The palace was an occasional abode of James, her successor, and his queen, and the residence of their eldest son, the accomplished Prince Henry, "England's darling." Here he died, amid universal lamentation, and his brother succeeded to the expectation of a crown, and the ultimate doom of the headsman's axe. Prince Henry would hardly have pulled down "Bishops and Bells," but his brother secured their downfall and his own by trying unduly to exalt them. Prince Charles, after an interval of some three years, took up his abode at the palace, and Richmond once more awoke, for the new Prince of Wales scattered his money--or rather the nation's money--royally while he played the fool with "Steenie," Duke of Buckingham. After he assumed the crown his visits here became less frequent, and after his execution it was ordered by Act of Parliament that the valuable contents of the palace should be sold. Though inhabited from time to time after the Restoration, it never returned to its former greatness. Much of the building was destroyed before the end of the seventeenth century, and now only a few fragments remain. Old pictures and documents enable us to form a good idea of its ancient splendour, and a right noble and picturesque structure it must have been. On the north side it looked on to Richmond Green, where now may be seen the remnant of its ancient gatehouse; on the south-west it came down to the margin of the Thames. A narrow lane, leading from the Green to the riverside, and emerging opposite to the noble old elm which forms so marked a feature in the view from the river, passes across the site of the court of the ancient palace, and, doubtless, over the foundations of its principal buildings. Roughly speaking, the site of the river façade is now occupied by the three mansions already mentioned, which themselves, as we shall show, are not without a history. The principal of these lies far back from the river; a lovely garden, shaded with trees, intervenes. Judging from the drawings, the buildings of the palace approached near to the waterside, and the space between had rather a barren and desolate look, as though it were left in the rough as a mere foreshore. Now the gardens make the passer-by long to trespass. The owners, however, beneficently (or is it to secure a good view of the river?) keep their boundary fences low. Building on the site of the old palace seems to have begun quite early in the last century. The heavy, but stately red-brick house, with a stone portico, which we have already mentioned, was erected by a Mr. Richard Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, the well-known favourite of Queen Anne. It bears the name of the Trumpeters' House, from two statues of figures blowing trumpets, which once adorned the façade. The more modern mansion, nearer to both the bridge and the river, stands on the site of the villa occupied by a noted character in the last century, the Duke of Queensbury--commonly