it is incredible what collections have been made by English
gentlemen since that time, and how all Europe has been rummaged, as
we may say, for pictures to bring over hither, where for twenty
years they yielded the purchasers, such as collected them for sale,
immense profit. But the rates are abated since that, and we begin
to be glutted with the copies and frauds of the Dutch and Flemish
painters who have imposed grossly upon us. But to return to the
palace of Hampton Court. Queen Mary lived not to see it completely
finished, and her death, with the other difficulties of that reign,
put a stop to the works for some time till the king, reviving his
good liking of the place, set them to work again, and it was
finished as we see it. But I have been assured that had the peace
continued, and the king lived to enjoy the continuance of it, his
Majesty had resolved to have pulled down all the remains of the old
building (such as the chapel and the large court within the first
gate), and to have built up the whole palace after the manner of
those two fronts already done. In these would have been an entire
set of rooms of state for the receiving and, if need had been,
lodging and entertaining any foreign prince with his retinue; also
offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury,
and of Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business
as it might be necessary to have done there upon the king’s longer
residence there than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great
officers of the Household; so that had the house had two great
squares added, as was designed, there would have been no room to
spare, or that would not have been very well filled. But the
king’s death put an end to all these things.
Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemed abandoned of
its patron. They have gotten a kind of proverbial saying relating
to Hampton Court, viz., that it has been generally chosen by every
other prince since it became a house of note. King Charles was the
first that delighted in it since Queen Elizabeth’s time. As for
the reigns before, it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was
not made a royal house till King Charles I., who was not only a
prince that delighted in country retirements, but knew how to make
choice of them by the beauty of their situation, the goodness of
the air, &c. He took great delight here, and, had he lived to
enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thing than it
was. But we all know what took him off from that felicity, and all
others; and this house was at last made one of his prisons by his
rebellious subjects.
His son, King Charles II., may well be said to have an aversion to
the place, for the reason just mentioned–namely, the treatment his
royal father met with there–and particularly that the rebel and
murderer of his father, Cromwell, afterwards possessed this palace,
and revelled here in the blood of the royal party, as he had done
in that of his sovereign. King Charles II. therefore chose
Windsor, and bestowed a vast sum in beautifying the castle there,
and which brought it to the perfection we see it in at this day–
some few alterations excepted, done in the time of King William.
King William (for King James is not to be named as to his choice of
retired palaces, his delight running quite another way)–I say,
King William fixed upon Hampton Court, and it was in his reign that
Hampton Court put on new clothes, and, being dressed gay and
glorious, made the figure we now see it in.
The late queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kind regards
to the prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where her care of
his health confined her, and in this case kept for the most part at
Kensington, where he died; but her Majesty always discovered her
delight to be at Windsor, where she chose the little house, as it