Hampton Court (Richmond upon Thames, London, England)
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.
When Anne Boleyn's ambition was gratified and she was made Henry's
second queen--vice Katherine of Arragon, divorced--Hampton Court
became for a time a scene of royal revelling. It was not so for long,
however, for already the King's passion was cooling. It was at Hampton
Court that King Henry's hopes of a son and heir were disappointed for
the third time, when, early in 1536, Anne there gave birth to a
still-born child. In the following May the unhappy Queen's brief
triumph was brought to a tragic close by the sword of the executioner
on Tower Hill, and on the very next day King Henry was formally
betrothed to Jane Seymour. In October of the following year Queen Jane
gave birth in this Palace, presumably in that part of the buildings
demolished more than a century and a half later, to a son who
afterwards became King Edward the Sixth. The arrival of a male heir
was no doubt a matter of great gratification to King Henry, and served
to lessen any sorrow that his easily salved affections might otherwise
have felt from the fact that the Queen only survived the child's birth
but a brief while. When he was but three days old the infant prince
was christened here in great state. The Princess Mary held her tiny
brother, twenty years her junior, during the ceremony at the solid
silver font, while the child Princess Elizabeth, herself carried, bore
the chrysm. Nine days after the christening of her son Queen Jane
died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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