Henry of Richmond kept his royal state in the Tower, receiving his ambassadors, counting his angels, making presents to his bride, Elizabeth of York.  Among other gifts to that lady on her nuptial day was a Royal Book of verse, composed by a prisoner in the keep.

St. James’s palace [Footnote:  From “Walks in London.”]

BY AUGUSTUS J.C.  HARE

The picturesque old brick gateway of St. James’s Palace still looks up St. James’s Street, one of the most precious relics of the past in London, and enshrining the memory of a greater succession of historical events than any other domestic building in England, Windsor Castle not excepted.  The site of the palace was occupied, even before the Conquest, by a hospital dedicated to St. James, for “fourteen maidens that were leprous.”  Henry VIII. obtained it by exchange, pensioned off the sisters, and converted the hospital into “a fair mansion and park,” in the same year in which he was married to Anne Boleyn, who was commemorated here with him in love-knots, now almost obliterated, upon the side doors of the gateway, and in the letters “H.A.” on the chimney-piece of the presence-chamber or tapestry room.  Holbein is sometimes said to have been the king’s architect here, as he was at Whitehall.  Henry can seldom have lived here, but hither his daughter, Mary I., retired, after her husband Philip left England for Spain, and here she died, November 17, 1558.

James I., in 1610, settled St. James’s on his eldest son, Prince Henry, who kept his court here for two years with great magnificence, having a salaried household of no less than two hundred and ninety-seven persons.  Here he died in his nineteenth year, November 6, 1612.  Upon his death, St. James’s was given to his brother Charles, who frequently resided here after his accession to the throne, and here Henrietta Maria gave birth to Charles II., James II., and the Princess Elizabeth.  In 1638 the palace was given as a refuge to the queen’s mother, Marie de Medici, who lived here for three years, with a pension of L3,000 a month!  Hither Charles I. was brought from Windsor as the prisoner of the Parliament, his usual attendants, with one exception, being debarred access to him, and being replaced by common soldiers, who sat smoking and drinking even in the royal bedchamber, never allowing him a moment’s privacy, and hence he was taken in a sedan chair to his trial at Whitehall.

On the following day the king was led away from St. James’s to the scaffold.  His faithful friends, Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Capel were afterward imprisoned in the palace and suffered like their master.