The manor of Havering has remained Crown property to the present day, though the park in which the Confessor's house stood has been cut up and let on leases. The so-called royal palace, that was probably merely a hunting lodge, was replaced after the Conquest by a more convenient residence, called the Bower, to which the English kings were {76} fond of resorting. There Edward III., a disappointed and disillusioned man, spent several months of the last year of his life, after he had named the unworthy son of the beloved Black Prince his successor, and there Edward IV., a year before his death, won great popularity with the citizens of London by the hospitality he showed to the 'maire and aldermen,' as related in Hall's _Chronicle_, who observes, 'No one thyng in many daies gatte him either more hartes or more hertie favour amongst the comon people.' Edward VI. was often at the Bower before he came to the throne; Queen Elizabeth, to whom the people of Havering were devoted, for she secured to them many of their ancient privileges, was as fond of it as of any of her palaces at Enfield, and her successor James I., never failed to visit it once a year. After his time, however, it, for some unexplained reason fell into disrepute, and was allowed to become a complete ruin. By the middle of the nineteenth century not a trace of it remained, and it is now represented by a new Bower House, a short distance from its site, built in 1729 for a private lease-holder. Not far from the old hunting lodge there was another royal residence, known as Prygo, which was for a long time reserved for the use of widowed queens, but was given by Elizabeth to Sir John Grey, a relation of the ill-fated nine days' queen. After changing hands again and again, the historic relic, which might well have been bought for the nation, was sold for building material and pulled down, with the exception of one wing, which was {77} later incorporated in a house built in 1852, that retains the quaint old name. [Sidenote: Leyton]