now covered by buildings, were fought out
certain ordeals of battle. Here was held at least one famous tournament,
that in which the two Scottish prisoners, the Earl Douglas and Sir
William Douglas, bore themselves so gallantly that the King restored
them to liberty on their promise not to fight against the English.

One memory of Old Palace Yard must not be forgotten. Geoffrey Chaucer
lived during his last year at a house adjoining the White Rose Tavern
abutting on the Lady Chapel of the Abbey. The house was swept away to
make room for Henry VII.'s chapel. Nor must we forget that Ben Jonson
lived and died in a house over the gate or passage from the churchyard
to the old palace. In the south-east corner of Old Palace Yard stood the
house hired by the Gunpowder Plot conspirators for the conveyance of the
barrels into the vault. And it was in Old Palace Yard that four of them
suffered death.

The whole of the ground now occupied by the Houses of Parliament,
Westminster Hall and New Palace Yard was formerly covered with the
walls, gates, tower, state chambers, private chambers, offices, stables,
gardens, and outhouses, of the King's House, Westminster. Until sixty
years ago, when fire finally destroyed them, still stood on this spot
many of the buildings, altered and reroofed, repaired, and with changed
windows and new decorations, of Edward the Confessor, and perhaps of
Knut. Still under these modern houses the ground is covered with the old
cellars, vaults and crypts, which it was found safer and cheaper to fill
with cement than to break up and carry away.

It is at present impossible to present a plan of the King's House such
as it was when Edward the Confessor occupied it; we can, however, draw
an incomplete plan of the place later on, say in the fourteenth
century.

The palace was walled, but not moated; it had two principal gates, one
opening to the north, and another on the river. The circuit of the wall
only included twelve acres and a half, and into this compass had to be
crowded in Plantagenet times the King's and Queen's state and private
apartments, and accommodation for an immense army of followers, and also
for all the craftsmen and artificers required by the Court. The total
number of persons thus housed in the fourteenth century is reckoned at
20,000. The part of the King's House thus occupied, the narrow streets
of gabled houses, with tourelles at the corners, and much gilded and
carved work, has van