for Twelfth Day, tho' I doubt the
New Room will be scant ready."[659] Thereafter the Banqueting House,
"every way larger than the first," was regularly used for the
presentation of masques. But it was rarely if ever used for plays.
Throughout the reign of James, the ordinary place for dramatic
performances, as has been observed, was the Great Hall.

[Footnote 659: John Nichols, _The Progresses of James_, II, 162.]

On January 12, 1619, as a result of negligence during the preparations
for a masque, the Banqueting House caught fire and was burned to the
ground. The Reverend Thomas Lorkin writes to Sir Thomas Puckering on
January 19, 1619:

The unhappy accident that chanced at Whitehall last week by
fire you cannot but have heard of; but haply not the manner
how, which was this. A joiner was appointed to mend some
things that were out of order in the device of the masque,
which the King meant to have repeated at Shrovetide, who,
having kindled a fire upon a false hearth to heat his
glue-pot, the force thereof pierced soon, it seems, the
single brick, and in a short time that he absented himself
upon some occasion, fastened upon the basis, which was of
dry deal board, underneath; which suddenly conceiving flame,
gave fire to the device of the masque, all of oiled paper,
and dry fir, etc. And so, in a moment, disposed itself among
the rest of that combustible matter that it was past any
man's approach before it was almost discovered. Two hours
begun and ended that woful sight.

[Illustration: THE COCKPIT

Probably as built by Henry VIII. (From Faithorne's _Map of London_,
1658. The Whitehall district is represented as it was many years
earlier, compare Agas's _Map_, 1560).]

Inigo Jones, who had dreamed of a magnificent palace at Whitehall, and
who had drawn elaborate plans for a royal residence which should
surpass anything in Europe, now took charge of building a new
Banqueting House as a first step in the realization of his scheme.
The noble structure which he erected is to-day one of his chief
monuments, and the sole relic of the once famous royal palace. It was
completed in the spring of 1622; but, as in the case of its
predecessor, it was not commonly used for dramatic entertainments.
Though masques might be given there, the regular place for plays
continued to be the Great Hall.

In the meanwhile, however, there had been developed at