When Charles II. was restored to his inheritance in 1660, he evidently contemplated indulging in the royal pastime of fine building. At this time John Webb was not only the veteran of architecture, but the most notable exponent of the art then living in England. His claims on the favour of the king were founded on his long and intimate connection with Inigo Jones, a name to conjure with both in relation to architecture and to the less stable factor of court influence. They were supported on the practical side by the work he had done, although fruitlessly, for Charles’s father in the preparation of the great schemes for the palace at Whitehall, and by the assistance he had given both in architecture and the artistic hobbies of the time to many of the nobility and gentry. They were supported on the human side by personal services rendered to the late king, especially in furnishing to him, while at Oxford, full designs and particulars of all the fortifications round London, with instructions how they might be carried; and in conveying to the king, whilst at Beverley, his majesty’s jewellery, which he took, concealed in his waistcoat, through the enemy’s quarters, suffering, in consequence of the fact being discovered, close imprisonment for a month. These claims, as we have seen, failed to gain for him the coveted post of surveyor to the king’s works, but Charles employed him in resuscitating the idea of a new palace at Whitehall, which never came to fruition, and in actually erecting a considerable part of the projected palace at Greenwich.