It is impossible to assign these buildings and places to their original sites. Take the plan of Thorney, with its Palace, Abbey, and City. Remember that there was an open space for the Inner Bailly—Old Palace Yard; and another for the Outer Bailly—New Palace Yard. In this respect the Palace followed the practice of every castle and great house in the country; even in a college the first court is a survival of the Outer Bailly. Leave, also, an open space east of the wall from the Jewel House to the outer wall for the gardens and herbaries—perhaps, like the Abbey, the Palace had gardens in the reclaimed meadows outside. Then fill in the area between the King’s House and the river with other halls, houses, offices, galleries, wardrobes, and cloisters. Let barracks, stables, shops of all kinds run under the river wall; let there be narrow lanes winding about among these courts, connecting one with the other, and all with the Inner and the Outer Bailly and the Palace stairs. This done, you will begin to understand something of the extent and nature of the King’s Palace in the fourteenth century. Add to this that the buildings were infinitely more picturesque than anything we can show of our own design, our own construction, our own grouping. The gabled houses turned to the courts and lanes their carved timber and plaster fronts; the cloisters glowed in the sunshine with their lace-like tracery and the gold and crimson of their painted roofs and walls; gray old towers looked down upon the clustered and crowded little city; everywhere there were stately halls, lofty roofs, tourelles with rich carvings—gables, painted windows, windows of tracery most beautiful, archways, gates, battlements; granaries, storehouses, barns, chantry chapels, oratories, courts of justice, and interiors bright with splendid tapestry, the colors of which had not yet faded, with canopies of scarlet and cloth of gold, and the sunlight reflected from many a shining helm and breastplate, from many a jeweled hilt and golden scabbard, from many a trophy hanging on the walls, from many a coat of arms bright with color—azure, or gules and argent. It is the color in everything that makes the time so picturesque and bright. We see how small their chambers were, how narrow were the lanes, how close the houses stood; but we forget the bright colors of everything, the hangings and the arras, the painted shields, the robes and dresses, the windows and the walls, the chambers, halls, and refectories, the galleries and the cloisters. When Time brings in another age of color—it is surely due—we shall understand better the centuries of the Plantagenets.
When the fire destroyed these buildings how much we lost that connected us with the past! True it is that in Westminster Abbey and in Westminster Hall we seem to stand face to face with the history of the country. In the Hall were done such and such things; before us lies the effigy of a king to remind us that he was a living reality—to most of us the past is as unreal as the future; we need these reminders lest the voice of our ancestors should fall upon our ears with no
EAST FRONT OF ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE OF 1834.
more meaning than the lapping of the tide or the babble of the brook or the whisper of the stream among the rushes. But we have nothing to remind us of the Palace where the Princes lived; the things that were done in them are not in the Book of Kings, but in that of the Things Left Out—the Book of Chronicles—mostly as yet unedited.
Princes were born here, and played here, and grew here to the age when they could ride the great horse and practice exercises in the New Palace Yard. Kings’ daughters were born here, and were kept here till they were sent away to marry—strange lot of the King’s daughter, that she never knew until she married what her country was to be! Queens prayed here for the safety of their husbands and their sons; here was all the home life, the private life of the Kings and Queens; in these chambers were held the King’s feasts; here he received ambassadors; here he held his council; here he looked on with the Queen at the mummeries and masques; here he held Christmas revelry; here he received and entertained—or else admonished—my Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London; here were his Parliaments; here were executed many nobles; here God Himself was invited to give judgment on the ordeal of battle. In the Painted Chamber, for instance, died King Edward the Confessor; this was the council-chamber of the Normans; here Edward III. received the embassy of Pope Benedict XII.; here Charles’s judges signed his death warrant; here Chatham lay in state. In the Court of Requests, close by, Richard I. heard cases as a judge; here Edward IV. kept his Christmas in 1472, and entertained the Mayor and Aldermen. In the old House of Lords Bacon was sentenced and disgraced, Somers was acquitted, Chatham was struck down. Under this hall the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot piled the barrels which were to destroy the Lords sitting in council. In Old Palace Yard died Raleigh; on the north side of Old Palace Yard lived Geoffrey Chaucer, clerk of the works. From the Confessor and Harold through five hundred years of kings and princes, for the whole history of England’s Parliament, for the whole history of English law and justice, the things that belonged to these chronicles passed in this succession of halls and chambers.
PASSAGE FROM ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL TO THE CLOISTER.