PLATE XLIII. 96 WHITEHALL FROM ST. JAMES’S PARK. Oil picture. 60½ by 37 in. This picture represents much the same subject as No. 89, though it takes in less ground to the north or left, but from variations in buildings is evidently some years earlier. The Banqueting House appears, and near it on right the Holbein Gate is partly visible. Figures are emerging from a great staircase which communicated with a passage over this gate. In an article by the late Sir Reginald Palgrave, K.C.B., we are told (on the authority of the Sydney papers) that Philip, 4th Earl of Pembroke, on the day of Charles I’s execution, “out of his chamber” (in the Cockpit part of Whitehall) “looked upon the King as he went up those stairs from the Park to the gallery on the way to the place of his death.” Hard by, to left of staircase, is a doorway to passage through the Tiltyard. To right of staircase is a long gallery dating from Henry VIII’s time. Farther to right is a two-storied building which appears in Fisher’s plan as part of the Duke of Albemarle’s lodgings. Vertue’s copy of this plan is dated 1680, but Mr. Spiers gave good reasons for believing that it was drawn before 1670. The battlemented structure behind, with buttresses, mullioned windows, and turrets at the angles (mentioned in note on No. 89), was to north of passage from Whitehall to the Cockpit, now known as Treasury Passage. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1816 it is described as part of the palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, and other writers have called it “Wolsey’s Treasury.” Contemporary evidence, however, is lacking to prove that any part of Wolsey’s “York Place” stood west of the thoroughfare that led from Charing Cross, the land on the Park side having apparently been conveyed to Henry VIII by the Abbot of Westminster in 1532. The material of this important building was brick and stone. Its external character and the ground plan suggest a hall, but whatever its origin it was undoubtedly used as a tennis court by Henry VIII. Being perhaps of inconvenient shape for the later developments of the game, and Charles II having built himself a tennis court farther south, floors were inserted in 1664, and it became the Duke of Monmouth’s lodging. What remained of it in the early nineteenth century was finally swept away to make room for Soane’s Council Office as completed by Barry.