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

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HAMPTON COURT
the chapel from that of his great minister, but it is at
least clear that the situation, general design, and proportions
were Wolsey's, and that the King, here as
elsewhere, showed very little originality in his work.
One of the most interesting features of the chapel is
the large royal pew, which forms the west gallery, and
closely resembles the pew found in so many domestic
chapels of great houses. It is approached through
the " haunted gallery," down which it is said that
Catherine Howard's ghost still wanders, trying to
intercept the King as he goes to the devotions which
had so small an effect on his life.
Henry VIII. put painted glass in all the windows,
and then or later a picture of the Crucifixion was
hung over the high altar.
The chapel, owing to a recent restoration which has
opened several of the Perpendicular windows, long disguised
by a semi-classical barbarism, now resembles in
some measure what it was when Henry VIII. had completed
the roof. The fan tracery, with long pendants
gorgeously decorated with angels, and gilded bosses,
makes one of the most splendid Tudor roofs still in
existence. Evelyn in 1662 speaks of it as "excellently
fretted and gilt." Restoration here, too, has been at
work, and the figures that support the corbels on the
walls are evidently of Wren's design. But the general
effect is that of a not unharmonious blending of late
Tudor gorgeousness with the solid comfort in pews,
and pillars, and panels of the age of Wren and his
followers.