The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Meanwhile the Dutch House had become even more closely associated with the royal family than its opposite neighbour. It was occupied for some time by Queen Caroline, consort of George II., and in 1781 was bought by George III. for Queen Charlotte, who brought up her large family in it, for which reason it became known, first, as the Royal Nursery, and later as the Princes' House. It was in it that the unfortunate king was shut up when he lost his reason, whilst his wife and children resided in Kew House, and when the latter was pulled down the Dutch House became the chief suburban residence of the royal family. In its drawing-room, fitted up for the occasion as a chapel, were married, on July 11, 1818, the royal brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Kent, the latter the future father of Queen Victoria, who was born in 1819 in Kensington Palace. In it, too, on November 1818, Queen Charlotte died, and from that time the house was comparatively neglected. It is still the property of the Crown, is kept in good repair, and remains a noteworthy example of sixteenth-century domestic architecture, but it is never likely to be again used as a royal residence. On the other hand the gardens connected with it have become even more beautiful than they were in the time of the Georges. They were given to the nation by Queen Victoria in 1841, and since then, under the able direction of the distinguished botanists Sir William Hooker, his son Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir W. Thisselton Dyer, and their successors, they have become not only an endless source of delight to thousands of sightseers, but also a centre of scientific research. In the museums are preserved examples of a vast number of vegetable products, so that they form, with the infinite variety of growing plants in the grounds and houses, an all but perfect epitome of botany. Moreover, until quite recently, the Observatory, situated on the land filched for a time by George III. from the Richmond Deer Park, was for many years noted for the good astronomical work done in it, but unfortunately, though the building is still standing, the savants, who for so long studied the heavenly bodies from it, have been driven away by the electric trams running between Brentford and Twickenham, that caused such an oscillation of the delicate instruments in use that the accuracy of the observations taken was destroyed. Kew now knows the astronomers no more; they have taken refuge in a remote district in Dumfriesshire, where as yet no tramways disturb their peace, their departure marking the beginning of a new era for the neighbourhood in which they worked so long, and where commercial enterprise has won a complete, though somewhat inglorious, victory over science.

The parish church of Kew, that is still a royal chapel, rises from the green, on land presented by Queen Anne to the people, and dedicated in compliment to her to her namesake, the mother of the Virgin. It was completed in 1714, and is a fairly good example of early eighteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture, for though it has been considerably enlarged, the original style has been preserved. The great gallery at the western end was added by George III. for the use of his large family, and a supplementary chancel, with the mortuary chapel in which rest the remains of the Duke of Cambridge, youngest son of that monarch, was completed in 1833. According to popular tradition George III. was married in Kew Church to the beautiful Quakeress Hannah Lightfoot, whom he had wooed and won long before he saw his future consort, who, it is said, insisted on going through the ceremony of wedlock again in the same building, after the story of her husband's relations with her predecessor came to her ears. However that may be, the old place of worship is full of memories of the royal family; in it the blind King George of Hanover, who was born in a house now used as one of the Herbariums of the Botanic Gardens, was baptized, and there, many years later, the Duchess of Teck, who resided for a long time in Cambridge Cottage, still standing on the green, was married to the father of the present Princess of Wales. A stained-glass window commemorates the duchess, and amongst the hatchments on the walls are two unpretending tablets, one in honour of the portrait painter Johann Zoffany, the other of the more famous Thomas Gainsborough, both of whom are buried in the churchyard, the latter, in accordance with his own instructions, near his old friend Joshua Kirby, who was one of his first patrons.

Sheen

Full of interest as is the history of Kew, it is surpassed in fascination by that of the neighbouring royal borough of Richmond, so varied have been the vicissitudes through which it has passed, and so many are the great names associated with it. Originally known as Syenes, and later as Sheen, Richmond was at the time of the Conquest included in the manor of Kingston, when it was but one of many riverside hamlets tenanted chiefly by fishermen. The Anglo-Saxon form of the word Sheen signifies gleaming or beautiful, and certain lovers of Richmond have assumed that it was from the first distinguished above its fellows by its charm, but this is scarcely borne out by evidence, for the name was in use when the sites of the future monasteries, palace, and town were still mere waste lands, often under water, and differing but little if at all from the adjoining districts up and down stream.

It seems certain that there was a manor-house at Sheen as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, and in it Henry I. resided for a short time, probably welcoming there his widowed daughter, Matilda, who on the death of her husband, Henry V. of Germany in 1126, returned to England to be accepted at the following meeting of the Witan as heiress-apparent of her father's kingdom. The Sheen estate was given later by Henry I. to a butler in his service named Michael Belet, but it was not long before it reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever since belonged. Edward I. was several times at Sheen, receiving the Scottish commissioners there in 1300, but the house he occupied was practically rebuilt and converted into a palace by Edward III., who often held his court in it, showing princely hospitality to many distinguished guests before the news of the death of his beloved son, the Black Prince, broke his heart. In it, deserted it is said by all his courtiers, and attended only by a single priest, the once powerful monarch died in 1377, his unworthy mistress, Alice Ferrers, having, when she saw the end was near, absconded with all the valuables she could carry away, including several valuable rings which she had torn off the fingers of her dying lover.

When the news of Edward's death reached London, his four surviving sons hastened down to the palace at Sheen to pay to their dead father the honours they had withheld from him during the closing years of his life; but whether the body was taken to Westminster for interment by road or by river history does not say. Soon after the funeral Richard II., then a boy of ten years old, received the formal announcement of his succession to the throne from a deputation of leading London citizens, who were received by him and his brother in the great hall, when the young king became so excited that he could not restrain his emotion, but kissed his guests all round on both cheeks. The next day he left his early home mounted on a white horse and robed in white, attended by all his great nobles, who also wore white in honour of the occasion, to make his public entry into his capital. A few years later he brought home to Sheen his beloved bride, Anne of Bohemia, and until her early death he was often there with her, holding regal state and entertaining hundreds of guests every day.

Considerable additions were made to the royal residence at Sheen by Richard's orders, and the superintendence of the works was entrusted to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been held in high esteem by Edward III., that monarch having granted him a pension in 1367, calling him in the deed of gift 'our beloved yeoman.' Chaucer became deeply attached to Sheen, but his connection with it was not a long one, for he presently fell into disgrace with his employer, who took away all his official appointments, and though later he was to some extent restored to favour, the king's love for his riverside home had by that time been turned to hatred. In 1394 Queen Anne died at Sheen, and so great was the grief of her husband, who, for all that, soon married again, that he ordered the palace to be razed to the ground immediately after the funeral, a grand and imposing ceremony in which all the chief nobles of England took part. Fortunately the royal commands were not fully carried out, for much of the interesting old building was left standing, and although it was neglected throughout the remainder of the reign of Richard II., it was sufficiently habitable in that of Henry IV. to be used as a residence by his son, the Prince of Wales. Indeed Henry V. was from the first very fond of Sheen, and soon after his succession to the throne he restored and added to the palace, converting it into what his biographer, Thomas Elmham, called 'a delightful mansion of curious and costly workmanship befitting the character and condition of a king.' Henry VI., who was but nine months old when his father died, may possibly have been at Sheen as a child, but the first well-authenticated visit paid by him to the palace was in 1441, when he issued a warrant from it to the sheriffs of the counties through which his aunt, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, whose husband had been Protector of England during his minority, was expected to pass, giving instructions for her reception. In 1445, the year of Henry's marriage to Margaret of Anjou, Sheen Palace was the scene of many a costly festivity, and ten years later it was to it that the unfortunate monarch was taken when his constitutional weakness had developed into positive insanity. Thence, after his recovery, he went forth to the fatal battle of St. Albans, at which he was defeated and taken prisoner by the Yorkists, and there he returned in 1456, when his mind was again unhinged, whilst his wife, with her beloved son, withdrew to Chester. Once more restored to mental health, Henry made a gallant effort to regain the reins of power, but he never again was king in anything but name, his palace at Sheen knew him no more, but before his tragic death in the Tower in 1471 it was twice tenanted by his hated rival Edward IV. The latter was there for a short time in the first year of his reign, and in 1465 he held a brilliant court in the palace, hoping by his lavish hospitality to reconcile the nobles to his secret marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, the discovery of which so alienated the kingmaker, the mighty Earl of Warwick, that he reverted to the Lancastrian side. At Sheen the queen's relations were very much in evidence, and it is said to have been there that her ladies paid her brother, Anthony Woodville, the compliment of presenting him with a golden garter embroidered with forget-me-nots. In 1467 the king gave the Sheen Palace to his wife, and she often resided in it during her husband's lifetime, possibly also occasionally in the brief reign of Richard III., and she probably hoped, after the murder of her sons, to be allowed to spend her remaining years there, especially as the new king was her son-in-law, but in this she was disappointed. Henry VII. liked the riverside home too much himself, and he lost no time in confiscating it, ordering the widowed queen to retire to a convent at Bermondsey, where she died not long afterwards. Richmond Now began a new era of glory for Sheen, the name of which the king changed to Richmond, he having been Earl of Richmond in Yorkshire before he was called to the English throne. What had hitherto been really more like a fortress than a palace was greatly enlarged, the moat which had surrounded it was filled in to make room for the various extensions, and the new buildings were lavishly decorated. When the insurrection headed by Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford carpenter, who claimed to be the heir of the murdered Duke of Clarence, broke out in Ireland in 1487, Henry called a council of war together at Richmond, and the following year the Princess Anne of York, fifth daughter of Edward IV., was the guest of the king in the palace. In 1492, after the termination of the war with France, a grand tournament was held partly in the grounds of the royal residence and partly on the green between it and the river, 'in the which space,' says the chronicler John Stow, writing about a century later, 'a combat was holden and doone betwixt Sir James Parker, knight, and Hugh Vaughan, gentleman usher, upon controversie for the arms that garter gave to the sayde Henry Vaughan ... and Sir James was killed incontinently at the first course, in consequence,' in the writer's opinion, 'of his having worn a false helmet,' an incident proving how real were the dangers attending the warlike pageants in which the Tudor sovereigns so greatly delighted.

In 1497 or 1498 a serious fire broke out in Richmond Palace, and the greater part of the older portion of the building was destroyed, but the king at once set a whole army of workmen to repair the mischief, and in 1501 he was back again in his favourite residence. There, in the early autumn of that year, took place the betrothal of his eldest son, Prince Arthur, with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Katharine of Aragon, and there, too, in January 1502, was signed the contract of marriage between the Princess Margaret of England and James IV. of Scotland that eventually resulted in the union of the two countries. Prince Arthur died five months after the wedding, and the king with unexpected generosity gave up the Richmond Palace to his widowed daughter-in-law, who, on June 25, 1503, was affianced to his second son, Henry, heir-apparent of the English throne, who was then only eleven years old. Henry VII. appears to have taken possession of the palace again very soon, for in 1503 he received in it Philip I. of Spain, who had been shipwrecked off the coast of England, holding great festivities in his honour. In 1506 another fire occurred, breaking out this time in the king's own bedroom, and he narrowly escaped a serious accident, for a gallery through which he had passed with the young Prince Henry collapsed just as he was leaving it. In this case, fortunately, the damage done was slight, and Henry spent much of the remainder of his life at Richmond, where he died in 1509, leaving behind him, it is said, a vast accumulation of treasure hidden away in secret chambers and cellars. After solemn services had been held in the private chapel of the palace, the body was taken by road with great pomp to be laid to rest in the beautiful but still unfinished chapel in Westminster Abbey, on which the king had spent fabulous sums during his lifetime, and for the completion of which he left £1000 in his will that he made at Richmond three weeks before his death.