THE TUDORS AT HAMPTON COURT - February/March 1999 British Heritage Feature

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THE TUDORS AT HAMPTON COURT

The Palace of Hampton Court is so splendid that two of its 16th-century residents have seemingly refused to leave, for it is said that their ghosts walk its halls to this day.

by Walter H. Owens

Of all the Royal and ancient buildings along the banks of the River Thames in and near London, none evokes more colourful memories or romantic associations than the Palace of Hampton Court. It is less spectacular than Windsor Castle and less historic than either Windsor or the Tower of London. Yet this cluster of weathered red-brick Tudor courts, gatehouses and tall decorative chimneys, set in magnificent gardens shared with the State Apartments of a later century, has great charm.

For more than two centuries Hampton Court Palace was the favourite residence of England’s kings and queens. Apart from William and Mary, for whom the extended palace was built in the 17th century by Christopher Wren, the sovereigns most closely associated with Hampton Court’s history are the Tudors; especially Henry VIII, in whose reign the Tudor palace took its present shape and form.

Henry spent his honeymoon there with five of his six wives. Anne Boleyn, the first to have apartments in the palace prepared for her, never lived to see them completed. Shortly after her execution the king wed her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, and the Royal masons and carpenters set to work altering the letter A into a J wherever it was intertwined with an H in the palace decorations.

Jane died at Hampton Court a few days after giving birth to Henry’s eagerly awaited heir, the future boy King, Edward VI. Mary Tudor, Henry’s eldest daughter, also spent her honeymoon at the palace with Philip II of Spain, after their wedding in Winchester Cathedral.

Elizabeth I, like her father, loved Hampton Court, despite having been held prisoner there shortly before her own accession. She often enjoyed relaxation from the cares of state at the palace. Records tell of her dancing, playing the virginals, watching entertainments in the Great Hall and flirting with her courtiers. She was resting in the gardens after the traditional goose banquet on Michaelmas Day, 1588, when a messenger brought her news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

The founder of Hampton Court was the great Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII. In 1514, when he was Archbishop of York and close to the height of his power, he leased the manor of Hampton in Middlesex from the Knights Hospitallers for L50 a year. he built a grand country palace in healthy surroundings, within convenient reach by river of his Westminster mansion, York Place. The palace and its rich furnishings cost Wolsey 200,000 gold crowns and on completion Hampton Court was said to be ‘more lyke unto a paradise than any earthlie habitation’. Wolsey lived there in regal splendour with a household of nearly 500 until his downfall a dozen years or so later. The Cardinal entertained lavishly and one of the last occasions was his hospitality to the French ambassador and his retinue of 400 when a treaty between England and France was signed in 1527.

Henry VIII coveted his Lord Chancellor’s property for some time before Wolsey presented it to him as a gift. The seemingly magnanimous gesture was really a desperate attempt to regain Henry’s favour, which Wolsey finally lost after failing to obtain a papal sanction for the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. By 1529 the break between King and Cardinal was complete, and Wolsey was stripped of what remained of his power and wealth. York Place was taken over and became part of Henry’s new Palace of Whitehall. Although Wolsey received a pardon in 1530 and returned to York Place, he was arrested later that year for high treason and died while being taken to London for trial.

Henry lost no time in altering and enlarging Hampton Court to make it one of the finest Royal homes in Europe. Only Wolsey’s Great Gatehouse and two of the original courts survived, so that the Tudor palace that visitors see today dates mainly from the mid-16th century. It is built of patterned brickwork, varying in colour from rose to deep crimson, with dressings of stone. Above the walls rise carved brick chimneys in groups of two, three, of four, each stack being of slightly different design from the rest.

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