to go to the Holy Land and fight the infidel, being himself, as Roger of Wendover says, _Miles strenuus_; but not being able to fulfil his vow, he gave his land at Whitehall, which he describes as being in the parish of St. Margaret’s, into the hands of trustees to be sold in aid of an expedition to the Holy Land. The trustees promptly sold it to Walter Grey, archbishop of York, who annexed it to his See. Walter died in 1255, and was succeeded by Sewall Bovill, who had been Dean of York. Thirty archbishops in all held this house, beginning with Walter Grey and ending with Thomas Wolsey. It is curious to remark that no trace now exists of their occasional residence. It was uniformly called York House, and we may be sure that Wolsey improved it, and built a hall and a chapel similar to those at Hampton Court. One or two old views show us stately and lofty buildings in the half-Gothic, half-Italian style, which is so familiar at Christ Church at Oxford, and at King’s College at Cambridge. A large hall was in King Street; that is, outside Holbein’s Gate. We see it beyond the gate in Silvestre’s view; and it stands up dark and heavy, with its strong buttresses on the left hand, in T. Sandby’s view. In the last century, when it had been part of the Treasury buildings for generations, it was newly fronted in stone, and the buttresses turned into pilasters. Since then it has been refronted twice—by Soane in 1824, and by Barry in 1846. Barry greatly increased the length. It would be interesting, but almost impossible, to ascertain if any of the masonry of Wolsey’s building still remains within the new walls. This is, of course, a digression. No part of the Treasury is in Whitehall; but the reason for mentioning it is that its inclusion in the two engravings I have named shows us what, in all probability, Wolsey’s other buildings were like. Paul Hentzner, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, says that they were “truly royal.” Very little building of any importance went on under Henry VIII. or his three immediate successors, so that Hentzner’s allusion must be to what Wolsey left. It is true, as we shall see, that Henry proposed to improve and extend it; but we may rest certain that he added nothing to its magnificence, if we except the gates; as the anonymous author of _Dodsley_ remarks, he had a greater taste for pleasure than for elegance of building, and immediately on entering upon possession he ordered a tennis court, a cockpit, and a series of bowling-greens.