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

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HAMPTON COURT
war and by his own ill-health, were spent chiefly there.
After the new buildings were completed, apartments
were given to all the chief officers of state, to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and from time to time to foreign
ambassadors. It was there that the seals were taken
from Somers: it was there that the great breach with
France was begun, when William said to Tallard,
" Monsieur l'Ambassadeur,le temps est bien change: "
it was thence that Marlborough's commission, military
and diplomatic, for the great war was dated. But with
such exceptions the King did little business save at
Kensington. It was probably in the House Park that
his horse Sorrel stumbled and threw him, and the shock
brought on the illness which ended in his death. That
he had not died long before might well be wondered at
by all save his physicians, who administered to him
such pleasing concoctions as the "juice of thirty hoglice."
Two years before he had plaintively remarked
that " he should be very well if they would leave off
giving him remedies."
When William died, Hampton Court was the most
famous of English palaces. When Anne succeeded, it
sank into secondary rank. Anne liked Kensington and
Windsor. She hadno pleasant memories of her brotherin-law,nor
had the place itself happy memories for her.
It was there that her boy — her only child who survived
his infancy — William Henry, named Duke of Gloucester
on the day of his christening, was born. There
he was christened with great ceremonial. His fostermother
came from Hampton W'ick ; and though the