At Wilton, in Wiltshire, is some of the finest of Jones’s internal work, and his connection with this house is established by a series of designs for the ceilings preserved among the Worcester College drawings. The south front, of which there is a sketch in the R.I.B.A. collection, would hardly have served to make his reputation, but the splendid suite of state rooms is unrivalled in any English house. One of these is a double cube, being 60 ft. by 30 ft. by 30 ft. high, and another is a single cube of 30 ft. The double cube, with its stately panelling filled with Vandyke’s portraits of the family, deserves its reputation as the finest room in the country (Fig. [34]). A plain, double cube of these dimensions would be unpleasantly lofty (as may be realised by visiting one at St James’s Palace), but here at Wilton the great height is lessened to the eye by the introduction of a large cove which springs from a bold cornice some 9 ft. below the ceiling, thus reducing the height of the walls to 21 ft.
The double cube and such precise proportions were quite new in English architecture; so also were the careful proportions of the windows and their relation to the wall space, the pervading refinement of the mouldings, and the simplicity (almost amounting to baldness in some cases) of the general treatment. These factors inevitably influenced the plan of the house, which became much less elastic than of old, and less adaptable to the wants of English life. They tended towards the glorification of the house at the expense of its inhabitants and to subordinate household comfort to architecture.
Fig. 34.—WILTON HOUSE, Wiltshire. The Double Cube Room. About 1649.
A small but admirable piece of work which may safely be assigned to Jones is the water-gate of York House (Fig. [35]). Its present rather forlorn situation at the bottom of Buckingham Street, Strand, gives no indication that it was an adjunct of the town house of the princely Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the “Steenie” of Charles I. York House, for so the place was called, had belonged to the Archbishops of York, but when it came into the hands of Buckingham, he pulled it down and built a large and temporary structure, apparently for the purpose of using it for state occasions. Within its walls he housed a magnificent collection of pictures and other works of art, purchased from Rubens.[23] Gerbier (who will be mentioned again later) was employed by the duke to design some of the new work at York House, and hence the water-gate has been attributed to him. But the fact that a drawing of it by Webb is included among the “Inigo Jones” drawings precludes this idea, for it is hard to imagine either Jones or Webb condescending to delineate any work of Gerbier’s. Apart from this it is improbable that Gerbier could have designed anything so good. That excellent mason and sculptor, Nicholas Stone, was employed upon its execution, and he put in a claim to the design, but Webb’s drawing is a sufficient answer to this pretension also.
York House was sold in 1672 by the second duke, the “chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon” of Dryden, to a syndicate who pulled down the house, and covered the site with new buildings, leaving the water-gate as practically the sole relic of the old palace. Its appearance, backed by its newer neighbours, is well indicated in a drawing by Thomas Sandby, made about 1760 (reproduced as the frontispiece).
Inigo Jones died in June 1652.[24] His will is dated the 22nd July 1650, when he was “aged seaventy-seaven yeares.” He left in specified sums the amount of £4,150, and he bequeathed the debt owing to him from the late king and queen, of which the amount is not stated, in equal shares to his executor, John Webb, and one Richard Gammon, a carpenter, after deducting £50 for the paymaster of the works payable within a month after the discharge of the debt. He disposes of one half of his wearing apparel, but does not mention the other half, nor does he dispose of the residue of his estate. He mentions no collection of drawings (as did John Webb) nor any books. On the face of it he can hardly be considered a wealthy man at his death. A really exhaustive account of his life has yet to be written; one which shall be free from the undemonstrable attribution of work to him; free from baseless eulogy on the one hand and detraction on the other; one which shall fairly balance tradition and evidence; which shall take account of him as an artist and scene-painter, as a surveyor dealing from day to day with prosaic details, and as an architectural designer. It has been no part of the present purpose to enter minutely into these particulars; it was outside the scope of this work to marshal all the evidence for or against his authorship of every building with which he has been credited. The aim has been to indicate the general influence he had upon English architecture, particularly in respect of house design.
Fig. 35.—The Water-Gate of York House, London.
He was the most notable figure that had hitherto appeared upon the stage of English architecture, the most refined and scholarly, with an exquisite sense of proportion. He was at heart an artist, just as Wren was at heart a man of science.