VI.
WHEN ELIZABETH WAS QUEEN
In the reign of Henry VI., Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King's uncle, built himself a palace at Greenwich, and he called it "Placentia" or "Plaisance," which means a pleasant thing or place. (Turn over this page and the next, and you will find a [picture] of it.) I think the Tudor Kings really found it a pleasant place, for they lived there a great deal; here Henry VIII. and his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were born, and here Edward VI. died.
In those days the road we now call the Strand led from the City to the village of Charing Cross; and all along it stood great and beautiful houses with gardens which stretched down to the river. Each house, most likely, had its water-gate or landing-place, where the master of the house and his guests could step on board their barges, which might take them up the river to Westminster and the royal palace near Richmond, or down to London and beyond it to Greenwich; for in those days the river was London's greatest and most stately highway. Very stately were the barges, very gay, too, with flags and the fine liveries of servants; and very often people on the banks or in little boats near-by heard music sounding from their decks as they moved swiftly along. How beautiful, how stately, must Queen Elizabeth's barge have been, when at her Coronation she came by water to the Abbey!
She often stayed in her palace called Plaisance; how grandly she lived there! One who saw her there tells of the "gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly-dressed and bareheaded," who went before her; one of them carried the sceptre, another the sword of state. The ladies of her Court followed her, and she was guarded on each side by fifty gentlemen who carried gilt battle-axes. She was herself magnificently dressed, and "wherever she turned her face as she passed along, everybody fell down on their knees."
