Whitehall

by W. J. Loftie

Evelyn, like Pepys, makes occasional mention of Whitehall Chapel and of the other buildings. We need not quote more than one or two. In April, 1667, he writes:—

“22nd.—Saw the sumptuous supper in the banqueting house at Whitehall, on the eve of St. George’s Day, where were all the companions of the Order of the Garter.

“23rd.—In the morning, his Majesty went to chapel with the Knights of the Garter, all in their habits and robes, ushered by the heralds; after the first service, they went in procession, the youngest first, the Sovereign last, with the Prelate of the Order and Dean, who had about his neck the book of the Statutes of the Order; and then the Chancellor of the Order (old Sir Henry de Vic), who wore the purse about his neck; then the Heralds and Garter-King-at-Arms, Clarencieux, Black Rod. But before the Prelate and Dean of Windsor went the gentlemen of the chapel and choristers, singing as they marched; behind them two doctors of music in damask robes; this procession was about the courts at Whitehall. Then, returning to their stalls and seats in the chapel, placed under each knight’s coat-armour and titles, the second service began. Then, the King offered at the altar, an anthem was sung; then, the rest of the Knights offered, and lastly proceeded to the banqueting house to a great feast. The King sat on an elevated throne at the upper end at a table alone; the Knights at a table on the right hand, reaching all the length of the room; over-against them a cupboard of rich gilded plate; at the lower end, the music; on the balusters above, wind music, trumpets, and kettle-drums. The King was served by the lords and pensioners who brought up the dishes. About the middle of the dinner, the Knights drank the King’s health, then the King theirs, when the trumpets and music played and sounded, the guns going off at the Tower. At the Banquet, came in the Queen, and stood by the King’s left hand, but did not sit. Then was the banqueting-stuff flung about the room profusely. In truth, the crowd was so great, that though I stayed all the supper the day before, I now stayed no longer than this sport began, for fear of disorder. The cheer was extraordinary, each Knight having forty dishes to his mess, piled up five or six high; the room hung with the richest tapestry.”

Then comes the end in a well-known and oft-quoted passage. It was in the winter of 1685. Why Evelyn visited Whitehall that particular Sunday we do not know. His description of the scene at Whitehall the last Sunday but one of the life of Charles II. is not new to any one, but must come in here: “I can never forget,” he says, “the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day se’nnight I was witness of, the King sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, etc.; a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 in gold before them; upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust.”

Funeral of Queen Mary, 1694.

From an Engraving by P. Persoy.

James II. seems to have preferred St. James’s to Whitehall as a residence during his brief and stormy reign. All his children were born there, and there is an account of his Queen, Mary of Modena, hastening from Whitehall just before the birth of the prince who became subsequently the Old Pretender.

William and Mary were hardly settled at Whitehall when they began to look about for a house which would suit the King’s health. At Whitehall he was constantly ill. The low, foggy, damp situation was not calculated for a man who suffered daily from asthma and often from ague or low fever. One day he looked at Holland House, and we read in the Kensington parochial accounts of the church bells being rung as he went through the suburban village. Holland House was perhaps too far away; but William next visited what was really the old manor house of Neyte, in Westminster, which was then called Nottingham House. It was purchased for him, and renamed Kensington Palace, and henceforth neither Whitehall nor St. James’s saw much of him or of Queen Mary, except on state occasions. We gather from Evelyn that Charles II. had given suites of apartments to the Duchess of Portsmouth, whom the people called Madam Carwell, and others. The Duchess of Cleveland had a house near St. James’s, and afterwards lived in Arlington Street. Nell Gwynne lived in Pall Mall: so that of all those “curses of the nation,” as Evelyn calls them, only this Frenchwoman remained. If we look at Vertue’s map, though we shall not see any mention of the lodgings of the Duchess, we do see an entry which, as it turns out, is more important. It points out the room of the King’s laundress.

She was a Dutchwoman at this time, and made a charcoal fire to dry a shirt belonging to a Colonel Stanley. The situation of the room, if it was the same as that of the laundress of King Charles, is precisely that in which a fire, once set going, might spread in all directions, as it was surrounded with small chambers, probably with wooden partitions, and then again by chapels, libraries, galleries, halls, and other inflammable buildings. The unhappy Dutchwoman set her room on fire and perished in the flames. “The tapestry, bedding, the wainscotes were soon in a blaze,” says Macaulay. “Before midnight, the King’s apartments, the Queen’s apartments, the wardrobe, the treasury, the office of the Privy Council, the office of the Secretary of State, had been destroyed.” Evelyn mentions a second chapel as having been fitted up for James II.: both perished. The guardroom also, and the glorious gallery of which Evelyn speaks. The Banqueting House was saved, but some pictures by Holbein in the Matted Gallery were burnt out, and there was said to be considerable loss of life. We shall see presently why so many valuable pieces of furniture and pictures were saved. Some of them found their way across the park to St. James’s. Others went as far out as Kensington, and are now to be found partly at Windsor and partly at Hampton Court.