painted ceilings, carved cornices, tapestried and oak-panelled walls, we may mentally people them again with the king's and queens, and statesmen and courtiers, who thronged them in the last century. Moreover, by the aid of an unbroken series of historical pictures and portraits, illustrative of three centuries of English history, we may recall the past with a vividness that no books can ever excite.

And then, when satiated with art and archæology, we can relax the mind by wandering beneath the shade of William III.'s stately avenues of chestnut and lime; strolling in the ever-delightful gardens where Wolsey paced in anxious meditation a few weeks before his fall; where Henry VIII. made love to Anne Boleyn and to Catherine Howard; along the paths where Queen Elizabeth took her daily morning walk; past the tennis court where Charles I. played his last game on the day he escaped from the palace; beneath the bower where Queen Mary sat at needlework with her maids of honour; along the terrace to the bowling green and pavilion where George II. made love to Mrs. Howard and Mary Bellenden; under the lime groves which sheltered from the sun Pope and Hervey, Swift and Addison, Walpole and Bolingbroke.

Hampton Court is pleasantly situated on the left or north bank of the river Thames, in the hundred of Spelthorne, in the county of Middlesex, about one mile distant from the villages of Hampton and Hampton Wick, about a mile and a half from the town of Kingston-on-Thames, and thirteen miles or so from London, reckoning in a westerly direction from Charing Cross. It longitude is o° 20' west of Greenwich, and its latitude 51° 24′ north. The boundaries of the ancient parish of Hampton appear to have been coterminous with those of the manor, which consists of about 3,000 acres and of which Hampton Court forms a part.

The natural features of the country in which Hampton Court is situated are not particularly striking. The ground is flat, with scarcely an undulation rising more than twenty feet above the dead level, and the soil, though light and gravelly, supports very little indigenous timber. Indeed, in primæval times, the whole district of Hampton appears to have been an open tract, forming part of the famous Hounslow Heath, to which it immediately adjoins; and the

thorns in Bushey Park, with a few ancient gigantic elms and oaks in the Home Park, are still surviving remnants or traces of its original state. One of the oaks, which is believed to be the largest in England, is as much as 37 feet in girth at the waist.

Nevertheless, the surrounding prospect must, from the earliest times, have been not unpleasing. The stretch of

the river opposite Hampton Court-studded with eyots, and bordered with luxuriant meadows fringed with willows-is one of the prettiest in the lower Thames; and the stream, which is particularly clear and swift at this point, is always lively with boats and barges. When we add, that the view from the palace extends, across the river, over a wide expanse of

"Meads for ever crowned with flowers,"

clusters of trees, flowery hedgerows, and broad undulating heath-clad commons,—

"To Claremont's terraced height, and Esher's groves,
By the soft windings of the silent Mole,-"

and that in the distance can be traced the dim blue outline of the Surrey hills; while on another side appear the crowded gables and the picturesque old church-tower of Kingston, we have enumerated all the natural and local amenities of Hampton Court.

Of the annals of the place in the days of the ancient Britons, Romans, and Saxons, we can record nothing but a complete blank; nor have there been found here many traces or remains of those periods of history.

To Saxon times we owe, of course, the name Hampton, a compound of the words Hame, meaning home or place of shelter, and Ton, signifying an aggregate of houses environed and fortified with a hedge and ditch.

The first mention of Hampton in any records is to be found in Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, where the manor of Hamntone in the county of Middlesex, and the hundred of Spelthorne, which in Saxon times had belonged to Earl Algar, is entered as held by Walter de St. Valerie or Valeric, and valued, including arable land, pasture for the cattle of the manor, and 35. arising from the fisheries in the Thames, at £39, a very high value for Domesday. In the time of Edward the Confessor it was valued at £40, of which the King received £20.

For a century and a half after this, the manor remained in the possession of the family of De Valery or De St. Valery. From their hands it passed into those of Henry de St. Albans, who about the year 1217 gave it, lent it, or leased it to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who appear to have had here, as early as the end of the twelfth century, a preceptory of some sisters of their Order; and who were, at any rate, by the middle of the thirteenth century in possession of the whole manor of Hampton.

The Order was at this time in the heyday of its prosperity and power, and possessed enormous property in every country in Europe, and not least in England, where their lands were farmed, and money amassed, to be paid into the

LEASE OF THE MANOR TO WOLSEY.

5

exchequer for the general purposes of the ruling body. The establishment at Hampton, however, though a typical one, must have been on a small scale, and maintained for little more than managing the property and collecting the

rents.

For 160 years or so, we hear little of the manor of Hampton Court. But the house was still inhabited by the Order in the year 1503, when Elizabeth of York went there from Richmond Palace, as we gather from her privy purse expenses, to make a retreat, and pray for a happy delivery, just a month before she died in childbed.

We may observe here that long before the manor was acquired by Wolsey it was known by the name of "Hampton Court," and that it is incorrect to suppose that the word "Court" has anything to do with the palace, which he built. It has, in fact, the same origin and meaning as in the names Ember Court, Sayes Court, etc., and signifies, in distinction to the whole manor, that portion of it which was retained by the Lord for his own use, and called the demesne lands, and in which was situated the manor-house, or capital mansion of the manor.

The next date in the history of Hampton Court is 1514, on the 20th of March of which year Henry visited the manor in company with Katharine of Arragon.

A little later, in the same year, 1514, namely, on Midsummer day, by an indenture executed on the 11th of January of the following year, the manor of Hampton Court, with all its appurtenances, was leased by the prior, Sir Thomas Docwra, and his brethren Knights of the Hospital of St. John to "the most Rev. Father in God Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York," for a term of ninety-nine years, at a rent of £50 per annum. A contemporary copy of the lease is still extant in the chartulary of the priory in the British Museum, and confirms our surmise that there was a manor-house on the site of the present palace previous to its acquisition by Wolsey, though it was evidently of small dimensions, and very rudely furnished.

Several motives probably weighed with Wolsey in fixing on Hampton Court as a residence. In the first place, he was in need of a secluded country place, within easy access of London, whither he could withdraw occasionally for rest

and quiet without being too far from the centre of affairs— as he would certainly have been, had he retired to his diocesan palaces of York, Lincoln, or Durham. At the same time he was anxious to select a place where his health, which suffered much from the fogs and smoke of London, might be recruited in fresh and pure air. We may presume, too, that he was not regardless of the advantage attaching to a site on the banks of the Thames, in days when, on account of the badness and danger of the roads, no route was so safe, convenient, and expeditious as the "silent highway" of a river.

With these objects in view, he is declared by the legend of the parish to have "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." The decision of the faculty was emphatically in favour of Hampton Court, on account of its "extraordinary salubrity"; and Wolsey, in accordance with their advice, forthwith proceeded to treat for a lease of the manor.

Whether this tradition be founded on fact or not, it would be impossible now to decide; but certainly the healthiness of Hampton Court at the present is an unquestioned fact, nor has anything ever happened, during the last 370 years, to belie the favourable opinion of Wolsey's doctors. The building, though the ground floor is scarcely 10 feet above the average level of the river, is wonderfully free from damp, while the air, though sometimes foggy, is never unwholesome. Much of this is doubtless due to the gravelly nature of the soil, the absence of moist vegetation, and the proximity of the running stream of the river, which acts as a drain to carry off all surface water and impurites.

Wolsey had no sooner entered into possession of Hampton Court, than he began with characteristic energy to plan the erection of a vast and sumptuous edifice commensurate with the dignity and wealth he had just attained to. He was then on the threshold of his career of greatness, and already receiving enormous revenues. Besides his office of Grand Almoner, he had been appointed within a year to three several bishoprics-that of Lincoln, that of Tournay in France, and the archbishopric of York; and in quick suc