After the disgrace of his great chancellor, Henry VIII. seized York Place, quite regardless of the fact that, as it was not the private possession of the cardinal, he had no right to do so. But it was just what the King wanted, his own palace at Westminster having been destroyed by fire a few years before. It was then that the name of Whitehall came into use, as Shakespeare reminds us in the play of Henry VIII.: "You must no more call it York Place; that's past: For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost; 'Tis now the King's, and called Whitehall." Though Whitehall for us to-day signifies but one palace, in the days of the Tudors nearly every palace had its "white hall," usually the great banqueting hall, so that the new name bestowed by Henry was not peculiarly distinctive. Henry was delighted with his new residence, and proceeded to add new buildings, and to enclose nearly all St. James's Park up to the site of Buckingham Palace. Covering a vast extent of ground, the palace rambled from Scotland Yard along the riverside, to where Downing Street now stands, and spread across the roadway by means of a long gallery. Never so beautiful as Westminster, the Whitehall of the Tudors was a mass of brick buildings, erected without any particular scheme just as occasion required, resulting, as Besant declares, in a building "without dignity and without nobility." A roadway had always existed from Charing Cross to Westminster, and not even the autocratic Henry dared divert it for the sake of his palace, so that he caused two gateways to be erected to mark the precincts of the royal domain. Both were put up about the same time, the one nearer Westminster being called the King's Gate, and the other the Holbein Gate, being designed by the famous artist, Hans Holbein. Across this latter gateway ran the gallery connecting the main part of the palace with the Tiltyard (now the Horse Guards Parade) and the Cockpit (where the Admiralty now stands), the tennis court, and the bowling alley, where Henry VIII. indulged his love of games; for, as Leigh Hunt cynically tells us, "though he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports." Both gateways were removed during the first half of the eighteenth century, when the road was widened. Henry VIII. died in the palace where he had secretly married Anne Boleyn, and where he had enjoyed so many of the good things of life. It is said that he had grown so unwieldy that he had to be lifted by means of machinery. Cranmer came to see him on his deathbed, but when he arrived the King was already speechless, though still conscious. The Archbishop, after "speaking comfortably to him, desired him to give some token that he put his trust in God through Jesus Christ, therewith the King wrung hard the Archbishop's hand," and so left the earthly scene of his cruelties, his amusements, and his worldly success. [Illustration: Whitehall Palace at the End of the Seventeenth Century.]