Edward the Sixth during his short reign appears to have been but little associated with the place of his birth, though he was here when the Protector Somerset was nearing his fall, and hence were sent out frantic appeals to the people to come armed to the defence of their youthful sovereign. Here King Edward splendidly entertained Mary of Guise, Queen-Dowager of Scotland, on her journey through England. The most notable association of Hampton Court with the boy-king's reign is, however, that it was then that the aggrieved people of the surrounding afforested area dared to give voice to their feelings and petition against that oppression before which they had had to bow under Henry. The petition was successful, and the district was dechased, the palings and deer being removed. King Edward's dour sister-successor Queen Mary and her sombre spouse Philip of Spain were scarcely the people to make the place bright on their occasional visits, and when they were here shortly after their marriage it was said "the hall door within the Court was continually shut, so that no man might enter unless his errand were first known: which seemed strange to Englishmen, that had not been used thereto". The most gorgeous association of the depressing couple with Hampton Court was the Christmas feast of 1554, when the Great Hall was illuminated "with a thousand lamps curiously disposed". When Elizabeth came to the throne the Palace became again the centre of much Court splendour. It is a curious fact that although magnificence and pomp are generally more associated with Roman Catholic than with Protestant Courts, the Tudors were exceptions to the rule. Under Queen Elizabeth, Hampton Court saw again something of the brilliancy and pageantry in which her father had delighted. Here Her Majesty held high revel at Christmas on more than one occasion--"if ye would know what we do here," wrote one in attendance to a friend, in 1592, "we play at tables, dance--and keep Christmas". Elizabeth had been brought to Hampton Court shortly after the marriage of her sister with Philip, in the hope that she might be turned to their way of religion, but though she was for a time a sort of semi-prisoner in the Palace it became one of her favoured places of residence after her accession. Here she toyed with the idea of matrimony and entertained wooers or their ambassadors, and here she held high state and gorgeous pageantry of which many records have been kept. Elizabeth appears, indeed, to have had something of her father's love for the place and to have added to it or embellished it from time to time. On the south side of the Palace, Wren's reconstruction stops short at beautiful bayed windows doubly decorated with the monogram E. R. and the date 1568.