The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Every year on Maundy Thursday it was the queen's habit to wash one of the feet of as many poor women as the years of her own life, and the ceremony on these occasions was alike lengthy and imposing. A service in the chapel inaugurated the proceedings, and the feet of the chosen women having been first thoroughly cleansed by members of the queen's household, her majesty entered the hall attended by her whole court, and performed her part with great condescension, kissing each foot she had washed with earnest devotion and making over it the sign of the cross. Gifts of wearing apparel and food were then presented to the women, one of them chosen beforehand receiving the costume worn by her majesty.

It is said to have been at Greenwich that Sir Walter Raleigh was first presented to the queen, and the oft-told episode of the cloak is by some authorities supposed to have taken place there, the gallant young courtier having flung down his richly decorated mantle on the landing-stage just in time to prevent his royal patron from wetting her feet as she alighted from her barge opposite the palace. Whether there be any truth in this version of the story it is certain that Raleigh was often at Greenwich, as was also his rival the handsome Earl of Essex, who was so soon to succeed him in the favour of the fickle queen. It may possibly have been from Placentia that Raleigh started for Ireland in 1587, and it was certainly there that he learned to love his future wife Bessy Throckmorton, one of the queen's maids of honour, jealousy of whom had much to do with his committal to the Tower in 1592.

To the end Queen Elizabeth retained her affection for Greenwich, and some of the last walks she took were in her beloved park there, in which is preserved a mighty hollow oak-tree, capable of holding no less than twenty people, that is still known as Queen Elizabeth's and is protected by a railing from injury. Her successor James I., however, cared little for the palace or its grounds, and bestowed them both in 1605 upon his wife, Anne of Denmark, who became much attached to her new possession. She greatly improved the old palace and began the building of another, to which she gave the name of the House of Delight. Her affection for Greenwich was shared by her son, Charles I., and his wife, Henrietta Maria, who were often in residence there before their troubles began, and had the House of Delight, which now forms the central portion of the Royal Naval School, completed by Inigo Jones. They opened negotiations, too, with some of the chief artists of the day, including Rubens, who was often their guest at Placentia, for the painting of the walls of the new palace, but the terms asked were prohibitive, and all too soon more pressing matters took up all the king's time and thoughts. After his fatal journey to Scotland Charles I. was never again at Greenwich and for some little time after his death the palaces there were deserted, but later Cromwell resided for some time in the older of the two. On the Restoration the Greenwich estate became once more the property of the royal family, and the widowed queen Henrietta Maria lived in one of the palaces for a short time. That of Placentia was, however, now in such a melancholy state of decay that it was decided to pull it down, and a new palace was begun on its site after the designs of Inigo Jones, of which, however, only one wing was completed, with which, says Pepys in his Diary, 'the king was mightily pleased,' but his majesty's ardour soon cooled, and writing in 1669 the gossipy journalist remarks: 'The king's house at Greenwich goes on slow but is very pretty.' Gradually the slowness became stagnation, Charles II. lost all interest in the work, and neither he nor his successors, James II. or William III., used the new palace as a residence. The wife of the latter, however, who cherished many happy memories of Greenwich, resolved to turn the royal buildings there to account by using them as a hospital for disabled seamen. The idea, it is said, first occurred to her after the great victory of La Hogue in 1692, at which so many English sailors were crippled for life; and without waiting for the return of her husband from Holland, she at once ordered various alterations to be made to render the building suitable for its new purpose. Later William entered very cordially into the scheme, and in 1694 the palace and the estate connected with it were formally given over to trustees 'for the relief and support of seamen of the Royal navy ... who by reason of age or other disabilities shall be incapable of further service ... and also for the sustenance of the widows and maintenance and education of the children of seamen happening to be slain or disabled in such sea service.'

Unfortunately Queen Mary died before the work inaugurated by her was completed, but William III. resolved to make the hospital a worthy memorial of her, and entrusted the task of supplementing the existing buildings with another of noble proportions to Sir Christopher Wren, under whom was to work as treasurer John Evelyn, and as secretary the famous dramatist and architect Sir John Vanbrugh, who in 1714 built the mansion known as Vanburgh Castle, still standing on Maize Hill on the eastern outskirts of the park, in which a number of French prisoners were shut up during the last war with France.

Greenwich Hospital was designed without fee by Sir Christopher, for love, as he said, of the cause of the seamen, and is considered one of his masterpieces. With his usual skill in subordinating detail to general effect and dovetailing the new on to the old, he made the colonnades connecting his work with that of his predecessors appear an integral part of a single harmonious scheme, and fortunately there is nothing incongruous with that scheme in the additions made since his death. As it now stands the hospital consists of four groups of buildings, named respectively after Charles II., Queen Anne, Queen Mary, and King William. The two first on either side of the great square face the river and are both handsome structures, but they are excelled in beauty of design by the two last. In Queen Mary's is the richly decorated chapel completed in 1789 that replaces an earlier building destroyed by fire in 1779, whilst King William's encloses the most important feature of all, the fine Painted Hall originally the refectory of the pensioners, that was decorated between 1708 and 1729 with a series of mural and ceiling paintings by Sir James Thornhill, and is now used as a national gallery for portraits of naval heroes and pictures of marine subjects, some of which, notably Turner's 'Battle of Trafalgar,' are real masterpieces. Many banquets to royal and other distinguished guests have been held in the Painted Hall, but the most memorable association with it is the fact that in it in 1806 the dead body of Lord Nelson lay in state for three days before it was taken by boat on January 8 to be interred in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Until 1865 Greenwich Hospital continued to be one of the most useful and appreciated charitable institutions of the United Kingdom, but at that date it was decided, in accordance with the wishes of the seamen, that they should be allowed pensions enabling them to live in their own homes. In 1869 the last of the inmates left, and four years later the buildings were re-opened as a naval college, those named after Queen Anne being set aside as a museum of naval relics, models of ships, etc., for the use of the students, to which, however, the public are admitted. From the first the new school throve in a remarkable way, and at the present day as many as a thousand pupils are received in it at a time.

The parish church of Greenwich, dedicated to St. Alphege, occupies the site of an earlier one, that in its turn is supposed to have replaced a chapel marking the spot where the martyrdom of the holy man it commemorated took place. The present building was completed in 1718, and is a fairly good example of the Renaissance style then in vogue. It contains a fine memorial window to its titular saint, who is represented in his bishop's robes raising the right hand in blessing, an ornate royal pew, some good carving by the famous Grinling Gibbons, and on one of the walls a quaint old painting representing Charles I. in prayer. In the crypt beneath rest Major-General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, the celebrated musician, Thomas Tallis, and the famous beauty, Polly Peacham, who became Duchess of Bolton, and resided with her husband the duke at Westcombe Park. In the same place was also interred the noted antiquarian, William Lombarde, who lived in the time of Elizabeth and founded the picturesque almshouses named after her, still to be seen opposite the modern railway station, but when the old church was pulled down his tomb was removed to Sevenoaks.

Greenwich Park, that was first roughly enclosed by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester and his wife Eleanor in 1433, was further protected some two centuries later by a brick wall erected by order of James I. The grounds were laid out by the famous landscape gardener, Le Nôtre, chosen by Charles II., who took a great interest in the progress of the work, himself planting many trees, including the noble avenue of Spanish chestnuts that is still one of the most noteworthy features of the park. It was the same monarch who decided to transform into an Observatory the tower built by Duke Humphrey, which had been the home for many years of the younger members of the royal family, and in which the Princess Mary, one of the daughters of Edward IV., died in 1482. Later the building, to which the inappropriate name of Mirefleur was given, was used as a prison, and in it Queen Elizabeth had the Earl of Leicester shut up after his marriage to the widowed Duchess of Essex. James I. gave the property to Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, founder of the still flourishing Trinity Hospital, and he greatly enlarged the Tower, converting it into a really fine mansion. The work of transforming it into an observatory was entrusted to Sir Christopher Wren, who found it necessary to have the greater part taken down, but he used the old materials; and in spite of the many additions that have been made since his time, the group of buildings, with their numerous turrets and domes, harmonise well with each other and their surroundings. Through Greenwich Observatory runs the meridian line from which longitude is reckoned, and from it the exact time is conveyed by electricity every day at one o'clock to the chief towns of Great Britain. In it elaborate records are made of the daily changes in temperature, the direction of the wind, and many other data of importance to astronomical and meteorological science. The great telescope, that is twenty-eight feet long and has an object glass of twenty-eight inches, is the most powerful anywhere in use, and near to the chief entrance is the huge astronomical clock that shows the true official time. Many distinguished men have held the important post of Astronomer-Royal at Greenwich, including Flamsteed, Halley, Bradley, and Sir George Airey, under whose enlightened auspices the observatory has won first rank amongst similar institutions elsewhere, a position it seems likely long to maintain if its interests are protected from the dangers that have recently begun to threaten them. The annual reports issued by the Astronomer-Royal are practically a history of astronomical science, and it is impossible to overestimate the value of the quiet, systematic, unremitting work done under his auspices all the year round, or of the unceasing vigilance of the experts whose business it is to make sure that all the instruments used are in the highest possible state of efficiency.