When we turn away from Woolwich it is perhaps with something like a sigh to think that men will spend all this money, and devote all this time and labour and material, merely in order that they may be able to blow each other to pieces. CHAPTER SEVEN _Greenwich_ The history of towns no less than the history of men can tell strange tales of failure and success. Some have had their era of intoxicating splendour, have been beloved of kings and commoners alike, have counted for much in the great struggles with which our tale is punctuated, and then, their little day over, have shrunk to the merest vestige of their former glory. Others, unknown and insignificant villages throughout most of the story, have sprung up, mushroom-like, almost in a night, and entered suddenly and confidently into the affairs of the nation. In the former class must, perhaps, be counted Greenwich. True, it has not had the disastrous fall, the unspeakable humiliation, of some English towns—Rye and Winchelsea on the south coast, for instance—yet over Greenwich now might well be written that word “Ichabod”—“The glory is departed.” For Greenwich to-day, apart from its two places of outstanding interest, the Hospital and the Park with its Observatory, is largely an affair of mean streets, a collection of tiny, uninteresting shops and drab houses. Yet Greenwich was for long a place of great fame, to which came kings and courtiers, for here was that ancient and glorious Palace of Placentia, a strong favourite with numbers of our monarchs. [Illustration: GREENWICH PARK.] Really it began its life as a Royal demesne in the year 1443, when the manor was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and permission given for the fortification of the building and enclosing of a park of two hundred acres. The Duke interpreted his permission liberally, and erected a new palace, to which he gave the name of Placentia, the House of Pleasance. He formed the park, and at the summit of the little hill, one hundred and fifty feet or more above the River, constructed a tower on the identical spot where the Observatory now stands. On Humphrey’s death the Crown once more took charge of the property. Edward IV. spent great sums in beautifying it, so that it was held in the highest esteem by the monarchs that followed. Henry VII. provided it with a splendid brickwork river front to increase its comeliness. Here, in 1491, was born Henry VIII., and here he married Katherine of Aragon. Here, too, his daughters, Mary (1515) and Elizabeth (1533), first saw the light. Edward VI., his pious young son, breathed his last within the walls.