York Place was Cardinal Wolsey’s scarcely less magnificent residence at Westminster.

Whether inspired by jealousy owing to the things said of the state upheld by Wolsey, or whether his repeated visits simply inspired the monarch with envy of his Chancellor’s new palace cannot be said, but when Hampton Court had been building for ten years King Henry, we are told, asked the Chancellor why he had erected so magnificent a place. “To show how noble a palace a subject may offer to his Sovereign,” was the reply of the Cardinal—a truly courtly and an unquestionably costly compliment. The King accepted the noble gift, but Wolsey continued from time to time to occupy his own whilom palace at Hampton and was besides given permission to make use of the royal palace at Richmond. This was in 1525, and already it may be the shadow of coming events was over both the powerful Churchman and the fickle King, though Wolsey was still three or four years from that final downfall which was soon followed by his death.

Though the ownership of Hampton Court had passed from the subject to the sovereign, the former continued on occasion to do the honours of the place to distinguished visitors. In 1527, for example, there came a noble “ambasset” from France, and arrangements were made for the due entertainment here of the French nobles and their retinue. A full account of it is given in George Cavendish’s Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, the earliest of our biographies and assuredly one of the most delightful. There is not space here to transcribe Cavendish’s full account of the splendid entertainment accorded to “this great ambasset ... who were in number above fourscore and the most noblest and worthiest gentlemen in all the court of France”; but the biographer, who was gentleman-usher to the Cardinal, and thus well situated for giving an authoritative record of things, was also an admirable narrator, and from his description we may get a good idea of Tudor prodigality and splendour. Not only were there the fourscore French nobles, but there were also their trains and the many home visitors who must have been invited to accompany them; so that two hundred and eighty beds had to be arranged. We are told how the best cooks were brought together, and wrought day and night in the preparing of “divers subtleties and many crafty devices”, how the purveyors “brought and sent in such plenty of costly provisions as ye would wonder at the same”, and further:

“The yeomen and grooms of the wardrobes were busied in hanging of the chambers with costly hangings, and furnishing the same with beds of silk, and other furniture apt for the same in every degree. Then my Lord Cardinal sent me, being gentleman usher, with two other of my fellows, to Hampton Court to foresee all things touching our rooms, to be noblily garnished accordingly. Our pains were not small or light, but travailing daily from chamber to chamber. Then the carpenters, the joiners, the masons, the painters, and all other artificers necessary to glorify the house and feast were set to work. There was carriage and re-carriage of plate, stuff and other rich implements; so that there was nothing lacking or to be imagined or devised for the purpose. There were also fourteen score beds provided and furnished with all manner of furniture to them belonging, too long particularly here to rehearse. But to all wise men it sufficeth to imagine, that knoweth what belongeth to the furniture of such triumphant feast or banquet.”

Cavendish goes on to tell of the sumptuousness and wonder of the entertainment which the Cardinal gave to his guests before speeding them on their way to Windsor on the following day. Of the furnishing of the chambers for the “fourteen score beds” prepared for the guests, he gives details which suggest an extraordinary display of gold and silver; but the whole account should be read in the biography of Wolsey, where it gives us a peculiarly full and detailed description of the splendour of banqueting in Tudor days. And it must be added, that though “the Frenchmen, as it seemed, were rapt into paradise”, yet this feast at Hampton Court was but as “silver is compared to gold” when contrasted with that which the King gave at Greenwich a little later to speed his parting guests on their homeward journey. In the full account which Cavendish gives of the feasting at Hampton Court and in his description of the furnishings of York House, Westminster, when Wolsey left it on his last unhappy journey, we have glimpses of the richness and magnificence to which the great men of the sixteenth century had attained in the heyday of Henry the Eighth. King Henry was at Hampton Court, engaged in practising archery in the park when George Cavendish arrived with the news of Wolsey’s death, and the bluff King paid his old and too loyal servant the tribute of saying that he would rather have given £20,000 than he had died. The King did not, however, let any sentiment about the builder of Hampton Court trouble him long or interfere with his plans.

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A CORNER OF WOLSEY’S KITCHEN

When the monarch came into full possession of Hampton Court he soon converted the lease into freehold by arrangements with the Knights Hospitaller, and at once set about having it made yet more magnificent than before. Among his improvements was the erection of the Great Hall—one of the finest buildings of the kind belonging to the Tudor period that remain to us; he rebuilt, or at any rate considerably altered, the Chapel, and made many other changes in the Palace. His additions and alterations may sometimes be recognized by the working of his monogram and those of his wives into the decoration, as in the roof of Anne Boleyn’s Gateway, where that unhappy lady’s initial is to be seen. For though this roof is a modern restoration, it is a restoration believed to be in accordance with the original design. Such evidence is not therefore always conclusive, for sometimes the monograms are not contemporary records—as in the windows of the Great Hall where the stained glass, full of such personal allusions, is all modern, having been put in between sixty and seventy years ago. Those responsible for the replacing, after a long interval, of the glass that had been destroyed when all concerning royalty was out of favour, worked in monograms and devices in a way that misleads many visitors, some of whom seeing “H” and “J” in the glass, too rashly assume that it dates from the time when Jane Seymour was the much married monarch’s queen.