Doubtless the nuns made their own comments when in later years a gruesome story came from England to them in their new home across the sea. The coffin of Henry VIII., on its journey towards Windsor, was laid for a night within the convent walls; there the bloated corpse within burst, and the blood dropped on the pavement, so that it was licked up by the dogs, as that of the King of Israel in the streets of Samaria. A few months later the convent was granted to the Lord Protector Somerset, who began the building of the present mansion, and when he fell on the scaffold, it was given to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. There was a curse upon it. Lord Guildford Dudley had it for his home, and from its door he led the Lady Jane, his wife, to the Tower, to claim the throne of England, and receive at last the stroke of the headsman’s axe. Elizabeth granted it to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, but he was no exception to the ill-luck of his house, for he was afterwards convicted of being an accomplice in the Gunpowder Plot, disgraced, heavily fined, and imprisoned in the Tower. His son, the tenth earl, repaired the house, and from beneath its roof the children of the ill-fated King Charles were conducted to St. James’s Palace to bid their father a last farewell. One of them—Charles II.—held his court here during the Great Plague, and royalty has more than once in later times been a guest within the walls of Sion House. The mansion retains the general outline of the Lord Protector’s building, though it has been modernised, and probably made uglier. It is a bleak-looking structure, faced with grey stone, quadrangular in plan, as we note in passing, with embattled square towers at the corner. The principal façade is relieved by an arched terrace, and over the central bay now stands the lion with outstretched tail, once so conspicuous on Northumberland House in the Strand. The gardens and grounds, laid out in the style of the last century, are fine, the plant-houses being especially noted—in fact, they “may be said to be no mean rivals to Kew.”
But to these we must return, for the open meads of the Old Deer Park have now been replaced by the groves of Kew. First come the wilder portion of the royal gardens, devoted more especially to forest trees, scenes of sylvan beauty and quiet solitude, as few of the visitors find their way hither, but remain in the more highly cultivated portion, among the plant-houses and the gay parterres, in the neighbourhood of the Richmond road. Yet a more delightful spot for a ramble cannot easily be found; the great trees, feathering down to the sward, cast cool shadows in the summer heat; the long pool here glitters in the light, here lies still and dark beneath overhanging foliage. In due season many a flowering shrub adds a new and more striking diversity to the varied tints of verdure, and the water-lilies expand their cups of gold and silver among their broad floating leaves; the fowl float idly by; the birds twitter among the branches; among the scents of springing grass and of opening flowers, amid the flickering lights and shadows, and the peace of the forest, the roar of London streets dies away from the wearied ears, and the smoke of the town is forgotten in the savour of the pure air.
From the river bank we obtain glimpses from time to time of the glittering roof of the great palm-house, of the various buildings devoted to botanical science, and of the tall pagoda. The history of these gardens, now so great a boon to the dwellers in London, must be briefly sketched, for they are inseparable from the Royal River; and the site of the palace, for a time a favourite residence of kings and princes of England, is but a short distance from its bank, although the walled enclosure prevents so free a view of this as of the other parts of the gardens. The building which now bears the name of “the palace” was, in the earlier part of the last century, called the Old Dutch House. It is a red-brick structure, heavy in style, but not unpleasing, dating from the reign of James I., and probably built by Sir Hugh Portman, a wealthy merchant. Kew House, or “the palace,” as it was often called, stood a little more than a hundred yards away, and was obtained on a lease by Caroline, wife of George II., and afterwards purchased by Queen Charlotte. It became the country residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and after his death was inhabited by his widow. Here was spent much of the early life of the young prince, afterwards George III. Brought up in the strictest seclusion, jealously guarded by his mother and her favourite, Lord Bute, he received an education which cramped his faculties and in many respects disqualified him for his future lot. “The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after-life that his education had been neglected. He was a dull lad, brought up by narrow-minded people ... like other dull men the king was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox, he did not like Reynolds, he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities.”
Here, then, the young princes and princesses, after the death of their weakly and insignificant father, grew up under the guardianship of their stern and unloving mother, assisted, as every one will remember, by Lord Bute, who, at one time, had a fair claim to the title of the most unpopular man in England. It was with him that Prince George was riding when the note was put into his hand which apprised him that an end had come to his grandfather’s pleasuring, and that he was king, and at Kew Palace he remained till the following morning. During the first twenty or thirty years of his reign at least three or four months of every year were spent at Kew, where, as has been said, he “played Darby and Joan” with Queen Charlotte, and the young princes and princesses amused themselves like other children in the gardens. The great contrast between the mode of life of this and the preceding reigns was not altogether to the liking of the people; the rarity with which the king appeared in public, or entertained the members of the “upper ten,” the infrequency of state ceremonials, gave some colour to the accusation that he affected an Oriental seclusion, and was aiming at establishing a despotism. It had also, in all probability, another ill effect, that the king and queen lost their social influence over the aristocracy, and by standing aside from their position of the leaders did not exert upon its members that influence which would naturally have resulted from the purity and simplicity of their own lives. Certainly, society at large continued hardly less corrupt under the young king, whose reputation was spotless, than it had been when his grandfather kept court with Walmoden and Yarmouth. It was in Kew Palace also that the unfortunate king was secluded during the first attack of that mental disorder which afterwards permanently darkened his life.
The original Kew House was eventually pulled down by George III., who commenced the building of a much larger palace in its neighbourhood. This, which, so far as we can judge from prints, promised to be as ugly as are most structures of that period, was an incomplete shell when the king died, and was happily destroyed by his successor. The Dutch House, however, which was inhabited by the old king, and in a room of which Queen Charlotte died, still remains, though now almost unfurnished and unused. Here, also, in the drawing-room, were celebrated the marriages of two royal dukes, Clarence and Kent, the latter the father of the present Queen.
THE PAGODA IN KEW GARDENS.
One other memory also lingers about the precincts of Kew. On the lawn, perhaps a furlong from the old palace, we may notice a sun-dial. This marks the site of a little observatory, wherein, in the year 1725, before the house became a royal residence, James Bradley made the first observations which led to his two important discoveries, that of the aberration of light and of the nutation of the earth’s axis. This sun-dial, together with a memorial tablet, was erected by William IV.