In Hampton Court the romantic interest of outlying London may perhaps be said to culminate, for {293} no other place within easy reach of the capital is associated with quite so many thrilling memories, or has retained, in spite of all alterations, an equal number of the characteristic features of its evolution. In the quiet courts and cloisters overlooked by the picturesque gables and turrets of Wolsey's building, and in the beautiful gardens in which the anxious minister so often paced to and fro pondering over the many problems that harassed him, his spirit still seems to linger; the magnificent hall of Henry vili., in which took place so many stately banquets and gorgeous ceremonies, and the richly decorated chapel in which two of the despotic monarch's marriages were solemnised, appear to be haunted by the ghosts of his murdered wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and of the scarcely less ill-fated Jane Seymour, who paid with her life for the birth of the long-desired heir to the throne, and is said to be unable to rest in her grave because of her remorse for having been the cause of the execution of her predecessor. Now the young monarch, Edward VI., and his stern guardian, the Protector Somerset, loom forth from the dim past, and behind them the imagination conjures up the shadowy form of Mrs. Penn, who on the death of the infant prince's mother was chosen to be his nurse, and was greatly beloved not only by him, but by his father and sisters. Henry VIII. gave her an estate in the country, but she attended her foster-son wherever he went, and after his early death she resided in apartments reserved to her at Hampton Court, till she too passed away. She was buried in {294} the parish church of Hampton, a full-length recumbent effigy portrait surmounting her tomb, that is still preserved in the modern Gothic building replacing an earlier place of worship; but her grave has been rifled of its contents, and since the desecration took place she has been supposed to haunt her old rooms, and many have asserted that they have seen her groping along in them with outstretched hands as if seeking for some lost treasure. To these phantoms succeed those of Edward's melancholy sister Mary and of her sombre bridegroom Philip, who repells her ardent expressions of affection with forbidding coldness, the ill-assorted pair in their turn giving place to the stately maiden queen Elizabeth and her train of richly garbed courtiers, all vying with each other in their eagerness to prove their devotion to her person. Again the scene changes, and the hapless Charles I. comes forth, closely attended by his guards, to walk for the last time round the precincts of the palace that has served as his prison, where but a little later his arch-enemy, Cromwell, was to reign supreme. Now a wedded pair as ill-assorted as Philip and Mary, Charles II. and the childless Catherine of Braganza, hold their court in the