To the end Queen Elizabeth retained her affection for Greenwich, and some of the last walks she took were in her beloved park there, in which is preserved a mighty hollow oak-tree, capable of holding no less than twenty people, that is still known as Queen Elizabeth's and is protected by a railing from injury. Her successor James I., however, cared little for the palace or its grounds, and bestowed them both in 1605 upon his wife, Anne of Denmark, who became much attached to her new possession. She greatly improved the old palace and began the building of another, to which she gave the name of the House of Delight. Her affection for Greenwich was shared by her son, Charles I., and his wife, Henrietta Maria, who were often in residence there before their troubles began, and had the House of Delight, which now forms the central portion of the Royal Naval School, completed by Inigo Jones. They opened negotiations, too, with some of the chief artists of the day, including Rubens, who was often their guest at Placentia, for the painting of the walls of the new palace, but the terms asked were prohibitive, and all too soon more pressing matters took up all the king's time and thoughts. After his fatal journey to Scotland Charles I. was never again at Greenwich and for some little time after his death the palaces there were deserted, but later Cromwell resided for {109} some time in the older of the two. On the Restoration the Greenwich estate became once more the property of the royal family, and the widowed queen Henrietta Maria lived in one of the palaces for a short time. That of Placentia was, however, now in such a melancholy state of decay that it was decided to pull it down, and a new palace was begun on its site after the designs of Inigo Jones, of which, however, only one wing was completed, with which, says Pepys in his _Diary_, 'the king was mightily pleased,' but his majesty's ardour soon cooled, and writing in 1669 the gossipy journalist remarks: 'The king's house at Greenwich goes on slow but is very pretty.' Gradually the slowness became stagnation, Charles II. lost all interest in the work, and neither he nor his successors, James II. or William III., used the new palace as a residence. The wife of the latter, however, who cherished many happy memories of Greenwich, resolved to turn the royal buildings there to account by using them as a hospital for disabled seamen. The idea, it is said, first occurred to her after the great victory of La Hogue in 1692, at which so many English sailors were crippled for life; and without waiting for the return of her husband from Holland, she at once ordered various alterations to be made to render the building suitable for its new purpose. Later William entered very cordially into the scheme, and in 1694 the palace and the estate connected with it were formally given over to trustees 'for the relief and support of seamen of the Royal navy ... who by reason of age