James II. also occasionally visited Hampton Court, but the palace was neglected, and did not actually again become a royal residence till the accession of William III. and Queen Mary. He, as we have already mentioned on a former occasion, made the palace what it now is by pulling down the buildings erected by Henry VIII., and covering the site with the present Fountain Court and the State apartments surrounding it. According to a drawing by Hollar, showing Hampton Court as furnished by Henry VIII., the eastern front was really picturesque, and agreed perfectly with the architectural features of Wolsey’s building. Still, according to the notions of the seventeenth century, the apartments were not suitable for a royal residence, especially as William intended to make it a permanent and not a merely temporary one. Moreover, the King took a personal pleasure in building and planting and decorating his residence. He determined to create another Loo on the banks of the Thames. A wide extent of ground was laid out in formal walks and parterres; limes, thirty years old, were transplanted from neighbouring woods to make shady alleys. The new court rose under the direction of Wren, and with it the grand eastern and southern fronts. It is said that the King once entertained the idea of erecting an entirely new palace at the west end of the town of Hampton on an elevation distant about half a mile from the river Thames, but the design was abandoned from a consideration of the length of time necessary for such an undertaking. Horace Walpole informs us that Sir Christopher Wren submitted another design for the alterations of the ancient palace in a better taste, which Queen Mary wished to have executed; but she was overruled. The same authority says: ’This palace of King William seems erected in emulation of what is intended to imitate the pompous edifices of the French monarch.’ Unfortunately for William, he found after a time that Hampton Court was too far from the Houses of Lords and Commons and the public offices, but being unable to stand the impure air of London, he took up his residence at Kensington House, which was then quite in the country. But he frequently visited Hampton Court, and it was there he met with the accident which caused his death. On February 20, 1702, he was ambling on a favourite horse named Sorrel through the park. He urged the horse to strike into a gallop just at a spot where a mole had been at work. The horse stumbled and went down on his knees; the King fell off and broke his collar-bone. The bone was set, and the King returned to Kensington in his coach; but the jolting of the rough roads made it necessary to reduce the fracture again. He never recovered the double shock to the system, and fever supervening, he died a few days subsequently.