With the coming of the Hanoverians the importance of the Palace as a Court centre dwindled. It is true that George the First and his son, while Prince of Wales, were often at Hampton Court, and that the latter when he became George the Second carried out a number of minor alterations; but the place became less regularly and less notably a centre of royal pageantry, though it was more than once made the centre of state theatrical performances. King George the Third never took up his residence here at all, owing, it is said, to the fact that it was here that his grandfather had boxed his ears! It was, indeed, during his long reign that the removal of many furnishings of the Palace, and the systematic allotting of suites of rooms to people who had some claim on royal gratitude took place. After the death of George the Second Hampton Court ceased to be used as a royal residence, and shortly after the accession of Queen Victoria the State Apartments were thrown open to the public, and the Palace gradually came to be recognized as one of the most delightful and interesting centres of historical association within easy reach of the metropolis. V It has been seen that Hampton Court Palace has associations--often peculiar and intimate associations--with our monarchs for close upon three hundred years. In the first two chief courts, in the Great Hall, the kitchens, the old cloisters, and the courts along the north side of the building, it is not a difficult effort of the imagination that is required to make us see it as it was in the brightly-attired days of Tudor splendour and lavishness; to make us realize the arrival in one of the courts of some noble company, when the great Cardinal was entertaining and when King Henry was setting forth hunting; to make us realize the hurrying of the cooks and their minions in the corridors and cloisters about the great kitchens, the knots of idlers and retainers in the lesser courts. In the later portions of the Palace, the Fountain Court and the State Chambers, we may, "with the mind's eye", see something of the more formal brightness of a later day, may see the beaux and beauties of the early eighteenth century promenading or "taking tea" with "proud Anna whom three realms obey".