Soon after their first arrival at Hampton Court William and Mary received as their guest the Princess Anne, daughter of the exiled James II., who had been married in 1683 to Prince George of Denmark. As heir-presumptive of the English throne, the princess was very cordially disliked by the king and queen, whose jealousy was greater than ever when, on July 4, 1689, she gave birth to a son, the Duke of Gloucester. The boy was baptized in the chapel of Hampton Court, William III. standing godfather, but the child died in 1700, two years before his mother became queen. As was not unnatural, considering all that she had suffered there, Anne cared little for Hampton Court, preferring her palaces at Kensington and Windsor, but she commissioned the painter Verrio and the sculptor Grinling Gibbons to {304} supplement the already lavish decorations with ceiling paintings and mural carvings. Her successors, George I. and George II., on the other hand, were very fond of the palace, but they left it much as they found it, except that the former had the ceiling of the state bedchamber painted by Sir James Thornhill. It was in the reign of George III., who never resided at Hampton Court, that the famous Black Hamburgh vine, the largest in England, was planted, and it was the same monarch who first turned the palace to account by assigning apartments in it to people of rank and distinction, to whom for one reason or another he wished to show favour. Since then, though it has never again been the abode of royalty, it has been the scene of many gatherings of celebrities. At one time, for instance, it was the home of the Countess of Mornington, mother of the great Duke of Wellington and the astute statesman Lord Wellesley, and in it lived for several years Mrs. Tom Sheridan, daughter-in-law of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, one of whose daughters was the Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, and another the wife of the Marquis of Dufferin, whose son, the late Lord Dufferin and Ava, became Viceroy of India. It was in 1838 that Queen Victoria decided to admit all her subjects free of fee to the state apartments and grounds of her palace at Hampton, a generous policy, the wisdom of which has been conclusively proved by the ever-increasing numbers of those who show their appreciation of the fine works {305} of art preserved in the galleries and their delight in the beauty of the grounds. The grand old demesne is indeed a notable witness to the continuity of the present with the past, and to the close union between the people and their rulers, that in spite of the growth of democracy is still distinctive of England, and is her best hope for the future. {306}