Princes were born here, and played here, and grew here to the age when they could ride the great horse and practice exercises in the New Palace Yard. Kings’ daughters were born here, and were kept here till they were sent away to marry--strange lot of the King’s daughter, that she never knew until she married what her country was to be! Queens prayed here for the safety of their husbands and their sons; here was all the home life, the private life of the Kings and Queens; in these chambers were held the King’s feasts; here he received ambassadors; here he held his council; here he looked on with the Queen at the mummeries and masques; here he held Christmas revelry; here he received and entertained--or else admonished--my Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London; here were his Parliaments; here were executed many nobles; here God Himself was invited to give judgment on the ordeal of battle. In the Painted Chamber, for instance, died King Edward the Confessor; this was the council-chamber of the Normans; here Edward III. received the embassy of Pope Benedict XII.; here Charles’s judges signed his death warrant; here Chatham lay in state. In the Court of Requests, close by, Richard I. heard cases as a judge; here Edward IV. kept his Christmas in 1472, and entertained the Mayor and Aldermen. In the old House of Lords Bacon was sentenced and disgraced, Somers was acquitted, Chatham was struck down. Under this hall the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot piled the barrels which were to destroy the Lords sitting in council. In Old Palace Yard died Raleigh; on the north side of Old Palace Yard lived Geoffrey Chaucer, clerk of the works. From the Confessor and Harold through five hundred years of kings and princes, for the whole history of England’s Parliament, for the whole history of English law and justice, the things that belonged to these chronicles passed in this succession of halls and chambers. [Illustration: PASSAGE FROM ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL TO THE CLOISTER.] Thus, then, presented to you, was the Palace. You have restored the Palace of Westminster. It stands before you, plain and clear. But as yet it is a silent city--a city of the cold daybreak, a city of the sleeping. Fill it again with the living multitude--the thousands who thronged its courts--when it was the Palace of the Second Richard. Look: the men-at-arms and esquires and knights bear the cognizance--a fatal cognizance it proved to many--of the White Hart. It is the Palace of the Second Richard, whose court was the most splendid, and his expenditure the most prodigal, that the country had ever witnessed.