The hunting palace at Newmarket, of which mention has been made, was accidentally burnt down, and this made King Charles more anxious to have a palace in the ancient city of Winchester. Lands were bought for a park, a river was to have been brought from the downs with a thirty-foot cascade in the park, and a broad street planned to lead to the cathedral from the future palace. Wren designed a magnificent palace,[182] with a great cupola which would have been seen far out at sea, and laid the first stone on March 23, 1683. The work was much pressed forward both by King Charles and by the Duke of York, who frequently stayed at Winchester for a considerable time watching the progress of the building, and hunting in the forest. At such times the King was lodged in the Deanery and his train in the houses of the close, where most of them were sufficiently incongruous inmates. Ken, then a prebendary of the Cathedral, utterly refused to give a lodging in his house to the notorious Nell Gwynne. Winchester had many associations for Wren, to whom the name of Lancelot Andrewes must have been a household word from childhood, and it is pleasant to think that he at this time became acquainted with the saintly Ken. The palace, which was finished as far as the shell in 1685, was never used either by Charles II. or his successors, though Queen Anne made one visit to Winchester, and was so much struck with the situation and the shell of the building as it stood awaiting completion, the marble pillars sent by the Duke of Tuscany for the great staircase lying on the ground, that she resolved to finish it as a jointure house for Prince George, but his death and the cost of the great war made her give up the scheme. Sir Christopher seems to have hoped that George I. might finish it. It is, however, now used as a barrack. [_PALACES AT WINCHESTER._] Dr. Morley, Bishop of Winchester, had also engaged Sir Christopher's assistance; and having pulled down a part of the old episcopal palace, he began to build another; he died when but one wing was erected and left sufficient money to finish it. Bishop Mew, his successor, as the 'Parentalia' says, 'never minded it;' but it was finished, apparently not under Wren's auspices, by Sir Jonathan Trelawney. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1707; as Bishop of Bristol he was one of the famous 'Seven Bishops.' FOOTNOTES: [157] It was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, a great supporter of the Puritans. In Bishop Corbet's poem, _The Distracted Puritan_, the hero says:-- 'In the house of pure Emmanuel I had my education, Where my friends surmise I dazel'd my eyes With the sight of Revelation.' Evelyn, who visited it in September 1655, says: 'That zealous house ... the Chapel (it was but a room) is reformed _ab origine_, built N. and S. as is the Librarie.' [158] _Vide infra_, p. 331-3. [159] Evelyn's _Diary_, September 17, 1657, and July 23, 1678.