified with hanging toscans made of holly and ivy, with all manner of strange fruits, as pomegranates, oranges, pompions, cucumbers, grapes, with such other like, spangled with gold, and most richly hanged. Betwixt these works of bays and ivy were great spaces of canvass, which was most cunningly painted, the clouds with stars, the sunne and sunbeams with diverse other cotes of sundry sorts belonging to the Queen's Majesty, most richly garnished with gold." The Queen also ordered a great tournament to be given in the Tilt Yard, which was considered to be the most sumptuous celebration of the kind ever known in England. Nor was this all. The Queen placed herself in the gallery of the palace, which was accordingly called "the castle or fortress of perfect beauty;" and a mimic fight took place between Her Majesty's defenders and Desire, with his four foster-children, who stoutly attacked the castle. The combatants on both sides were persons of the first rank, and one of them bore a name that the world will not willingly let die,-Master Philip Sidney. A regular summons was first sent by Desire to the garrison, with the delectable song of which the following is a specimen :

"Yield, yield, O yield, you that this fort do hold,
Which sealed is in spotless honour's field;
Desire's great force no forces can withhold;

Then to Desire's desire, O yield! O yield!"

Not even this very mild and considerate message being attended to, "two cannons were fired off, one with sweet powder, and the other with sweet water; and after there were store of pretty scaling ladders, and then the footmen threw flowers and such fancies against the walls, with all such devices as might seem shot from Desire." Whilst this was going on in Elizabeth's presence, a regular tourney and jousting took place in the Tilt Yard, where Sir Harry Lee, the Queen's devoted and veteran knight, broke six staves in her honour. On the