Scotland Yard.
Part of the Old Palace of Whitehall.
From an Etching by J. T. Smith, 1805.
View in Privy Garden.
From an Engraving by J. Malcolm, 1807.
The fire occurred on the night of the 4th January, 1698, and the King returning from one of his expeditions to Holland, found his palace, as he came up the river, in ruins. William himself acknowledges in a letter to a foreign friend that the accident, as he calls it, affected him less than it might another, because Whitehall was a place in which he could not live. Several fires had occurred within a short time at Whitehall, the most destructive being that by which in April, 1691, the Duchess of Portsmouth was burnt out, after having had her house three times rebuilt, a subject on which Evelyn enlarges in his usual pious manner. The Duchess went to live in Kensington, and survived until far on in the reign of George II. All these fires did damage, but that of the 4th January, 1698, seems to have been almost or altogether confined to the royal apartments. Macaulay’s account of the fire is enormously exaggerated. The whole palace, on both sides of the “street of Whitehall” was mainly intact still—a vast region stretching up beyond Scotland Yard, and almost to Charing Cross. Abundant remains of the Tudor period were still to be seen twenty years ago by those who sought for them. I remember a pointed window in a basement as lately as 1877. The fact is, this part of the palace was never destroyed by fire, but perished gradually, being pulled down piecemeal, to make way for other buildings, or falling into decay.