The Cockpit was situated near to what is now called Downing-street; and was the only access from Charing Cross to St. James’s Park, and the buildings beyond. Henry, for the accommodation of passengers, erected two gates, one of which opened from the Cockpit into King-street, Westminster, on the north, and the other into Charing Cross. The former of these was known by the name of Westminster Gate, and the other by the name of Cockpit Gate. Both were eminently beautiful; and before the year 1708, that of the Cockpit was still remaining, and added considerable dignity to the entrance into Anne’s courtyard, being adorned with four lofty towers, battlements, portcullises, and richly decorated.[158] Westminster Gate had no less a reputation than its neighbour, and is said to have been erected upon a design of Hans Holbein. Successive innovations in different reigns had, however, long before the Princess of Denmark honoured the Cockpit with her residence, annihilated its uses and original splendour. Apartments had been built over the space, where Henry, with his coarse taste, delighted, in the truly national and disgraceful sport. The Palace of Whitehall, including the Cockpit, was one vast range of apartments and offices, extending to the river. There was even a gallery for statues, accessible to young artists, and rooms to the number of seventy were remaining until lately.[159] The rooms were lent, or given, or let, to different persons who rejoiced in royal favour; and the same tenement, if one so vast and of such a character could be so considered, contained Charles the Second, his court, his queen, the haughty Castlemaine, and the beautiful, dangerous, and devoted Louise de la Querouaille. The rooms at the Cockpit appear, however, to have been in some respects inconvenient to the Princess of Denmark. Their situation, when all between them and the village of Charyng was an open space, when Westminster Abbey rose uninterrupted to the view, and when St. James’s Park, peopled with birds, was daily the scene of all that London could boast of aristocratic splendour, must indeed have been at once gay and commanding. Yet, notwithstanding these advantages, the Princess desired, for certain reasons, to exchange her apartments for others; and she encountered, in that desire, an unkind, and, as it appears, an unnecessary opposition from Mary. The Duchess of Marlborough thus explains the affair; and as other historians have not thought it worth their notice, we must consider her account of it to be conclusive.