in which her father had delighted. Here
Her Majesty held high revel at Christmas on more than one
occasion--"if ye would know what we do here," wrote one in attendance
to a friend, in 1592, "we play at tables, dance--and keep Christmas".
Elizabeth had been brought to Hampton Court shortly after the marriage
of her sister with Philip, in the hope that she might be turned to
their way of religion, but though she was for a time a sort of
semi-prisoner in the Palace it became one of her favoured places of
residence after her accession. Here she toyed with the idea of
matrimony and entertained wooers or their ambassadors, and here she
held high state and gorgeous pageantry of which many records have been
kept. Elizabeth appears, indeed, to have had something of her father's
love for the place and to have added to it or embellished it from time
to time. On the south side of the Palace, Wren's reconstruction stops
short at beautiful bayed windows doubly decorated with the monogram
E. R. and the date 1568.

A foreign Duke visiting Hampton Court during Elizabeth's reign
described it as the most splendid, most magnificent royal palace of
any to be found in England or any other kingdom, and the details which
he gives seems to bear this out. More especially was he struck by what
a later verse writer described as "that most pompous room called
Paradise", a room which, according to the ducal description,
"captivates the eyes of all who enter by the dazzling of pearls of all
kinds", and "in particular there is one apartment belonging to the
Queen, in which she is accustomed to sit in state, costly beyond
everything; the tapestries are garnished with gold, pearls, and
precious stones--one table-cover alone is valued at above fifty
thousand crowns--not to mention the royal throne, which is studded
with very large diamonds, rubies, sapphires and the like that glitter
among other precious stones and pearls as the sun among the stars".

[Illustration: ANNE BOLEYN'S GATEWAY, CLOCK COURT]

III

If under the Tudors--more especially the pleasure-loving Henry and the
display-loving Elizabeth--Hampton Court was the scene of much splendid
pageantry, under the Stuart monarchs it was the scene of more varied
happenings, even as it was the home of yet more varied rulers. The
Stuart regime began, however, quite in the spirit of the Palace
traditions, for here, during the first Christmas after James had
ascended the English throne, the