“Not in the Great Fire certainly, but it was burnt down only about thirty years later, in the reign of William and Mary. Afterwards St. James’s Palace, which you know well by sight, was the London home of royalty till Buckingham Palace took its place.”
In less than half an hour, they were driving from Westminster up Whitehall, and the car stopped before that building opposite the Horse Guards which is now called the United Service Museum.
“The famous Banqueting Hall has been turned into a museum, you see, where all sorts of interesting relics connected with the Army and Navy are preserved. We’ll go in and look at it,” said Godmother.
They went upstairs into the lofty hall, and Betty gazed up at the painted ceiling high above her head and at the flags hanging in a line just below it.
“The ceiling is the work of Rubens, a famous Dutch painter, and the old flags hanging up there once belonged either to famous ships or famous regiments. Now come and look at this model of Whitehall Palace as you saw it half an hour ago.”
Betty followed her eagerly to a glass case near the door.
“Oh, it’s a splendid model of it!” she exclaimed. “Here’s the part that went along by the river, where the Queen lived, and some of the beautiful ladies of the Court as well. And there are all the gabled houses round the big garden in the middle.”
“And that’s the building we’re standing in at the present moment,” Godmother added, pointing out the Banqueting Hall in the model. “The beginning of what the architect intended as a great new palace, and the only part of it either built or remaining now.”
“That’s where the Tilt Yard was,” Betty exclaimed, when having examined the model, she went to one of the big windows of the Hall and looked across at the Horse Guards, with the scarlet-coated soldiers on their horses standing on either side of the gateway. “And just under this window poor King Charles was beheaded.”
There were numberless interesting things besides the model to be seen in the Hall, but Betty’s mind was full of Restoration days, and when Godmother proposed that they should drive to the place where the Great Fire ended, she readily agreed.