“She died at her palace at Richmond, but her body was borne on a funeral barge down the river there, and here in Whitehall it lay in state till she was buried in the Abbey yonder. Then came James the First, and not content with this great palace, he planned to build a new one! Do you remember I told you of an artist called Inigo Jones who designed beautiful scenery for the masques in this reign? Well, he was also an architect, and he made a plan for a wonderful new palace, and actually began to build it. There is the little bit he finished.” Godmother pointed to a stately house on the left. “Why, I remember that! It’s in Whitehall now. Opposite the Horse Guards.” “It is, and it’s all that’s left of Whitehall Palace in our own day. The dream of a new palace remained a dream, for that’s all of it that was ever built, and was only a tiny part of what Inigo Jones meant to do. But it remains to our day, and I never pass it without thinking of the tragedy that happened there.” “What tragedy?” “Don’t you remember that it was there on a scaffold put up outside that second window at this end, that James’s son, Charles the First, was executed?” “I’d forgotten,” Betty said, looking with interest at the window Godmother pointed out. “James little thought he was having the very place built where his poor son was to die, did he?” she added after a moment. “Then did Oliver Cromwell come to live at Whitehall?” she asked presently. “Yes, and he took all the royal apartments for himself and lived in state with the poet Milton as his secretary. Here he died, only two or three years ago, and now the Palace is filled to overflowing with the great Court of the present King. Let us walk across to the river front.” They passed through many gardens and courts surrounded by houses built in the Elizabethan fashion, with gabled roofs, and timbered fronts, till they came to a long stone building facing the river, but divided from it by a pretty garden. “This is called the _Stone Gallery_,” said Godmother, “and here two of the beauties of the Court have their apartments. One is Lady Castlemaine, and the other the Duchess of Portsmouth.” “What a lovely place to live in!” Betty exclaimed. “Overlooking this garden and the beautiful river.” “It has its disadvantages,” Godmother remarked drily. “Sometimes the river floods the lower rooms at high tide. Only yesterday, for instance, when Lady Castlemaine had invited the King to dine with her, the cook came to tell her that the water had put the fire out in the kitchen.” Betty laughed. “What _did_ she do?” “Pepys wrote it all down in his diary this morning, so we know. He tells us that Lady Castlemaine exclaimed, ‘_Zounds!_’ (a favourite word in these Restoration days), ‘_you may burn the palace, down but the beef must be roasted!_’ ‘_So_,’ the ‘Diary’ goes on, ‘_it was carried to Mrs. Sarah’s husband, and there roasted_,’ ‘Mrs. Sarah’ being the housekeeper to one of Mr. Pepys’s friends. [Illustration: CHARLES I.]