ished completely, even to the memory. When King
Henry VIII. removed to the palace at Whitehall a new Westminster arose
about his old Court; this in its turn almost vanished with the fire of
1834. Up to this time some of the old buildings remained, but have now
completely gone. Among them were the Painted Chamber, the Star Chamber,
the old House of Lords, and Princes' Chamber, all part of Edward the
Confessor's palace. In the Painted Chamber the Confessor himself died,
but it is manifestly impossible to give here any minute account of the
chambers in the ancient building.

The crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel (not shown to visitors) is one of the
few parts remaining which dates from before the fire. The chapel is said
to have been first built by the King whose name it bore, but was
rebuilt by Edward I. and greatly altered by his two immediate
successors. It was used for the sittings of the House of Commons after
Edward VI.'s reign. At the end of the seventeenth century it was much
altered by Wren, but it perished in 1834. A small chapel on the south
side was called Our Lady of the Pew. The oldest part of the ancient
palace remaining is Westminster Hall, built by William Rufus as a part
of a projected new palace. He held his Court here in 1099, and, on
hearing a remark on the vastness of his hall, he declared that it would
be only a bedroom to the palace when finished. However, he himself had
to occupy much narrower quarters before he could carry out his scheme.
Richard II. raised the hall and gave it the splendid hammer-beam roof,
one of the finest feats in carpentry extant. George IV. refaced the
exterior of the hall with stone.

In the eighteenth century the Courts of Justice (Chancery and King's
Bench) were held here, and as the hall was also lined with shops, and
the babble and walking to and fro were incessant, it is not wonderful
that justice was sometimes left undone. It would be difficult--nay,
impossible--to tell in detail all the strange historic scenes enacted in
Westminster Hall in the limited space at disposal, and as they are all
concerned rather with the nation than with Westminster, mere mention of
the principal ones will be enough. Henry II. caused his eldest son to be
crowned in the hall in his own lifetime, at which ceremony the young
Prince disdainfully asserted he was higher in rank than his father,
having a King for father and a Queen for mother, whereas his father
could only claim blood royal on the