The third of his great secular buildings, Greenwich Hospital, had the same charitable purpose as Chelsea, but exceeded Hampton Court in magnificence. Charles I. had employed Inigo Jones to build, at some distance from the Thames, a house for his Queen, Henrietta Maria. Soon after the accession of Charles II., John Webb, as ghost for Sir John Denham, had begun the great building by the shore for which Inigo Jones may have left designs; but money ran short and work was suspended after only a small part had been done. This wing is on well-known Palladian lines, but is hampered by a heavy attic, so ill-adjusted as to discredit whoever was responsible for it. When William and Mary succeeded James II., the Queen wished to emulate her uncle Charles in making provision for disabled seamen as he had done for soldiers. Once more Wren and Evelyn were to be colleagues. On May 5, 1695, the Royal Commission, consisting of these two, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other bigwigs, had its first meeting at the London Guildhall, and sixteen days later the two friends and three others went, as a Committee, to survey the site. Evelyn’s task was to raise subscriptions, and he made an interesting choice of a secretary in Mr. Vanbrugh, afterwards Sir John. About a year was spent in preparing plans, and on June 4, 1696, the Committee met at Wren’s house in Whitehall to make agreements for materials and workmen and to give orders for the foundations to be begun. On the last day of June a select committee of thirteen dined together at Greenwich, and precisely at five o’clock (Mr. Flamsteed, the King’s Astronomer, “observing the punctual time by instruments”) Wren and Evelyn jointly laid the foundation stone. [Illustration: PLATE XI GREENWICH HOSPITAL AND ITS TWO DOMES.] Queen Mary wanted the old Queen’s House and the Charles II. wing to be integral parts of the new scheme--a rather hampering condition. Wren took the former as the closing feature of a vista from the river, between his two new blocks named after William and Mary and his Queen Anne block, which balances and exactly follows the Jones-Webb block of Charles II.