We assume the local position of the Palace to be sufficiently well known, and therefore not necessary to be described. It has, not inappropriately, been called the St. Cloud of Londoners. In the time of Edward the Confessor Hampton Manor belonged to Earl Algar, a powerful Saxon nobleman, and its value then was estimated at £40 per annum. After the Norman Conquest it is mentioned in Doomsday Book as held by Walter de St. Valeri, who probably gave the advowson of the living to the Priory of Takeley, in Essex, which was a cell to the Abbey of St. Valeri, in Picardy; from the port adjoining it William the Conqueror sailed for England. Hampton Manor subsequently became the property of Sir Robert Gray, whose widow in 1211 left by her will the whole manor and the manor-house of Hampton, the site of the present Hampton Court Palace, to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, whose chief residence in England was the Hospital of St. John, Clerkenwell, and of which now nothing but the gate remains. The manor thus bequeathed was of enormous extent. It comprised within its boundaries the lesser manors of Kingston-on-Thames, Walton Legh, Byflete, Weybridge, East and West Moulsey, Sandon, Weston, Innworth, Esher, Oatlands, together with the manors of Hampton, Hanworth, Feltham, Teddington, and even Hounslow Heath. Tradition says that Cardinal Wolsey, at the summit of his power, was desirous of building a palace suitable to his rank; but he was equally desirous of enjoying health and long life, and employed the most eminent physicians in England, and even called in the aid of learned doctors from Padua, to select the most healthy spot within twenty miles of London. They agreed that the parish of Hampton was the most healthy soil, and the springs in Coombe Wood, south of Richmond Park, the purest water within the limits assigned to their researches. Upon this report the Cardinal bargained for a lease with the prior of St. John of Jerusalem, and the following is a précis of the lease as still extant in the Cottonian MS. in the British Museum, and first published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for January, 1834. The indenture was made between Sir Thomas Docwra, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem and his brethren knights of the one part, and Cardinal Wolsey, Primate of England, of the other part. It granted a lease of ninety-nine years, to date from January 12, 1514, to Cardinal Wolsey at a yearly rent of £50, the lessee agreeing to the usual covenants of a repairing lease. If the rent should remain unpaid during two whole years, the lessors to have the right of re-entry, and a new lease to be granted for another ninety-nine years should such be desired by the lessee. The lessors did not foresee the future, which would, by _force majeure_, put an end to all their lease-granting.