There are indications that Duke Humphrey possessed several houses scattered about the country in which he dwelt from time to time. We have seen him residing and holding his Court at Pembroke Castle (Rot. Parl., iv. 474); on one occasion, at least, he was resident at his manor of Penshurst in Kent (Oriel MS., xxxii.); and he is said to have at one time dwelt at the Manor of the Weald, near St. Albans (Newcome, History of Abbey of St. Albans, 510). Another story declares that he held the castle of Devizes and had a mansion there (Holkham MS., p. 68), but there is no trace of the possession of the castle in official records, and it is known to have been demolished towards the end of the reign of Edward III. It would seem likely that he resided at Leicester and Pontefract at certain times, as on the fly-leaf of a book that he gave to his wife there are scribbled certain accounts relative to his household, dated at the two above-named places (Sloane MS., 248). The most famous of Gloucester’s residences was the one situated at Greenwich. This mansion is supposed to have been a royal residence as far back as the days of Edward I.; Henry IV. was constantly resident there, and from it his will is dated. Henry V. gave it to Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, for his life, and within two years of the latter’s death, we find it in the possession of Duke Humphrey (St. Albans Chron., i. 32)—possibly under the provision in Henry V.’s will that gave all his castles in the south of England to his youngest brother (Test. Vetust., i. 21). Henceforth it was Duke Humphrey’s favourite resort, and between 1432 and 1437 he transformed it into a far more important house than it had been hitherto. He was given permission to increase his possessions in the immediate neighbourhood by exchanging some lands for seventeen acres belonging to the Carthusian Monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem at Shene (Ancient Petitions, File 113, No. 5612; Rot. Parl., iv. 466; Ordinances, iv. 136-138), and ultimately he surrounded the manor with a wall, embattled the mansion itself, and built towers and turrets within the park, one of which stood on the spot on which Greenwich Observatory is now placed. The house was surrounded by a park of some two hundred acres, most of which had been enclosed and afforested by special permission of the King (Rot. Parl., iv. 498, 499; Ordinances, iv. 136-138; Cal. Rot. Pat., 277). Both in official documents and in letters written from Greenwich this residence is called ‘the manor of Plesaunce,’ and at Humphrey’s death it reverted to the Crown and was inhabited by Henry VI., when Jack Cade’s rebellion had made the capital unsafe (Fabyan, 623). Edward IV. enlarged and furnished this palace, Henry VII. spent much time there, his son Henry VIII. and his grand-daughters Mary and Elizabeth were all born there. At the Restoration, the King pulled down the old building, and in the days of Humphrey’s seventeenth-century biographer hardly a stone of it was left; and a new building was rising on the site (Holkham MS., p. 68). This new house, by the gift of William III. and Mary, became, and still is, the National Hospital for Seamen. (See Gentleman’s Magazine, New Series, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24; ‘Cygnea Cantio auctore Joanne Lelando,’ in Leland’s Itinerary, ed. by Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1768), vol. ix. p. 17.)
Besides his residence in Greenwich, Humphrey possessed a house in London, ‘a place callid the Duke’s Wardrobe atte Baynardes Castel in London, otherwise called Waterton’s Aley’ (Rot. Parl., v. 239). This mansion was situated on the banks of the river, just west of Paul’s Wharf, and bounded on the north by what is now Queen Victoria Street. It has been thought that this was the same site as the original castle of Bainard and the Fitzwalter family (Stow’s Survey of London (London, 1720), Book i. pp. 60, 61), though modern research tends to prove that this earlier fortress was in another parish (London, by J. W. Loftie, Historical Towns Series (London, 1887), p. 80). Possibly the palace of the earliest Saxon kings stood on this spot, and in Chaucer’s day it seems to have been a royal residence, to which Edward II. had added a lofty tower (The Pageant of London, by Richard Davey (London, 1906), i. 42, 188). In 1428 a devastating fire reduced this quarter of London to ashes, and it seems that it was at this time that Humphrey built the palace associated with his name, though no documentary evidence exists to justify the suggestion (Stow’s Survey, Book i. pp. 60, 61; London City, by W. J. Loftie (London, 1891), p. 249). The fact that in 1427 the Duke was at an ‘Inn,’ when the representatives of Parliament called upon him, supports the theory that at that time he had no permanent residence in the city. The house was called Baynard’s Castle after the ward in which it was built, extensive grounds surrounded it, and it was only second in magnificence to the palace at Greenwich, if we are to believe a political songster of the time, who makes Eleanor sadly take leave of ‘fayer places on Temmy’s side’ (‘The Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester,’ in Polit. Songs, ii. 207). Mansion, gardens, and all pertaining thereto were given by the King in 1447 (when they reverted to him at the death of his uncle) to King’s College, Cambridge (Rot. Parl., v. 132), but in the reign of Edward IV. we find the King’s mother there resident, and it was at Baynard’s Castle that the Mayor of London waited on Richard of Gloucester in 1483 with the formal offer of the English Crown (London City, pp. 76, 116). Henry VII. rebuilt the palace early in his reign, but it was not then embattled, ‘or so strongly fortified castle-like,’ as in Duke Humphrey’s days, but was more of a royal and family residence (Stow’s Survey, Book i. pp. 60, 61). We next find it in the possession of the Herbert family, and on July 19, 1553, the Privy Council met there to proclaim Mary queen, the owner being then William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (The History and Survey of London, by B. Lambert, London, 1806, iii. 98). John Cooper, the seventeenth-century biographer of Duke Humphrey, had himself visited Baynard’s Castle, and by that time, he tells us, the property had been split up, and was intersected by streets and lanes, but they still bore ‘the name of Duke Humphries.’ Indeed there stood an inn which bore the sign of the Duke just on the edge of the site of the old mansion, and at the time of writing was famous for a recent brawl on the premises (Holkham MS., pp. 68, 69). The whole district was swept away by the great fire of 1666, but in 1809 two towers of the old castle were still standing, and to this day Castle Street and Castle Yard commemorate the past glories of Gloucester’s London residence (Davey’s Pageant of London, i. 337).
APPENDIX E
PORTRAITS OF GLOUCESTER
I. In a book of portraits in Vol. 266 of the Bibliothèque de la ville d’Arras, on folio 37, there is a portrait bearing Gloucester’s name, a reproduction of which hangs in the Bodleian Library. It appears among a series of portraits of people from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, which represent in most cases Flemish grandees and prominent courtiers of the Court of Burgundy. On folio 36 there is a portrait of Jacqueline of Hainault, and on folio 35 another of the Dauphin John, her first husband. All are in crayon, and are probably the work of Jacques Le Boucq, a herald of the Toison d’Or, who was known as a painter in the days of Philip II. of Spain. It has been thought probable that he copied contemporary portraits for these crayon drawings, and if this be true, he provides us with the only attempt at real portraiture of Duke Humphrey (Catalogue of the Arras Library; Les Portraits Aux Crayons, by Henri Bouchet, Paris, 1884).
II. In the initial letter of the dedication to Duke Humphrey, prefixed to Capgrave’s Commentary on Genesis, a miniature portrays the author in the act of presenting his book to his patron. The workmanship of this miniature is too coarse to allow of any portraiture, though a slight likeness to the Arras portrait may be traced (Oriel MS., xxxii.). A line reproduction of the Duke’s head, taken from this manuscript, is given in Doyle’s Official Baronage.
III. In a register at St. Albans Abbey there is a small illumination representing Duke Humphrey and his wife Eleanor, painted on the occasion of the latter’s reception into the confraternity of St. Albans. There is here a more successful attempt at portraiture than in the Oriel manuscript, and the type of face, long, clean shaven, almost apathetic, is similar to that in the Arras drawing. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere there is no real character in the face of Humphrey, and still less in that of his wife; there is, indeed, a strong suggestion of mediæval formalism (Cotton MS., Nero, D. vii. f. 154).
IV. Among the royal collection of manuscripts in the British Museum there is a Psalter which was prepared for Duke Humphrey, and which, besides being beautifully illuminated, bears a miniature which may contain a portrait of the owner (Royal MS., 2, B. i.). It represents a man kneeling at a Prie-Dieu, with a patron standing behind him. The kneeling figure may very well be taken to represent the owner of the book. Again there are very few signs of portraiture, but such as it is, the miniature seems to be the likeness of Humphrey when still a young man The manuscript was written about 1415, which would lead us to suppose that the artist here tried to present the Duke’s features at the age of twenty-five.
V. In the church at Greenwich which was destroyed in 1710 there was a stained-glass window representing the Duke in a kneeling posture. A copy of this window is still extant, and is to be found as the headpiece of the preface to the old catalogue of manuscripts contained in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1697). A rough drawing thereof, executed in 1695, is also to be found in Tanner MS., 24, f. 107, and another, dating from some seventy-five years earlier, exists in Ashmole MS., 874, f. 113vo. Humphrey is represented in armour, and in appearance he is here totally unlike any of the above-mentioned portraits, being represented as wearing a beard. The window was probably placed in Greenwich church some time after his decease.
VI. In the year 1610 there was at the west end of the church of St. Helen’s, Abingdon, a glass window, in which were portraits of Henry V. and his three brothers. ‘These Dukes be in their robes and their coronalls with their arms over their Hedds, and their names written under their feet.’ No drawing of this window has survived, and it has disappeared as completely as the one in Greenwich church. (Ashmole MS., 874, f. 113vo.)