The lodging, or palace, as the friars loved to call it, of the emperor, was constructed under the eye of Fray Antonio de Villacastin, a brother of the house, and afterwards well known to fame as the master of the works at the Escorial. The site of it had been inspected in May, 1554, by Philip II., then on his way to England to marry queen Mary Tudor. Backed by the massive south wall of the church, the building presented its simple front of two stories to the garden and the noontide sun. Each story contained four chambers, two on either side of a corridor, which traverses the structure from east to west, and leads at either end into a broad porch, or covered gallery, supported on pillars, and open to the air. All the rooms were furnished with ample fire-places, in accordance with the Flemish wants and ways of the inhabitants. The chambers which look on the garden are bright and pleasant, but those on the north side are gloomy, and even dark, the light being admitted only by windows opening on the corridor, or on the external and deeply-shadowed porches. Charles inhabited the upper rooms, and slept in that at the north-east corner, from which a door or window had been cut through the church wall, within the chancel, and close to the high altar. From the eastern porch, or gallery, an inclined path led down into the garden, to save him the fatigue of going up and down stairs. His attendants were, for the most part, lodged in apartments built for them near the new cloister; and the hostel of the convent was given up to the physician, the bakers, and the brewers. His private rooms being surrounded on three sides by the garden, he took exclusive possession of that, and put it under the care of gardeners of his own. The friars established their potherbs in a piece of ground to the eastward, behind some tall elm trees, and adjoining the emperor's domain, but separated from it by a high wall, which they caused to be built when they found that he wished for complete seclusion.