It was the first duty of the mediæval builder to provide a wall of defense. This was done at Westminster. The wall, as indicated on the plan, entirely surrounded the Palace; it was provided with a water gate at the King’s Bridge or King’s Stairs; a postern at the Queen’s Stairs; a gate leading into the Abbey precinct east of St. Margaret’s Church; a subway by which the king could enter the Abbey, at Poet’s Corner; and a gate opposite the Great Hall leading into the Wool Staple. [Illustration: A BIT OF THE OLD WALL FROM BLACK DOG ALLEY.] Thus fortified, the Palace assumed something of the usual plan of a Norman castle. The Outer Bailly was represented by the New Palace Yard, with its Clock Tower and place for martial exercises, ridings, and tournaments. Westminster Hall faced the Outer Bailly; to right and to left, to east and to west, stood buildings; on the south were other buildings which inclosed the Inner Bailly, now Old Palace Yard; south of these were gardens and stables with less important houses, offices, and barracks. The great mass of the Palace buildings was between Westminster Hall and the river. [Illustration: PLAN OF WESTMINSTER PALACE IN 1834.] Of the old Palace there survived, long after the removal of the Court to Whitehall, and until the fatal fire of sixty years ago, a group of its most interesting and most historical buildings. Changes had been made in them; their roofs were taken down and replaced, their windows were altered, the very walls in some had been rebuilt; yet they were the rooms in which Edward the Confessor and all the kings and queens of England lived up to the time of the Eighth Henry. Beneath them the solid substructures of the Confessor remained after the fire, and, for all I know, remain to this day. The plan shows the position of these buildings. Beginning with the south, there is first of all the Prince’s Chamber, afterward the Robing Room of the old House of Lords. It was forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide; it ran east and west. The chamber had five beautiful lancet windows on the south side and three each on the east and west. On the north side it opened into the old House of Lords. It was in this room that Queen Elizabeth hung up the tapestry celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This excellent piece of work was afterward transferred to the Court of Requests, where it was burned in the last fire. The hall adjoining the old House of Lords formed, with the Painted Chamber and the Court of Requests, Edward the Confessor’s living rooms. Under the House of Lords was the King’s kitchen, afterward the cellar where Guy Fawkes and his friends placed the barrels of gunpowder. After the Lords removed to the Court of Requests this room was called the Royal Gallery.