The Parliaments of England sat occasionally in this Hall for four hundred years after the Conquest. Since Henry VIII.’s reign county business has been transacted here, and from Cromwell’s time the Law Courts have been established, the space being divided, the upper part devoted to the Crown Court, and the lower to Nisi Prius. Generations of judges here shivered on the Bench, but at length a successful demand was made that New Courts should be constructed at the east end, and that this hall should be only the vestibule and waiting-room. During a long period the graceful pillars we now behold were portly and shapeless, encased in cement a foot thick, but in course of time the witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants who were kept kicking their heels here by “the law’s delays” did some good, for they knocked off the lower part of the cement and the marble became visible. About fourteen years ago it was determined to try the effect of removing the incrustation, and the operation having proved successful on one of the pillars near the door, the rest were soon “translated.” [Sidenote: Palace of Charles II.] Passing through the south door we found ourselves beside the one remaining tower, massive in strength and looking down from the height upon a garden where once ran the castle moat. On our right rises the high wall of a very different structure--Charles II.’s red brick palace. The proportions are magnificent and the whole effect worthy of its great designer, Wren. The main entrance with its six lofty pillars, acanthus-leaved capitals, and heavy entablature surmounted by the royal arms is scarcely visible from any point in the town, owing to the conglomeration of houses below it, but a glimpse can be obtained from a stable yard in Trafalgar Street, turning out of the High Street. Charles II. laid the first stone in 1683. Evelyn writes in that year that the palace was estimated to cost £35,000, and the surveyor was purchasing land for a park to be ten miles in circumference. There was to be a cupola over it visible at sea. After Newmarket was consumed by fire, the King was more earnest to render Winchester the seat of his autumnal field diversions. Two years later Evelyn was here, and observed that £20,000 had been expended on the palace, but his Majesty (James II.) did not seem to encourage the work. Queen Anne surveyed it in person, and would have completed it for the Prince of Denmark had he lived. The first use made of it was for the incarceration of French prisoners of war in 1756. It must have been at that time a dreadful place; there were sometimes as many as five thousand prisoners in it. In 1792 it was occupied by a number of the exiled French clergy,[29] and a few years later was fitted up as a barrack, for which it has been ever since used.