Henry’s son and successor, Edward VI, gave St. Stephen’s Chapel—within the Palace of Westminster—to the Commons for their meeting place in 1547, the first year of his reign, and there the representatives of the people regularly met and deliberated until the place was destroyed by fire in 1834. This Chapel, built by Edward III in 1327, the first year of his reign, on the ruins of the original St. Stephen’s Chapel (which was provided by King Stephen in 1147 for the use of the inhabitants of the Palace, and dedicated by him to the first Christian martyr) was in the beautiful Gothic of the period, and Italian artists were brought to London to adorn its walls with religious frescoes. After the Reformation, when the Chapel was transferred from the Crown to the House of Commons, these mural paintings were covered over with a plain, decorous wainscot, which in the gay times of Charles II was in turn hidden behind rich tapestry hangings. These tapestries disappeared in the alterations made by Sir Christopher Wren in 1707, after the Union of England and Scotland, so as to provide accommodation for the forty-five Members from Scotland. The Chamber underwent a final transformation in 1800, when, as a result of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, seats for 100 additional Members had to be found. The old wainscot was then taken down; and although the paintings of the Italian artists of the fourteenth century were found to be in a perfect state of preservation, they were demolished likewise to make room for the required two extra lines of benches on each side. There were now five rows of benches on either side, divided, as in the present Chamber, by a gangway. The Speaker’s Chair was at the top of the Chamber, where the altar originally stood. It was a carved oak armchair, surmounted with the Royal Arms of England. Below it, as now, was the Clerk’s table. The old House of Lords, like the old House of Commons, was an oblong chamber with rows of benches on each side running up from the floor to the walls. On the walls hung tapestries, divided into compartments by oak frames, illustrating scenes from the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and with medallion portraits of the principal English naval captains woven in the borders. They were the gifts of the States of Holland to Queen Elizabeth in commemoration of England’s great deliverance and the ruined dream of Spain. The Throne on which all the Sovereigns of England from 1550 to 1834—from Edward VI to William IV—sat on the assembling of Parliament was at the top of the Chamber. It was a carved gilt armchair standing on a dais. The seat was lined with crimson velvet. Two gilt Corinthian pillars supported a canopy, also of crimson velvet, and the whole was surmounted by a crown.