Inigo Jones prepared plans for a new palace that should eclipse the old, and his designs lacked not anything on the side of magnificence; if the palace had been built as he designed, it would have exceeded in splendour any building now in London, but he did not finish it. Like William Rufus with Westminster Palace, like many another architect, his plans demanded more than his allotted span of years, and before he could do more than put his imagination upon paper, and realize but a fragment of it in stone, he was called away from a world dependent on the "work of men's hands."
The fragment he has left us still stands; it was to be the banqueting-hall, but no Royal banquets were held there; it was used as a Chapel Royal for many years, and is now the home of the United Service Museum. For the magnificent ceiling painted by Rubens we are indebted to Charles I., who also designed to have the walls painted by Vandyck, a still more costly operation, which was never carried out. The weathercock on the north end was put up by order of James II., so that he might see whether the wind was for or against the dreaded Dutch fleet. The building has one association never to be forgotten. On that black day when England shamed herself before the nations by spilling the blood of her King, the scaffold was erected before this building, though the exact site is unknown. It is believed that the window second from the north end is that in front of which it stood, and that the King stepped forth from a window in a small outbuilding on the north side; he came forth to die, the only innocent man in all that great crowd, who watched him suffer without raising a finger to save him. At that time the present windows were not glazed, but walled in. William III. talked of rebuilding the palace, but he died too soon. Queen Anne went to St. James's, and Whitehall was never rebuilt.
The Horse Guards is almost directly opposite the Banqueting House, and stands on the site of an old house for the Gentlemen Pensioners who formed the guard when there was not a standing army in England. This itself superseded the tilt-yard built by King Henry VIII., though the actual yard was the wide space at the back of the building, which still witnesses the trooping of the colours and other ceremonies on state occasions. It is interesting to notice that the words "Tilt-yard Guards" still occur in the regulations hung up inside the sentry-boxes where the magnificent sentries keep guard, to the wonder and admiration of every small boy who passes.
