In poverty, as in all things else, there are degrees. What may be wealth to one may be destitution to another. It depends upon what the previous habits of life have been. Take, for instance, the gentlemen and ladies, many of them bearing the noblest English names, to whom the Queen grants apartments in the old Palace of Hampton Court. They are not without small incomes themselves, and the rates and taxes they have to pay amount to no inconsiderable sum. Yet to live rent free is a boon that enables them to live comfortably.
Shortly after the commencement of his reign George III. closed the Palace as a royal residence, and from that time private families commenced to occupy its innumerable rooms. These "royal squatters," as they have been called, at first behaved in doubtful fashion. Many had been granted leave to stay for a few weeks, and quietly proceeded to make it a permanent residence. Worse still, they seized additional rooms when they thought they could do so in safety, and sometimes let them out at a substantial rent to their friends. News of these strange doings was carried to the king, who became very angry, as an existing letter that he wrote shows to us. It was proclaimed that no one would in future be allowed to occupy a suite of apartments save under the Lord Chamberlain's warrant. Gradually the thousand rooms of the great building were divided up into, firstly, the State apartments, and, secondly, fifty-three private suites, varying in size from ten to forty chambers. At the present time these suites are granted, as a general rule, to the widows of men who have distinguished themselves in the service of their country. To no more worthy use could the Palace have been placed; indeed, the tact and discrimination which have been exhibited by our Queen and her advisers in the distribution of these benefits cannot be too highly praised.
About the royal pensioners of Hampton Court many interesting and amusing stories are told. When debt brought imprisonment as its punishment, a certain gentleman retired to the rooms of a relation in the Palace, and claimed the immunity of a royal residence. The bailiffs knew that they could not arrest him there, and hung about at the gates, while he took his daily exercise upon the roof. One day he incautiously ventured out and was arrested; but he escaped from his enemies, swam the river, and got back into safety again. Red-tape rules supreme in the management of the royal buildings, as the pensioners know to their cost. Certain windows, for instance, are never properly cleaned, owing to the fact that the Woods and Forests Department washes the outside of the panes and the Lord Steward's Department the inside. As the two departments rarely manage to do their cleaning on the same day, the windows are usually in a state of semi-obscurity. To obtain the use of an old staircase that led from her rooms to the gardens, a lady had to successively petition the Lord Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household, the Lord Steward and Board of Green Cloth, the First Commissioner of Her Majesty's Works, and, finally, the Woods and Forests!
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HOUSES OF THE MILITARY KNIGHTS, WINDSOR CASTLE.
While chronicling the movements of the Queen, reference is now and again made in the daily press to the Military Knights of Windsor. Nevertheless, but few who read about their doings know of what that order consists. They are officers who have distinguished themselves in some of our innumerable little wars, and yet in their old age find themselves solely dependent on a very diminutive pension. From the Queen they served so faithfully and well they receive an annuity and a lodging in that vast palace, Windsor Castle. The order is, indeed, a pendant to that better-known home for the veterans of the rank and file, Chelsea Hospital. Its history is peculiarly interesting. When that gallant warrior, King Edward III., founded the Order of the Garter, he ordained that each of the twenty-six companions should be allowed to present an "alms-knight" to the provision made for them by the king. According to the original grant, these veterans were to be "such as through adverse fortune were brought to that extremity that they had not of their own wherewith to sustain them nor to live so genteely as became a military condition." That they might live "genteely" they were given a lump sum of forty shillings a year, and twelve pence each day they attended the royal chapel—a small pension, it seems to us, but it must be remembered that money has vastly decreased in purchasing power since those early days.
A MILITARY KNIGHT OF WINDSOR.
But evil fortune awaited the alms-knights. They had been placed under the supervision of the canons of St. George's Chapel, and these priests seem to have bullied them unmercifully. Under Edward IV. the quarrel had grown to such a pitch that the king interfered. Monks carried long tales to the monarch of the insubordination shown by the stout old warriors to the rules that had been made for their government. The alms-knights replied, but in cunning they were no match for their adversaries; "deeds not words" might have been their motto. In the end they were shut off from the royal bounty, and, as an old chronicler of the times remarks, "how they next subsisted doth not fully appear." Bluff King Hal, however, took pity on the poor old gentlemen that yet remained in the land of the living, and set apart certain lands for their maintenance. Queen Bess added to their lodgings, but issued a series of strict regulations as to their behaviour, which well became the maiden Queen, however distasteful they were to the alms-knights themselves. Their old enemies, the canons of St. George's Chapel, were informed that they were to consider themselves responsible for their behaviour, and severe penalties awaited a "haunter of taverns" or a "keeper of late hours." When the Queen visited Windsor they were to be ready to salute her; lastly, it was ordained that no married man could be admitted to the order, bachelors and widowers being alone eligible.