Whitehall, such as it is in 1852, bears little resemblance to the Whitehall of 1652.
Wolsey lived in York Palace. He was most vain, fond of splendour, conceit, and tyranny; but for all that, he was the most remarkable man among the prelates of England. His palace was the richest booty which his downfall procured for his master, who at once settled down in it. Here he married Anna Boleyn; here he died; here did all the great men meet, who flattered that crowned tiger until he consigned them to the hands of the executioner, and impaled their heads on London Bridge. Among them were Cavendish, Thomas Cromwell, and Wolsey. Erasmus, also, and Hans Holbein, whose low degree alone saved them from sharing the fate of the king's friends and wives. Among these were the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet, Catharine of Arragon, Anna Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catharine Howard, Anne of Cleves, and Catharine Parr, the least unfortunate among these unfortunate women; and the children that were to wear crowns--Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth--these were they that passed in and out of York Palace in the days of Henry VIII.
The spirits of the murdered have probably cast a gloomy shadow on those golden walls, for after Henry's decease his successors avoided Whitehall, and Elizabeth was the first to establish her court there. A change comes over the figures of the past--Cecil and Burleigh, the two Bacons, Drake and Raleigh, Spenser and Shakespere, Sydney and Lee, Leicester and Essex, stand before us. And after them James I. and his darling "Steenie," and Charles I., Cromwell, and--the executioner.
Charles I. was very active in the improvement of Whitehall. Inigo Jones, the great architect of those days, was employed on it, and Rubens painted the ornaments of the ceiling, for which he received £3000 and the honour of knighthood. It is mere calumny, to say that Cromwell, in puritanic brutality, destroyed the works of art which he found in Whitehall. On the contrary, he made great exertions to save them; we owe it to him that the famous cartoons by Raphael may this day be seen at Hampton Court. But, of course, the Great Protector put a stop to the dissolute and merry life which formerly ruled in the palace. There was no end of praying and preaching in Whitehall; the Barebones Parliament assembled here after the dissolution of the Long Parliament; it was here that Cromwell refused the crown; and here he died, while a dreadful thunderstorm convulsed the heavens. His friends said that nature sympathised with the great man, and his enemies would have it that it was the devil going off to hell with "Old Noll," his brother.
