Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

CHARLES I. 71
decisive step in the march of events which brought on
the Rebellion.
One last visit together did Charles and his "Mary"
pay to Hampton Court. It was when the attempt
to seize the Five Members had failed, and the Queen
herself was in danger, and Charles fled that he might
put her, at least,in safety. Charles left London for
the last time till he should enter it a prisoner. A
hurried ride to Hampton found nothing prepared.
King and Queen and their three eldest children had
to sleep together in one room. Worse hardships had
they all before life was over. A few months later and
the royal standard was set up at Nottingham. When
Charles left Hampton Court he did not see it again
for six years.
It was on August 24, 1647, that Charles, after
all the escapes of the war, and the negotiations and
intrigues that followed it, after Newcastle and
Holmby House, came to Hampton Court, having
his state as King for the last time. Sir Thomas
Herbert, his faithful groom of the chamber, in the
touching memoirs which he called Carolina Threnodia,has
given a short account of these three months,
which is well worth giving in its own simplicity.1
" About the middle of August the King removed
to Hampton Court, a most large and imperial house,
built by that pompous prelate Cardinal Wolsey, in
ostentation of his great wealth, and enlarged by King
1 "Memoirs of Sir Thomas Herbert," &c, London, 1702, pp.
33, sqq.