ANECDOTE OF VERRIO.

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was not so strict, however, that it did not allow of Pepys coming down to the palace occasionally. On Sunday, July 23rd, he notes: "To Hampton Court, where I followed the King to chapel and there heard a good sermon; and after sermon with my Lord Arlington, Sir Thomas Ingram, and others, spoke to the Duke about Tangier, but not to much purpose. I was not invited anywhere to dinner, though a stranger, which did also trouble me; but yet I must remember it is a Court, and indeed where most are strangers; but, however, Cutler carried me to Mr. Marriott's, the housekeeper, and there we had a very good dinner and good company, amongst others Lilly the painter."

On the 26th of July the King went down the river for the day to Greenwich and Woolwich, where he was met by Pepys, who came the day after to Hampton Court to see him and the Queen set out for Salisbury, whither they went on account of the increase of the plague in the environs of London. Afterwards he saw the Duke and Duchess of York, who were going northwards; and he kissed the duchess's hand; "and it was the first time I did ever, or did see anybody else, kiss her hand, and it was a most fine white and fat hand. But it was pretty to see the young, pretty ladies dressed like men, in velvet coats, caps with ribbons, and with lace bands, just like men."

Charles II. continued to the end of his reign to pay occasional flying visits here; and to his latter years belongs an anecdote told of Verrio the painter, who had done much decorative work for the King in the way of painting ceilings and staircases. Verrio, it seems, was very extravagant, and kept a most expensive table, so that he often pressed the King for money with a freedom, which his Majesty's own frankness indulged. "Once at Hampton Court, when he had but lately received an advance of £1,000, he found the King in such a circle that he could not approach him. He called out: 'Sire, I desire the favour of speaking to your Majesty.' 'Well, Verrio,' said the King, 'what is your request?' 'Money, Sir, money; I am so short of cash, that I am not able to pay my workmen; and your Majesty and I have learnt by experience, that pedlars and painters cannot give long credit.' The King smiled and said he had but lately ordered him £1,000. Yes, Sir,' replied he, 'but that

was soon paid away, and I have no gold left.' 'At that rate,' said the King, 'you would spend more than I do, to maintain my family.' 'True,' answered Verrio, 'but does your Majesty keep an open table as I do?'"

The reign of James II. was, as far as the history of Hampton Court is concerned, an uneventful one; for it is not certain whether, as King, he ever passed a single night in the palace; though he seems to have held a Council here about the 29th of May, 1687, at which "the militia was put down and the licensing of ale-houses was put in other hands than the justices of the peace."

James, however, was frequently in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court, namely at Hounslow Heath, which adjoins the outskirts of Bushey Park, and on which was encamped during the year 1687 the army of 16,000 men, on whose support he relied to carry out his schemes against the liberties of the English people. But his armed force was regarded, by his subjects, with little else but derision; of which we have a good example in the contemptuous irony of the following lines, published at the time:

"Near Hampton Court there lies a Common,
Unknown to neither man nor woman;
The Heath of Hounslow it is styled;
Which never was with blood defiled,
Though it has been of war the seat
Now three campaigns, almost complete.
Here you may see great James the Second
(The greatest of our Kings he's reckoned)
A hero of such high renown,

Whole nations tremble at his frown;
And when he smiles men die away
In transports of excessive joy."

We have a reminiscence, also, of this reign in the canopy, now in the Queen's Audience Chamber, which was removed here from Windsor Castle, and under which King James there received the Papal Nuncio-an incident which gave deep offence to his Protestant subjects-and another in the old cast-iron fire-back in the Queen's Gallery, which bears the royal arms, his initials, I. R., and the date 1687.

ACCESSION OF WILLIAM AND MARY. 289

CHAPTER XXII.

WILLIAM AND MARY AT HAMPTON COURT.

THE accession of the Prince and Princess of Orange to the English throne marks as great an epoch in the history of Hampton Court as it does in that of England, for it was during their reign, and under their superintendence, that the greater part of the old Tudor State Apartments was pulled down, the new palace erected, and the parks and gardens laid out in the form in which we behold them at present.

Until their proclamation as King and Queen, on February 13th, 1689-the day after Mary's arrival in London, and three months after the landing of William at Torbay— William had been too engrossed with affairs of State to find time to visit any of the royal palaces out of London; but when once firmly seated on his father-in-law's throne, he began to look about him for some place where, without being too far away from his ministers, he might be free from the press and crowd of Whitehall, and give full indulgence to his unsociable inclinations.

With this object in view he soon turned his attention to Hampton Court, and, ten days after the proclamation, came down with the Queen to spend two or three days here.

With its situation, and the aspect of the surrounding landscape, William was at once captivated: for not only did the flatness of the country remind him of the scenery of his own dear home in Holland, but even from the very windows of the palace he could look out on a long straight canal, fringed with avenues of lime trees, such as met his eye at Haarlem and the Hague. The seclusion of the place also, combined with its convenient proximity to the capital, rendered it just such a residence as he was in search of.

Accordingly, after paying several short visits to this palace, he and Queen Mary moved hither for a more prolonged stay, at the beginning of March.

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While William was attending to business, Mary amused herself by inspecting everything, walking out five or six miles a day, superintending the gardening, making fringe, and playing basset, and doubtless doing as she had done at Whitehall, on her first arrival as Queen, where she went from room to room, looking at all the arrangements, and sleeping in the same bed where the Queen of James II. had slept. The Duchess of Marlborough, who was in attendance on her when she first arrived, tells us that she ran about "looking into every closet and conveniency, and turning up the quilts upon the beds, as people do when they come into an inn, and with no other sort of concern in her appearance but such as they express." Evelyn's testimony is to a like effect: "She smiled upon all, and talked to everybody; so that no change seemed to have taken place at Court as to queens, save that infinite throngs of people came to see her, and that she went to our prayers." In this last particular, however, the zeal of the newly-installed sovereigns rather outran their discretion; for it was complained of the Queen that her Protestant feeling was so deep as to lead her to suppress the fiddlers and other musicians who used to play in the Chapel Royal; while the King set his face against any church music at all, and deeply offended the prejudices of English ecclesiastics by adhering to the Dutch custom of wearing his hat in chapel.

It was here, also, that he shocked the religious feelings of many of his new subjects by scoffing at the old English custom of touching for the King's evil-a superstition consecrated by the usage of centuries, and sanctioned by the highest authorities in the Church. The close of Lent was the usual time for the ceremony; and the fact of the King being at twelve miles' distance from London did not prevent a crowd of poor scrofulous wretches flocking from the capital to Hampton Court, to crave the magical virtue of the kingly touch. They received, however, but little medical consolation at the end of their laborious journey. "It is a silly superstition," exclaimed William; "give the poor creatures some money, and let them go."

Previous to this, Queen Mary had written to a friend of hers in Holland, giving her impressions of Hampton Court, and saying that, though the air was very good, the place had been much neglected, and was, in her opinion, wanting in

NEW ROYAL APARTMENTS DETERMINED ON. 291

many of the conveniences of a modern palace. William was of the same opinion. "The King," says Burnet, "found the air of Hampton Court agreed so well with him, that he resolved to live the greatest part of the year there; but that palace was so very old built and so irregular, that a design was formed of raising new buildings there for the King and Queen's apartments.'

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The architect to whom was intrusted the designing of the new apartments was Sir Christopher Wren, by whose aid he hoped to rear an edifice that might in some degree vie with, if it could not excel, the palatial splendours of Versailles. This, of course, determined the architectural style of the building, which-our own old English Gothic being then in great disrepute was to be that of the debased Renaissance of Louis XIV. Wren's task was, as a consequence, no easy one; for he had to unite his own to another work, totally different in style, and yet do so in such a manner as to maintain an appearance of consistence in the whole design, and to exhibit no glaring incongruity. This result, at any ratewhatever we may think of the new building in other respects -Wren, it must be confessed, has been pretty successful in attaining; partly through having employed red brick, with dressings of white stone in the windows, doors, and string courses, as in the old Tudor work, and partly, also, by arranging the new buildings into the shape of a quadrangle, in conformity with the plan of Henry VIII.'s old Cloister Green Court, on the site of which Wren's new State Apartments stand.

When we learn that, in addition to working with these fetters on his constructive skill, Wren had to consult William III.'s taste in everything, and to defer to his sovereign's judgment instead of following his own, it is not surprising that the building, as it was finally completed, should scarcely be worthy of the great architect's genius.

Horace Walpole, indeed, tells us, on the authority of a descendant of Sir Christopher's, that he submitted another design for the alteration of the ancient palace "in a better taste, which Queen Mary wished to have executed, but was overruled." If this, however, means that an imitation of the old Tudor building was projected, we cannot but be glad, with Wren's mock Gothic Towers at Westminster before our