in the middle of the night was aroused by order of his son-in-law, and hurried forcibly down the river to Rochester, whence, on December 23, he escaped to France.  On the 25th of November the Princess Anne had declared against her unfortunate father, by absconding at night by a back staircase from her lodgings in the Cockpit, as the northwestern angle of the palace was called, which looked on St. James’s Park.  Compton, Bishop of London, was waiting for her with a hackney coach, and she fled to his house in Aldersgate Street.  Mary II arrived in the middle of February, and “came into Whitehall, jolly as to a wedding, seeming quite transported with joy.”

But the glories of Whitehall were now over.  William III., occupied with his buildings at Hampton Court and Kensington, never cared to live there, and Mary doubtless stayed there as little as possible, feeling opprest by the recollections of her youth spent there with an indulgent father whom she had cruelly wronged, and a stepmother whom she had once loved with sisterly as well as filial affection, and from whom she had parted with passionate grief on her marriage, only nine years before.  The Stone Gallery and the late apartments of the royal mistresses in Whitehall were burned down in 1691, and the whole edifice was almost totally destroyed by fire through the negligence of a Dutch maidservant in 1697.

The principal remaining fragment of the palace is the Banqueting-House of Inigo Jones, from which Charles I. passed to execution.  Built in the dawn of the style of Wren, it is one of the most grandiose examples of that style, and is perfect alike in symmetry and proportion.  That it has no entrance apparent at first sight is due to the fact that it was only intended as a portion of a larger building.  In the same way we must remember that the appearance of two stories externally, while the whole is one room, is due to the Banqueting-House being only one of four intended blocks, of which one was to be a chapel surrounded by galleries, and the other two divided into two tiers of apartments.  The Banqueting-House was turned into a ehapel by George I., but has never been consecrated, and the aspect of a hall is retained by the ugly false red curtains which surround the interior of the building.  It is called the Chapel Royal of Whitehall, is served by the chaplains of the sovereign, and is one of the dreariest places of worship in London.  The ceiling is still decorated with canvas pictures by Rubens (1635) representing the apotheosis of James I. The painter received L3,000 for these works.  The walls were to have been painted by Vandyke with the History of the Order of the Garter.  “What,” says Walpole, “had the Banqueting-House been if completed?” Over the entrance is a bronze bust of James I. attributed to Le Soeur.

The tower [Footnote:  From “Her Majesty’s Tower.”]

BY W. HEPWORTH DIXON