Considerable additions were made to the royal residence at Sheen by Richard's orders, and the superintendence of the works was entrusted to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been held in high esteem by Edward III., that monarch having granted him a pension in 1367, calling him in the deed of gift 'our beloved yeoman.' Chaucer became deeply attached to Sheen, but his connection with it was not a long one, for he presently fell into disgrace with his employer, who took away all his official {229} appointments, and though later he was to some extent restored to favour, the king's love for his riverside home had by that time been turned to hatred. In 1394 Queen Anne died at Sheen, and so great was the grief of her husband, who, for all that, soon married again, that he ordered the palace to be razed to the ground immediately after the funeral, a grand and imposing ceremony in which all the chief nobles of England took part. Fortunately the royal commands were not fully carried out, for much of the interesting old building was left standing, and although it was neglected throughout the remainder of the reign of Richard II., it was sufficiently habitable in that of Henry IV. to be used as a residence by his son, the Prince of Wales. Indeed Henry V. was from the first very fond of Sheen, and soon after his succession to the throne he restored and added to the palace, converting it into what his biographer, Thomas Elmham, called 'a delightful mansion of curious and costly workmanship befitting the character and condition of a king.' Henry VI., who was but nine months old when his father died, may possibly have been at Sheen as a child, but the first well-authenticated visit paid by him to the palace was in 1441, when he issued a warrant from it to the sheriffs of the counties through which his aunt, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, whose husband had been Protector of England during his minority, was expected to pass, giving instructions for her reception. In 1445, the year of Henry's marriage to Margaret of Anjou, Sheen Palace was the scene of many a costly festivity, and ten years later it was to {230} it that the unfortunate monarch was taken when his constitutional weakness had developed into positive insanity. Thence, after his recovery, he went forth to the fatal battle of St. Albans, at which he was defeated and taken prisoner by the Yorkists, and there he returned in 1456, when his mind was again unhinged, whilst his wife, with her beloved son, withdrew to Chester. Once more restored to mental health, Henry made a gallant effort to regain the reins of power, but he never again was king in anything but name, his palace at Sheen knew him no more, but before his tragic death in the Tower in 1471 it was twice tenanted by his hated rival Edward IV. The latter was there for a short time in the first year of his reign, and in 1465 he held a brilliant court in the palace, hoping by his lavish hospitality to reconcile the nobles to