Wolsey’s great palace at Hampton Court, although planned with considerable attention to symmetry round several rectangular courts, and with an eye to an axial line--arranged, that is to say, with a view to noble and dignified effect, was still very irregular both in disposition and in grouping, with roofs of different heights, lofty towers, turrets, and chimneys. Spenser incidentally sketches such palaces in the “Faerie Queene.” The house of Pride was “a stately Pallace built of squarèd bricke,” where “High lifted up were many loftie towres, And goodly galleries far over laid, Full of fair windowes and delightful bowres: And on the top a Diall told the timely howres.” The red-cross knight passing through the gates which “stood open wide,” although in charge of a porter, came to the hall, “which was on every side with rich array and costly arras dight.” The house of Temperance, too, was entered through a porch of hewn stone fairly wrought, provided with a “fayre portcullis” and a gate, likewise under the charge of a porter, who, unlike the careless guardian of the house of Pride, duly kept watch and ward and saw that every one passed in good order and due regard. The gateway passed, the visitors came to “a stately Hall Wherein were many tables fayre dispred.” Thence their hostess led them to see the kitchen, “A vaut ybuilt for greate dispense With many raunges reard along the wall, And one great chimney, whose long tonnell thence The smoke forth threw”; and later, “Thence backe againe faire Alma led them right, And soone into a goodly Parlour brought That was with royal arras richly dight.” The only other part of her house to which Alma took her guests was a turret, “Therein were divers rowmes and divers stages, But three the chiefest and of greatest powre.” No other rooms are particularly mentioned, but these glimpses at the palaces of Spenser’s days bring before our vision their gatehouses, their towers and turrets, their long galleries, and their many windows. It is both interesting and curious to find that even to Spenser, who wrote in the latter part of the sixteenth century (the “Faerie Queene” was being written in 1580), the hall, the kitchen, and the parlour were still the principal apartments. Except for the sumptuous hangings and the other embellishments with which he adorns his rooms, and except for the parlour and gallery, the houses which he pictures resemble those of Chaucer. The parlour, however, stands for a good deal; it typifies the extension which had taken place in the family apartments. Spenser’s descriptions, too, although indicating no great advance in the classification of rooms, point to a much more magnificent furnishing and adornment than anything to be found in Chaucer’s.